Читать книгу Shakspere & Typography - William Blades - Страница 2

The First Chapter of this Tractate is designed to show, in a succinct manner, the numerous and contradictory theories concerning Shakspere’s special knowledge, the evidence for which has been created by ‘selecting’ certain words and phrases from the mass of his writings.

The Second and Third Chapters, erected on a similar basis of ‘selection’, are intended to prove that Shakspere had an intimate and special knowledge of Typography.

Old Printers can still call to mind that period of our history when a stalwart Pressman, on his way to work, ran considerable risk in the streets of London of being seized by another kind of pressmen, viz., the Press-gang, and forced nolens volens into the service of the King. Some readers (not Printers) may think that I have exercised over quotations from Shakspere’s works a similar compulsion, by pressing into my service passages whose bearing is by no means in a typographical direction. They may even go so far as to strain somewhat the self-accusation of Falstaff (Henry IV, iv, 2), and bring against me the charge that

I have misused the King’s press most damnably, by printing such evidences.

I can only reply that if, notwithstanding a careful consideration of the proofs here laid before him, the reader should consider my case ‘not proven’, I must submit with all humility to his penetration and judgment.

At the same time, since my proofs that Shakspere was a Printer are at least quite as conclusive as the evidence brought forward by others to demonstrate that he was Doctor, Lawyer, Soldier, Sailor, Catholic, Atheist, Thief, I would claim as a right that my opponent, having rejected my theory that he was a Printer, should be consistent, and at once, reject all theories which attribute to him special knowledge, and repose upon the simple belief that Shakspere, the Actor and Playwright, was a man of surpassing genius, of keen observation, and never-failing memory.

W. B.