courts, extraordinary natural gifts and learned acquisitions, for commencing and prosecuting such a work; and in the situation of the briefless young barrister, in the midst of books, making slow progress in the profession, getting no advancement for a period of twenty-five years after his coming to the bar beyond the unproductive honor of a Queen's or King's Counsel and a seat in Parliament, laboring under the twofold embarrassment of an expensive mode of life and debt to the Lombards and Jews, casting about for 66 some lease of quick revenue" to relieve (as he says) "the meanness of my estate," enjoying the society of the theatre-going and masque-devising young courtiers, the dazzling favor of the Court, the ample leisure of Gray's Inn, and occasionally the Arcadian quiet of Gorhambury and Twickenham Park; and in his known devotion to all manner of studies and the profoundest speculations, we may find the needful preparation, the time for writing and for study, and the means of growth and culture which the case requires. And his acknowledged prose compositions of that period, to say nothing of the sonnets which he addressed to the Queen, or the masques which he wrote for her entertainment, exhibit all the necessary qualities of the poet. He was "a poetic imaginator," says George Darley, "and dramatic poets are (or ought to be) philosophers." Even Macaulay admitted that "the poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason." 2

"1

As early as 1610, Shakespeare, having some time before ceased to play his part as an actor upon the stage, had retired from the theatres in London, and resumed his permanent residence in Stratford-on-Avon. He is not known to have had any further connection with the stage. But in 1611 were produced the "Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest." The "Lear" was first performed before the King

1 Introd. to Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, by George Darley.
2 Misc., II. 408.

at Whitehall, in 1606, and the "Troilus and Cressida," in 1609; and the first notice that we have of the "Tempest is, that it was performed before the King's Majesty at Whitehall, in November, 1611; and the "Winter's Tale," first acted at the Globe, in May, 1611, was performed before the King at Whitehall, a few days after the "Tempest." Both were repeated at Court during the festivities. attending the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, toward the close of the year 1612, and in the spring of 1613. And on the thirtieth day of June following, and while these festivities were still proceeding, as it appears, the magnificent play of "Henry VIII." was for the first time produced in great splendor at the Globe, with the presence (if not the assistance) of Ben Jonson (Shakespeare having retired from London), containing a studied and special compliment to King James. On the twentyseventh of October, thereafterwards, Sir Francis Bacon, Solicitor-General, having sometime before "come with his pitcher to Jacob's well, as others did," and obtained "the royal promise to succeed to the higher place," is raised to the laborious and lucrative position of Attorney-General, and the plays cease to appear. William Shakespeare continues, a few years longer, to enjoy the social comforts of New Place, prosecuting at leisure his agricultural pursuits and miscellaneous traffic, and dies in April, 1616, leaving a handsome estate and a will.

§ 9. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES.

Seven years after the death of Shakespeare, these lasting memorials of the most transcendent genius were gathered up from the play-houses in London (as it would seem) by his surviving fellows, Heming and Condell, who appear to have assumed the function of editors; and they were published in the Folio of 1623, as they say in the preface, from "the true original Copies." What and whence were these true original copies? Let us consider of this. As

early as 1589, commissioners were appointed by the Queen to revise stage-plays; and after 1594, they had to be licensed and entered at Stationers' Hall, before they could be printed, being prohibited, "except they bee allowed by such as have auctoritye." Nevertheless, some may have been printed without license. Before 1600, theatres had become so numerous and disorderly that all but two, the Globe and the Fortune, were suppressed by public order. Plays sold to a theatre were kept for its own exclusive use, and when they got abroad, as sometimes they did, through surreptitious copies, or when they found their way into the hands of the printers, other theatres, on appeal to the authorities, were prohibited from acting them. It appears by the entries in the Register of the Stationers' Company, that the publishers of plays claimed a right of property in the copy, which was considered assignable ; and when the Folio of 1623 was published by Jaggard and Blount, an entry was made at Stationers' Hall of the sixteen plays which had not been printed before, by their titles, as of "soe many of the said Copies as are not formerly entered to other men," and these sixteen were assigned by Jaggard and Blount, in 1630, to one of the publishers of the Folio of 1632. But how the publishers of the first Folio had acquired the copyright of the rest of the plays from those "other men," does not appear: it is to be presumed they did so. It is probable that this right of property in the copy was not then so protected by law as to be a thing of much value, there being no effective remedy either at law or in equity: at least, none appears to have been sought in the courts. The chief object of this license and entry seems to have been to secure a strict censorship of the press; a function that was exercised at first by commissioners, and afterwards by the Master of the Revels. When a copy had been licensed to one publisher, a second license appears sometimes to have been granted to another, perhaps after a transfer of the copyright. The printing of

books was held to be a matter of state, to be regulated by Star-Chamber decrees, letters-patent, commissions, and the ordinances "set down for the good government of the Stationers' Company." And though some right of property in the copy may have existed at common law, none was ever distinctly recognized by any legislation, nor by any reported judicial decision before the year 1640; but in 1637, a decree of the Star-Chamber prohibited the printing of any book or copy which the Stationers' Company, or any other person, had obtained the sole right to print, by entry in their Register; whence it may be inferred that previous to that date this right had been but little respected. Nevertheless, it will be borne in mind that this right of property in a book was called the copy in those days, whence the term copyright came into use in the law. None of these plays were ever entered in the name of William Shakespeare, as owner of the copy, but all in the names of the several publishers; and there were different publishers of the several plays at dates not far apart. And after the publication of the Folio of 1623, there were, in like manner as before, separate entries of several of the plays for license to print by other publishers, at different dates. Whence it may be inferred that no well-recognized copyright existed in any owner of those plays, or that it was often and readily transferred; and so, that the publishers of the Folio could have had but little difficulty in obtaining the copyright from those "other men," if indeed there were any at all. It is barely possible that this difficulty may have been the reason why the "Pericles" was not included in the Folio, though it may have been rejected by the Editor.

We know from Blackstone that stage-plays unlicensed were liable to indictment as public nuisances, and inasmuch as they had to be licensed before they could be printed, it is certain that complete manuscripts must have

1 Curtis on Copyright, 26; 1 Eden on Inj., cxli.

24 Comm., 168.

been furnished to the proper officer for examination. So Chettle said of Greene's “Groatsworth of Wit": "I had only in the copy this share; it was ill written, as sometime Greene's hand was none of the best; licensed it must be ere it could be printed, which could never be if it might not be read." 1

Now, as to the "six true and genuine copies" (spoken of by Capell), of which only some meagre first draughts had been printed in quarto, and the sixteen plays that were first printed in the Folio, if not, in fact, as to all of them, the true original copies could only mean the perfected manuscripts: it is plain they were not the quartos. And then the proposition must be, that the complete and finished manuscripts were in the possession of these editors as managers of the theatre. They were not committed to their charge by the will of Shakespeare, nor do they say anything in their preface of having received them from his executors. Of course, the author must have furnished a complete manuscript copy to the theatre, from which the separate parts for the use of the actors might be drawn off. The conjecture of Pope, upon a very superficial examination, that the plays in the Folio were printed from such piecemeal parts, with all the interpolations, alterations, and mistakes of the actors, is effectually negatived by the more thorough studies and comparisons of later critics. No entry was made, nor any quarto printed, of any work of Shakespeare between 1609 and his death in 1616, but between this date and 1623 there were six reprints of quartos, besides the "Othello," of which the first quarto appeared in 1622. Whence came the manuscript of this "Othello"? Was it furnished by the theatre, or by Heming and Condell, or by the author himself? It appears, by an entry in the official accounts of the Revels at Court, that a play of the "Moor of Venise" was acted before King James at Whitehall, on the first day of November, 1 Kind Heart's Dream, (Halliwell, 146.)