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The special features of these early quartos are:

These quartos are the only playbooks existing to-day which can show Shakespeare's constructive art as a dramatist, and it will be necessary to refer to them from time to time.

Seven years after his death, Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Heminge and Condell, collected all his dramas, and, with the help of some booksellers, published them in one volume in what is known as the first folio . These "trifles," as the editors called them, were dedicated to two noblemen in the confidence that this tribute would help to keep the author's memory alive, and the reader is invited to purchase the book because the plays had found favour on the stage where they were first tried and "stood out all appeales." There is, besides, some anxiety shown by the editors lest the publication of the volume should detract from the author's fame as a dramatist, for the reader is urged to read the plays "againe and againe," if he does not like them, or in other words, if he does not understand them. Now, in this first folio, Heminge and Condell began marking divisions for intervals in the plays. This was an innovation, probably suggested to them by the booksellers at the instigation of Ben Jonson. Fortunately, the editors left their task unfinished, finding, perhaps, that these divisions were unsuitable interpolations.

In 1709 there came a new phase in the history of Shakespearian Bibliography when Rowe, the poet-dramatist, at the suggestion of his bookseller, who believed that "none but a poet should presume to meddle with a poet," undertook to present to the world a new edition of Shakespeare's plays, in which the player-dramatist was for the first time to be brought within the fraternity of academicians. His works were to be edited on similar lines to those of the poets of Rowe's time, with the appendage of a life and a recommendatory preface. The contrast between this preface and that of Heminge and Condell is characteristic. To Rowe it is "a great wonder" that Shakespeare should have advanced dramatic poetry as far as he did; and, since he wrote "under a mere light of nature," and was never acquainted with Aristotle's precepts, it would be hard to "judge him by a law he knew nothing of." With Rowe, also, the "fable" comes first for criticism, because even if it is not the most difficult or beautiful part of the play, it is the most important; yet he contends that in this art Shakespeare has "no mastery or strength." In accordance with academic notions, Rowe completes the work begun by Heminge and Condell, and divides all the plays into acts and scenes; cutting up the text, as it is said, on "rational principles." But Rowe's divisions are both misplaced and unauthorized; and even his text is faulty through being printed from the fourth edition of the first folio, the latest one and the least accurate.

Pope follows Rowe as editor in 1723, and upholds the authority of the early copies, which, as he says with truth, "hold the place of the originals, and are the only materials left to repair the deficiencies, or restore the corrupted sense of the author." Pope's study of the "originals," however, confirms him in Rowe's opinion that Heminge and Condell were ignorant men, both as editors and actors. It was--

"Ben Jonson, getting possession of the stage, brought critical learning into vogue: and that this was not done without difficulty may appear from those frequent lessons which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and put into the mouth of his actors.... Till then, our authors had no thoughts of writing on the model of the ancients: their tragedies were only histories in dialogue: and their comedies followed the thread of any novel as they found it no less implicitly than if it had been true history."

Pope also remarks that "players have ever had a standard to themselves upon other principles than those of Aristotle," and Shakespeare's "wrong judgment as a poet" must be ascribed to his "right judgment as a player." It is evident, then, that Pope, like Rowe, had nothing favourable to say about Shakespeare's art in the management of his "fable," and if Heminge and Condell put in some act and scene divisions, "often where there is no pause in the action," Pope marks a change of scene at every removal of place, "which is more necessary in this author than in any other, because he shifts them more frequently."

It was said of Pope's edition that he had rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than cure. In the controversy which followed, Pope found his match in Theobald. This critic points out in his preface that an editor should be well versed in the history and manners of his author's age, "if he aim at doing him service." But Theobald, like Rowe, fails to understand Shakespeare's dramatic art, and compares him with a "corrupt classic" for whom classical remedies are necessary. Fortunately, Theobald confines his attention entirely to textual emendations, and, unlike Pope, he does not tamper with the text in order to make Shakespeare "speak better than the old copies have done." Johnson, in spite of his censure, honoured Theobald by borrowing largely from his labours in his own edition.

Warburton defends Pope, and shrewdly remarks that Shakespeare's works "when they escaped the players did not fall into much better hands when they came amongst printers and booksellers," adding, "the truth is Shakespeare's condition was yet but ill-understood." But Warburton is wanting in historical knowledge when he writes, "The stubborn nonsense, with which he was incrusted, occasioned his lying long neglected amongst the common lumber of the stage." In fact, Warburton abuses Rowe's editing, yet none the less adopts his tone in disparaging "those impurities," the original copies.

Dr. Johnson brings vigour and common sense to bear upon his editorial labours, without, however, betraying special sympathy with the poet's achievements, or any subtle comprehension of his art as a dramatist. But Johnson never forgets that Shakespeare wrote plays and not poems, and that he sold them to actors and not printers. His criticisms are those of a playgoer writing of plays, as if he had seen them acted at the theatre. At the same time he follows Rowe's lead in saying that Shakespeare's plots are so loosely constructed that not one play would now "be heard to the conclusion," and similarly with Rowe, he generalizes as to the text being vitiated "by the blunders of the penman, or changed by the affectation of the players." About the division into acts and scenes, he writes:

"I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few if any of our author's compositions can be properly distributed in that manner. An act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of time or change of place. A pause makes a new act. In every real and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accidental and arbitrary. This Shakespeare knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities."

Something must be said later on about the "short pauses." There is wisdom as well as humour in Johnson's observation: "Let him who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give read every play from the first scene to the last with utter negligence of all his commentators."

To Steevens belongs the credit of being the first to collect and reprint in one volume the original quartos, of which a revised and completed edition is much needed. "Many of the quartos," he writes, "as our own printers assure me, were far from being unskilfully executed, and some of them were much more correctly printed than the folio." With regard to Shakespeare's text, he observes: "To make his meaning intelligible to his audience seems to have been his only care, and with the ease of conversation he has adopted its incorrectness." In fact, Steevens thinks that Shakespeare, of all the writers of his day, was the most ungrammatical.

Capell is perhaps the least dogmatic of all the eighteenth-century editors, and the most cautious in his judgment, when he remarks: "Generally speaking, the more distant a new edition is from its original, the more it abounds in faults which is done by destroying all marks of peculiarity and notes of time." And in another passage: "That division of scenes which Jonson seems to have attempted, and upon which the French stage prides itself, Shakespeare does not appear to have any idea of." In a note he adds: "The current editions are divided in such a manner that nothing like a rule can be collected from any of them." Unfortunately, like all the other editors, Capell believes it necessary to divide Shakespeare's plays into acts and scenes.

With Malone Shakespearian criticism enters upon a new phase--the historical one--when research and evidence take precedence of conjecture. What he says of the first editors of his century remains as true to-day as it was when written--"that the men never looked behind them, but considered their own era and their own phraseology as the standard of perfection."

Malone, moreover, observes that the two chief duties of an editor are to show the genuine text of an author and to explain his obscurities. This, it must be admitted, is the view taken by all his contemporaries; and yet dramas are not poems any more than words are deeds. And while Malone spares no pains to amend a corrupt text in the hope of arriving at verbal accuracy, he has little scruple about marring Shakespeare's scheme of action. "All the stage-directions," he writes, "throughout this work I have considered as wholly in my power, and have regulated them in the best manner I could." To do this is to run counter to an editor's province and duty; for a dramatist to know that his text is correct affords him small consolation if his story has been misunderstood and mutilated. It is doubtful whether scholars who insist on editing Shakespeare's plays as if they were anything or everything but drama have any just appreciation of the work they undertake. When Dr. Johnson contends that Shakespeare was "read, admired, and imitated while he was yet deformed," he is indirectly praising deformity. All the eighteenth-century editors blame Shakespeare for the management of his "fable," and attribute it to his ignorance, while many modern editors altogether overlook his art of making a play. The late Dr. Furnivall's introduction to the "Leopold Shakespeare," which has been deservedly and universally praised, has yet one vital defect as dramatic criticism--his comments apply to the art of a novelist, not to that of a playwright.

In his young days Shakespeare must certainly have read "Gorboduc," with its five acts, its five dumb shows, and its chorus; he may, perhaps, have seen it revived at Greenwich Palace, or elsewhere, and have seen other plays of the kind which were written in five acts by academicians--amateurs who were anxious to air their learning before Queen Bess at the Universities or at the Inns of Court. Then there was Ben Jonson at hand to instruct his elder rival on the superiority of Latin comedy. Chapman, too, who was highly esteemed by clergy and scholars, was within call to point out to "artless Will" the merits of Senecan tragedy. In fact, the Bard of Avon had good reason to know why his playhouse dramas were despised by the learned, who, however, were not justified in presuming that he was ignorant of classical conventions simply because he chose to ignore them.

No doubt it was possible in Shakespeare's time to write plays in five acts for the public stage. We know that at the Rose and Fortune theatres the action of the play was often suspended to allow of dancing and singing, though whether these intervals for interludes came after the termination of each act it is difficult to decide.

It cannot be urged too often that Shakespeare invented his dramatic construction to suit his own particular stage. And but for the special conditions of his playhouse, Shakespearian drama could never have come into being; for Shakespeare's genius was not adapted to writing plays with intervals for music, as was done at Court. Unity of design was his aim. "Scene individable" is his motto. The internal evidence of the plays themselves proves this.

Dr. Johnson, then, was right to contend that Shakespeare wrote his plays as they were first printed "in one unbroken continuity," but to infer that "they ought now to be exhibited with short pauses interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass," shows that he failed to grasp the real object for which Shakespeare adopted the continuous movement. An Elizabethan audience was absorbed by the story of the play, and thought little about lapse of time or change of place. There was only one locality recognized, and that one was the platform, which projected to the centre of the auditorium, where the story was recited. There was, besides, only one period, and that was "now," meaning the moment at which the events were being talked about or acted. All inconsistencies, then, that are apparent in the text, arising from change of place or break in the time, should be ignored in representing the play. It is no advantage to rearrange the order of the scenes, or to lower the curtain, or to make a pause in the progress of the story in order to call attention to change of place or interval of time. Whatever information Shakespeare wished the audience to have on these matters, he put into the mouths of his characters, and he expected the audience to accept it without any questioning or further illustration by actual presentation. Elizabethan folk-songs are sung without pausing between the verses; in this way attention is fixed on the story, and Shakespeare obtains the same result by dispensing with the empty stage.

Capell long ago pointed out the real difficulty, when he wrote in his preface: "Neither can the representation be managed nor the order and thread of the fable be properly conceived by the reader till the question of acts and scenes be adjusted." Unfortunately, Capell could prescribe no remedy. To this day these irregular divisions continue, and all our modern editions need reprinting and re-editing. One of the debts we owe to Shakespeare is to present his plays in their authentic form. This is due to him for what he was and for what he has done for us, as our greatest national poet and dramatist.

SOME MISTAKES OF THE ACTORS.

In Shakespeare's time the relations existing between the author and his actors were often strained. Those who interpreted the characters were blamed for more faults than their own, while the author, who was out of sight, had his reputation depending upon the skill of his interpreters. The actors, besides, were the author's paymasters, and often gave less for a new play than they paid for a silk doublet, while at the same time they were the absolute owners of all the dramas they produced. It was natural, then, for authors to taunt the actors with being men who thrived by speaking words which "better wits had framed."

The hired player, however, fared no better than the authors, and it was only those actors who had the right to pool the theatre takings who became rich. Before Shakespeare was forty years of age, he was earning a competent income out of his shares in two playhouses. No other dramatist of his time occupied so fortunate a position, nor probably one more isolated. As a tradesman's son, brought up at a grammar school only, he would have no standing among scholars, and as a writer of plays he was the "upstart crow," taking the bread out of the mouths of those who had paid for a college education. Then the historical dramas which brought the Globe fame and fortune were not calculated to please at Court, because neither the Queen nor the nobility cared to see their ancestors walking the public stages, unmasked, showing authority robbed of its sincerity and of its sanctity. Across the Thames stood the Blackfriars, where the children of the Chapel Royal, backed by royal favour, were rapidly becoming the attraction among the leaders of fashion and culture. These patrons upheld a class of entertainment with which Shakespeare had no sympathy. So the master spirit of the Elizabethan drama, like Beethoven, withdrew from the crowd to work out his own destiny, and to perfect himself in an art that fascinated him, and for which his practical life in the theatre, and his independence, gave him exceptional opportunity for experiment. During his last ten years in London he wrote some dozen or more plays, all of them of supreme merit. That they were dramas far in advance of the requirements of the day is probable, since few of them were printed during the poet's lifetime. Some of them, perhaps, were acted "not above once." He had outgrown, indeed, the theatrical taste of the day, and now only cared for plays which were "well digested in the scenes," meaning well constructed. But this was an achievement which no dramatist of his time attempted, unless it was Ben Jonson, who wrote artificial comedy after the classical models. Shakespeare, however, wanted the art of the theatre to imitate Nature, and he contrived to make speech and story appear natural; and, indeed, his contemporaries mistook this art for Nature, and thought it the work of an untutored mind and an unskilled hand. Even to-day many actors are under the impression that Shakespeare would have sanctioned as improvements the liberties now taken on the stage with his plays. Perhaps, also, his own fellow-actors failed to interpret his dramas entirely in accordance with his wishes; and yet his art is so vital and so vividly impressed on the printed page of the "authentic copies" that there is little justification for misrepresenting it. There is an anecdote about Mrs. Siddons, to the effect that when again reading over the part of Lady Macbeth, after her retirement from the stage, she was amazed to find some new points in the character "which had never struck her before"! A confession which would seem incredible were it not known how apt English actors are to base the study of their parts not on the text, but on stage traditions, which often are valueless, because unauthorized. Yet no actor should defend a conception of character which is shown to be at variance with the author's words.

The only copies of Shakespeare's plays which can with any authority be called acting-versions are the quartos, published during the poet's lifetime, and these are not acting-versions in the modern sense of the term, because, with the exception of textual errors, or abbreviations of dialogue, there is no shortening of the play by the omission of entire scenes or characters. The early quartos, with the notable exceptions of the 1599 "Romeo and Juliet," the 1604 "Hamlet," and the 1609 "Troilus and Cressida," have the appearance of being made up from actors' parts, or taken down by shorthand writers during performances. In consequence, they are less esteemed by the literary expert than are the plays as they appear printed in the first folio; yet to the actors they provide information which cannot be found elsewhere. That in some of these quartos the text is corrupt may be explained by the difficulty of taking down dialogue spoken rapidly from the stage, but at the same time it is unlikely that the note-takers went out of their way to describe any movement which they did not actually see carried out by the actors. From the title-page of "The Merchant of Venice" it is evident that the copyist saw the play acted differently from the way it is now acted. Take, for instance, the headline which is worded: "The comicall Historie of the Merchant of Venice"; and the title-page, which sets forth the "extreme crueltie of Shylocke the Jewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and the obtayning of Portia by the choyse of three chests." These two stories, which are continued in alternate scenes throughout most of the play, were to the Elizabethans regarded as of equal importance. To-day the title-page would have to be rewritten, and might run thus: "The tragicall Historie of the Jewe of Venice, with the extreme injustice of Portia towards the sayd Jewe in denying him the right to cut a just pound of the Merchant's flesh, together with the obtayning of the rich heiress by the prodigal Bassanio." Over the Shylock controversy enough ink has been wasted without adding more, but the shortening of all the Portia scenes, and the omission of the Prince of Aragon, one of the three suitors, and one who provides excellent comedy, are indefensible mutilations.

With regard to the first quarto of "Hamlet," and its probable history, something will be said later on. But it might be well here to call attention to the three stage-directions in this quarto, which have dropped out of all the subsequent editions, and which elucidate the context. Ophelia, in her "mad" scene, did not bring in flowers, but had a lute in her hands. There would be no need for the Queen so minutely to describe Ophelia's flowers at the time of her death if she had been previously seen with the garlands. The ghost, when in the Queen's chamber, wore a dressing-gown, not armour, probably the same gown he wore at the time of his death; Hamlet is overwhelmed with horror at this pitiful sight of his father. And Ophelia's body was followed to the grave by villagers and a solitary priest, who took no further part in the ceremony.

Elizabethan players had an advantage over modern actors in that they could more readily appreciate the construction of Shakespeare's plays. They knew that the dramatist's characters mutually supported each other within a definite dramatic structure, and that it was the business of the actor to preserve the author's framework. This attitude towards the play grew naturally out of the conditions belonging to their theatre, for unless the plot were adhered to, confusion would have arisen in the matter of entrances and exits, causing the continuity of the movement to be interrupted.

After the Restoration, when the public theatres were reopened, the "fable" ceased to have the same importance attached to it by the actors, and attention became more and more centred on those characters which were good acting parts. In 1773 appeared a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, "As they are now performed at the Theatres Royal, Regulated from the Prompt Books of each House." The volumes were dedicated to Garrick, whom Bell, the compiler, pronounced to be "the best illustrator of, and the best living comment on, Shakespeare that ever has appeared or possibly ever will grace the British stage"; a statement which is qualified by the remark of Capell that "Garrick spoke many speeches of Shakespeare as if he did not understand them." Garrick, however, expresses his fear lest--

The reader need only examine one of the plays in Bell's "Companion to the Theatre" to understand Garrick's modesty as to his "prunings." Take the actor's stage-version of "Macbeth"--one of Bell's notes states, "This play, even amidst the fine sentiments it contains, would shrink before criticism did not Macbeth and his lady afford such uncommon scope for acting merit. Upon the whole, it is a fine drama with some gross blemishes." Apparently the "blemishes" are only found in those scenes where Macbeth or his wife do not appear, for Bell continues:

"The part of the porter is properly omitted...."

"The flat, uninteresting scene, between Lenox and another useless Lord, is properly omitted...."

"Here Shakespeare, as if the vigorous exertion of his faculties in the preceding scene required relaxation, has given us a most trifling, superfluous dialogue between Lady Macduff, Rosse, and her son, merely that another murder may be committed on the stage. We heartily concur in and approve of striking out the greater part of it...."

"There are about eighty lines of this scene omitted, which, retained, would render it painfully tedious, and, indeed, we think them as little deserving of the closet as of the stage," etc.

It does not seem to have struck Garrick that the scenes he "pruned" might have some significance in the scheme of the author's drama independently of their individual characteristics.

To take another instance. In Garrick's version of "Romeo and Juliet," reprinted in Dolby's "British Theatre" , the following paragraph is inserted underneath the list of characters:

"The scenery in 'Romeo and Juliet' at Covent Garden this season is very grand. That of the 'Funeral of Juliet' is truly solemn and impressive. The architectural arrangement of the interior of the church is most chaste and appropriate: the slow approach of the funeral procession, the tolling of the bell, and the heart-saddening tones of the choristers, swelling in all the sublime richness of the minor key, make an impression on the feelings of the auditory which can never be forgotten."

With regard to acting-versions, therefore, it may be contended that the interests of the author are more often than not opposed to those of the modern actor in so far as the latter considers the author's drama to be tedious whenever it fails to enhance the acting merits of some particular character or characters in the play. Thus it is questionable whether, in the absence of the author, the actors are the persons best qualified to make stage-versions of his dramas. Their point of view is rarely the same as that of the author, and if it is necessary to shorten a play they can hardly be expected to undertake the work entirely to the satisfaction of the author, nor yet in the interests of the public, since the value of the fable may or may not be a matter of moment to an actor. If, then, Shakespeare's plays are a valuable asset to the artistic wealth of the nation, the amount of "pruning" they require for the stage should be determined by competent experts. Unfortunately, actors believe that a scholar is not qualified to advise on the matter, owing to his lack of what they call "a sense of the theatre." This "sense" would no doubt be differently interpreted by different actors. Broadly speaking, it may be taken to mean the ability to forecast what degree of emotion or sympathy certain incidents can arouse in an audience when they are seen represented on the stage. Pope rejected the Gonzalo dialogue in the second act of "The Tempest," asserting that it was not Shakespeare's because courtiers who had been just shipwrecked on a desert island would not indulge in idle gossip! Here Pope missed the theatre point of view. The audience see in the first act an old man who once had been a King, but who was cruelly and unjustly thrust out of his kingdom, and exposed with his baby daughter in a frail and rotten bark to the mercy of the perilous ocean. Moreover, it hears that the very men who did this wrong are now themselves shipwrecked on this enchanted island, where Prospero is living. What the audience is curious to see, then, in the second act, is not noblemen who are suffering from shipwreck, but ignoble men, who merit the contempt of those who look upon them, and who deserve the just rebuke they receive from the man who is once more restored to his rights. The question as to what these noblemen have themselves suffered in the course of being shipwrecked, Shakespeare rightly judged was not one that an audience, under the circumstances, could be interested in. Then, again, to take a textual illustration from "King Lear" quoted by Steevens, the commentator. He writes in his "Advertisement to the Reader":

"The dialogue might, indeed, sometimes be lengthened by yet other insertions than have been made , without advantage either to its spirit or beauty, as in the following instance:

"'LEAR. No. "'KENT. Yes. "'LEAR. No, I say. "'KENT. I say, yea.'

"Here the quartos add:

"'LEAR. No, no; they would not. "'KENT. Yes; they have.'

The answer given by the actor is, "Certainly! The added words from the quartos give the idea of reality and character." It is inconceivable that Shakespeare, himself an actor, omitted the additional lines. Without this reiteration, the expression of Lear's amazement at the indignity put upon his servant cannot be adequately tuned by the actor, nor yet be consistent with his character. This, then, is the dilemma with regard to stage-versions; scholars are hampered in their judgment by want of knowledge of the art of the theatre; and actors by their bias for good acting parts, or, in other words, for parts which are always in view of the audience.

As to elocution, it may be well to recall what an Antwerp merchant who had for many years resided in London said of the English people, about the year 1588. He then observed that "they do not speak from the chest like the Germans, but prattle only with the tongue." The word "prattle" is used in the same sense by Shakespeare in his play of "Richard the Second." In the "Stage Player's Complaint," we find an actor making use of the expression, "Oh, the times when my tongue hath ranne as fast upon the Sceane as a Windebanke's pen over the ocean." Added to this, there is the celebrated speech to the players, in which Hamlet directs the actors to speak "trippingly on the tongue." There can be no doubt, therefore, that Shakespeare's verse was spoken on the stage of the Globe easily and rapidly. And the actor had the advantage of standing well within the building in a position now occupied by the stalls, nor were audiences then stowed away under deep projecting galleries. But unless English actors can recover the art of speaking Shakespeare's verse, his plays will never again enjoy the favour they once had. Poetry may require a greater elevation of style in its elocution than prose, but in either case the fundamental condition is that of representing life, and as George Lewes ably puts it, "all obvious violations of the truths of life are errors in art." In the delivery of verse, therefore, on the stage, the audience should never be made to feel that the tones are unusual. They should still follow the laws of speaking, and not those of singing. But our actors, who excel in modern plays by the truth and force of their presentation of life, when they appear in Shakespeare make use of an elocution that no human being was ever known to indulge in. They employ, besides, a redundancy of emphasis which destroys all meaning of the words and all resemblance to natural speech. It is necessary to bear in mind that, when dramatic dialogue is written in verse, there are more words put into a sentence than are needed to convey the actual thought that is uppermost in the speaker's mind; in order, therefore, to give his delivery an appearance of spontaneity, the actor should arrest the attention of the listener by the accentuation of those words which convey the central idea or thought of the speech he is uttering, and should keep in the background, by means of modulation and deflection of voice, the words with which that thought is ornamented. Macbeth should say:

"That but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all HERE, But HERE, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to COME.--But in these cases We still have judgment HERE; that we but teach BLOODY instructions, which, being taught, RETURN To plague the INVENTOR."

"EYES, look your last! ARMS, take your last embrace!"

or he may say:

"Eyes, look your LAST! Arms, take your last EMBRACE!"

but it is not correct to say:

"EYES, look your LAST! ARMS, take your last EMBRACE!"

which every Romeo persists in saying to-day; and this method of duplicating emphasis, being used by all the actors throughout the whole play, the time taken up in speaking it is at once doubled. Hence the need for excessive "prunings."

To sum up the arguments: Shakespeare's dramatic art, which is unique of its kind, cannot to-day be properly understood or appreciated on the stage for the following reasons: Because editors print the plays as if they were five-act dramas, which they are not; because actors, in their stage versions, mutilate the "fable," and interpolate pictorial effects where none are intended; because, also, actors use a faulty and artificial elocution, unsuited to the poet's verse. These causes, combined, oust Shakespeare's original plays from the theatre, and impose in their place pseudo-classical dramas which are not of his making, nor of his time. To remedy this evil it is necessary to insist that the early quartos alone represent Shakespeare's form of construction and his method of representation, and that for the purpose of determining the text these same quartos should be collated with the first folio, with occasional reference to modern editions. Cheap facsimiles of the quartos as well as the folio should be accessible to actors, and from these an attempt should be made to standardize stage-versions of Shakespeare's most popular plays, and these stage-versions should be the joint work of scholars and actors.

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