The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in Twenty Volumes

^^ CORNELL 11b5 UNIVERSFfY i-H'^ LIBRARY 454 3 1924 071 108 - CiRCULATJON OLIN LIBRARYDATE DUE ifmM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IN TWENTY VOLUMES THE WINTER'S TALE THE TEMPEST VOLUME VIII The armotations at the foot of the page are intended to explam difficult phrases or allusions. Single words, which are no longer in common use, appear only in tJie glossary, which is printed in last volume. The numbering of the lines follows that of the Cambridge Edition, the text of which is used in this edition. COPVRIOHT 1807. BY TNE UNIVtBSITV PHESS Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924071108454 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WITH ANNOTATIONS AND A GENERAL INTRODUCTION BY SIDNEY LEE VOLUME VIII THE WINTER'S TALE WITH A SPECIAL INTEODUCTION BY JEAN JULES JUSSEEAND AND AN ORIGINAL FRONTISPIECE BY ELEANOR F. BRICKSALE NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1907 By The Univeesity Pkess Entered at Stationers' Hall, Loudon All Bights Reserved wilf CONTENTS Page Introduction to The Winter's Tale BY Jean Jules Jusserand . ix Text of the Play : INTRODUCTION FTER a performance at one of the Southwark theatres, in the spring of 1611, a strange look- ing fellow, the strangest perhaps of all that were there, — shaggy bearded and shaggy haired, a man of queer learning and queer ignorance, a real doctor of Cam- bridge and an averred quack of London, a frequent inmate of the royal prisons, and the trusted adviser of the fairest ladies at court, — went home, took his book of memoranda, and wrote as follows " In the Winters Talk at the Glob, 1611, the 15 of Maye, Wednesday. — Observe ther howe Lyontes, the Kinge of CiciUia, was overcom with jelosy of his wife with the Kinge of Bohemia. Remember also howe he sent to the orakell of Apollo ..." [ix] THE WINTER'S TALE and how this, and how that ..." Remember also the rog that ^ cam in all tottered like Coll Pipci . and after cam to the shep-sher with a pedlers packe, and ther cosoned them again of all their money. Beware of trustinge feined beggars or fawn- inge fellouse." The title of these memoranda was, " The Bocke of Plaies and Notes therof per Formahs for common pol- Hcie." ^ Though beheving in the stars and sure of his ability to read in them every one's destiny, the doctor did not disdain to observe also less exalted sights, and de- rive instruction from mere plays. For what there might be in them of art, poetry, sentiment, genius, he cared naught ; but he duly recorded what lessons he could dis- cover in them " for common poUicie," unaware that he would have little enough time to use in this world any kind of " poUicie," and that whatever the stars might have told him he would die four months later. We must, however, be thankful to him for this the earliest allusion to " The Winter's Tale," and one of the very rare accounts of a play by Shakespeare from one who had seen it in its newness; for it was then, to all appearances, a new play. Every test apphed to the prose and the poetry, the grammar and the prosody of the work, agrees with the inference to be drawn from the date of Forman's notes.^ This is surelv one of 1 An unidentified character. 2 E. g. in HaUiweU-Phillipps, " Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare," 10th ed., 1898, vol. II, p. 85. A portrait of Forman, showing his deep-wrinkled bushy- face, is in the "Antiquarian Repertory," new ed., vol. II, p. 311. London, 1808, 40. " There was no edition before the Folio of 1623. where the text is one of the INTRODUCTION the last productions of Shakespeare, the last, perhaps, with " The Tempest," entirely due to him; and it had the freshness of novelty when Dr. Forman went to hear it on the 15th of May, 1611, and learn the lesson that quacks should not be trusted. For the last few years Shakespeare had been gradu- ally loosening the ties which bound him to London and her theatres; he had begun in earnest the kind of life which he had constantly looked forward to: the life of a well-to-do citizen of his native place, who could be truly styled " Mr. Wilham Shakespeare, of Stratford on Avon, Gent." In the same year, 1611, he had defini- tively settled in that beautiful house, " New Place," the finest in the town, purchased by him long before, and which was sm-rounded with gardens, one being an orchard planted by himself. His father had then been dead ten years, his mother three ; but he still had his wife, his two married daughters, his beloved granddaughter Elizabeth, his sister Joan Hart, and two of his brothers. He himself had five years left before he was to die in that same New Place, and " Good Frend, for Jesus sake forbeare," would be written on the slab in the church of the Holy Trinity, five years to be spent in peace and content, as an indulgent on-looker who had no longer to act. Emile Augier, towards the end of his career, after one last triumph, ceased to write ; and to those who best printed In the whole collection. Forman's mention of the play is the earliest on record ; the allusions to it become somewhat numerous afterwards ; twelve have been discovered for the period ending in 1693 ; only seven for "Ojriolanus " and six for " Anthony and Cleopatra." [xi] ; THE WINTER'S TALE besought him to take up his pen again, he used to say: " J'ai ete assez longtemps sur les planches, j'ai le droit maintenant de m'asseoir au parterre." Shakespeare before him had thought and done likewise. The great dramatist's last compositions, matured and written when he was already more " of Stratford " than of London, show the quieting influence of resumed country life and the equanimity pf the sane mind pre- paring to leave men as a friend of men, and existence with gratitude for all it has brought of happiness, " remerciant son hote," said La Fontaine. Another characteristic of this last period in Shake- speare's hfe is an increased indifference as to the means he employs to please his audience, and as to facts and probabilities. He had never cared much whether any Bohemia had any sea-shore; he cared even less now. Far too much has been made of his anachronisms and geographical inaccuracies. Their widespread fame is mainly due to well-intentioned idolaters who, deter- mined to find every science, precept and teaching in that other Bible, Shakespeare's Works, have volunteered in each case far-fetched explanations which have simply made the author's mistakes more conspicuous. One found that instead of Bohemia we should read Bithynia another proposed to understand Styria, which was under Bohemian rule in 1270, but he does not go so far as to pretend that in 1270 people in trouble consulted the oracle at Delphi as in " The Winter's Tale." Lippmann suggests that the poet's Bohemia must have been Apuha, which Apulia may possibly have been called by some [xii] INTRODUCTION Bohemia, because at one time it belonged to the famous Norman crusader Bohemond, and was therefore " terra Bohemundi," and why not Bohemia? ^ Much better acknowledge common-sense evidence, the truth being that Shakespeare depicts real men in fancy countries, which he would have called Sardinia, Apulia, or anything, had he suspected there would ever be any one to care. Personally he was so far from caring that his one general rule in matters of geography, — a rule so easy and pleasant that he would never have opened a book or consulted a friend for fear of its suffering in the process, — his one general rule was that aU distant towns are by the sea-side; and if they are not, they should be, and shall. The Rome, the Mantua, the Padua, the Verona, the MUan, the Florence of his stage are washed by the sea. His people go by sea from Padua to Pisa, from Verona to Milan, not forgetting to take advantage of " the tide," an imfrequent advantage, any- how, in the Mediterranean. His Danish geography in " Hamlet," with the vast plain between the castle at 1 In the " Magazln fiir die Literatur des Auslandes," Aug. 19, 1863, J. Caro has pointed out that in a Polish chronicle (little enough known in England, we should think) Bohemia was described in 1383 as bordering on the Mediterranean, which chronicle he quotes as follows : " Anno quoque eodem Romae in tota fere Ytalia, ac circa mare Mediterraneum in terris, que Moravia nuncupantur - . pestilencia seviebat. " A mere illusion, doubtless caused by a misplaced comma in the printed text, the real meaning of which is obviously that the plague raged round the Mediterranean and elsewhere, viz. Moravia, Pomerania, Bohemia, etc. : " Anno quoque eodem Rome in tota fere Ytalia ac circa mare Mediterraneum[,] in terris que Moravia nuncupantur, et in Fomorania inferiori ac in partibus Sandomiriensibus, Cracoviensibus, Bohemie, Slezie et Polonie per loca diversa magna pestilencia seviebat." " Anonymi archi-diaconi Gneznensis brevior chronica Cracovie," in Sommersberg, " Silesicarum Rerum Scriptores," LfCipzig, 1729 ff., voL II, part II, p. 152. [ xiii ] THE WINTER'S TALE Elsinore and the harbour, is as fanciful as his Italian one elsewhere; some of his fellow players had visited Elsinore and might have told him, but he was careful not to ask.

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