other that he could not by any known conveyance have passed from one to the other within the time supposed (which was Ratcliffe's case, and which I hold to be legitimate as long as the impossibility is not brought home to the spectator's imagination)--but in two places both within the sight of the spectators and visible at the same time. He had at the same time to be with Richard on the walls of the tower, and to enter with Hastings's head.

"Glo. Catesby, o'er look the walls.

Buc. Hush! I hear a drum.

Glo. Look back, defend thee, here are enemies.
Buc. God and our innocency defend us.

Glo. O, O, be quiet, it is Catesby.

Enter Catesby with Hastings's head."

This cannot have been intended. The puzzle is to understand how it came about. For Ratcliffe was ready, and Catesby was wanted to go and bring the Lord Mayor; and therefore it cannot be accounted for as an alteration made for the convenience of the actors. There is, however, one reason for thinking that it was not Shakspere's original intention to assign that office to Catesby. Up to that morning, Hastings had considered Catesby as his own confidential friend acting altogether in his interest.

"Bid him not fear the separated councils.
His honour and myself are at the one,
And at the other is my servant Catesby:
Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us

Whereof I shall not have intelligence." (III. ii. 20, Quarto version.) I cannot think that Shakspere would have made this same Catesby carry Hastings to the block the same afternoon, without some notice taken on one side or the other of this peculiar relation. And yet Hastings is made to treat him like an ordinary official to whom he has nothing to say, and all that Catesby is made to say to him is—

Despatch, my Lord, the Duke would be at dinner,
Make a short shrift, he longs to see your head."

With Ratcliffe, on the contrary, a man not known to Hastings for anything that appears, such language was natural, and in accordance with his traditional character-" short and rude in speech,

rough and boisterous of behaviour, bold in mischief, and as far from pity as from all fear of God." The substitution for Catesby, therefore, of Lovell and Ratcliffe removes all difficulties. When Catesby is told to "o'er-look the walls he has just arrived within them, bringing the Lord Mayor with him: and the enemies whom Richard pretended to be on his guard against turn out friends.

"Be patient, they are friends, Ratcliffe and Lovell."

An objection has indeed been taken to the employment of Ratcliffe in this office, on the ground that he had been employed just before in leading Rivers, Vaughan, and Gray to execution at Pomfret; and as both executions are represented as happening on the same day, he could not have officiated at both, considering the distance of Pomfret from London. But this is to cramp the legitimate liberty of the theatre. There is nothing in the previous Scene to bring before the spectators' imagination the distance of Pomfret from London: and all physical impossibilities are allowable in a play, which do not shock the imagination.

It appears therefore that a comparison of the stage-directions leads to the same conclusion as that of the texts. The alterations in the Folio have been made with a view to dramatic effect by some one who understood its value, and not to the actual conditions of the performance, which depended upon the strength of the company. If we are to choose between the two, therefore, we must surely take the stage-directions in the Folio as most probably representing the stagearrangements which Shakspere intended.

Let me now sum up the results to which this inquiry has conducted me.

The question was, which is the best authority for the text of Richard III. The argument of the Cambridge editors in favour of the Quarto as preferable to the Folio rests, as I understand it, upon the following considerations:

1. The Quarto contains passages which, though "essential to the understanding of the context," are not found in the Folio. The corrector therefore who removed them cannot have been the author.

2. Many of the alterations introduced in the Folio are such as Shakspere would not have made: there being some in which the force of the passage is sacrificed only to avoid the repetition of the same word in it: some in which the sense is spoiled, only to remove a supposed defect of metre: some in which the change has been made only to get rid of a word or phrase that had become unfashionable : some in which "the earlier form is the more terse, and therefore not likely to have been altered by its author."

I have collected all the cases I could find which might seem to come under any of these heads; and I have found none which seem to me to justify the conclusion. I have found that the passages, which, though essential to the understanding of the context, are omitted in the Folio, have been apparently omitted through accidents over which the corrector had no control,-accidents such as are either known to happen frequently or may easily have happened in the particular case. Among the alterations made to avoid the repetition of the same word, I have found scarcely one by which any force appears to me to be lost,-scarcely one by which a perceptible blemish is not removed. Among those made to correct the metre, I have not found any which spoil the sense, scarcely any by which the metre is not mended. Among those made to get rid of obsolete words, I have not found any in which the word to be got rid of is not one that may probably have become distasteful to Shakspere himself. Of cases in which the 'terser' form has been exchanged for one less terse I have not met with any which I recognized as answering the description; nor have I been able to perceive any other reason for refusing to believe that the text of the Folio (errors being corrected or allowed for) represents the result of Shakspere's own latest revision, and approaches nearest to the form in which he wished it to stand. Upon the whole, therefore, I conclude that where express reason cannot be shown to the contrary, the readings of the Folio ought always to be preferred.

NOTE.

Since this paper was written and sent to the printer, I have been told that the question was investigated some years ago by Professor

Delius,1 upon a plan somewhat similar, and that his conclusion is still more at variance with that of the Cambridge editors than mine. According to him, the text has indeed been tampered with by a nameless corrector, but his work is to be looked for in the Quarto,— not in the Folio. Prof. Delius thinks that the differences between the two are due to alterations made by this corrector in the original manuscript before it went to the printer in 1597: and that it appears in the Folio (except in a few places) as it was before the corrector meddled with it. If this can be made out, a comparison of the two copies can give us no light as to the progressive changes in Shakspere's taste and style: though the fact that the copy in the Folio dates as early as 1597 would be of some value in that inquiry.

P.S. Mr Fleay states that he finds 28 six-feet lines in the Quarto of Richard III, and 9 in the Folio.

MR MATTHEW said :-Professor Delius, who is now in London, and present at our Meeting to-night, has kindly sent me a copy of a paper on this subject, contributed by him to the Year-book of the German Shakspere Society for 1872. His view differs more than Mr Spedding's from that of the Cambridge editors. He thinks that

we have in the Folio (allowing for mistakes) not only the genuine, but the original text of Shakspere, as it was always spoken on the stage, and preserved in the theatre-library. The Quarto represents the same text, obtained clandestinely, and amended or patched up by some unknown person for the pirate-publisher.

Professor Delius's paper goes into detail almost as much as Mr Spedding's, so that I cannot do more than indicate the leading grounds for a conclusion which will, I think, commend itself to many. It must be understood that almost everything I say is taken from Professor Delius.

In the first place it is difficult to believe that Shakspere can ever have gone through a play making such alterations as those to which Mr Spedding has called our attention. Scarcely any of these, as you will have noticed, bear upon the action of the play. It is easy to imagine that after representation it might be found advisable to cut out or add a passage here and there; but a series of merely verbal alterations would serve no end but to bother the actors who had already learned their parts. Such changes may be made for the printer, not for the stage.

The most important difference in the two editions lies in the

In the German Shakspere Society's Jahrbuch, vol. vii.

many lines which are in the Folio, but not in the Quarto. The genuineness of these lines is practically admitted by the Cambridge editors, so that on this point the only question is whether they are later additions, or original lines omitted in the careless editing of the 4to. Many of them are so interwoven with the context, that it is difficult to suppose them later insertions, especially when, as so often happens, the omission is but of one or two lines. For the most part there is no argument to be used, save an appeal to the critical sense; and I can only ask you to go through the list given by Mr Spedding in p. 35, and judge for yourselves. In one or two instances, however, distinct reasons may be given for supposing that the lines omitted from the 4to were originally in the play.

1. Act II. s. ii. 1. 123-140. The words "with some little train" (1. 120) are clearly written with reference to what follows. It is impossible to believe that they were at first put in without any special purpose, and that, later, Shakspere caught at this chance expression, and hung to it a score of lines which do not help the action, and that in a play already above the average length. On the other hand, the lines might well be left out in acting to shorten the play, and thus perhaps they escaped the pirate.

In two passages—

I. ii. 155, 167-"These eyes which never shed remorseful tear," &c.,

and I. iii. 167--169-"Wert thou not banished on pain of death," we have references connecting this with the earlier plays of Henry VI. When after a time this play had become far more popular than others of the series, these references might well be left out: they were very unlikely to be added then.

III. vii. 144-153. "If not to answer, you might haply think," &c. This passage, which is not in the 4to, comes from the chronicle. Its absence, you will see, leaves an awkward gap in Gloucester's speech, and it is inconceivable that the poet should first leave such a gap, and then after feeling it have to turn to his chronicle for material to supply it.

If this be allowed (as I think it must be) we nave one case of omission proved against the 4to, and it is needless to insist how much this increases the probability of there being others.

The difference as to Stony Stratford (discussed by Mr Spedding, p. 19) is very significant. We know that Shakspere must have worked often with his authorities open before him, since whole speeches come almost directly from the chronicles or Plutarch. The Folio reading is natural enough if we suppose it to have arisen thus, as is the 4to correction. That the Folio reading should be an independent correction from the 4to, made only for the sake of metre, seems to me most improbable.

It is unnecessary to follow Mr Spedding through his later sections.