THE NORTHERN WHIG AND BELFAST POST, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER IT, 192& 



MORNING EXPRESS. 



fBy Private Wire.l 



•'Northern Whig and Belfast Post" Office, 

 82, Fleet Street, London. 



Saturday, 5 a.m. 



THE SHAKESPEARE FIRST FOLIO 



1623-1923. 



In this month falls the tercentenary of the 

 publication of the first collected edition of 

 Shakespeare's Plays, known as the First Folio 

 — an event in the history of our language only 

 second in importance to the issue in 1611 of 

 the " Authorised " Version of the Bible. It 

 is wonderful the influence exercised on the 

 English-speaking people by these two books- 

 quotations from them both have become in- 

 corporated in our common speech, even the 

 comparatively illiterate allude to incidents 

 recorded in their pages; no other nation has j 

 been so blessedly endowed as ours in the pos- ; 

 session of these two precious volumes. iet 

 •we might never have had the inestimable 

 benefit of reading such plays as " The Tem- 

 pest/' " A.s You Like It," "Twelfth Night, 

 " Macbeth," " Julius Csesar," and " Anthony 

 and Cleopatra," to mention only six out of 

 twenty that had been totally lost to us, but 

 for the initiative of two men— John Iiemmge 

 and Henry Condell: 



Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52, 

 and he was then only known to a reading . 

 [public by his poems and sonnets and by fifteen 

 of his plays. Some of these latter had been 

 issued in good form, their publication having 

 been apparently authorised by their theatri- 

 cal owners, but others were merely garbled 

 .versions made up from notes taken down at 

 performances, or put together by some un- 

 scrupulous actor (the actor who took the part 

 of the Host in "The Merry Wives of Wind- 

 sor," and Marcellus in " Hamlet," was such a 

 pirate), or printed from some stolen manii- ; 

 scripts, as the 1603 edition of "Hamlet" would 

 suggest. In 3619, three years after his death, 

 an attempt was made to publish what was to 

 purport to be a collected edition of his plays, 

 but which was partly a reprint of previous 

 editions of some of the plays, and partly a 

 publication of plays in which he had never 

 tad a hand. , , . .,, 



Heininge and Condell, churchwardens of bt. 

 Mary, Aldermanbury, and wealthy citizens 

 of repute, had been fellow actors and friends 

 of Shakespeare— they both had figured in his 

 will— and they doubtless felt it very keenly 

 to see the reputation of their old comrade at 

 such light hazard. That some such senti- 

 ment was present in their minds is to_ be 

 gathered from "The Epistle Dedicatone. 

 addressed to the "Incomparable pair ot breth- 

 ren." the Earls of Pembroke and Montgom- 

 ery, as well as from that written "To the 

 great variety of readers." In the former 

 they observed, "We have but collected them, 

 and done an office to the dead, to procure 

 his Orphans, Guardians; without ambition 

 either of self -profit, or fame: only to keep the 

 memory of so worthy a Friend* and lellow 

 alive, as was our Shakespeare, by humble 

 offer of his plays, to your most noble 

 patronage." '•, 



" To the readers they wrote, " It had been a 

 thing, we confess, worthy to have been 

 -wished, that the Author himself had lived to 

 have set forth, and overseen his own writings; 

 But since it hath been ordained otherwise, 

 and he by death departed from that right, we 

 pray you do not envy his Friends, the office 

 of their care, and pain, to have collected and 

 published them ; and so to have published 

 them, as where (before) you were abused with 

 divers stolen, and surreptitious copies, 

 maimed, and deformed by the frauds and 

 stealths of injurious impostors, that exposed 

 them: even those, are now offered to your 

 view cured, and perfect of their limbs; and 

 all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he 

 conceived them. Who, as he was a happy 

 imitator of Nature, was a most gentle ex- 

 presscr of it. His mind and hand went to- 

 gether: and what he thought, he uttered 

 with that easiness, that we have scarce re- 

 ceived from him a blot in his papers." 

 QUESTIONS OF COPYRIGHT. 



These two devoted friends were fortunate in 

 interesting in their enterprise two printers- 

 William Jaggard, who as printer of the 

 players' bills, was well known to them, and 

 Edward Blount, a publisher of a literary turn 

 of mind. But as sixteen of Shakespeare's 

 plays had already appeared in print — 

 " Othello " had been printed since the 

 dramatist's death— the question of copyright 

 constituted an obstacle to a. complete collec- 

 tion of the plays. This was overcome by ad- 

 anitting to partnership in the Tej.t.ire S.metn- 

 ■wick and Apsley, owners or controllers ot 

 copyrights, and there only remained to ob- 

 tain permission to include ' Iroilus and 

 Cressida." This difficulty was also eventu- 

 ally surmounted, and thus the volume con- 

 tained thirty-six plays in all— ot plays appear- 

 in"- in modern editions the only absentee was 

 " Pericles " Complimentary poems by ISen 

 Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and 

 I M. were prefixed, in addition to a portrait ot 

 Shakespeare and a list of the principal actors 

 in the plays. It is estimated that 500 copies 

 were published, and the price charged for 

 each wa s twenty shillings (equivalent to £10 

 in our money). Notwithstanding the high 

 -price demanded, the edition was apparently 

 sold out in nine years, for in 1632 a second 

 edition was issued. 



Notwithstanding the implication conveyed 

 to modern minds by the announcement that 

 the plays were printed from original copies 

 it is evident that none of Shakespeare a auto- 

 graph manuscripts was used as printers 

 copy In at least eight instances (possibly 

 Bine) previously printed editions were em- 

 ployed, presumably because t heir publication 

 had beea authorised and they had been m 

 use in the theatre. The text of the remain- 

 der was supplied from playhouse transcripts. 

 A consequence is that one play— King Henry 

 VIII —was included in which Shakespeare 

 may have had no hand at all. However, the 

 fact that original copies, m our sense of the 

 word were not employed must not be taken 

 to impugn the good faith of Hemmge and ; 

 Condell. The cumulative effect of errors due 

 to copyists and compositors was not at that 

 time properly appreciated. Thus the trans- 

 lators of the New Testament m 1611 relied 

 for their text on a Greek text printed as late 



as 1550 — they saw no reason to regard it as 

 other than sound. Likewise Heminge and 

 Condell considered any document as authen- 

 tic which had been legitimately derived and 

 had been used by the actors for purposes of 

 representation on the stage. It is to be noted 

 that they did not employ any garbled ver- 

 sion and that they had available no legiti- 

 mate text of "Pericles" is probably the reason 

 why they omitted that play — many docu- 

 ments must have perished in the burning of 

 the Globe Theatre in 1613. 



While the First Folio abounds in printers' 

 errors, yet when the requisite allowances are 

 made it is a wonderful achievement and a 

 credit to all parties concerned. The accusa- 

 tions of incompetence and culpable negli- 

 gence, which used to be charged against these 

 Jacobean compositors by men bent on dis- 

 playing their ingenuity in emendation, 

 are no longer fashionable — scholars are now 

 more conservative and are inclined to esteem 

 the original editions at a higher rate. A 

 greater familiarity with the early copies 

 owing to the dissemination of facsimiles has 

 helped in producing this sobering effect. But 

 no matter how we regard the manner in 

 which the work was executed there is no 

 denying the gratitude due from us that so 

 much genius has been preserved for our en- 

 tainment. It would almost seem that a kind 

 Providence had intervened on our behalf. 

 The, names of all the nrincinal participants, 

 especially Heminge and Condell. in the pub- 

 lication ought to be known to every boy and 

 girl and never ought to be permitted to fade 

 from, memory. E. S. H. Noble. 



