Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 08 No. 47 September 1861 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

THE SHAKESPEARE MYSTERY.

In 1853 there went up a jubilant cry from many voices upon the publication of Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections," etc. "Now," it was said, "doubt and controversy are at an end. The text is settled by the weight of authority, and in accordance with common sense. We shall enjoy our Shakespeare in peace and quiet." Hopeless ignorance of Shakespeare-loving nature! The shout of rejoicing had hardly been uttered before there arose a counter cry of warning and defiance from a few resolute lips, which, swelling, mouth by mouth, as attention was aroused and conviction strengthened, has overwhelmed the other, now sunk into a feeble apologetic plea. The dispute upon the marginal readings in this notorious volume, as to their intrinsic value and their pretence to authority upon internal evidence, has ended in the rejection of nearly all of the few which are known to be peculiar to it, and the conclusion against any semblance of such authority. The investigation of the external evidence of their genuineness, though it has not been quite so satisfactory upon all points, has brought to light so many suspicious circumstances connected with Mr. Collier's production of them before the public, that they must be regarded as unsupported by the moral weight of good faith in the only person who is responsible for them.

Since our previous article upon this subject, nothing has appeared upon it in this country; but several important publications have been made in London concerning it; and, in fact, this department of Shakespearian literature threatens to usurp a special shelf in the dramatic library. The British Museum has fairly entered the field, not only in the persons of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Maskelyne, but in that of Sir Frederic Madden himself, the head of its Manuscript Department, and one of the very first paleographers of the age; Mr. Collier has made a formal reply; the Department of Public Records has spoken through Mr. Duffus Hardy; the "Edinburgh Review" has taken up the controversy on one side and "Fraser's Magazine" on the other; the London "Critic" has kept up a galling fire on Mr. Collier, his folio, and his friends, to which the "Athenaeum" has replied by an occasional shot, red-hot; the author of "Literary Cookery," a well-read, ingenious, caustic, and remorseless writer, whose first book was suppressed as libellous, has returned to the charge, and not less effectively because more temperately; and finally an LL.D., Mansfield Ingleby, of Trinity College, Cambridge, comes forward with a "Complete View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives, what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.

And here we pause a moment to consider the temper in which this question has been discussed among the British critics and editors. From the very beginning, eight years ago, there have been manifestations of personal animosity, indications of an eagerness to seize the opportunity of venting long secreted venom. This has appeared as well in books as in more ephemeral publications, and upon both sides, and even between writers on the same side. On every hand there has been a most deplorable impeachment of motive, accompanied by a detraction of character by imputation which is quite shocking. Petty personal slights have been insinuated as the ultimate cause of an expression of opinion upon an important literary question, and testimony has been impeached and judgment disparaged by covert allegations of disgraceful antecedent conduct on the part of witnesses or critics. Indeed, at times there has seemed reason to believe the London "Literary Gazette" right in attributing this whole controversy to a quarrel which has long existed in London, and which, having its origin in the alleged abstraction of manuscripts from a Cambridge library by a Shakespearian scholar, has made most of the British students of this department of English letters more or less partisans on one side or the other. Certainly the "Saturday Review" is correct, when it says that in this controversy "a mere literary question and a grave question of personal character are being awkwardly mixed together, and neither question is being conducted in a style at all satisfactory or creditable to literary men."

Mr. Collier is told by Mr. Duffus Hardy that "he has no one to blame but himself" for "the tone which has been adopted by those who differ from him upon this matter," because he, by his answer in the "Times" to Mr. Hamilton, made it "a personal, rather than a literary question." But, we may ask, how is it possible for a man accused of palming off a forgery upon the public to regard the question as impersonal, even although it may not be alleged in specific terms that he is the forger? Mr. Collier is like the frog in the fable. This pelting with imputations of forgery may be very fine fun to the pelters, but it is death to him. To them, indeed, it may be a mere question of evidence and criticism; but to him it must, in any case, be one of vital personal concern. Yet we cannot find any sufficient excuse for the manner in which Mr. Collier has behaved in this affair from the very beginning. His cause is damaged almost as much by his own conduct, and by the tone of his defence, as by the attacks of his accusers. A very strong argument against his complicity in any fraudulent proceeding in relation to his folio might have been founded upon an untarnished reputation, and a frank and manly attitude on his part; but, on the contrary, his course has been such as to cast suspicion upon every transaction with which he has been connected.

It has also been discovered that Mr. Collier has misrepresented the contents of the postscript of a letter from Mistress Alleyn to her husband, Edward Alleyn, the eminent actor of Shakespeare's day. This letter was first published by Mr. Collier in his "Memoirs of Edward Alleyn" in 1841, where he represents the following broken passage as part of it:--

The paper on which this postscript is written is very much decayed, and has been broken and torn away by the accidents of time; but enough remains to show that the passage in question stands thus,--the letters in brackets being obliterated:--

"Aboute a weeke agoe ther e a youthe who said he was || Mr. Frauncis Chalos man ld have borrowd x's.--to || have bought things for s Mri..... st hym || Cominge wthout... token.... d ||I would have.... || f I bene sue ..... || and inquire after the fellow," etc.

The parallels || in the above paragraph indicate the divisions of the lines in the original manuscript; and a moment's examination will convince the reader that the existence of those words of Mr. Collier's version which we have printed in Italic letter in the place to which he assigns them is a physical impossibility, as Mr. Hamilton has clearly shown. And that the mention of Shakespeare, and what he said, was not on a part of the letter which has been broken away, is made certain by the fortunate preservation of enough of the lower margin to show that no such passage could have been written upon it.

The bad effect of what he does is increased by the manner in which he seeks to shield himself from the consequences of his acts. He should have said at once, "Let this matter be investigated, and here am I to aid in the investigation," Soon after this folio was brought into public notice, Mr. Charles Knight proposed that it should be submitted to a palaeographic examination by gentlemen of acknowledged competence; but so far was Mr. Collier from yielding to this suggestion, that we have good reason for saying that it was not until after the volume passed, in 1859, into the hands of Sir Frederic Madden of the British Museum, that the more eminent Shakespearian scholars in London had even an opportunity to look at it closely. The attacks upon the genuineness of the writing on its margins Mr. Collier was at once too ready to regard as impeachments of his personal integrity, and to shirk by making counter-insinuations against the integrity of his opponents and the correctness of their motives. He attributes to the pettiest personal spite or jealousy the steps which they have taken in discharge of a duty to the interests of literature and the literary guild, and at the risk of their professional reputations, and then slinks back from his charges with,--"I have been told this, but I don't believe it: this may be so, but yet it cannot be: I did something that Mr. So-and-so's father did not like, yet I wouldn't for a moment insinuate," etc., etc. Then, Mr. Collier, why do you insinuate? And what in any case do you gain? Suppose the men who deny the good faith of your marginalia are the small-souled creatures you would have us believe they are, they do not make this denial upon their personal responsibility merely; they produce facts. Meet those; and do not go about to make one right out of two wrongs. Cease, too, this crawling upon your belly before the images of dukes and carls and lord chief-justices; digest speedily the wine and biscuits which a gentleman has brought to you in his library, and let them pass away out of your memory. Let us have no more such sneaking sentences as, "I have always striven to make myself as unobjectionable as I could"; but stand up like a man and speak like a man, if you have aught to say that is worth saying; and your noble patrons, no less than the world at large, will have more faith in you, and more respect for you.

But what has been established by the examination of Mr. Collier's folio and the manuscripts which he has brought to light? These very important points:--

The folio contains more than twice, nearly three times, as many marginal readings, including stage-directions and changes of orthography, as are enumerated in Mr. Collier's "List of Every," etc.

The margins retain in numerous places the traces of pencil-memorandums.

These pencil-memorandums are in some instances written in a modern cursive hand, to which marginal readings in ink, written in an antique hand, correspond.

There are some pencil-memorandums to which no corresponding change in ink has been made; and one of these is in short-hand of a system which did not come into use until 1774.

These pencil-memorandums in some instances underlie the words in ink which correspond to them.

Similar modern pencil-writing, underlying in like manner antique-seeming words in ink, has been discovered in the Bridgewater folio, the manuscript readings in which Mr. Collier was the first to bring into notice.

Some of the pencilled memorandums in the folio of 1632 seem to be unmistakably in the handwriting of Mr. Collier.

Several manuscripts, professing to be contemporary with Shakespeare, and containing passages of interest in regard to him, or to the dramatic affairs of his time, have been pronounced spurious by the highest palaeographic authorities in England, and in one of them a pencilled guide for the ink, like those above mentioned, has been discovered. These manuscripts were made public by Mr. Collier, who professed to have discovered them chiefly in the Bridgewater and Dulwich collections.

In his professed reprint of one manuscript Mr. Collier has inserted several lines relating to Shakespeare which could not possibly have formed a part of the passage which he professes to reprint.

In the above enumeration we have not included the many complete and partial erasures upon the margins of Mr. Collier's folio; because these, although they are inconsistent with the authoritative introduction of the manuscript readings, do not affect the question of the good faith of the person who introduced those readings, or serve as any indication of the period at which he did his work. But it must be confessed that the points enumerated present a very strong, and, when regarded by themselves, an apparently incontrovertible case against Mr. Collier and the genuineness of the folios and the manuscripts which he has brought to light. Combined with the evidence of his untrustworthiness, they compel, even from us who examine the question without prejudice, the unwilling admission that there can be no longer any doubt that he has been concerned in bringing to public notice, under the prestige of his name, a mass of manuscript matter of seeming antiquity and authority much of which at least is spurious. We say, without prejudice; for it cannot be too constantly kept in mind that the question of the genuineness of the manuscript readings in Mr. Collier's folio--that is, of the good faith in which they were written--has absolutely nothing whatever to do with that of their value or authority, at least in our judgment. Six years before the appearance of Mr. Hamilton's first letter impeaching their genuineness, we had expressed the decided opinion that they were "entitled to no other consideration than is due to their intrinsic excellence"; and this opinion is now shared even by the authority which gave them at first the fullest and most uncompromising support.

Other points sought to be established against Mr. Collier and the genuineness of his manuscript authorities must be noticed in an article which aims at the presentation of a comprehensive view of this subject. These are based on certain variations between Mr. Collier's statements as to the readings of his manuscript authorities and a certain supposed "philological" proof of the modern origin of one of those authorities, the folio of 1632. Upon all these points the case of Mr. Collier's accusers breaks down. It is found, for instance, that in the folio an interpolated line in "Coriolanus," Act iii. sc. 2, reads,--

and that so Mr. Collier gave it in both editions of his "Notes and Emendations," in his fac-similes made for private distribution, in his vile one-volume Shakespeare, and in the "List," etc., appended to the "Seven Lectures." But in his new edition of Shakespeare's Works he gives it,--

and hereupon Dr. Ingleby asks,--"Is it not possible that here Mr. Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently remembered to the prejudice of the second?" Here we see a palpable slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done before him, tortured into evidence of forgery. Such an objection is worthy of notice only as an example of the carping, unjudicial spirit in which this subject is treated by some of the British critics.

"Rewards; to m'r. Lyllyes man w'ch } brought y'e lotterye boxe to } x's. Harefield: p m'r. Andr. Leigh." }

But Mr. Collier's accusers fall short of their aim upon other and no less important points. It seems more than doubtful that the spuriousness of all the marginal readings in the notorious folio and all the documents brought forward by Mr. Collier has been established. Under ordinary circumstances, when palaeographers like Sir Frederic Madden, Sir Francis Palgrave, and Mr. Duffus Hardy, tell us that a manuscript, professing to be ancient and original, is a modern fabrication, we submit at once. A judgment pronounced by such experts commands the unquestioning deference of laymen; unless, indeed, the doctors differ; and then the humblest and most ignorant of us all must endeavor to decide between them. And when a court, under extraordinary circumstances,--and those of the present case are very extraordinary,-- not only pronounces judgment, but feels compelled to assign the reasons for that judgment, thinking men who are interested in the question under consideration will examine the evidence and weigh the arguments for themselves.

In the present case reasons have been given by Sir Frederic Madden, Mr. Hardy, and Dr. Ingleby, the chief-justice and two puisne judges of our court. The first says, that, on examining the folio with Mr. Bond, the Assistant Keeper of his Department, they were both "struck with the very suspicious character of the writing,"--certainly the work of one hand, but presenting varieties of forms assignable to different periods,--the evident painting of the letters, and the artificial look of the ink.

Mr. Hardy speaks more explicitly to the same purpose; and we must quote him at some length. He says,--

"The handwriting of the notes and alterations in the Devonshire folio is of a mixed character, varying even in the same page, from the stiff, labored Gothic hand of the sixteenth century to the round text-hand of the nineteenth, a fact most perceptible in the capital letters. It bears unequivocal marks also of laborious imitation throughout.

"In their broader characteristics, the features of the handwriting of this country, from the time of the Reformation, may be arranged under four epochs, sufficiently distinct to elucidate our argument:--

"2. The same, inclining and less stiff, as a greater amount of correspondence demanded an easier style of writing, under Elizabeth.

"4. The round hand of the schoolmaster, under the House of Hanover, degenerating into the careless, half-formed hands of the present day.

"Now it is perfectly possible that any two of these hands in succession may have been practised by the same person.... That the first and third or the second and fourth should be coexistent is very improbable. That all, or that the first, second, and fourth, should be found together, as belonging to one and the same era, we hold to be utterly impossible.

"Yet this is a difficulty that Mr. Collier has to explain; as the handwritings of the MS. corrections in the Devonshire folio, including those in pencil, vary as already said, from the stiff, upright, labored, and earlier Gothic, to the round text-hand of the nineteenth century."

Now how monstrous the last two letters are is a matter of taste,--how impossible, a matter of knowledge; but we submit that any man with a passable degree of either taste or knowledge is able to decide, and will decide that No. 6 is not more impossible than No. 1, or No. 4 more monstrous than No. 2; while in Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is exhibited a variation in the form of capital letters, instances of which Dr. Ingleby intimates it is impossible to find in genuine handwriting, and the existence of which in the Collier folio Mr. Hamilton sets forth as one reason for invalidating the good faith of its marginal readings.

But to return to the margins of our Guazzo, from five pages of which we here give fac-similes.

The ink, too, in which these notes are written illustrates the shifts to which our ancestors were put when writing-materials were not made and bought by the quantity, as they are now,--a fact which bears against a not yet well-established point made by Mr. Maskelyne of the British Museum against Mr. Collier's marginalia. This writing exhibits every possible variety of tint and of shade, and also of consistence and composition, that ink called black could show. As far as the recto of folio 12 it has the look of black ink slightly faded. On the reverse of that folio it suddenly assumes a pale gray tint, which it preserves to the recto of folio 20. There it becomes of a very dark rich brown, so smooth in surface as almost to have a lustre, but in the course of a few folios it changes to a pale tawny tint; again back to black, again to gray, again to a fine clear black that might have been written yesterday, and again to the pale tawny, with which it ends. It is also worthy of notice, that, where this ink has the dark rich brown hue, it also seems, in the words of Professor Maskelyne, in his letter to the London "Times," dated July 13, 1859, to be "on rather than in the paper"; and it also proved in this instance, to use the phraseology of the same letter, to be "removable, with the exception of a slight stain, by mere water." But who will draw hence the conclusion of the Professor with regard to the fluid used on the Collier folio, that it is "a water-color paint rather than ink,"--unless "ink" is used in a mere technical sense, to mean only a compound of nutgalls and sulphate of iron?

Now it should be observed, that, among all the fac-similes published of the marginal readings in Mr. Collier's folio, there are none either so modern or so antique in their character as the five fac-similes respectively given above; nor is there in the former a variation of style approaching that exhibited in the latter, which all surely represent the work of one hand. Neither do the fac-similes of the folio corrections exhibit any chirography more ancient, more "Gothic," than that of the account a specimen of which was published in our previous article upon this subject, and which could not have been written before 1656, and was quite surely not written until ten years later.

We have thus far left out of consideration the faint pencil-memorandums which play so important a part in the history of Mr. Collier's folio. We now examine one of their bearings upon the question at issue. Is it possible that they, or any considerable proportion of them, may be the traces of pencil-marks made in the century 1600? The very great importance of this question need not be pointed out. It was first indicated in this magazine in October, 1859. Mr. Collier has seen it, and, not speaking with certainty as to the use of plumbago pencils at that period, he says,--"But if it be true that pencils of plumbago were at that time in common use, as I believe they were, the old corrector may himself have now and then adopted this mode of recording on the spot changes which, in his judgment, ought hereafter permanently to be made in Shakespeare's text."

We now turn to another, and, to say the least, not inferior department of the evidence in this complicated case. Mr. Hamilton has done yeoman's service by his collation and publication of all the manuscript readings found on the margins of "Hamlet" in Mr. Collier's folio. It is by far the most important part of his "Inquiry." It fixes indelibly the stigma of entire untrustworthiness upon Mr. Collier, by showing, that, when he professed, after many examinations, to give a list of all the marginal readings in that folio, he did not, in this play at least, give much more than one-third of them, and that some of those which he omitted were even more striking than those which he published. We must be as brief as possible; and we shall therefore bring forward but one example of these multitudinous sins against truth; and one is as fatal as a dozen. In the last scene of the play, Horatio's last speech is correctly as follows, according to the text both of the folios and the quartos:--

"Of that I shall have also cause to speak; And from his mouth, whose voice will draw on more: But let this same be presently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance, On plots and errors, happen."

But in Mr. Collier's folio it is "corrected" after this astounding fashion:--

But no man in the world knows the ancient customs of the English stage better than Mr. Collier,--we may even say, so well, and pay no undue compliment to the historian of that stage; and though he might easily, in the eagerness of discovery, overlook the bearing of such stage-directions as those in question, will it be believed, by any one not brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632 notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were, in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions, which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the credit he was laboring to obtain for it?

"With one auspicious and one dropping eye, With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,"--

and these from the same scene:--

"It shows a will most incorrect to heaven; A heart unfortified, or mind impatient; An understanding simple and unschool'd: For what we know must be, and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we, in our peevish opposition, Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd; whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse, till he that died to-day, This must be so."

In the last scene, all after Horatio's speech; "Now cracks a noble heart," etc., is struck out. Who will believe that any man in his senses, making corrections for which he meant to claim the deference due to a higher authority than the printed test, would make such and so numerous erasures? In fact, no one does so believe.

From the foregoing examination of the evidence upon this most interesting question, it appears, we venture to assume, that the conclusions drawn by Mr. Collier's opponents as to the existence of primal evidence of forgery in the ink writing alone in his folio are not sustained by the premises which are brought forward in their support. It seems also clear, that, to say the least, it is not safe to assume that all the pencil memorandums which appear upon the margins of that volume as guides for the corrections in ink are proofs of the spurious character of those corrections; but that, on the contrary, those pencil-marks, with certain exceptions, may be the faint vestiges of the work of a corrector who lived between 1632 and 1675, and who entered his readings in pencil before finally completing them in ink. We have found, too, that this volume, for the manuscript readings in which the alleged forger claimed an authority based upon the early date at which they were written, presents upon its every page changes in phraseology, grammar, orthography, and punctuation, which, utterly useless for a forger's purpose, could not have been made before a late period in the century 1600. Now when, in view of these facts, we consider that the man who is accused of committing this forgery is a professed literary antiquary, who, at the time when he brought forward this folio, had been engaged in the minute study of the text of old plays and poems for more than thirty years, can we hesitate in pronouncing a verdict of not guilty of the offence as charged? It is as manifest as the sun in the heavens that Mr. Collier is not the writer of the mass of the corrections in this folio. It is morally impossible that he should have made them; and, on the other hand, the physical evidence which is relied upon by his accusers breaks down upon examination.

But the modern cursive pencil-writing!--for you see that it is this cursive writing that damns this folio,--what story does that tell? What is its character? Who wrote it? Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Ingleby have answered these questions by the publication of between twenty and thirty fac-similes of this pencil-writing, consisting in only five instances of more than a single word, letter, or mark. But these are undeniably the work of a modern hand,--a hand of this century, as may be seen by the following reproductions of two of the fac-similes:--

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