THE FIRST FOLIO.*
WE must congratulate the publishers a This reprint upon the conclusion of their design of issuing fee:similes of each of the first four collected editions of 'Shakespeare's works. What-, ever might be one's feelings towards first editions in general, it would be impossible not to feel' a thrill at handling a copy of the Folio of 1623 ; and the thrill seems barely diminished as one turns over the pages of this photographic reproduction. It.. is is certain that in the whole history of the world no single• volume has even approached this-one in literary importance. With the single exception of Pericks, it contains all Shake- speare's plays that exist to-day ; hilt of the thirty-six plays which-are included in it, no fewer than twenty had never been printed before. A score of the world's masterpieces, trembling upon the verge of oblivion, were saved by the publication of this book. It is perhaps natural that controversy should rage over its origins. The two cottradictory views—the pessimistic and the -optimistic—are represented chiefly to-day by Mr. Sidney Lee and Mr. A. W. Pollard. According to the first of these, there was scarcely a creditable incident in the whole history of its publication, from the inaccuracies of the prompt copies and private transcripts of plays upon which it was based, through the shady transactions by means of which the publishers acquired them, down to the hasty bunglings of the printers and binders. The alternative view is less critical : " Optimism," says Mr. Pollard, in the preface to his companion volume to this series of reprints, "thinks the part assigned to the playhouse scrivener and the importance of the private• transcripts dangerously exaggerated; it has heard of a prompt copy in an author's autograph; it remembers that Shake- speare was himself an actor and manager as well as a playwright; it believes in the human dislike to throwing pro- perty away, even when it seems to have bedome useless. Lastly, it recognises the editors as busy men with no love for tinkering manuscripts or for proof-reading, but it finds that they exercised care and discrimination in forming their canon, in- substituting good texts for bad ones, and in restoring passages which had been omitted." But, whether 'this is the correct attitude or not, a. First Folio of Shakespeare will always be viewed with affection by everycine who cares 'for literature. In the " Census of Copies " prepared by Mr.
*"Me. Whiles pha1tsspesra's ecnitedies, Ifiat ries' and Trevediss, fait rii� in faconnuo from tho edition of 1d23. London: Methuen and Co.
1Zr:1.w:eat.] _ • Lee in 1902 a hundred and sixty survivors are enumerated. {Mr. Lee infers from this, though his inference has been disputed, that the edition originally numbered six hundred.) We cannot all- be among the fortunate owners of these ; but the next beat thing is to buy a facsimile. Our only regret is that it was not found possible to reproduce the very rare early state of the Droeshout portrait. It is found; we believe, in only two copies, one in a private collection in America and the other the Malone copy in the Bodleian. Although the shadow upon the collar was forgotten in this state, yet the whole appearance of the face is much less rough and hard than in later copies, and the portrait is consequently less inhuman.
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