The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] | Page 9

4to, was completed in 1715. On the title-page we read, 'The Works of Shakespeare, in six volumes.' The six volumes, however, included only the plays contained in the first and second Folios. The poems, with an Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Stage, and a Glossary, were contained in a seventh volume edited by Dr Sewell.
Pope, unlike his predecessor, had at least seen the first Folio and some of the Quartos of separate plays, and from the following passage of his preface it might have been inferred that he had diligently collated them all:
'This is the state in which Shakespeare's writings be at present; for since the above-mentioned folio edition [i.e. F4], all the rest have implicitly followed it without having recourse to any of the former, or ever making the comparison between them. It is impossible to repair the injuries already done him; too much time has elaps'd, and the materials are too few. In what I have done I have rather given a proof of my willingness and desire, than of my ability, to do him justice. I have discharg'd the dull duty of an editor, to my best judgment, with more labour than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture. The method taken in this edition will show itself. The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare 'em, and those I prefer'd into the text are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority.'
This passage, as any one may see who examines the text, is much more like a description of what the editor did not do than of what he did. Although in many instances he restored, from some Quarto, passages which had been omitted in the Folio, it is very rarely indeed that we find any evidence of his having collated either the first Folio or any Quarto, with proper care. The 'innovations' which he made, according to his own 'private sense and conjecture,' are extremely numerous. Not one in twenty of the various readings is put in the margin, and the readings in his text very frequently rest upon no authority whatever. The glaring inconsistency between the promise in the preface and the performance in the book may well account for its failure with the public.
It would, however, be ungrateful not to acknowledge that Pope's emendations are always ingenious and plausible, and sometimes unquestionably true. He never seems to nod over that 'dull labour' of which he complains. His acuteness of perception is never at fault.
What is said of him in the preface to Theobald's edition is, in this point, very unjust[6].
'They have both (i.e. Pope and Rymer[7]) shown themselves in an equal impuissance of suspecting or amending the corrupted passages, &c.'
Pope was the first to indicate the place of each new scene; as, for instance, Tempest, I. 1. 'On a ship at sea.' He also subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making a fresh scene whenever a new character entered--an arrangement followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of reference to these editions, we have always recorded the commencement of Pope's scenes.
By a minute comparison of the two texts we find that Pope printed his edition from Rowe, not from any of the Folios.
A second edition, 10 volumes, 12mo, was published in 1728, 'by Mr Pope and Dr Sewell.' In this edition, after Pope's preface, reprinted, comes: 'A table of the several editions of Shakespeare's plays, made use of and compared in this impression.' Then follows a list containing the first and second Folios, and twenty-eight Quarto editions of separate plays. It does not, however, appear that even the first Folio was compared with any care, for the changes made in this second edition are very few.
Lewis Theobald had the misfortune to incur the enmity of one who was both the most popular poet, and, if not the first, at least the second, satirist of his time. The main cause of offence was Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors committed as well as unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this Poet, 1726. Theobald was also in the habit of communicating notes on passages of Shakespeare to Mist's Journal, a weekly Tory paper. Hence he was made the hero of the Dunciad till dethroned in the fourth edition to make way for Cibber; hence, too, the allusions in that poem:
'There hapless Shakespear, yet of Theobald sore, Wish'd he had blotted for himself before;'
and, in the earlier editions,
'Here studious I unlucky moderns save, Nor sleeps one error in its father's grave; Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, And crucify poor Shakespear once a week.'
Pope's editors and commentators, adopting their author's quarrel, have