 | |  |
Notes
Warburton had evidently kept copies of all the emendations and notes which he had through their long correspondence sent to Theobald. These, together with the letters in which they had probably been embodied, are not known to have survived. But Theobald's letters to Warburton, from 1729 to 1733, were preserved by the latter and are now in the Folger Library, bound in two large volumes (cs 873). With them in the second volume are transcripts, by an amanuensis but with interlined corrections in Warburton's hand, of half a dozen letters from Warburton to Theobald written in 1734. With these latter is a transcript of the 56 emendations and notes, together with several more additional notes sent later. The whole contents of these two MS volumes are printed (almost certainly from the Folger MS) by John Nichols in Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, II (1817), 189-648.
For a full account of the relations between Theobald and Warburton see R. F. Jones, Lewis Theobald, his Contribution to English Scholarship with some Unpublished Letters (New York, 1919), chapters 5 and 6.
He asserts (p. 17) that he 'found the offensive sheet had been withdrawn, and a new one put into its place, printed so much wider as was necessary to fill the same space, without Sir Thomas's letter.' In the three copies which I have seen (Folger and Huntington) the letter is present (leaf 41Q2, pp. 3743-44) and there is no sign of cancellation. But there is good evidence that the cancellation (of the whole sheet) was carried out and that the Folger and Huntington copies are not three which escaped with the cancellandum in place. Instead I am convinced that in these copies—and probably in all others—the sheet as it now stands is a second cancellans, substituted for the first one (from which the letter was omitted). On p. 3780 (sub Spelman) is a note quoting from Warburton's Shakespeare Preface a statement relating to his quarrel with Hanmer. This statement, the editors say, came to their attention 'since the letter at the end of Dr Joseph Smith's Article was printed off.' And they add that if they had seen it in time, it 'should have been inserted as a marginal note to the aforesaid letter of Sir Thomas Hanmer.' But as the letter now stands in the Smith article the statement has been inserted as a marginal note, to which is added a reference to the note on p. 3780. It seems probable then that Philip Nichols ultimately prevailed with the editors to restore the Hanmer letter. It is from Biog. Brit., p. 3743, that I quote the letter above. It is also printed by John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v (1812), 588-89, and by Sir Henry Bunbury, The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. (1838), pp. 85-88.
Hanmer printed from the 1725 Pope, but he appears to have intended originally to use the 1733 Theobald edition for this purpose. A set of the latter in the Folger Library has been heavily annotated throughout (except for Titus, Macbeth, and Othello) in his hand as if to prepare it for printer's copy. But he seems to have changed his mind about this and probably transferred these annotations and emendations to a copy of the 1725 Pope.
A good example is Hanmer's reading of Othello, I.i.21:
- Pope and Theob. damn'd in a fair wife
- Hanmer damn'd in a fair phyz
Styan Thirlby, of Jesus College, Cambridge, a friend of Theobald's, contributed a number of notes and emendations to Theobald's edition.
| | |