III
The fact that Malone had completed a full historical collation of the
text gave his commentary notes an authority and cogency seldom present
in Steevens'. Malone insisted again and again that the 1778 text return to
the reading of the copy-text, usually the first folio or occasionally a quarto.
One way to remedy the almost embarrassing intellectual imbalance in the
commentary
was to take textual emendations from Malone without crediting him, which
actually happens in 21 places; the theft is easy to detect, because Malone's
printed arguments in 1780 and 1783 for the changes were in all these
instances simply omitted. For a similar reason, evidently, four of Malone's
collation notes were attributed to Reed, Theobald, and Dr. Johnson, and
eight were directly credited to Steevens. At least thirteen of Ritson's
emendations are also plagiarized by the edition. Steevens, who announced
he had retired forever from editing, reports nine new collation notes, some
of which offer to correct Malone's collation published in 1783, while in
another twenty new notes he defends his 1778 text against the emendations
proposed by Malone. The cumulative effect of this petty plagiarism and
sniping must have soured Malone against giving new commentary in
manuscript to Reed. Although it cannot be established that the volumes
were printed in precise serial order, Malone's new notes
and the volumes in which they appear indicate a sharp falling off after the
fifth volume: I(78); II(6); III(22); IV(101); V(46); VI(7); VII(3); VIII(4);
IX(3); X(1). The highest count of notes stolen from Malone (5),
emendations stolen from Malone (7), and new collation notes from Steevens
and Reed (9) also comes in the fourth volume. There is only one more note
stolen from Malone after the fifth volume, and only once again do Steevens
or Reed offer a new collation. Malone's textual emendations are stolen only
eight more times after the fifth volume.
Malone's reaction to this high-handedness is not recorded in any
letters, and a perusal of Reed's diaries reveals that Malone did not break his
social or professional relationship with Reed because of the 1785 edition.
Unlike Steevens, who was generally incapable of sustaining personal
relationships, Malone had the widely acknowledged gift of social grace and
ease. Yet in his private hours the treatment he received must have been an
irksome experience to contemplate. Some glimpse of his deeper feelings
may be revealed in his collection of Shakespeariana now preserved in the
Bodleian Library. Among the pamphlets and clippings which record the
history of Shakespearean scholarship in his lifetime, Malone preserved
many accounts of the damage which Steevens had inflicted on the careers
of his contemporary Shakespeareans. What Malone had in common with
these men was that each of them had challenged the ability of Steevens as
a textual editor.
One of the most poignant incidents concerns Dr. Kenrick, who
undertook an edition of Shakespeare based on a full collation of David
Garrick's superb collection of the quartos. He was apparently
double-crossed by the booksellers' cabal, who originally promised Kenrick
100 guineas a volume; when Steevens offered to do the edition gratis,
however, the cabal refused to publish Kenrick. Some measure of blame also
seems to fall on Garrick, who knew what was afoot even as he made
promises to Kenrick. Kenrick recounts the events in the Morning
Chronicle (Malone dates it 1774). He was permanently blocked by
the appearance of the 1773 edition, also edited gratuitously, for it seems to
have tied up the booksellers with copyright obligations. Kenrick casts a
scornful eye at the 1773 edition, "replete with
typographical errors, inelegant as incorrect . . . . I say nothing of such
restorations and elucidations of the text as would be peculiar to my own
edition." Kenrick complained that Steevens' gambit to block a potential
rival had "rendered the labour and study of a considerable part of my life
entirely useless."
Charles Jennens also felt hurt and abused by Steevens. His edition of
King Lear (1770) received an extraordinarily harsh notice in
the
Critical Review, and he accused Steevens of instigating it so
as
to obliterate a rival editor (The Tragedy of King Lear . . .
Vindicated, 1772). Jennens criticized the careless collation in Dr.
Johnson's 1765 edition and Steevens' Twenty Plays (1766);
both
editors, he wrote, having "published an edition of Shakespeare without
success (and whose many and gross errors and neglects have, as they
occurred in the course of the collating, have been taken notice of in the new
edition of Lear) are combined together, as co-editors of
another
edition [i.e. the 1773 variorum]," (p. 3). Although Jennens was attacked in
the Critical Review for being too exact in his collation, which
is the sort of defense Steevens might mount, it is difficult to conclude with
Jennens that Steevens controlled the Critical Review.
For example, when Capell complained in his Notes and Various
Readings (1783), that Steevens had pilfered heavily from his 1768
text, the complaint was fully aired in the Critical Review (56,
404), which printed much of Capell's attack on the "regular system of
plagiarism" and "the industry with which the purloining trade has been
pursued," even though the reviewer did add the disclaimer that the charge
had been "completely refuted."
By 1783, when Ritson mocked Malone for having endorsed Steevens'
1778 text, Malone doubtless already regretted what he wrote in his 1780
Supplement. Ritson expresses Malone's dilemma bluntly:
What an abuse of that confidence and credit which the public
naturally place in an editor of rank and character, to tell them, that "by a
diligent collation of all the old copies hitherto discovered, and the judicious
restoration of ancient readings, the text of this author seems now finally
settled!" To what better cause can we ascribe such unfounded assertions
than to indolence and temerity? Since, had the ingenious writer compared
the old and present editions through a single play, he must necessaryly (sic)
have perceived, that all the old copies had NOT been diligenely collated,
that ancient readings had NOT been judiciously restored, and that the text
is no more finally settled at present than it was in the time of Theobald,
Hanmer, and Warburton: nay, that it is, at large, in the same state of
innaccuracy and corruption in which it was left by mr. Rowe."
(Remarks, pp. iv-v)
Ritson put his finger squarely on the issue, but Malone chose to suffer in
silence, a tactic he maintained even in the publication of his own 1790
edition, when he virtually ignored Steevens in his account of the history of
the text. John Monck Mason, who had also collated Shakespeare, aptly
summarizes the growing public case against Steevens' competence as a
textual editor: he "seems to have acted rather from caprice, than any settled
principle" (
Comments, p. viii).
Thus it is undeniable that Steevens' reputation as an editor, already
under attack from various quarters, suffered further from the inclusion of
so many of Malone's notes in the 1785 edition, for in these notes Malone
repudiated scores of emendations Steevens had allowed. Nevertheless, it
should be acknowledged that although the integrity of Steevens' 1778 text
was challenged by a number of Malone's contemporaries, Steevens' lack of
editorial fidelity never seemed to shake the confidence of the booksellers or
his popular successors, for as I reported in volume 29, Steevens' 1793 text
was dominant into the mid-nineteenth century, until it was at last rejected
by Charles Knight.
