isolation of his point of view, the simplicity of his statement (one mortal man and good writer talking happily about another), the enthusiastic tone, and at the same time the want of reverence, all bring out the individual genius of Dryden as a critic, the directness and truth of his answer when he is appealed to by good poetry."

1 Introduction to his edition of the Essays of John Dryden, Oxford, 1900, I, xxi.

EARNEST AND JEST IN SHAKESPEAREAN

SCHOLARSHIP, 1709-1747 1

FOUR folio editions of Shakespeare's plays appeared during the seventeenth century. The first critical edition was edited by Nicholas Rowe, the playwright. was in six volumes, and appeared in 1709.

It

Rowe supplied a table of characters for every play. He divided into acts and scenes the sixteen plays which in the folios were divided only in part or not at all. He marked the entrances and exits of the characters; and modernized the spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

In addition a most valuable service was performed by Rowe when he made inquiries into the facts of Shakespeare's career, and wrote the first account of his life. In this task he was greatly indebted to Betterton, the most famous actor of Shakespeare's great tragic rôles during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Betterton made a special journey to Stratford, and collected the local traditions about Shakespeare that had survived.

The text of Rowe's edition was based on the Fourth Folio. This was most unfortunate, and, as we shall see, had important evil consequences. Pope based his text on Rowe, other editors followed Pope, and so on. Edward Capell's edition in 10 volumes, 1767, was the first one to

'I have been greatly indebted in writing the major portion of this paper to Professor T. R. Lounsbury's interesting book The Text of Shakespeare, Scribner, 1906. I have also tried, so far as I could, to make an independent study of the ground there covered.

be based throughout on the First Folio and early quartos. The following table indicates upon what text each edition of Shakespeare before Capell's is believed to be based. I take the dates from Lowndes.

Rowe seems never to have consulted the First Folio at all. From some Quarto of "Hamlet" he inserted important passages that are not found in the Folios (such as I, iv, 17-38; IV, ii, 9-66). But for the most part he simply reprinted the Fourth Folio with such corrections and conjectural emendations as occurred to him.

As the first editor of Shakespeare, Rowe had it in his power to correct the more obvious misprints and oversights found in the Fourth Folio. He also made many excellent emendations of the text which have been universally accepted. I give a few examples.

Near the beginning of "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" we have these four lines in the speech of Egeus:

Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,

This man hath my consent to marry her [i.e.
Hermia, the daughter of Egeus].

Stand forth, Lysander: and, my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child.

The expressions Stand forth, Demetrius and Stand forth, Lysander are printed as stage directions in the quartos and folios. Rowe saw that these words belong in the text and put them there.

Rowe saw that the word fiends in one place in "King John" in the Folios is a mistake for friends (III, iv, 64). In "Richard II" III, iv, 10, a Lady says to the Queen, "Madam, we'll tell tales." The Queen answers in the quarto and folio texts, "Of sorrow or of griefe ?" Rowe changed this question to the form "Of sorrow or of joy?" The context shows that this is the only plausible reading. Naturally Rowe was sometimes too ingenious, and made a change in the text where none is needed. For example, in the song in "As You Like It," II, v, 1 ff.:

Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat, etc.

Rowe changed turn to tune.

In 1714 Rowe's Shakespeare came out in a second edition. Many of his corrections and emendations appeared first in this later edition.

POPE'S EDITION, 1725

Pope's translation of the Iliad was completed in 1720. It came out from the publishing house of Lintot, and was

an unprecedented success. The rival publisher Tonson conceived the idea of a new edition of Shakespeare edited by Pope, the greatest living poet. Tonson made the proposal to Pope, and the task was accepted. The edition appeared in 1725, in six really sumptuous volumes.

Pope printed his text from that of Rowe's second edition. This is shown by his reprinting Rowe's corrections and mistakes without any remarks or alterations.

Pope speaks thus of his own editorial labors:

I have discharged the dull duty of an editor, to my best judgment, with more labour than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture. The method taken in this edition will show itself. The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare them; and those I have preferred into the text are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority.

It has been often remarked that these words are a very clear and exact statement of what Pope did not do.

We know from Pope's own words that he had a remarkable collection of early editions of Shakespeare. The list begins with the First and Second Folios. He had at least one quarto of every play that appeared in that form before the appearance of the First Folio, with the solitary exception of "Much Ado."

Pope completely failed to appreciate the value of the First Folio. He considered that the quarto editions of separate plays offer a text superior to that in the Folio. He regarded the lines added to these plays in the Folio text as “trifling and bombastic passages" which had been

1 Reprinted in the Boswell-Malone variorum edition of Shakespeare, 21 volumes, London, 1821, Vol. I, p. 16.