THE GLOBE SHAKESPEARE.*
WHEN a few months back half the literary men in London and all the actors and actresses were quarrelling in honour of Shake- speare, the brightest idea which suggested itself to enthusiastic committee-men was the erection of a statue. As the greatest dramatic poet. the world ever saw is not likely to be forgotten so long at least as European ciirilization lasts, and a statue is not likely to endure much longer, the idea is about as happy as it is original. The other schemes, however, wore even more unsuitable. The obvious truth that the best way to honour our great national
* The Globe Edition of the Works of William flhakespeore. Edited by William George Clark and WilliareAldie Wright. Landon and Cambridge: Macmillan and 0o.
poet is to increase the number of his admirers, and that the readiest mode of increasing his admirers is to publish a really good edition of his works at a price which brings it within the reach of even the working-classes, seems to have struck nobody, perhaps because it could in no way tend to the honour of com- mittee-rnen. What, however, public subscriptions have not effected private enterprise has. When the Tercentenary Committee will give us their statue we do not pretend to know, or even to . care, but in the meantime Messrs. Macmillan have given the great poet a better monument in this Globe Edition of his works. For the first time Shakespeare is made as accessible to Englishmen as their Bible.
Let us consider for a moment what were the conditions of the problem which the publishers set themselves to solve. They wanted to produce a volume which should be at once accurate, well edited, in good type, on good paper, portable, sightly, and cheap. One edition there is, the Lansdowne, which fulfils all these requisites but the last—it is not cheap. Cheap editions there are, but then they have absolutely none of these requisites but the cheapness. The mere amount of the letter-press of Shakes- peare's works is in itself alarming. We are informed on the authority of both the University printers that there is one-fourth more than in the Bible. The difficulty has, however, been in no way evaded. The Globe Edition contains not only the plays, but the poems, and -even a glossary. There are 1,080 pages, yet the book is a single volume, about an inch thick, and in size royal foolscap octavo, or just a little larger than Tennyson's poems. To accomplish this double columns were of course unavoidable, but the type though small is so clear that a person with good eyes, as we are able to certify, can read it with ease at a distance of two feet. Messrs. Dickinson, the makers of the paper, have achieved a still greater triumph. They have produced expressly for this edition a thin-toned paper, which has not only a good texture and whiteness, but is actually opaque. The binding, too, is very neat, and all this is offered to the public for three shillings and six- pence.
If, however, the Globe Shakespeare were merely an instance of what the skill of English printers and papermakers can effect, it would not deserve nor earn the welcome from lovers of litera- ture to which we think it entitled. But the publishers have felt that they owed something to the poet, and have not been willing to let the Works of the greatest master of oui language appear in a garbled or unscholarly form. The editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare have prep,ared the text of this edition also, and have in general followed the same rules. But as this has no notes they have been obliged, where the original text is evidently faulty, to choose the emendation which, on the whole, seemed the best; where no emendation seemed satisfactory the passage is marked with an obelus. So that this is Shakespeare, not the editor's improvement of him,—Cromwell, not Cromwell without the warts. Even the glossary is the work of a competent scholar. Thus the whole enterprise invites comparison with the cheap editions of the Bible. But it is to be remembered that the latter have been the work of the Missionary Societies, backed by the sub- scriptions of the wealthiest and most charitable people in the world. They have not been required to be remunerative. The copies have been sold at cost price, or even less. Regarded from this point of view,—as the work of a private firm,—the Globe Shake- speare is an experiment in literature. The work of the greatest mind that our race ever produced is offered to the humblest classes in its best form, and we sincerely hope they may justify the name by which the editors have baptized the edition by car- rying it "to the remotest corners of the habitable globe." For the great fault of the uncultivated classes is always their narrow- ness—their inability to recognize any form of excellence but that to which they have been accustomed. The remedy for this is to see human nature at work in every station of life, aim- ing at all the various objects of human enterprise, and struggling with every form of adverse circumstances. This is why we are Old that "travel teaches toleration." The poor man cannot travel. He cannot even study man, for the forms of social life in a highly civilized country shut him out from intercourse with his superiors. Luckily for him there once was an English player who apparently by a sort of inspiration knew at once all the grandeur and all the meanness of the human heart, and left his knowledge in his plays as a possession for ever to mankind. These plays are now offered him. To have mastered Shakespeare is to know human nature, and to know human nature is a liberal education.
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