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The conclusion of Cymbeline has been lauded because it is consistent with poetical justice. Those who adopt this species of reasoning look very imperfectly upon the course of real events in the moral world. It is permitted, for inscrutable purposes, that the innocent should sometimes fall. before the wicked, and the noble be subjected to the base. In the same way, it is sometimes in the course of events that the pure and the gentle should triumph over deceit and outrage. The perishing of Desdemona is as true as the safety of Imogen; and the poetical truth involves as high a moral in the one case as in the other. That Shakspere's notion of poetical justice was not the hackneyed notion of an intolerant age, reflected even by a Boccaccio, is shown by the difference in the lot of the offender in the Italian tale and the lot of Iachimo. The Ambrogiolo of the novelist, who slanders a virtuous lady for the gain of a wager, is fastened to a stake, smeared with honey, and left to be devoured by flies and locusts. The close of our dramatist's story is perfect Shakspere:

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STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF OTHELLO.

Ox the 6th of October, 1621, Thomas Walkley entered at Stationers' Hall The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice.' In 1622, Walkley published the edition for which he had thus claimed the copy. It is, as was usual with the separate plays, a small quarto, and it bears the following title:'The Tragedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diverse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friars, by his Majesties Servants. Written by William Shakespeare.' It contains, also, a prefatory address, which is curious:-" The Stationer to the Reader. To set forth a book without an Epistle were like to the old English proverb, a blue coat without a badge; and the author being dead, I thought good to take that piece of work upon me: to commend it I will not: for that which is good, I hope every man will commend, without entreaty and I am the bolder, because the author's name is sufficient to vent his work. Thus leaving every one to the liberty of judgment, I have ventured to print this play, and leave it to the general censure. Yours, Thomas Walkley."

'The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice,' commences on page 310 of the Tragedies in the first folio collection. It extends to page 339; and after it follow, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. It is not entered at Stationers' Hall by the proprietors of the folio edition, which affords some presumption that Walkley was legally entitled to his copy. But it is by no means certain to our minds that Walkley's edition was published before the folio. The usual date of that edition is, as our readers know, 1623; but there is a copy in existence bearing the date of 1622. We have, however, no doubt, that the copy of Othello in the folio was printed from a manuscript copy, without reference to the quarto; for there are typographical errors in the folio, arising, no doubt, from illegibility in the manuscript, which would certainly have been avoided had the copy been compared with an edition printed from another manuscript. The fair inference, therefore, is, that the Othello of the folio was printed off before the quarto of 1622 appeared. Had it been the last play in the book we should have retained the same opinion, from internal evidence. As two plays succeed it in the volume, we are strengthened in the belief that the original quarto and folio editions were printing at one and the same time.

The modern editors of Shakspere, without regard to these circumstances, speak of the quarto edition of Othello as the first edition-the more ancient copy. We can understand how they have attached, and, in some instances very properly, great importance to an edition which has been printed in the author's lifetime. They have, indeed, in our opinion, not allowed sufficient importance to the fact, that the editors of the folio explicitly declare that those plays which have been printed before the folio are in that edition offered to the reader's view "cured, and perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he (Shakspere) conceived them ;" and, further, they have resolved to overlook their affirmation that they printed from manuscript :-"what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." But in some cases, such as The Merchant of Venice, and The Midsummer-Night's Dream, the quarto and the folio editions vary so slightly, that we can scarcely doubt that each was printed from the author's unaltered copy. In the case before us the differences are most startling. The stationer who publishes the quarto copy tells us that the author is dead, and that he has ventured to print the play; but he does not tell from what copy he printed it, nor how he obtained the copy. The editors of the folio distinctly tell us that they have printed from the author's manuscript-that other copies are stolen and surreptitious, maimed and deformed. There must surely, then, have been some very strong reason for inducing the later and more authoritative editors, Steevens and Malone, to make the quarto the basis of their text of Othello, instead of the folio. Speaking without the least desire beyond that of wishing to present our readers with the most genuine text, we cannot call their preference of the quarto to the folio, in this instance, by any other name than judicial blindness; and we have, therefore, after the most careful examination, but without the slightest doubt, adopted the text of the folio. The folio edition is regularly divided into acts and scenes; the quarto edition has not a single indication of any subdivision in the acts, and omits the division between Acts II. and III. The folio edition contains 163 lines which are not found in the quarto, and these some of the most striking in the play; namely, 35 in Act I.; 6 in Act II. ; 20 in Act III.; 75 in Act IV.; and 27 in Act v.: the number of lines found in the quarto which are not in the folio do not amount to 10. The quarto, then, has not the merit of being the fuller copy. But is it more accurate in those parts which are common to both copies? This is a question which we cannot here enter upon in detail. In our foot-notes we have set forth every deviation from the current text which we have made upon the authority of the folio, and each reading must be judged upon its own merits. We venture to think that in some remarkable instances we have restored Shakspere to what he really was. With an old author it sometimes happens as with an old picture-what is genuine lies beneath dirt and varnish. There is a quarto edition of 1630, which differs in some readings from both of the previous editions, but which is generally held as of no value.

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The date of the first production of Othello is settled as near as we can desire it to be. The play certainly belongs to the most vigorous period of Shakspere's intellect-"at its very point of culmination." Chalmers, upon the very questionable belief that the expression new heraldry refers to the creation by James I. of the order of baronets, gave it to 1614; Malone, in the early editions of his 'Essay,' to 1611; Drake, to 1612. In the later edition of Malone's 'Essay,' published by Boswell, in 1821, Malone says, without any explanation, we know it was acted in 1604, and I have therefore placed it in that year." Mr. Peter Cunningham confirms this, by having found an entry in the Revels at Court of a performance of Othello in 1604. Mr. Collier has attempted to place it two years earlier, upon the authority of detailed accounts preserved at Bridgewater House, in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Mainwaring, of the expenses incurred by Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, in entertaining Queen Elizabeth and her court three days at Harefield. Amongst the entries in these accounts is the following:

"6 Aug. 1602. Rewardes to the Vaulters Players and Dauncers. Of this
£10 to Burbidge's players of Othello

64 18 10."

Without venturing an opinion ourselves, we are bound to observe that Mr. Grant White says, "this document, which will be found reprinted in full at p. 342 of 'The Egerton Papers,' edited by Mr. Collier, and published by the Camden Society, is one of those, his discovery of which at Bridgewater House, Mr. Collier announced in 1835; and all of which, with one exception, have been pronounced forgeries by various competent authorities." Mr. Staunton also says, "the suspicion long entertained that the Shaksperian documents in that collection are modern fabrications, having now deepened almost into certainty, the extract in question is of no historical value."

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