THE SHAKESPEARE MYSTERY
In 1853 there went up a jubilant cry from many voices upon the publication of Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections," etc. "Now," it was said, "doubt and controversy are at an end. The text is settled by the weight of authority, and in accordance with common sense. We shall enjoy our Shakespeare in peace and quiet." Hopeless ignorance of Shakespeare-loving nature! The shout of rejoicing had hardly been uttered before there arose a counter cry of warning and defiance from a few resolute lips, which, swelling, mouth by mouth, as attention was aroused and conviction strengthened, has overwhelmed the other, now sunk into a feeble apologetic plea. The dispute upon the marginal readings in this notorious volume, as to their intrinsic value and their pretence to authority upon internal evidence, has ended in the rejection of nearly all of the few which are known to be peculiar to it, and the conclusion against any semblance of such authority. The investigation of the external evidence of their genuineness, though it has not been quite so satisfactory upon all points, has brought to light so many suspicious circumstances connected with Mr. Collier's production of them before the public, that they must be regarded as unsupported by the moral weight of good faith in the only person who is responsible for them.
Since our previous article upon this subject,1 nothing has appeared upon it in this country; but several important publications have been made in London concerning it; and, in fact, this department of Shakespearian literature threatens to usurp a special shelf in the dramatic library. The British Museum has fairly entered the field, not only in the persons of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Maskelyne, but in that of Sir Frederic Madden himself, the head of its Manuscript Department, and one of the very first paleographers of the age; Mr. Collier has made a formal reply; the Department of Public Records has spoken through Mr. Duffus Hardy; the "Edinburgh Review" has taken up the controversy on one side and "Fraser's Magazine" on the other; the London "Critic" has kept up a galling fire on Mr. Collier, his folio, and his friends, to which the "Athenaeum" has replied by an occasional shot, red-hot; the author of "Literary Cookery," (said to be Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae,) a well-read, ingenious, caustic, and remorseless writer, whose first book was suppressed as libellous, has returned to the charge, and not less effectively because more temperately; and finally an LL.D., Mansfield Ingleby, of Trinity College, Cambridge, comes forward with a "Complete View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives, what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.2
And here we pause a moment to consider the temper in which this question has been discussed among the British critics and editors. From the very beginning, eight years ago, there have been manifestations of personal animosity, indications of an eagerness to seize the opportunity of venting long secreted venom. This has appeared as well in books as in more ephemeral publications, and upon both sides, and even between writers on the same side. On every hand there has been a most deplorable impeachment of motive, accompanied by a detraction of character by imputation which is quite shocking. Petty personal slights have been insinuated as the ultimate cause of an expression of opinion upon an important literary question, and testimony has been impeached and judgment disparaged by covert allegations of disgraceful antecedent conduct on the part of witnesses or critics. Indeed, at times there has seemed reason to believe the London "Literary Gazette" (we quote from memory) right in attributing this whole controversy to a quarrel which has long existed in London, and which, having its origin in the alleged abstraction of manuscripts from a Cambridge library by a Shakespearian scholar, has made most of the British students of this department of English letters more or less partisans on one side or the other. Certainly the "Saturday Review" is correct, (in all but its English,) when it says that in this controversy "a mere literary question and a grave question of personal character are being awkwardly mixed together, and neither question is being conducted in a style at all satisfactory or creditable to literary men."
Mr. Collier is told by Mr. Duffus Hardy that "he has no one to blame but himself" for "the tone which has been adopted by those who differ from him upon this matter," because he, (Mr. Collier,) by his answer in the "Times" to Mr. Hamilton, made it "a personal, rather than a literary question." But, we may ask, how is it possible for a man accused of palming off a forgery upon the public to regard the question as impersonal, even although it may not be alleged in specific terms that he is the forger? Mr. Collier is like the frog in the fable. This pelting with imputations of forgery may be very fine fun to the pelters, but it is death to him. To them, indeed, it may be a mere question of evidence and criticism; but to him it must, in any case, be one of vital personal concern. Yet we cannot find any sufficient excuse for the manner in which Mr. Collier has behaved in this affair from the very beginning. His cause is damaged almost as much by his own conduct, and by the tone of his defence, as by the attacks of his accusers. A very strong argument against his complicity in any fraudulent proceeding in relation to his folio might have been founded upon an untarnished reputation, and a frank and manly attitude on his part; but, on the contrary, his course has been such as to cast suspicion upon every transaction with which he has been connected.
First he says3 that he bought this folio in 1849 to "complete another poor copy of the seconde folio"; and in the next paragraph he adds, "As it turned out, I at first repented my bargain, because when I took it home, it appeared that two leaves which I wanted were unfit for my purpose, not merely by being too short, but damaged and defaced." And finally he says that it was not until the spring of 1850 that he "observed some marks in the margin of this folio." Now did Mr. Collier, by some mysterious instinct, light directly, first upon one of the leaves, and then upon the other, which he wished to find, in a folio of nine hundred pages? It is almost incredible that he did so once; that he did so twice is quite beyond belief. It is equally incredible, that if the textual changes were then upon the margins in the profusion in which they now exist, he could have looked for the two leaves which he needed without noticing and examining such a striking peculiarity. Clearly those marginal readings must have been seen by Mr. Collier in his search for the two leaves he needed, or they have been written since. Either case is fatal to his reputation. His various accounts of his interviews with Mr. Parry, who, it was thought, once owned the book, are inconsistent with each other, and at variance with Mr. Parry's own testimony, and the probabilities, not to say the possibilities, of the case. He says, for instance, that he showed the folio to Mr. Parry; and that Mr. Parry took it into his hand, examined it, and pronounced it the volume he had once owned. But, on the contrary, Mr. Parry says that Mr. Collier showed him no book; that he exhibited only fac-similes; that he (Mr. Parry) was, on the occasion in question, unable to hold a book, as his hands were occupied with two sticks, by the assistance of which he was limping along the road. And on being shown Mr. Collier's folio at the British Museum, Mr. Parry said that he never saw that volume before, although he distinctly remembered the size and appearance of his own folio; and the accuracy of his memory has been since entirely confirmed by the discovery of a fly-leaf lost from his folio which conforms to his description, and is of a notably different size and shape from the leaves of the Collier folio.4—Mr. Collier has declared, in the most positive and explicit manner, that he has "often gone over the thousands of marks of all kinds" on the margins of his folio; and again, that he has "reëxamined every fine and letter"; and finally, that, to enable "those interested in such matters" to "see _the entire body _in the shortest form," he "appended them to the present volume [Seven Lectures, etc.] in one column," etc. This column he calls, too, "A List of Every Manuscript Note and Emendation in Mr. Collier's Copy of Shakespeare's Works, folio, 1632." Now Mr. Hamilton, having gone over the margins of "Hamlet" in the folio, finds that Mr. Collier's published list "does not contain one-half of the corrections, many of the most significant being among those omitted."