The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

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REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Collier-folio Shakespeare._ Is it an imposture?

When the Lady Bab of "High Life below Stairs," having laid the
forgetfulness which causes her tardy appearance at the elegant
entertainment given in Mr. Lovel's servant's hall to the fascination of
her favorite author, "Shikspur," is asked, "Who wrote Shikspur?" she
replies, with that promptness which shows complete mastery of a subject,
"Ben Jonson." In later days, another lady has, with greater prolixity,
it is true, but hardly less confidence, and, it must be confessed, equal
reason, answered to the same query, "Francis Bacon." This question must,
then, be regarded as still open to discussion; but, assuming, for the
nonce, that the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in a certain folio
volume published at London in 1623 were written by William Shakespeare,
gentleman, sometime actor at the Black Friars Theatre and a principal
proprietor therein, we apply ourselves to the brief examination of
another, somewhat related to it, and at least as complicated:--the
question as to the authorship of certain marginal manuscript readings in
a copy of a later folio edition of the same works,--that published in
1632,--which readings Mr. Payne Collier discovered and brought before
the world with all the weight of his reputation and influence in favor
of their authority and value. We write for those who are somewhat
interested in this subject, and must assume that our readers are not
entirely without information upon it; but it is desirable, if not
necessary, that in the beginning we should call to mind the following
dates and circumstances.

According to Mr. Collier's account, this folio was bought by him "in the
spring of 1849," of Mr. Thomas Rodd, an antiquarian bookseller, well
known in London. For a year and more he hardly looked at it; but his
attention being directed particularly to it as he was packing it away to
be taken into the country, he found that "there was hardly a page which
did not represent, _in a handwriting of the time_, some emendations in
the pointing or in the text." He then subjected it to "a most careful
scrutiny," and became convinced of the great value of its manuscript
readings. He talked about it to his literary friends, and took it to a
meeting of the Council of the Shakespeare Society, and to two or three
meetings of the Society of Antiquaries, as we know by the reports of
those meetings in the London "Times." He wrote letters in the summer
of 1852 to the London "Athenaeum," setting forth the character of the
volume, and giving some of its most noteworthy changes of Shakespeare's
text. He published, at last, in 1853, his volume of "Notes and
Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from _Early Manuscript
Corrections_ in a Copy of the Folio of 1632," etc.; and in 1854,
he published an edition of Shakespeare, in the text of which these
manuscript readings were embodied. In 1856, he added to a Shakespearian
volume a "List of all the Emendations" in his folio, remarking in the
preface to the book, (p. lxxix.,) that he had "_often gone over_ the
thousands of marks of all kinds in its [the folio's] margins," and
that, for the purpose of making the list in question, he had "recently
_reexamined every line and letter_ of the folio." He had previously
printed for private circulation a few fac-simile copies of eighteen
corrected passages in the folio; and with the volume last mentioned, his
publications, and, we believe, all others,--of which more anon,--upon
the subject, ceased. Mr. Collier, it should be borne in mind, has been
for forty years a professed student of Elizabethan literature, and is a
man of hitherto unquestioned honor.

But he is now upon trial. Certain officers of the British Museum, among
them men of high professional reputation and personal standing, men who
occupy, and who confess that they occupy, "a judicial position" on such
questions, charge, after careful investigation, that a great fraud has
been committed in this folio; that its marginal readings, instead of
being as old as they seem, and as Mr. Collier has asserted them to be,
are modern fabrications, and that, consequently, Mr. Collier is either
an impostor or a dupe. The charge is not a new one. The weight that
it carries, and the impression that it has produced, are owing to the
position of the men who make it, and the evidence which they have
published in its support. It was made, however, six years ago,--but
vaguely. For, although there was on every side a disposition to welcome
with all heartiness the manuscript readings, the antiquity and value of
which Mr. Collier had so positively announced, the poetic sense of the
world recoiled from the mass of them when they appeared; and although a
few, a very few, of the readings peculiar to this folio were accepted
by Shakespearian editors and commentators, they were opposed as a whole
with determination, and in one or two instances with unbecoming heat, by
Mr. Collier's fellow-laborers. Prominent among these was Mr. Singer, a
man of moderate capacity and undisciplined powers, but extensive reading
in early English literature,--known, too, for the bitterness with
which he habitually wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not
hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition.
But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences
between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural
readings of the editors and critics of the last century,--coincidences
which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of
the noticeable changes in the folio,--he failed to accomplish his
conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But
although this insinuation of the spurious character Of the writing in
Mr. Collier's folio fell to the ground, such antiquity as would give
its readings the consequence due to their having been introduced by a
contemporary of Shakespeare was shown not to pertain to them, in the
course of two articles which appeared in "Putnam's Magazine" for October
and November, 1853, and which, it may be as well to say, were from the
same hand that writes this reference to them. They effected this by
exhibiting the corrector's ignorance of the meaning of words in common
use twenty years after Shakespeare's death, and his introduction of
stage directions which could not have been complied with until half a
century after that event, and which were at variance with the very text
itself to which they were applied. That the argument which they embodied
was conclusive has been admitted by all the English editors and
commentators, including even Mr. Collier himself. But this conclusion
only brought down the date of these marginal readings to a period
somewhat later than the Restoration of the British Monarchy, and it
did not put in question the good faith either of their author or their
discoverer.

The attack now made upon them is directed solely against their
genuineness, and is based altogether upon external, or, we may properly
say, physical evidence. The accusers are Mr. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, an
assistant in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, (whose
chief, Sir Frederick Madden, the Keeper of that Department, is
understood to support him,) and Mr. Nevil Story Maskelyne, Keeper of
the Mineraloglcal Department. Of the alphabetical Mr. Hamilton we know
something. He is one of the ablest palaeographists of his years in
England, and the possessor of a pair of eyes of such microscopic
powers that he can decipher manuscript which to ordinary sight seems
obliterated by time, or even fire: a man of worth, too, as we hear, and
one who has borne himself in this affair with mingled confidence and
modesty. He says, that, of the corrections originally made on the
margins of this folio, the number which have been wholly or partially
"obliterated.....with a penknife or the employment of chymical agency"
"are almost as numerous as those suffered to remain"; that, of the
corrections allowed to stand, many have been "tampered with, touched
up, or painted over, a modern character being dexterously altered, by
touches of the pen, into a more antique form"; and that the margins are
"covered with an infinite number of faint pencil-marks, in obedience to
which the supposed old corrector has made his emendations"; and that
these pencilled memorandums "have not even the pretence of antiquity in
character or spelling, but are written in a bold hand of the present
century"; and with regard to the incongruities of spelling, he
especially mentions the instances, "'body,' 'offals,' in pencil,
'bodie,' 'offals,' in ink."

Mr. Maskelyne, having examined many of the margins of the folio with the
microscope, confirms entirely the evidence of Mr. Hamilton's eyes. He
found the pencilled memorandums "plentifully distributed down the
margins," and "the particles of plumbago in the hollows of the paper" in
every instance that he has examined. He found, also, that what seems
to be ink is not ink, but "a paint, removable, with the exception of a
slight stain, by mere water,"--which "paint, formed perhaps of sepia,"
would enable an impostor, it need hardly be observed, to simulate ink
faded by time; and in several cases in which "the ink word, in a quaint,
antique-looking writing, and the pencil word, in a modern-looking hand,
occupy the same ground, and are one over the other," the pencil-marks
being obscured or obliterated, Mr. Maskelyne found, on washing off the
ink, that at first "the pencil-marks became much plainer than before,
and even when as much of the ink-stain as possible was removed, the
pencil still runs through the ink line in unbroken, even continuity."
These points established, Mr. Maskelyne's conclusion, that in the
examples which he tested "the pencil underlies the ink, that is to say,
was antecedent to it in its date," is unavoidable. But does it follow
upon this conclusion that the manuscript changes in the readings of this
folio are of spurious and modern date,--made, for instance, within the
last fifty years, and with the intention of deceiving the world as to
their age? Perhaps; but, for reasons which we are about to give, we
venture to think, not certainly.

First, however, as to the very delicate and unpleasant position in which
Mr. Collier is placed by these discoveries. For, although the age of the
manuscript readings of his folio must be fixed by that of the pencilled
memorandums over which they are written, the question as to whether he
has not been uncandid or unwise enough to suppress an important part
of the truth in describing that volume is entirely independent of this
problem in paleography. For these numberless partially erased pencilled
memorandums, to which Mr. Collier has made no allusion whatever, must
have been written upon the margins of that folio either before Mr.
Collier bought it, in the spring of 1849, or since. If before, is it
possible that he could have subjected it to "a most careful scrutiny" in
1850, that he could have studied it for three years for the purpose of
preparing his "Notes and Emendations,"--an octavo volume of five hundred
pages,--which appeared in 1853, and that after having, for various
purposes, "often gone over the thousands of marks _of all kinds_" on
its margins, he could again, after the lapse of three years more, have
"reexamined every line and letter" on those margins for the purpose of
making the list of the readings which he published in 1856, without
having discovered, in the course of all this close scrutiny, extending
through so many years, the pencil-marks which at once became visible
when the volume went to the British Museum? And if these pencil-marks,
that underlie the simulated ink corrections, were made after the spring
of 1849----! Here is a dilemma, either horn of which has a very ugly
look.

But out of this trial we hope, nay, we confidently believe, that Mr.
Collier will come unscathed. We hope it for the sake of the profession
of literature,--for the sake of one who has been honorably known among
men of letters for almost half a century, and who has borne into the
vale of years a hitherto untarnished name. We believe it, because a
contrary supposition would be entirely at variance with Mr. Collier's
conduct about this folio ever since his first announcement of its
discovery. It is true, that, in the course of the controversy which the
publication of his "Notes and Emendations" inevitably brought upon him,
Mr. Collier has not always shown that delicacy and consideration for
candid opponents which he could have afforded to show, and which would
have sat so gracefully upon him. It is true, that, in noticing, and,
in his enthusiastic partiality, much exaggerating, the admissions of a
volume in which, as he must have seen, he was first defended against Mr.
Singer's repeated insinuations of forgery, [Footnote: See _Shakespeare's
Scholar_, p. 71.] and in availing himself again and again of those not
always discreet admissions, he was uncourteous enough not to mention the
name even of the work in question, not to say that of its author. It
is true, that, on the appearance of an edition of Shakespeare's Works
edited by the author of that volume, he hastened to accuse him publicly
of misrepresentation, unwarily admitting at the same time that he did so
upon a mere glance at the book, and before he had even "cut it open,"
and, in his haste, causing his accusation to recoil upon his own
head.[1] [Footnote 1: See the London _Athenaeum_, of Nov. 20th, 1858,
and Jan. 8th, 1859.] It is true, that, when, in his recent edition of
Shakespeare's Works,[2] [Footnote 2: London, 1858, Vol. II, p. 181.]
he abandoned one of the readings of his folio, ("she discourses, she
_craves_," Merry Wives, I. 3,) which the same opponent had been the
first to show not only untenable, but fatal to the authority and
antiquity of the readings of that volume, he requited that opponent's
defence of him by attributing his defeat on this point to an English
editor, who only quoted the passage in question from "Shakespeare's
Scholar," and with special mention of its authorship and its
importance,[3] [Footnote 3: Rimbault's Edition of Overbury's Works,
London, 1856, p. 50.]

Under the present circumstances, it may be well to let the reader see
for himself exactly what Mr. Collier's course was in this little affair.
Dr. Rimbault's note, published in 1856, is as follows:--

(-----"_her wrie little finger bewraies carving_, etc.) The passage in
the text sufficiently shows that _carving_ was a sign of intelligence
made with the little finger, as the glass was raised to the mouth. See
the prefatory letter to Mr. R. G. White's _Shakespeare's Scholar_,
8vo., New York, 1854, p. xxxiii. Mr. Hunter (_New Illustrations of
Shakespeare_, i. 215), Mr. Dyce (_A Few Notes on Shakespeare_, 1853, p.
18), and Mr. Mitford (_Cursory Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, etc.,
1856, p. 40), were unacquainted with this valuable illustration of a
Shakespearian word given by Overbury."

And yet Mr. Collier, with this note before him, as it will be seen,
could write as follows:--

"The Rev. Mr. Dyce ('Few Notes,' p. 18) and the Rev. Mr. Hunter ('New
Illustrations,' i. p. 215) both adduce quotations [as to 'carves'], but
they have missed the most apposite, _pointed out by Dr. Rimbault_ in his
edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's Works, 8vo., 1856, p. 50."

The reader cannot estimate more lightly than we do the credit which Mr.
Collier thought of consequence enough for him to do an unhandsome, not
to say dishonorable, act to deprive an opponent of it. By referring to
White's edition of Shakespeare, Vol. II. p. lx., another instance may be
found of the same discourtesy on the part of Mr. Collier to Chalmers,
with regard to a matter yet more trifling.] and that he thereby
subjected himself self to open rebuke in his own country;[4] [Footnote
4: See Dyce's _Strictures_ etc., 1859, p. 28.] and he found, we suppose,
his justification for this course in his seniority and his opponent's
place of nativity. It is true, also, that, in the recently published
edition of Shakespeare's Works, just alluded to, he has vengefully
revived, in its worst form, the animosity which disgraced the pages of
the editors and commentators of the last century, and has attacked the
most eminent of critical English scholars, the Rev. Alexander Dyce,
throughout that edition, bitterly and incessantly,[5] [Footnote 5: See
the edition _passim_.] and also unfairly and upon forced occasion,
as Mr. Dyce has conclusively shown, in a volume,[6] [Footnote 6:
_Strictures on Collier's Shakespeare_, London, 1859.] the appearance of
which from the pen of a man of Mr. Dyce's character and position we yet
cannot but deplore, great as the provocation was. Mr. Collier has done
these things, which would not be tolerated among such men of letters in
America as are also gentlemen; and he has also made statements about his
folio which have been proved to be so inaccurate that it is clear that
his memory is not to be trusted on that matter; but, in spite of all
this, we neither will nor can believe, that, in his testimony as to the
manner in which he became possessed of this celebrated volume, or in his
description of its peculiarities, he has, with the intention to deceive,
either suppressed the true or asserted the false. Since his first
announcement of the discovery of the manuscript readings in that volume,
he has had no concealments about it; he has shown it freely to the very
persons who would be most likely to detect a literary imposition; he has
told all, and more than all, that he could have been expected to tell
about it; he has left no stone unturned in his endeavor to trace its
history; and, after finally putting all of its manuscript readings upon
record, and confessing frankly that he had been in error with regard
to some of them, and that there are many of them which are
"innovations,--changes which had crept in from time to time, [upon
the stage,] to make sense out of difficult passages, but which do not
represent the authentic text of Shakespeare," he gives the volume away
to the Duke of Devonshire, the owner of one of the most celebrated
dramatic libraries in England, on whose shelves he knew it would be
almost as subject to close examination as on those of the British
Museum. This is not the conduct of a literary forger in regard to the
enduring witness of his forgery; and we may be sure, that, unless
practice has made him reckless, and he is the very Merdle of Elizabethan
scholarship, Mr. Collier has been in this matter as loyal as he has
seemed to be.

But is the charge of forgery made out? It would seem that it is,--that
the discovery of pencilled memorandums in a modern hand and in modern
spelling, over which the readings in ink are written in an antique hand
and antique spelling, leaves no doubt upon the question. Yet, assuming
all that is charged at the British Museum to be established, we venture
to withhold our assent from the conclusion of forgery against all the
readings in question until the evidence in the case has been more
thoroughly sifted. Our reasons we must state briefly; and they can as
well be appreciated from a brief as a detailed statement.

And first, as to the "modern-looking hand" of the pencil-marks over
which the "antique-looking writing" in ink is found. All the writing
of even the early part of the seventeenth century was not done in the
quaint, and, to us, strange and elaborate-seeming hand, sometimes called
old chancery hand, specimens of which may be seen on the fac-simile
published with Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations." This
modern-looking hand, in which the pencil-marks appear, we venture to say
may be that of a writer who lived long before the date (1632) of the
volume on which his traces have been discovered, In support of this
supposition, we might produce hundreds of instances within our reach.
We must confine ourselves to one; and that, though somewhat more modern
than others that we could produce, shall be from a volume easily
accessible and well known to all Shakespearian scholars, and which
naturally came before us in connection with our present subject. In
Malone's "Inquiry, etc., into the Ireland Shakespeare Forgeries"
(London: 8vo. 1796) are two fac-similes (Plate III.) of parts of
letters from Shakespeare's friend, the Earl of Southampton. From the
superscription to one of them, written in 1621 to the Lord-Keeper
Williams, and preserved among the Harleian MSS., we give in fac-simile
the following words:--

[Illustration: script text which reads "the right honorable"]

We select these words only because they happen to contain six of
the letters most characteristic of the antique chancery hand of the
seventeenth century,--_t_, _h_, _e_, _r_, _g_, and _b_,--within a space
suited to the columns for which we write. The words themselves need none
of ours added to them to set forth their modern look. They might have
been written yesterday. The further to enforce our point, we add a
fac-simile of some writing of forty years' later date. It is in a copy
in our possession of Simon Lennard's translation of Charron "De la
Sagesse," which (the translation) was not published until 1658. On an
original fly-leaf, and evidently after the book had been subjected to
some years' hard usage, an early possessor of the volume has entered his
week's washing-account, in a hand of which the words following the date
afford a fair specimen.

[Illustration: script text which is illegible]

Probably not many readers of the "Atlantic" can decipher the whole of
this, although it is very neat, clear, and elegant. It is "Cloathes: 1.
shirt"; [Footnote: This memorandum is characteristic. In full it is as
follows:--

"Sept: the 9th: Cloathes: 1. Shirt: 3: bands: 8 handkecheirfs: 4
neckcloaths: 7: pa: cuffs: 1. bootes tops: 1 cap: an old towell: a
Napkin."

The writer was evidently young, poor, and a dandy. His youth is shown
by his wearing neckcloths, which were a new and youthful fashion at
the date of this memorandum; his dandyism, by the number of his
handkerchiefs, (a luxury in those days,) and of his cuffs, which answer
to our wristbands, and by his lace boot-tops; his poverty, by his
wearing three bands, four neckcloths, and seven pair of cuffs (probably
one a day for the week) to one shirt. His having, in respect to the last
garment, was probably like Poins'] and if the reader [Footnote: "one
for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which
he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably
made only "semi-occasional" visits to the laundress.]

will examine the fac-simile in Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations," he
will find that it is even older in appearance than the marginal readings
there given. Clearly, then, if the pencil memorandums on the margins of
the Collier folio had been made by a person who wrote as the Earl of
Southampton (born in 1573) did in the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, and the ink readings were made to conform to them by a person
who wrote as the profaner of Charron's "Wisdome" with his washing-bill
did in the third quarter of that century, the pencilled guide would
be "modern-looking," and the reading in ink written over it
"antique-looking," although the former might have been half a century
older than the latter. And that both pencil and ink readings are by the
same hand remains to be proved. The presumption in our own mind is, that
they are not. The margins of this folio, on the evidence of all who have
examined it, Mr. Collier included, are full of proofs that there were
many doubts and conjectures in the mind of its corrector, (shown by
erasures, reinsertions, and change of manuscript readings,) before the
work on it was abandoned; and is it not quite probable that some person
who was or had been connected with the theatre made memoranda of such
changes in the text as his memory suggested to him, and that these were
passed upon (it is in evidence that some of them wore rejected) by the
person who had undertaken to prepare the text for a new edition, or
the performance of the plays by a new company? That even all the ink
readings are by the same hand has not yet been established; and that
the writing in pencil and that in ink are by one person is yet more
uncertain. It is, in our opinion, more than doubtful. To assume it is to
beg the question.

Next, as to the suspicious circumstance, that the pencil spelling is in
some places modern, while that of the ink reading is old; as "body" in
pencil, and "bodie" in ink. We wonder that such a fact was noticed by
a man of Mr. Hamilton's knowledge; for it can be easily set aside; or
rather, it need not be regarded, because there is nothing suspicious
about it. For the spelling of the seventeenth century, like its syntax
and its pronunciation, was irregular; and the fatal error of those
who attempt to imitate it is that they always use double consonants,
superfluous final e-s, and _ie_ for _y_. And even supposing that these
pencilled words and the words in ink were written by the same person,
the fact that the word, when written in pencil, is spelled with a _y_ or
a single _l_, when written in ink with _ie_ or double _l_, is of not the
least consequence. This will be made clear to those who do not already
know it, by the following instances (the like of which might be produced
by tens of thousands,) from "Euphues his England," ed. 1597, which
happened to lie on our table when we read Mr. Hamilton's first letter.
"For that _Honnie_ taken excessiuelie, cloyeth the stomacke though it be
_Honny_." (Sig. Aa3.) In this instance, "honey," spelled first in the
old way, as to the last vowel sound, on its repetition, in the same
sentence, is spelled in what is called the new way; but in the example
which follows, the word "folly," which appears first as a catchword
at the bottom of the page in modern spelling, is found in the ancient
spelling on the turning of the leaf: "Things that are commonlie knowne
it were foll_y_ foll_ie_ to repeate." (Sig. Aa.) English scholars may
smile at the citation of passages to establish such a point; but we are
writing for those who are too wise to read old books, and who have their
English study done, as the Turk would have had his dancing, by others
for them. And besides, Mr. Hamilton has shown that even an English
professor of antiquarian literature can forget the point, or at least
not see its bearing on the subject in hand.

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