In one case at least, Shelley's first
draft of a poem is described as like a marsh of reeds in water, with
wild ducks, but he made very elegant fair copies for the press.) Let
it be supposed that Ben Jonson wrote all this Preface, in accordance
with the wishes and instructions of the two actors who sign it. He
took their word for the almost blotless MSS. which they received from
Shakespeare. He remarks, in his posthumously published Discoveries
(notes, memories, brief essays), "I remember the players have OFTEN
mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing
(whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line." And Ben gives,
we shall later see, his habitual reply to this habitual boast.
As to the sources of such plays as had been "maimed and deformed by
injurious impostors," and are now "offered cur'd and perfect of their
limbs," "it can be proved to demonstration," say the Cambridge
Editors, "that several plays in the Folio were printed from earlier
quarto editions" (but the players secured a retreat on this point),
"and that in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or
from a better manuscript than the Folio text, and therefore of higher
authority." Hamlet, in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the
quarto of 1604, "differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while
it differs for the better in twenty places.
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