All the unsigned footnotes in this volume are by the writer of the article to which they are appended. The interpretation of the initials signed to the others is: I. G. = Israel Gollancz, M.A.; H. N. H. Henry Norman Hudson, A.M.; C. H. H. C. H. Herford, Litt.D. = = PREFACE By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A. THE EDITIONS As You Like It was published for the first time in the First Folio; a Quarto edition was contemplated many years previously, but for some cause or other was "staied,” and the play is mentioned among others in 1623, when Jaggard and Blount obtained permission to print the First Folio, as "not formerly entered to other men." The text of the play in the four Folios is substantially the same, though the Second Folio corrects a few typographical and other errors in the first edition. As You Like It was in all probability produced under circumstances necessitating great haste on the part of the author, and many evidences of this rapidity of composition exist in the text of the play, e. g. (i) in Act I, sc. ii, line 284, Le Beau makes Celia "the taller," which statement seems to contradict Rosalind's description of herself in the next scene (I, iii, 117), “because that I am more than common tall”: (ii) again, in the first Act the second son of Sir Rowland de Boys is referred to as "Jaques," a name subsequently transferred to another and more important character; wherefore when he appears in the last Act he is styled in the Folio merely "second brother": (iii) "old Frederick, your father" (I, ii, 87) seems to refer to the banished duke ("Duke senior"), for to Rosalind, and not to Celia, the words "thy father's love," etc., are assigned in the Folio; either the ascription is incorrect, or "Frederick” is an error for some other name, perhaps for "Ferdinand," as has been suggested; attention should also be called to certain slight inaccuracies, e. g. "Juno's swans" (vide Glos sary); finally, the part of Hymen in the last scene of the play is on the whole unsatisfactory, and is possibly by another hand. DATE OF COMPOSITION (i) As You Like It may safely be assigned to the year 1599, for while the play is not mentioned in Meres' Palladis Tamia, 1598, it quotes a line from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was printed for the first time in that year -five years after the poet's death-and at once became popular.1 The quotation is introduced by a touching tribute on Shakespeare's part to the most distinguished of his predecessors: "Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,— Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight."—(III. v. 82, 83.) 1 Two editions of Hero and Leander appeared in 1598. The first edition contained only Marlowe's portion of the poem; the second gave the whole poem, "Hero and Leander: Begun by Christopher Marloe and finished by George Chapman. Ut Nectar, Ingenium." The line quoted by Shakespeare occurs in the first sestiad: "Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?" There are many quotations from the poem in contemporary literature after 1598; they often help us to fix the date of the composition in which they appear; e. g. the Pilgrimage to Parnassus must have been acted at Cambridge not earlier than Christmas, 1598, for it contains the line "Learning and Poverty must always kiss," also taken from the first sestiad of the poem. No evidence has as yet been discovered tending to show that Hero and Leander circulated while still in MS. It is at times difficult to resist the temptation of comparing the meeting of Marlowe's lovers and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The passage in Marlowe immediately follows the line quoted in As You Like It; cp.: "He kneel'd: but unto her devoutly prayed: Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said, 'Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him.' Cp. Romeo and Juliet's first meeting, where Romeo ("the pilgrim”) comes to "the holy shrine” of Juliet: "palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss," etc. If in this case there is any debt at all, it must be Marlowe's. |