MEMORIALS OF SHAKSPEARE. PREFATORY ESSAY, Explanatory of the Plan of the Work, and containing an Inquiry into the Merits of Shakspeare's Principal Editors, Commentators, and Critics. NO AUTHOR has, perhaps, given rise to more extensive commentary, criticism, and persevering literary research than Shakspeare; and none 'The very orthography and orthoepy of his name have become a subject of doubt, and have given rise to no slight controversy; though I am persuaded not only from the third signature to his will, which is indisputably written William Shakspeare, but from the following very curious document which has been communicated to me by Captain James Saunders, of Stratford-upon-Avon, who has with indefatigable industry collected a large mass of very valuable materials relative to the poet and his family, that the intermediate e was very seldom written, and yet more rarely pronounced. "Notices of the Shakspeare's taken from the Entries of the Common Council of the Corporation of Stratford, from their book A. certainly has better claims, from the excellency and utility of his writings, to every illustration "The name of John Shakspeare occurs in this book 168 times under seventeen different modes of spelling, viz: 66 168 "One leading point of controversy," observes Captain Saunders, seems to be materially put to rest by the preceding summary; viz. the pronunciation of the name at that time. The first syllable was, evidently, given short, without the lengthening and softness of the intermediate e; for only three such modes, embracing twenty-one instances, are to be found here. It must be allowed, a middle y occurs in two varieties of thirteen instances, which may be of doubtful authority; but the great body of testimony is in favour of the short power of the first syllable. There is much reason to presume that the 10th variety was the spelling and pronunciation of John Shakspeare himself; for they were his own accounts, or those of which philology and philosophy. can afford; especially since we know that the bard, partly from extrinsic circumstances, and partly from the innate modesty of his nature, which led him to a very humble estimate of his own merits, was prevented paying that attention to his productions which is now almost universally extended to every publication, however trivial in its subject, and insignificant in its style. There are three modes by which it has been attempted, through the medium of the press, to illustrate and render more familiar the writings of Shakspeare, and these may be classed in the following order : Istly. Editions of Shakspeare accompanied by Prolegomena and copious Annotations. 2dly. Detached Publications exclusively appropriated to Shakspeare. 3dly. Criticisms on Shakspeare dispersed through various miscellaneous departments of literature. It will be evident from the tenor of the others made by him, and if not by himself, immediately under his inspection. The 13th mode is by far predominant, and was thus written by Mr. Henry Rogers, who was a man of education, and town-clerk, though even in his hand the 15th variety is sometimes seen." I have only to add that, as the letter x was manifestly introduced as corresponding in sound with ks, and for the sake of dispatch perhaps in writing the name, the vast preponderance of examples under No. 13, ought and must, I should think, decide all doubts both as to the spelling and pronunciation. |