SHAKESPEARE SAVED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 95, 21 April 1923, Page 17

SHAKESPEARE SAVED.

STORY OF THE FIRST FOLIO. (Ey CYRANO). Xext week they will be celebrating at Home and in other countries tbe tercentenary of the most valuable secular book in the world—the First Folio Shakespeare. The actual date of publication of the Folio was near the end of 102.'., but it has been decided to celebrate the tercentenary on the date of Shakespeare's birth an.l death, April 23. The First Folio is part of the exasperating mystery of Shakespeare. Hi spent, the last years of his life in semiretirement in Stratford, and there was plenty of time for him to collect and revise his plays, but he did not do so, and seven years elapsed after his death before that complete edition was issued that is the foundation of the .Shakespearean text. The risks to which he was exposing his fame were grave. His plays existed either in manuscripts in the hands of actors and managers, or in the printed Quartos, which were unauthorised and full of blemishes. Many had not been printed. Why was it that while lie was quick to protect his rights to other property, he took no action about his plays? Was he indifferent or lazy? Did the bother of getting the manuscripts together and obtaining the consent of the theatrical managers deter him? Was he satisfied with the fame he had already won, or Wind to tiie value of his work outside tho theatre? To us he is a man judged, and it seems an extraordinary thing that the greatest of writers should have been so indifferent to the ultimate fate of his creations. Shakespeare h.msdf, however, may have been concerned with nothing more than the fact that he had won success as a dramatist, and that theatre copies of his plays were available for any desired revivals. Probably we shall never know. Through his active years in London his sole anxiety seems to have been, says a biographer, to provide for the adequate representation of his plays on the stage. He took no interest in the surreptitious printing of them, neither substituting correct versions for the garbled one 3 in circulation, nor taking active steps against the offenders. The custom was to frown upon publication of plays. Theatrical managers owned the copyrights, and did not wish to see tbe material broadcasted. One theatre threatened with tine and dismissal any actor supplying "copy" to a printer. There was, however, a popular thirst for something to read, and there were few English classics to meet the enterprise of the host of competitive stationers and printer-publishers, so naturally those men turned to the drama that had burst into such popularity. Shakespeare was drawing the town, so why not print hinl? One method was to induce an actor or some one else behind the scenes to procure an acting copy; another was to send a mau into the audience to take down the lines in a kind of rough shorthand. Probably the two methods were sometimes combined. The result was highly unsatisfactory, but this was the only means by which the people could read Shakespeare during his lifetime, and even up to the date of the First Folio in 1023. In many cases these Quartos provided the best material for the editors of the Folio, and in others they have proved of the utmost value in helping commentators to fix the text. For some years after Shakespeare's death twenty-one of his plays were in jeopauly. These were the plays that had not been printed during his lifetime: "The Tempest," "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Measure for Measure," "Ihe Comedy of Errors." "As You Dike It," "All's "Well That Ends Well." "Twelfth Night,'' "The Winter's Tale," the First, Second and Third Parts of "Henry Vl.' "Henry VIII.," "King John," "Coriolanus/' "Tim on of Athens," "The Taminj; of the Shrew,'' "Julius Caesar," "Macbeth," Antony and Cleopatra," "Cymbelir.e," and "Othello.*' These existed only in manuscripts in the theatres and in a few private hands, and were exposed to the risk of fire and the carelessness and indifference of man. Tlie Olobe Theatre had been burnt in 1613, and when the Fortune Theatre was destroyed in IC2I all the manuscripts there were lost. It is estimated that between 1582 and H542 three thousand plays were produced on the. English stage, a.nd that scarcely more than one in six is preserved ln print; the rest have practically disappeared. Of these twenty-one plays of Shakespeare's •'Othello" was printed separately in 1622, and the others were given to the world (with those already published in Quarto form) in the First Folio of IU2*J. The two .men nominally responsible for this venture were John Heminges and Henry Ooiidell. 'both of whom had been fellowactors of Shakespeare's. Heminges had I been business manager of Shakespeare's company. The Folio is therefore not 'only the chief source of the Shakespeare I text-, it gives the best proof of Shakeeipcares identity. These actors had worked with Shakespeare, and their avowed aim was, in the language of tho address in the Folio, to keep his memory alive. Ha.l it been suggested to them, and to the other men who had a hand ill the Folio—Ben Jonson contributed two sets of verses on Shakespeare—that the real author was Francis Bacon and that William Shakespeare was only a ''blind," it would have taken many a cup of wine at the Mermaid to -drown the memory of this insolence." The editors used as ""copy" for the complete work= the editions of the plays already published, and manuscripts of the others. There is a tradition Ihat no manuscript of "Mac- . both"' existed, and that the lines were taken down from tlie mouths of the actors. What Mr. Masefield so finely ' calls "the unspeakable splendour of i vision" might easily have been lost to the world. Judged by modern standards, the Folio was poorly edited and indifferently printed, and it has re- . mained for subsequent editors to do the ■ laborious work of comparing the Folio editions with the Quartos, and produc- .' ing, with infinite pains, the best -possible text from material that was often put . together under very unfavourable conr ditions. Xumbers of scholars have | given years of their lives to this work, . but the average reader of Shakespeare , cannot realise how much he owes to '. their devoted labours. t The First Folio was a volume of i nearly a thousand double-columned t pages, and was 6old at £1. The value of a copy in good condition to-day runs

into thousands of pounds. Sir Sidney Lee, the most industrious of Shakepeare's biographers, has traced nearly two hundred of these volumes out of an edition estimated to number .")00 copies.. The.lAucklapd. Rublic Library, through the generosity of Sir George Grey, is the fortunate owner of a copy"it is imperfect in that the title page and the page before it are in facsimile, which would detract from its value in the auction room, but the text is there as it came from tha press in 1623. A large number of the Folios are in the United States, where the drawing power of millionaires is often irresistible. One millionaire is credited with having more than thirty copies in his cellar!—a form of hoarding that for selfish acquisitiveness: must be hard to beat. Shall we ever know more than the Quartos and Folios | tell us? Will facts draw aside the curtain I behind which the imagination of Mr. Maurice Baring, Miss Clomence Dane, and! others has penetrated? Mr. Baring's exquisitely humorous account of the first production of "Macbeth," with Burbagc behaving just like a modern egotistical "star," and "Mr. Shakespeare" filling an unobtrusive place in "the background, and producing after a few minutes' scribbling in the wings, as something to improve a scone of which Burbage disapproves, that awful and ' tremendous passage "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," which (light the actor regards as an insult to his profession —will the past ever throw up a record to show that" this shaft is not altogether wide of the mark? Shakespeare's case i 3 not unique in the disappearance of- such evidence. There were other great writers in. Shakespeare's age of whose handwriting not a scrap, not oven a legal signature, remains. Recently, however, a iiew poem of Milton's has -been found, so there ds still hope. In tlie meantime, when we open our Shap.espeare in this year 1023. we should remember Heminges and Condell of the First Folio.