REMARKS ON THE TITLE, DEDICATION, AND OTHER PRELIMINARY MATTER TO THE FOLIO OF 1623 AND THE FOLIO OF 1632. THE A HE first and only authentic edition of Shakespeare's Dramatic Works, the folio of 1623, opens with some preliminary matter which has peculiar interest. This matter is reprinted in reduced fac-simile for the first time in the present edition; the form and style of the original letter, as well as the orthography and the arrangement of the pages being imitated in such a manner that proportion is perfectly preserved, and the effect is that of the original volume seen through a concave lens The Title-page itself is singular in its appearance, and singularly interesting. It is chiefly occupied by a portrait of Shakespeare which was engraved by Martin Droeshout. Of the authenticity of this portrait there can be no reasonable doubt; and it is sustained by better evidence than the most diligent research has been able to bring forward in favor of that of any other. The interesting subject of the portraits of Shakespeare is, however, fully discussed in the first volume. Martin Droeshout is known only as the engraver of a few portraits and book illustrations for works published in London in the early part of the seventeenth century. His style is hard, stiff, and dry, as may be seen by his reproduction of the portrait of Shakespeare. As far as we know at present, eight portraits, (including those of Shakespeare and John Fox,) some plates for Haywood's Hierarchy of Angels, and the Death of Dido for Stapleton's Virgil, are all the specimens of his work that have come down to us. On the fly leaf opposite the title-page, in the position usually assigned to the portrait of an author, are some verse addressed "To the Reader," and signed "B. I." These are from the pen of Ben Jonson: even were not his initials appended to them, the style would bewray him. Jonson was only nine years younger than Shakespeare, and, from the arrival of the latter in London to his departure from it, had been in the habit of seeing him often, and was during much of the time his constant companion and friend. The value of his testimony to the authenticity of Droeshout's portrait, and we may almost say to its faithfulness, can hardly be overrated. After the title-page, the reverse of which is blank, as usual, comes the Dedication by the player editors to William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was the son of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, an accomplished scholar and gentleman, whose Countess is made immortal by Ben Jonson as "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," in that beautiful epitaph beginning, "Underneath this marble hearse." He was a worthy son of such parents; a nephew of whom even Sir Philip Sidney might have been proud. He was of a noble nature, magnificent in his tastes, generous in disposition, remarkable for his high breeding, was much beloved by all those who had intercourse with him, and though a courtier, was beyond all suspicion of corruptibility. Like most such men, he was not only very fond of the society of women, but much addicted to all the pleasures which their most intimate companionship affords. He was at once a munificent and a discriminating patron of letters, and himself attained some distinction both as an orator and a poet. He is the author of those pretty verses which bashful lovers will never allow to be forgotten, for the sake of this stanza: "Silence in love betrays more woe Than words, howe'er so witty; His poems were published at London in 1660. An instance of Earl of l'embroke, who immediately bestowed it upon the widow and children of the felon. He was born in 1580, and died suddenly, of apoplexy, in 1630.* Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, was the younger brother of William; and although they are addressed in this dedication as an "incomparable paire of brethren,” there was little in common between them but their blood. Philip lacked all the accomplishments and almost all the qualities that his brother possessed. He was little more than a low-bred, coarsemannered country squire, who put no restraint upon a violent and hasty temper, whose only knowledge was in dogs and horses, and whose language was not much better than that of the horse boys and kennel keepers, who were his fittest companions.* It would seem, however, that both brothers were patrons of the company which played at the Globe Theatre, and that they regarded Shakespeare with favor, and his plays with special admiration. The language of the dedication is explicit upon this point, which is one on which it can be trusted; and in the dedication of the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's works to this same Earl of Montgomery there is other evidence to the same effect. The Address to the Great Variety of Readers has been attributed by Malone and most of his successors to Ben Jonson. It certainly shows traces of his style; and he would quite probably have been called upon to write it. But it should be remarked that the two long paragraphs into which it is divided are very unlike in their diction, and seem very clearly the product of different hands. The first is sententious, whimsical, terse, and rugged; in all which respects it is like Jonson's prose: the second is marked with directness, simplicity, ease, continuity of thought, and a happy selection of unaffected phraseology, which wins the reader to forgive, if not to forget, some faults of construction. In this paragraph occurs, too, a reference to the ease with which Shakespeare composed, and the absence of blots in his MS., which could hardly have been penned by the man who wished, as he himself tells us, that Shakespeare had blotted a thousand lines. This Address has an important bearing upon the question of See, chiefly, Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses. the authority of the volume which it introduces; a subject which is fully considered in the Historical Sketch of the Text, Vol. I. Of John Heminge and Henry Condell who sign the address, all that is known will be found below, in the remarks upon the list of the principal actors in these plays. Ben Jonson's lines "To the Memory of my Beloved," &c., although, like most such tributes, they contain much that is mere vague and sounding generality, are, with two exceptions, both of which first appeared in the second folio, the most valuable contemporary appreciation of Shakespeare's genius, and contain some really noble and discriminating passages. Of Jonson himself a biographical notice will hardly be expected here. The particulars of his life are easily accessible, if they are not already well known to every reader of the works of the man whom he professed and honestly professed to love so much. Jonson was nine years younger than Shakespeare, to whom tradition says he was indebted for a hearing of his first play. He was a fellow-actor of Shakespeare's, and attained even less distinction on the stage than his beloved associate. Jonson was a vigorous and a skilful writer, but, in his plays at least, showed little creative power and no shaping imagination. His comic characters are vivid portraits, but have no general truth to nature; and his humor is mannered and his wit forced. His tragedy is artificial, and fails entirely as an ideal picture of human passion; but the long speeches which he puts in the mouth of his characters are always learned, often eloquent, and sometimes touched with true poetic fire. In his lyric verses he showed a charming fancy, and a vein of ever fresh and tender feeling, and has written in this department of poetry much that the world will not willingly let die. It is not certainly known whether he was university bred; but he made himself a thorough scholar, and had perhaps more critical ability and philological knowledge than any Englishman of his time who was not a scholar by profession. On this account, and from his habits of personal intercourse with Shakespeare, both in the way of their common art and mystery, and in their hours of social relaxation, all Jonson's recorded opinions about him who "was not of an age, but for all time," are of the greatest value. He survived Shakespeare twenty-one years; dying in 1637, aged sixty-four. Of the poets with whom Jonson compares Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont, Marlowe, Æschylus, Sophocles Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus are so we. known that any remarks which could be admitted here upon such mere allusions would be quite superfluous. All readers, however, may not be aware that the Lyly mentioned here is John Lyly, the author of Euphues and his England, who also wrote nine fantastic, pedantic plays, and the well-known tract, Pap with a Hatchet, against Martin Marprelate, or that the "sporting Kyd" is known only as the author of a very dolorous performance called Jeronimo, and its continuation, The Spanish Tragedy, which ministered much mirth to his contemporaries. Lyly was born in 1554, and died about 1602-3. As to Thomas Kyd, we know that he was born and died only by inference from his having lived. Pacuvius and Accius must have been mentioned by Ben only to show his learning. They were Latin dramatists of the earliest age; and but the merest fragments of their works exist. Leonard Digges, the author of the second rhyming tribute, was the son of Thomas Digges, Esq., of Berham, Kent, and, like his father, was a scholar and an accomplished person. He graduated at Oxford; and was created Master of Arts in 1626. He translated from the Latin and Spanish, and was esteemed by those who knew him at the university, a great master of the English language. He was also considered a good poet and no mean orator. He was born in 1588, and died in 1635.* He wrote commendatory verses for several books. Those which appear in the first edition of Shakespeare's plays are chiefly valuable for the evidence which they furnish, in the fourth line, that Shakespeare's monument at Stratford-on-Avon was erected within a few years of his death. Digges wrote also a much longer metrical eulogy upon Shakespeare, which appeared in the edition of the latter's Poems, published in 1640. The verses are tame and vapid enough; and the ignorance and undiscriminating good nature which united to produce the following sad. blunder must have been great, indeed: "Next Nature only help'd him, for look thorough This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow Nor once from vulgar languages translate, Nor plagiary-like from others gleane, VOL. II See Wood's Athena Oxonienses. C |