FASCINATING SCRAP

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 143, 2 June 1936, Page 8

FASCINATING SCRAP

Did Shakespeare Write It? INTERESTING NOTES Precious hours which must now amount to many a lifetime have been given by scholars to the search foi something written by the hand ol Shakespeare; yet how small is the result of all this search! So little has been found that gre.f interest is being taken in some marginal notes discovered in a work published when Shakespeare was a young mar and now claimed to be in his own handwriting. This work is, strangely enough, r copy of that very “Holinshed’s Chronicle” which Shakespeare himself ha: made famous as a’ book of reference for it was the source for his historical plays and his tragedies of Lear, Macbeth, and Cymbeline. Internal evidence has long suggested that the threevolume edition of 1585 was the version used by Shakespeare, and it is in a copy of this edition which has fallen into the hands of Captain William Jaggard, the well-known Shakespearean scholar of Stratford, that the marginal writings occur. Written rapidly in flowing style in the margin of one of the pages are four fine words standing for qualities which the poet esteemed highly; they are the words Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance. This motto forms the title-page (whence the poet may have derived it) of a lovely 13th-century illuminated manuscript, of French workmanship, now in the British Museum. It is among the colour plates of the Children’s Encyclopedia. Scribbled down below the motto is the epigram that “As wealth maketh lofty, Soe want maketh lowly,” an idea found in Shakespeare; but the most interesting passage of all is a horse-doctor's recipt jotted down perhaps for future reference: Blacke soaps, pigge meale, and honny, mingled together, good for horse’s legges swollen. It must be said that it would be truly remarkable if it happened that one of handwriting is a fragment telling us of a cure for a horse’s swollen legs! Captain Jaggard has compared the lettering with the little writing we know to be by Shakespeare, and he is confident the poet wrote it Another Shakespeare student, Countess Longworth de Chambrun, is convinced that the notes are authentic, and has submitted them to Count Franzoni, a handwriting expert at Geneva, who has no doubt on the subject. “Irrefutable as fingerprints” is his verdict. Another curious fact is that the chapters dealing with the period covered by Shakespeare’s historical plays have been well thumbed and the corners of the pages are stained and dog-eared from constant use, whereas the rest of the work is practically untouched. But there is another fascinating theory which receives some support from the discovery of this personal set of volumes, the theory that Shakespeare played a part in the production of books before he wrote one himself. These three volumes have, bound up in them, a series of extra pages which do not appear in any other known copy (and it is on these we find the quaint recipe) The pages appear to be those used by a printer’s reader in preparing the work for press, and the reason they do not appear in the ordinary 1585 edition of Holinshed is that the State censor suppressed them because they contained matter of a Papist tendency. Captain Jaggard believes that this unique set may have been Shakespeare’s own copy, and he imagines that the poet had acted as a printer’s reader for this edition during the years it was appearing; it began in 1585 and ended in 1587. Captain Jaggard had already established a claim for this view of Shakespeare's earlier activities, for he published in 1934 a volume called “Shakespeare Once a Printer and Bookman," containing 500 quotations supporting the theory. It may be that Shakespeare knew Raphael Holinshed before that illustrious writer passed on in 1580, for, Dr. Leslie Hotson last year found evidence in the Record Office that Holinshed was steward of the manor of Packwood, a morning’s walk from Stratford, and the home of a family of Shakespeares. Holinshed lived but two years to enjoy the face the first edition of his “Chronicle” brought him, and on his death the publishers set to work on the revised edition to which Captain Jaggard’s copy belongs. Was it to share in the labour of producing this work that Shakespeare left his home to walk to London? It is all very fascinating, but the facts are few and we can only imagine the rest.