SHAKESPEARE 



369 



chancel of the parish church, near the northern 

 wall. On a slat) which marks the spot are in- 

 scribed lines traditionally attributed to Shake- 

 speare. 



Good Friend for lesus sake forbeare 



To digg the dust encloased heare ; 



Bleste be the map that spares thes stones, 



And curst be he that moves my bones. 



The removal of bones to the charnel-house was 

 then a common practice. During the life of Shake- 

 speare's widow who died August 6, 1623 a 

 monument was erected in the church, on the 

 chancel wall hard by the grave. It was sculptured 

 by Gerard Johnson or one of his sons. A bust of 

 blue limestone was placed between Corinthian 

 columns of black marble. The head is massive, 

 the forehead lofty and domed, the face that of a 

 cheerful, prosperous man. The poet is represented 

 as composing nis works, pen in hand. ' The effigy 

 was originally painted in colours to resemble life. 

 The face and hands were of a flesh colour ; the 

 eyes of a light hazel; the hair and beard were 

 auburn. The doublet was scarlet, and the loose 

 gown without sleeves worn over it was black." 

 Besides this somewhat rude portrait, we possess a 

 portrait-print by Droeshout prefixed to the first 

 folio edition of Shakespeare's works (1623). It is 

 an ill-executed engraving, but is of value as con- 

 firming the features of the bust in their general 

 characteristics. These are the only certain por- 

 traits. A death-mask, known as the Kesselstadt 

 death-mask, presenting a remarkable and noble 

 face, may possibly be genuine ; but the evidence 

 leaves much room for doubt. Of many alleged 

 painted portraits that known as the Chanuos 

 portrait has found, perhaps, the widest acceptance. 



The central impression which his writings and 

 the story of his life leave upon us with respect to 

 the man Shakespeare is that of the completeness of 

 his humanity, and the sanity which results from 

 uch completeness. His life in the world of imagina- 

 tion is the widest and deepest on record ; but he 

 was not, like so many of the race of poets, indiffer- 

 ent to the practical, material life. He was certainly 

 a man of strong passions ; he was profoundly 

 speculative in the way of an imaginative thinker 

 with reference to the problems of the soul ; but he 

 learned to control his passions, and to master his 

 excessive tendency to speculation ; in the close, he 

 looked down on all of human life with sympathy 

 as from the heights ; and yet he did not desert the 

 duties of the common road on which men travel 

 aide by side. 



The name of the poet may be spelt ' Shakspere, 1 

 for we have his autograph signature in that form ; 

 but 'Shakespeare,' which appears on the title-page 

 of books which he superintended, is also correct. 

 There is less evidence in favour of the form ' Shak- 

 apeare. " 



During hit life from 1597 onwards several of his plays 

 were printed in quarto (see Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines 

 of the Life of Shakespeare, vol. i., 'Lifetime editions' ). 

 After his death the first collected edition of the plays 

 apjiearwl in 1H23, in folio, under the superintendence of 

 his fellow-actors Heminge and Condell. It U dedicated 

 to the brothers, the Earls of Pembroke and of Mont- 

 gomery. Seventeen of the plays contained in the volume 

 had not been published in quarto. The arrangement of 

 the content* 19 under the three divisions of comedy, 

 history, and tragedy. In 1632 this volume was reprinted 

 < second folio), and again in 1663-64 (third folio) and 

 1685 (fourth folio). The 1664 issue of the third folio 

 gives seven additional plays Pericles ; The London Pro- 

 di/ial ; Thomas Lnrd Cromwell ; Sir John Oltlcastle, the 

 gootl Lord Cobham ; The Puritan Widow ; A Yorkshire 

 Trayedy ; Locrine. Some critics have supposed A York- 

 hire Tragedy may possibly be by Shakespeare, or at 

 leant contain touches from his hand. 



The first critical edition of the plays is that by Nicholas 

 Howe (1709). He made some judicious corrections of 

 Mil 



the text, and gathered a few biographical materials, 

 which he embodied in a brief sketch of Shakespeare's 

 life. In 1725 appeared Pope's edition ; some of his 

 critical emendations are happy, and his preface contains 

 admirable remarks on the Shakespearian drama. Theo- 

 bald, whose edition appeared in 1733, though the object 

 of Pope's ridicule in the Dunciad, was a better scholar 

 than Pope ; he collated early editions, proposed ingenious 

 emendations, and very materially improved the text of 

 his author. Hanmer in the ' Oxford Edition ' ( 1744), and 

 Warburton in his edition ( 1747 ), based on Pope's, made 

 small advance on their predecessors. Warburton's text 

 was severely criticised by Upton, Grey, Heath, and 

 Edwards. The edition of Johnson (1765) is chiefly re- 

 markable for its masterly preface ; he rightly came to 

 distrust his own skill as a conjectural emender of the 

 text, and he was not qualified by any profound knowledge 

 of Elizabethan literature for the task of an editor. In 

 1766 Steevens reprinted twenty of the early quartos, and 

 from 1773 onwards Johnson's editorial work was ably 

 supplemented by that of Steevens. In dealing with the 

 text Steevens was learned and ingenious, but somewhat 

 rash and lacking in reverence. Capell's edition ( 1768 ) is 

 the work of a true and laborious scholar. His learned 

 Notes, Various Readings, and the School of Shakespeare 

 were published posthumously in 1783. Much was done 

 by Malone to ascertain the chronological order of the 

 plays and to illustrate the history of the English theatre. 

 In 1780 he edited the poems of Shakespeare and the 

 doubtful plays of the 1664 folio. His edition of Shake- 

 speare's works followed in 1790. He was modest, faith- 

 ful, learned, judicious, but unhappily was not endowed 

 with a feeling for the beauty of verse. Variorum editions, 

 embodying the work of Johnson, Steevens, and Malone, 

 appeared under the editorship of Reed in 1803 and 1813. 

 and under the editorship of James Boswell (the younger) 

 in 1821. Towards the close of the 18th century Shake- 



rarian critics were much occupied with the forgeries of 

 W. H. Ireland. In 1796 the forger made his public 

 confession. The criticism of Coleridge, and hi a less 

 degree that of Lamb and of Hazlitt, opened up new and 

 better ways for Shakespearian criticism in the early part 

 of the 19th century. Many valuable editions have 

 been issued since the Variorum of 1821, among which 

 may be mentioned those of Singer, Knight, Collier, Dyce, 

 Staunton Halliwell, the Cambridge Shakespeare, the 

 Henry Irving Shakespeare. Germany has given us the 

 excellent edition of Delius, and America those of Grant, 

 White, Hudson, Rolfe, and the magnificent Variorum 

 edition of certain plays by Furness. The Sonneti have 

 appeared in two annotated editions that of the present 

 writer and that of Tyler. The Shakespeare Society (1841- 

 63) did much to illustrate Shakespeare's writings by re- 

 prints from Elizabethan literature ; the Collier (q.v. ) con- 

 troversy helped to bring the society to an untimely break- 

 down. The New Shakspere Society (1874 onwards) 

 has carried on the work, and devoted itself in particular 

 to the study of ' verse-tests' as giving indications of the 

 chronology of the plays. A German Shakespeare Society 

 has pul>lihed annual volumes since 1865. 



Concordances: Mrs Cowden Clarke's Concordance^ to the 

 Plays ), Mrs Furness's Concordance to Shakespeare ' Poems 

 ( I'll i In. . 1874 ), Bartlett's Complete Concordance to the Dra- 

 matic Work* and Poems of Shakespeare ( 1894 ), Schmidt's 

 Lexicon. Grammar : Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar. 

 Verse: W. Sidney Walker's Shakespeare's Versification 

 and his Criticisms on Shaketpeare (textual notes), 

 Bathurst s Changes in Shakespeare's Versification. Chron 

 ology: Stoke'g Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Plays. 

 Sources: Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Courtenay's 

 Commentaries on the Historical Plays, Skeat's Shake- 

 speare's Plutarch. Life : Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines of 

 the Life of Shakespeare, Fleay's Life and Work of Shake- 

 speare. Portraits: J. Parker Norris' Portraits of Shake- 

 speare. Criticism : Coleridge's Shakespeare Notes ; Dow- 

 den's Shakespeare, his Afind and Art, and Shakespeare 

 Primer; Hudson, Shakespeare, his Life, Art, and Char- 

 acters ; Gervinus, Commentaries ; Lloyd's Critical Essays 

 on Shakespeare's Plaus; Mrs Jameson, Characteristics 

 of Women; and works by Kreyssig, Ulrici, Bernhard 

 Ten Brink, and Richard Loeuing. Dramatic History : 

 Collier's Enjlish Dramatic Poetry and History of the 

 Stage ; Fleay's Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559- 

 Itife ; Ward's English Dramatic Literature. Bibliog- 

 raphy : Bonn's Bibliography, 'Shakespeare' in Lowndess 

 Bibliography and AUioone's Dictionary of Authors, 



