The Preface takes it for granted that the
selected manuscripts contain the plays "absolute in their numbers as
he conceived them." But the Preface does not commit itself, I
repeat, to the statement that all of these many plays are printed
from Shakespeare's own handwriting. After "as he conceived them," it
goes on, "Who, as he was a most happy imitator of nature, was a most
gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: and what
he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce
received from him a blot in his papers."
This may be meant to SUGGEST, but does not AFFIRM, that the actors
HAVE "all the rest" of the plays in Shakespeare's own handwriting.
They may have, or may have had, some of his manuscripts, and believed
that other manuscripts accessible to them, and used by them, contain
his very words. Whether from cunning or design, or from the
Elizabethan inability to tell a plain tale plainly, the authors or
author of the Preface have everywhere left themselves loopholes and
ways of evasion and escape. It is not possible to pin them down to
any plain statement of facts concerning the sources for the hitherto
unpublished plays, "the rest" of the plays.
These, at least, were from manuscript sources which the actors
thought accurate, and some may have been "fair copies" in
Shakespeare's own hand. (Scott, as regards his novels, sent his prima
cura, his first writing down, to the press, and his pages are nearly
free from blot or erasion.
Pages:
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192