FullReads

This edition is said to be printed from the Original Copies ; I believe they meant those which had lain ever since the Author’s days in the playhouse, and had from time to time been cut, or added to, arbitrarily. It appears that this edition, as well as the Quarto’s, was printed (at least partly) from no better copies than the Prompter’s Book or Piece-meal Parts written out for the use of the actors: For in some places their very(38) names are thro’ carelessness set down instead of the Personae Dramatis : And in others the notes of direction to the Property-men for their Moveables, and to the Players for their Entries,(39) are inserted into the Text, thro’ the ignorance of the Transcribers.

Footnotes:

[38: Much ado about nothing, Act 2. Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jack Wilson, instead of Balthasar. And in Act 4. Cowley, and Kemp, constantly thro’ a whole Scene. Edit. Fol. of 1623, and 1632.

[39: Such as,

–My Queen is murder’d! Ring the little Bell —
–His nose grew as sharp as a pen, and a table of Greenfield’s, etc.]

The Plays not having been before so much as distinguish’d by Acts and Scenes, they are in this edition divided according as they play’d them; often when there is no pause in the action, or where they thought fit to make a breach in it, for the sake of Musick, Masques, or Monsters.

Sometimes the scenes are transposed and shuffled backward and forward; a thing which could no otherwise happen, but by their being taken from separate and piece-meal-written parts.

Many verses are omitted intirely, and others transposed; from whence invincible obscurities have arisen, past the guess of any Commentator to clear up, but just where the accidental glympse of an old edition enlightens us.

Some Characters were confounded and mix’d, or two put into one, for want of a competent number of actors. Thus in the Quarto edition of Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act 5, Shakespear introduces a kind of Master of the Revels called Philostratus : all whose part is given to another character (that of AEgeus ) in the subsequent editions: So also in Hamlet and King Lear. This too makes it probable that the Prompter’s Books were what they call’d the Original Copies.

From liberties of this kind, many speeches also were put into the mouths of wrong persons, where the Author now seems chargeable with making them speak out of character: Or sometimes perhaps for no better reason than that a governing Player, to have the mouthing of some favourite speech himself, would snatch it from the unworthy lips of an Underling.

Prose from verse they did not know, and they accordingly printed one for the other throughout the volume.

Having been forced to say so much of the Players, I think I ought in justice to remark, that the Judgment, as well as Condition, of that class of people was then far inferior to what it is in our days. As then the best Playhouses were Inns and Taverns (the Globe, the Hope, the Red Bull, the Fortune, etc.), so the top of the profession were then meer Players, not Gentlemen of the stage: They were led into the Buttery by the Steward, not plac’d at the Lord’s table, or Lady’s toilette: and consequently were intirely depriv’d of those advantages they now enjoy, in the familiar conversation of our Nobility, and an intimacy (not to say dearness) with people of the first condition.