SHAKESPEARE'S MANUSCRIPT

Evening Star, Issue 19142, 8 January 1926, Page 2

SHAKESPEARE'S MANUSCRIPT

WHY K9KE HAS SURVIVED Last year 81,146 persons visited the house in Henley street, at Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was horn, and 45,014 inspected Ann Hathaway’s cottage at the village of Shottery, which is about a mile distant Irom Stratford, along a footpatly that leads across the fields. These visitors represented fifty foreign countries, and also all parts of the British Empire. Both these places of interest, and also New place at Rtraford, which Shakespeare bought while he was obtaining a substantial income in London out of Jus shares in the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres, belong to the nation, and are under the control of a body known as the Trustees and Guardians ofSludyespearo’s Birthplace, of which Sir Sidney Lee, the Shakespearean scholar, is chairman. The old Elizabethan twostoried house in Henley street, in which Shakespeare was born, has been converted by the. trustees into a. Shakespearean museum and library. There the visitor is allowed to inspect in glass cases such treasures as a perfect copy of the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in .1828, seven years after his death; copies of the second, third, and f mirth 1 olios, original quarto editions of ‘ The Morel,ant of Venice/ 1 A_ Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and ‘King Lear,’ all published during Shakespeare’s hletime; original legal documents attesting the purchase by Shakespeare of land and other property in or near Stratford; autograph signatures or Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert; of bis elder daughter, Susanna, who married John Hall; and documents bearing the marks which attest the signatures oi Shakespeare’s father and mother at a time when even educated people made their mark instead of signing their names. But of Shakespeare’s own handwriting there is not a word' in this Shakespearean museum, because not a word of Shakespeare’s handwriting is known to bo in existence, except six signatures, three of winch are attached to his own will (executed a few days before his death), and the two words “ By mo,” which appear on the last sheet of the will. The other three signatures are attached to legal documents. Shakespeare’s will is kept in a locked oaken box in strong room at Somerset House, in the Strand, London, which is the eventual destination of all wills executed ill England. The story cabled from London that Mr Hunter .Charles Rogers, of the little village of Aliddlo Green, near Slough, had dug up in 'Warwickshire Shakespearean relics of incalculable value, including 140 pages of Shakespeare’s manuscript, which ho sold in America for £32,000, was so obviously false that Mr Rogers’s subsequent confession that ho had tried to hoax the public was almost unnecessary. .If has long been accepted by Shakespearean scholars that no scrap of Shakespeare’s manuscript of any of his plays_is in existence. Sir Sidney Lee, in his 1 Life of Shakespeare/ states that the only extant specimens of Shakespeare's writing that are of undisputed authority consist of the six autograph signatures, and the words “ By me,” to which reference has already been made. “ No other relic of Shakespeare’s handwriting—no letter nor any scrap of his Hetrary work—is known to he in existence,” ho writes. “The rum which has overtaken Shakespeare’s writings is no peculiar experience. jVcry exiguous is the fragment ol{ Elizabethan or Jacobean literature which survives in the author’s autographs. Barely forty plays, and many of these post-Shakespe.arcn date, remain accessible in contemporary copies, (and all but five or six of these are in scriveners’ handwriting. Dramatic manuscripts, which were the property of playhouse managers, habitually sul-k-red "the fate of waste paper.” I It was the custom in Elizabethan times for the playhouse manager to use the manuscript copy of the author nl a play in producing the play. Several copies were made tor prompt purposes, but there were scriveners to do this work. “Such copies,” states Sir Sidney Lee, “were usually made from the author’s autograph, after the manager, who habitually nboroviated the text and expanded the stage directions, had completed his revision. The divergencies from the author’s draft varied with the character and length of the piece and the mood of the manager.” It, was not the custom of the time to print plays. The playhouse authorities deprecated the publication of plays, because they believed that the dissemination of the plays in print was injurious to the receipts of the theatre. Professional opinion condemned such playwrights as sought “ a double sale of their labors, first, to the stage and .after to the Press.” Professional playwrights sold their plays outright to the acting companies with which they were associated, and they retained no legal interest in them after the manuscript had passed into the hands of the tlveatricnl manager. The usual price paid for a play ranged from £7 to £lO, hut Sir Sidney Lee puls forward the view that the exceptional popularity of Shakespeare’s work after 1599 enabled him to command higher rates. He estimates that the seventeen plays which were produced by Shakespeare between 1599 and the close of hi.s professional career brought him in an average of not less t han £25 each. He also estimates (hat Shakespeare's annual income as a playwright, actor, and shareholder in the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres exceeded £7OO a year, at a time when money was five told its present value. Bui, in spite of the objections of theatre managers to plays being printed, publishers found opportunities (rf publishing popular plays. Sometimes a publisher was able to buy from an actor one of the copies of a play which it was necessary for the manager to provide for his company. Sometimes the publishers employed shorthand writers to take clown the words of a play as it was acted. This is how the copy was obtained for the earliest printed version of at least four of Shakespeare's plays—viz., ‘ Romeo and Juliet/ ‘ Henry V./ ‘ The Merry Wives of Windsor/ and 1 Pericles.’ There is no evidence that Shakespeare assumed any personal responsibility for the printing of any of his dramas, or that any play in his own hand writing did reach the Dress. ft was not until seven years after Shakespeare’s death that a collected edition of his plays was published. This is known as the First, Folio edition, published in 1623. The world owes this first publication of a, collection of Shakespeare's plays (most, of which had not previously seen print) to the energy and enterprise of two of bis intimate friends and fellow-actors (John Heminges and Henry Condell). They induced n, small syndicate of printers and booksellers to undertake the expense of printing and publishing the volume, ft was published at £l. and if, is estimated that 5(10 ropier were print od, and that ISO now survive. A perfect copy of this volume is now worth over £3,000; one sold in London in March, 1907, realised £3,600. The plays contained in the find, folio edition were not printed from Shakespeare's autograph manuscript., for at the time these mannscrips were not in existence, it was then twelve years since Shakespeare's last, play had been staged, and more than thirty years since his first play had been produced. Moreover, the fire which destroyed the Globe Theatre in 1613 probably destroyed most of the manuscript copies of plays that were in the of the theatre. But there were in existence many transcripts of Shakespeare’s plays and others, which were in the

private possession of actors, and there nerd extant several “fair copies,” which, according to custom, the author or Actors had' procured for presentation to friends and patrons. It is assumed that it was mainly from these sources that the copy of the first folio edition was obtained.

Shakespeare during his lifetime made no effort, as far as is known, to preserve his manuscripts• or to print his plays. Professor Alfred W, Pollard (formerly keeper of printed books in the British Museum), in the course _ot the annual Shakespeare lecture delivered before tho British Academy in 1923 on ‘The Foundations of Shakespeare’s Text/ pointed out that Shakespeare conformed to tho custom of the time in showing indifference to his manuscripts which he had sold to the theatre managers. “ ft was the wellattested custom of the time,” stated Professor Pollard, “ for a dramatist to sell his complete rights in his plays to one of tho companies of actors, or to some agent acting on their behalf. The actors did what they liked with the manuscript, abridged it, augmented it, caused it to bo rewritten in part or whole, exactly as they pleased. Shakespeare profited by this custom in lii.early days. He took over other men’s plots, other men’s drafts, other men's completed plays, and did to them what he was told, transmuting copper and silver into gold, with an alchemy all his own. We applaud what he did, and invent fine phrases to glorify that which in modern dramatists _we should regard as monstrous. But it was the custom of the day thus to take oyer plots and ideas and rehandle and improve them. Shakespeare profited by it in his youth; he did not protest against it in his old age. He could have collected his own plays, expunged from them all that was not his, and prepared them for tho Press. As far as wo know, or have any reason to guess, lie did nothing of the kind. He had sold his work to tho actors, and it was theirs to do with it what they would. It has been contended that it is characteristic of the English race that its best work has always been done with a striking absence of _any realisation of what was being achieved. When wo have builded our best, we have never quite understood what we were building. Surely in this Shakespeare was most characteristically one of Ins race. Ho is a self-conscious artist in his youthful poems nnd_ sonnets, and if these alone had survived_ he would have ’ ranked high among his contemporaries, hut hardly have been heard of in lands where English is a foreign tongue. He was utterly nnsolf-eon-scions in his plavs, and his plays have penetrated to the very ends of the earth. It was part of the price of this greatness that he should lie careless ol them and their fate.”

But carefully preserved in the British Muslim, among the nation’s Shakespearian treasures, are three pages of manuscript which prominent Shakespearian scholars regard ns being in the hand writing of Shakespeare. These three pages form part of the manuscript play of 1 The Books of Sir Thomas Moore/ written by Anthony Miniday towards the close of tho sixteenth ’ century. It is supposed that tlie company of actors who intended to produce this play required certain alterations made in the manuscript in order to get the censor to license the production of the play, and that Shakespeare was one oi several dramatists who made the alterations. The suggestion that these three pages are in Shakespeare’s hand writing has been learnedly argued in a recent book by five Shakespearian scholars—viz.. Professor Pollard, Sir Edward Maunde Thompson (formerly principal librarian at the British Museum). Professor R. W. Chambers (of University College. London). Dr W. W. Greg, and Mr .1. Dover Wilson. But Sir Kidney Lee. in discussing the matter in_ the preface to the third edition of his ‘ Life of Shakespeare ’ throws doubt on tho contention’. though he admits that “ the dramatic quality of these three pages is far superior to that of anv other scene in the play, and may well justify tho attribution to Shakespeare’s youthful hand.”