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before that in folio, in 1623; but it does not follow from thence, that the ſcenes which then firſt appeared in print, and all the choruſes were added by Shakſspeare, as Mr. Pope ſuppoſes, after 1608. We know indeed the contrary to be true; for the chorus to the fifth act muſt have been written in 1599. The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, publiſhed in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exiſt, but that thoſe copies were ſurreptidous, (probably taken down in ſhort hand, during the repreſentation;) and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publiſh the whole, publiſhed what he could.
I have not indeed met with any evidence (except in three plays) that the ſeveral ſcenes which are found in the folio of 1623, and are not in the preceding quartos, were added by the ſecond labour of the author.—The laſt chorus of K. Henry V. already mentioned, affords a ſtriking proof that this was not always the caſe. The two copies of the Second Part of K. Henry IV. printed in the ſame year (1600) furniſh another. In one of theſe, the whole firſt ſcene of Act III. is wanting; not becauſe it was then unwritten, (for it is found in the other copy publiſhed in that year) but because the editor was not poſſeſſed of it. That what have been called additions by the author, were not really ſuch, may be alſo collected from another circumſtance; that in ſome of the quartos where theſe ſuppoſed additions are wanting, references and replies are found to the paſſages omitted[1].
I do not however mean to ſay, that Shakſpeare never made any alterations in his plays. We have reaſon to believe that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and The Merry Wives of Windſor, were entirely new written; and a ſecond reviſal or temporary topicks might have ſuggeſted, in a courſe of years, ſome additions and alterations in all his pieces. But with reſpect to the entire ſcenes that are wanting in ſome of the
- ↑ Of this ſee a remarkable inſtance in K. Henry IV. P. II. Act I. ſc. i. where Morton in a long ſpeech having informed Northumberland that the archbiſhop of York had joined the rebel party, the Earl replies,—“ I knew of this before”—The quarto contains the reply, but not a ſingle line of the narrative to which it relates.
