THE NEGLECT BY MODERN EDITORS OF A 1745 edition of
Shakespeare
has led them into errors and false assumptions regarding
eighteenth-century emendations of the text. This edition is in six
octavo volumes with the following general title in the first
volume:
THE | WORKS | OF | SHAKESPEAR. | IN | SIX VOLUMES. |
[rule] |
Carefully Revised and Corrected | by the former Editions. | [rule]
| — Nil ortum tale. — Hor. | [rule] |
[ornament: a
basket of flowers and foliage with 2 birds, 56 x 22 mm.] | [double
rule] | LONDON: | Printed for J. and
P.
Knapton,
S. Birt, T. Longman, | H. Lintot, C. Hitch, J. Brindley,
J. and R. Tonson and | S. Draper, R.
and
B.
Wellington, E. New, and B. Dod. | [short rule] | M
DCC
XLV.
The editor is not named, either on this title or elsewhere, but the
text is substantially that of the 1744 edition of Sir Thomas Hanmer
printed at the Oxford University press, and the 'Advertisement from
the Booksellers' (in vol. i) opens with the statement that 'This
Edition is exactly copied from that lately printed in
Quarto
at
Oxford'.
In order to understand the nature of this 1745 edition, and the
reasons for its importance, we must go back some fifteen
or twenty years and examine the early connections of Sir Thomas
Hanmer and the Rev. William Warburton with Shakespeare. Indeed the
story actually begins with Lewis Theobald, who published in 1726
his
Shakespeare Restored, an attack on Pope's editorial
methods in his Shakespeare of 1725. At some time near the beginning
of 1728 Theobald began what turned out to be a long and voluminous
correspondence with Warburton in which the two men exchanged
detailed critical and explanatory notes on the Shakespeare text.
Theobald intended to publish critical remarks upon all the plays,
similar to those on
Hamlet of which
Shakespeare
Restored was chiefly composed. But by 1730 he wrote to
Warburton that he had enlarged his plan and had now determined upon
an edition of Shakespeare. Thereafter Warburton appears to have
understood completely that the many notes which he continued to
communicate to the editor were in fact contributions to this
edition. Theobald accepted
them, printed a large number of them as footnotes, nearly always
assigning due credit for each, and devoted a paragraph of his
preface to a grateful acknowledgement of Warburton's assistance. He
did not use all of the contributions, however, and it was
Warburton's hurt pride at the discovery of this, soon after the
appearance of the edition in 1733, that led ultimately, about 1736,
to a complete breach in the friendship of the two men. On 17 May
1734 Warburton wrote:
I have transcrib'd abt. 50 Emend. & remarks
wch: I have
at several times sent you, omitted in ye. Edition of
Shakespeare
wch. I am sure are better than any of mine publish'd
there.
These I shall convey to you soon &desire you to publish them (as
omitted by being mislaid) in ye. Edition of the Poem[s],
wch.
I hope you will soon make ready for the Press.
A few days later he sent these emendations and notes (fifty-six of
them) to Theobald.
[1] But Theobald
never published the edition
of the Poems which he appears to have been considering, and
Warburton's strange request came to nothing. Theobald adopted the
very reasonable position that it was implicit in any such voluntary
contribution of material that the editor should have a free hand to
select or discard as he might see fit. Actually, if Theobald erred
at all in the selection of Warburton's notes, it was by including
too many, for Warburton was inferior to Theobald as a scholar and
in his knowledge of Shakespeare and Elizabethan literature.
Throughout the later relations of the two men, Warburton is
revealed as a thoroughly petty and vainglorious man.
[2]
The next new edition of Shakespeare is that of Hanmer, which
made its appearance in 1744, and in this, too, Warburton was
involved. At what date Hanmer decided upon the preparation of an
edition he nowhere tells us. In May 1737 Warburton spent a week at
Mildenhall, Sir Thomas's seat, and at that time the baronet, though
interested in constructing a 'correct text in Shakespeare,' had 'no
thoughts at all of making it public.'[3] It is not known what motive led
Warburton to seek Hanmer out—if indeed he did so. It is not
unlikely that he had in the back of his mind even then an edition
of his own. His quarrel with Theobald was still fairly fresh, and
he may have been thinking of some means of doing himself the
justice which he felt he had been denied by Theobald. In October
1737, five months after the meeting with Hanmer, he wrote to Thomas
Birch:
You are pleased to enquire about Shakespeare. I believe (to tell
it as a secret) I shall . . .
give an Edition of it to the
World. Sir Thomas Hanmer has a true critical genius, and has
done great things in this Author; so you may expect to see a very
extraordinary edition of its kind.
[4]
This sounds as if some sort of cooperation between the two men was
contemplated, but since in later accounts of their negotiations
they contradict each other it is difficult to decide just what
sort. In the letter to Joseph Smith quoted above Hanmer wrote:
I am satisfied there is no edition coming or likely to come from
Warburton, but it is a report raised to serve some little purpose
or other, of which I see there are many on foot. I have reason to
know that gentleman is very angry with me, for a cause of which I
think I have no reason to be ashamed, or he to be proud. My
acquaintance with him began upon an application from himself, and
at his request the present Bp of Salisbury introduced him to me for
this purpose only, as was then declared, that as he had many
observations upon Shakespeare then lying by him, over and above
those printed in Theobald's book, he much desired to communicate
them to me, that I might judge whether any of them were worthy to
be added to those emendations, which he understood I had long been
making upon that author. I received his offer with all the civility
I could: upon which a long correspondence began by letters, in
which he explained his sense upon many passages, which sometimes I
thought just, but
mostly wild and out of the way. Afterwards he made a journey hither
on purpose to see my books; he staid about a week with me, and had
the inspection of them: and all this while I had no suspicion of
any other design, in all the pains he took, but to perfect a
correct text in Shakespeare, of which he seemed very fond. But not
long after, the views of interest began to shew themselves, several
hints were dropt of the advantage he might receive from publishing
the work thus corrected; but as I had no thoughts at all of making
it public, so I was more averse to yield to it in such a manner as
was likely to produce a paltry edition, by making it the means only
of getting a greater sum of money by it. Upon this he flew into a
great rage, and there is an end of the story . . .
This letter was printed in
Biographia Britannica
(
sub
Smith) but, through the intervention of Warburton, then Bishop of
Gloucester, was cancelled. Philip Nichols, one of the proprietors
of
Biographia Britannica, through whose efforts the letter
had originally been obtained, attempted to prevent the
cancellation, but was overruled. He thereupon issued, anonymously,
a pamphlet entitled
The Castrated Letter of Sir Thomas Hanmer,
In the Sixth Volume of Biographia Britannica (1763), in which
he printed (pp. 26-27) the letter to Smith.
[5] This he followed by a reply from
Warburton (originally contributed, Nichols says, to the
St.
James Chronicle of 1 November 1762, when the Bishop was still
expecting the Hanmer letter to appear in
Biographia
Britannica). This reply begins:
Sir Thomas Hanmer's letter from Milden-hall to Oxford, Oct. 28,
1742, is one continued falshood from beginning to end.
It is false that my acquaintance with him began upon an
application from me to him. It began upon an application of the
present Bishop of London [formerly of Salisbury] to me, in behalf
of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and, as I understood, at Sir Thomas Hanmer's
desire. The thing speaks itself. It was publicly known that I had
written notes on Shakespeare, because part of them were printed;
few people knew that Sir Thomas Hanmer had: I certainly did not
know; nor indeed, whether he was living or dead.
The falsehood is still viler because it sculks only under an
insinuation that I made a journey to him to Milden-Hall, without an
invitation, whereas it was at his earnest and repeated request, as
appears by his letters, which I have still by me.
After relating that Hanmer had first tried to interest a
'bookseller in London, of the best reputation' (Nichols says this
was Tonson), Warburton continues:
But the bookseller understanding that he made use of many of my
notes, and that I knew nothing of the project, thought fit to send
me this account; on which I wrote to Sir Th. Hanmer, upbraiding him
with his behaviour . . .
One can scarcely help feeling some little annoyance at the tone
of nobility and insistent amateurism which Hanmer assumes
throughout the whole affair. Scholarly reputation is nothing to
him, and the thought of financial gain abhorrent. He has, he writes
in the preface to his edition, 'made it the amusement of his
leisure hours for many years past to look over his [Shakespeare's]
writings.' Yet his conduct, not only in connection with Shakespeare
but in other passages of his life, was that of a guileless and
generous man. His fault was simplicity, and there was in him
neither rancor nor deceit.
Warburton's behaviour, in contrast, attracts little sympathy or
confidence. Self-interest is too apparent in all of his
relationships—with Theobald, with Pope, with Hanmer. Yet even his
enemies—and he was not without them—did not accuse him
of
out-and-out lying.
I think then that we can reconcile the opposed statements of
Hanmer and Warburton without giving the lie to either of them.
Bishop Sherlock, perhaps knowing of their common interest in
Shakespeare, may well have brought them together in such a way that
each felt himself to be the one complimented. During the 'long
correspondence' that followed and the week at Mildenhall, Hanmer
and Warburton may have exchanged comments on the text without
either one mentioning clearly what was probably yet in the mind of
each no more than an ill-defined notion of producing an edition. It
is even possible that at that time neither had formed such a notion
at all. It is certain that Warburton sent Hanmer many notes, which
he thought 'mostly wild and out of the way'. A little later,
thinking—or perhaps only dreaming—that Hanmer was going
to help
him, Warburton wrote the letter to Birch quoted above and then
dropped some hints to Hanmer about advantage to himself. It is
likely that in this he clumsily displayed his spirit of
self-seeking pettiness which offended the guileless baronet. And so
they quarrelled, and each man felt himself aggrieved. Then for some
years Warburton, whose main path of promotion lay in the Church,
was busy with
The Divine Legation of Moses and other
theological works. Hanmer meanwhile continued to amuse his leisure
hours with his favorite author and so was able, a few years later,
to make a gift of his edition to Oxford, himself paying for the
handsome copper-plates by Hayman and stipulating only that the set
should be even more sumptuous than Pope's elegant quartos of 1725
and that the price must not exceed three guineas.
Aside from the impressive appearance of the six volumes when
they appeared in 1744, it is difficult to find much good to say
about Hanmer's edition. It competes with Warburton's of 1747 for
lowest place among eighteenth-century editions. But palpable as
they are, Hanmer's faults as an editor are those common to all
editors from Rowe to Johnson. His method was theirs—to reprint
the latest edition or editions,[6]
accepting their emendations or guesses as the established text and
further emending any passage the meaning of which did not strike
his fancy.[7] All the editors made
some pretence of examining or even collating first editions, but
none were systematic in this, and all, persuaded of the corrupt
state of the early texts, exercised varying degrees of license in
correcting them. Hanmer was
perhaps a little more arbitrary in his emendations and a little
less sound in his judgments than most of the others—but not much.
In one respect, however, he was clearly more culpable than any
other—or at least more consistently culpable. He never, or almost
never, gives credit to any of the earlier editors for the many
emendations of which he has availed himself, and he supplies no
textual notes. Along with his own he prints Pope's or Theobald's or
Warburton's readings, quite silently, and occasionally he lifts an
explanatory note equally without credit or comment. He merely
wished to construct 'a correct text in Shakespeare', not seeking
reputation for himself; and in his own generosity he simply
embraced his fellow-workers in the field.
Such methods are avoided by modern editors, like the Furnesses
and their successors in the New Variorum. These want to know who is
responsible for each reading and are punctilious in assigning
credit for each. But when they come to deal with Hanmer and
Warburton they are, without knowing it, too often working in the
dark. As a result Hanmer has been given credit—or should I say
discredit?—for a great many readings which belong to Warburton.
To Theobald too, though much less often, have been assigned
emendations which originated with Warburton.
The sole value of the 1745 edition, which is the subject of this
paper, lies in the fact that it constitutes, as I believe, a
reliable key by which these errors can be corrected.
The 'Advertisement from the Booksellers' informs the reader that
the plan followed in this reprint of the 1744 Oxford edition of
Hanmer is to mark those passages in the text altered by Hanmer and
to 'place the discarded Readings at the bottom of the Page, as also
to point out the Emendations made by Mr. Theobald, Mr.
Warburton, and Dr. Thirlby,[8] in Mr. Theobald's
Edition,
which
are used by this Editor'—that is by Hanmer.
This is an accurate account of the method used, at no
inconsiderable cost in labor, throughout the six volumes. Wherever,
departing from the text as handed down by Pope, Hanmer prints an
emendation of Theobald and his helpers (Thirlby and Warburton), or
one of his own, the emended words are marked in the text of 1745 by
a pair of small superior slanted lines, and a footnote is supplied.
For example, in
Merry Wives, V.iii.13, where Pope and
earlier editions read 'and the
Welch devil
Herne?'
and Theobald alters '
Herne' to '
Evans',
Hanmer
follows the latter, with '
Evans'. In the 1745 reprint
'
Evans' is enclosed in the superior slanted lines, and a
footnote reads '
Herne? . . .
old edit. Theob.
emend.'
If the emendation was first proposed by Thirlby or Warburton, the
appropriate name is given. If by Hanmer himself, the footnote
simply gives the reading and assigns it to the '
old edit.',
without the
emendator's name. The number of emendations so marked in the text
and footnoted in one way or the other is very large. In six plays
chosen at random
[9] I find 527 in
all; 409 are attributed to no one, which means that they are
Hanmer's own; 60 are attributed to Theobald; 52 to Warburton; and
6 to Thirlby.
The question which must now be considered is who could have done
this work on the 1744 Hanmer text. It can be demonstrated, I
believe, that it was Warburton himself. The 'Advertisement from the
Booksellers' continues, after the sentence quoted in the paragraph
just above:
The changes in the disposition of the Lines for the Regulation
of the Metre are too numerous to be taken particular notice of. As
to the other Emendations and Notes of Mr.
Warburton, which
are for the most part marked likewise in this Edition, we are only
commission'd to say thus much; "
That he "desires the Publick
would suspend their Opinion of his Conjectures 'till they see "how
they can be supported: For he holds it as ridiculous to alter the
Text of an Author "without Reasons assigned, as it was
dishonourable to publish those Alterations "without leave obtained.
When he asks this Indulgence for himself, if the Publick "will give
it too to the Honourable Editor, he will not complain; as having no
"objection why his too should not occupy the Place they have
usurped, until they be "shewn to be arbitrary, groundless,
mistaken, and violating not only the Sense of the "Author, but all
the Rules and Canons of true Criticism: Not that the Violation of
"these Rules ought to be any more objected to the Editor, than the
Violation of the "Rules of Poetry to his Author, as both
professedly wrote without any."
This curious advertisement clearly constitutes an attack by
Warburton upon Hanmer—with special emphasis upon the latter's
practice of appropriating other men's emendations 'without leave
obtained.' It does not imply that Warburton performed the textual
collation which gives the reprint its value. But though it is not
improbable that he or Tonson, the publisher, employed some nameless
hack for the more tedious part of the task, yet it is difficult to
see how it could have been accomplished without Warburton's active
collaboration—or indeed to see who else would have had any motive
for its accomplishment.
The greater part of the work, it is true, could have been done
by anyone—simply by collating Hanmer's text with Theobald's and
Pope's. In this way it would be an easy matter to determine where
Hanmer departs from the 'old edit.'—from Pope, that is —and
where he follows Theobald. Where Theobald has followed a reading
suggested to him by Warburton or Thirlby, his footnote almost
invariably makes this clear, and thus if Hanmer adopts one of these
readings his source is apparent. But frequently one finds in the
1745 edition a note reading 'old edit. Warb. emend.' when
a
glance at Theobald's text shows that that editor had not adopted
the reading or even mentioned it in a note (as he occasionally did
do) as a discarded possibility suggested by Warburton. These
readings, then, appear in print for the first time in Hanmer's
first edition; yet the textual annotator of 1745 assigns them to
Warburton. Something like half of all the emendations claimed for
'Warb.' in the
footnotes of the reprint are of this kind.
In light of what we know about Warburton's relations with
Theobald and Hanmer it is not difficult to explain these
assignments
of emendations to him. We know that Theobald had declined to make
use of some which Warburton felt were his very best. We have
Hanmer's own statement that Warburton 'had many observations upon
Shakespeare then lying by him' when the two men began
corresponding, and that some of them Hanmer 'thought just'. The
latter nowhere denies having used these, though how many of them he
may have used he does not suggest and we have no way of knowing.
There is in fact definite proof of his adopting some emendations
which he could have got from no other source: for six of the
fifty-six that Warburton sent (for the second time) to Theobald in
May 1734
[10] were adopted by
Hanmer
and are duly credited to Warburton in the 1745 footnotes. These six
emendations follow (with Globe references):
-
Com. of Errors, IV.iii.28.
Theob. morris-pike MS and Han.
Maurice-pike
-
All's Well, IV.v.42.
Theob. hotter MS and Han.
honour'd
-
John, IV.ii.255.
Theob. murd'rous MS and Han.
murd'rer's
-
Romeo and Jul., III.v.32.
Theob. would they had MS and Han. wot
they
have
-
Othello, IV.i.42.
Theob. instruction MS and Han.
induction
-
Ant. and Cleo., IV.xv.10.
Theob. Burn the great Sphere
MS Turn from th'great, &c.
Han. Turn from the Sphere
The treatment of these and other emendations claimed by
Warburton in the 1745 footnotes at the hands of New Variorum
editors and the old Cambridge editors (1863-66), shows that the
1745 edition ought to be better known than it has been.
The elder Furness, it is true, appears to have known the fifty-six
emendations and notes preserved in MS—probably from Nichols's
Illustrations—for he properly assigns many of them to
Warburton. He so treats the above
Othello and
Antony
and
Cleopatra emendations. But for no discernible reason he assigns
the
Romeo and Juliet reading to Hanmer. It is certain that
neither he nor the Cambridge editors used the 1745 edition, and the
same can be said of more recent editors of New Variorum volumes.
None of these lists that edition among those collated or refers to
it in any way. Three additional examples (where the MS is not
involved) will make the point clear:
-
Macbeth, I.ii.14.
Theob. quarry Han. quarrel
(claimed by Warb.)
Cambridge attributes emendation to Hanmer, Furness to
Johnson!
-
1 Henry IV, III.ii.13.
Theob. attempts Han. attaints
(claimed by Warb.)
Cambridge and Hemingway attribute emendation to
Hanmer.
-
2 Henry IV, IV.i.175.
Theob. purposes confin'd Han. properties
confirm'd
(claimed by Warb.)
Cambridge and Shaaber attribute emendation to Hanmer.
In view of Warburton's animosity toward the Oxford editor one
might well question his trustworthiness to perform his task in an
even reasonably judicious manner. There does not seem to be any way
of proving, for example, that he did not appropriate to himself, in
the 1745 footnotes, more emendations than he had a right to. But to
me it seems unlikely that he did such a thing. Neither Hanmer nor
anyone else is known to have made such a charge. Zachary Grey,
whose Word or Two of Advice to William
Warburton (1746) takes Warburton to task for the
'Advertisement' of 1745, gives no hint of this kind of dishonesty.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary we must, in my
opinion, assume that Warburton's assignments of credit for
emendations are accurate and reliable. Accordingly we must in the
future attribute to Warburton those emendations claimed by him in
the 1745 reprint.
A few words remain to be said about the publication of the
edition. At the beginning of the century the Shakespeare copyrights
were divided between the Tonson firm and the Wellington firm, the
former owning the greater part.[11] In
spite of the Copyright Act of 1710 these firms continued with fair
success to claim the exclusive right to publish Shakespeare. All
but one of the important editions from Rowe (1709) to Johnson
(1765) were in fact published by the Tonsons—usually in
association with the Wellingtons and often, as in 1745, with a
number of other booksellers. The one exception was the Oxford
edition of 1744—Hanmer's first edition—which in the eyes of
the
Tonsons and Wellingtons constituted a brazen piracy. On 11 April
1745 Jacob Tonson III, having seen proposals of Edward Cave to
publish an edition of Shakespeare, wrote in a letter of warning to
Cave:
I doubt not I can shew you such a title as will satisfy you . .
. and I will then give you my reasons why we rather chuse to
proceed with the University by way of reprisal for their scandalous
invasion of our right, than by law.
[12]
What his reasons were we do not know, but the reprisal almost
certainly consisted of the publication of the cheap reprint of
1745—a sort of piracy of a piracy. Not only was it cheap, and
thus designed to undersell the stately Oxford edition, but, as we
have seen, the 'Advertisement from the Booksellers' contains a
vicious attack upon the very book to which it is prefixed.
When this 'Advertisement' asks the public to 'suspend their
Opinion of his [Warburton's] Conjectures 'till they see how they
can be supported', it seems clear that Warburton was at work on his
own edition. This was published in 1747—by the Tonsons and their
associates. We may infer, then, that in 1745 Warburton had already
entered into an agreement with his publishers. Though it is not
improbable that it was the Tonsons who initiated the reprint—as
a protest against the 'piracy', in order that they might not give
the appearance of acquiescing in it—it is difficult to see how
they could have regarded the careful textual apparatus as a
necessary adjunct to it. It is therefore probable that this was
added at the suggestion of Warburton as his own personal revenge on
'the Honourable Editor'. He may have wished at the same time to
establish his own right to the emendations which he had supplied to
Hanmer—most of which he was to use in his own edition of
1747.