Chapter VII: The Text of Shakespeare

The main difficulties that stand in the way of determining the actual form in which Shakespeare left his plays are due, first, to the total absence of manuscripts, and, secondly, to the fact that he, like his contemporaries, regarded dramatic literature as material for performance on the stage, not as something to be read in the library. The most obvious evidence of this lies in his having himself issued with every appearance of personal attention his poems of _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, while he permitted his plays to find their way into print without any trace of supervision and, in some cases, apparently without his consent. When the author sold a play to the theatrical company which was to perform it, he appears to have regarded himself as having no longer any rights in it; and when a play was published, we are in general justified in supposing either that it had been obtained surreptitiously, or that it had been disposed of by the company. Exceptions to this begin to appear in the first half of the seventeenth century, notably in the case of Heywood, who defended his action on the plea of protecting the text from mutilation, and in that of Ben Jonson, who issued in 1616, in the face of ridicule for his presumption, a folio volume of his "Works." But, though Shakespeare is reported to have felt annoyance at the pirating of his productions, there is no evidence of his having been led to protect himself or the integrity of his writings by departing from the usual practice in his profession.

Among the various documents which make us aware of this situation, so general then, but so strongly in contrast with modern methods, three explicit statements by Heywood are so illuminating that they deserve quotation. One occurs in the preface to his _Rape of Lucrece_, 1630:

To the Reader.--It hath beene no custome in mee of all other men
(courteous Reader) to commit my plaies to the presse: the reason
though some may attribute to my owne insufficiencie, I had rather
subscribe in that to their seuare censure then by seeking to auoide
the imputation of weaknes to incurre greater suspition of honestie:
for though some haue vsed a double sale of their labours, first to
the Stage, and after to the presse, For my owne part I heere
proclaime my selfe euer faithfull in the first, and neuer guiltie of
the last: yet since some of my plaies haue (vnknowne to me, and
without any of my direction) accidentally come into the Printers
hands, and therefore so corrupt and mangled, (coppied only by the
eare) that I have bin as vnable to know them, as ashamed to chalenge
them, This therefore, I was the willinger to furnish out in his
natiue habit: first being by consent, next because the rest haue
beene so wronged in being publisht in such sauadge and ragged
ornaments: accept it courteous Gentlemen, and prooue as fauorable
Readers as we haue found you gratious Auditors. Yours T. H.

[Page Heading: The Right to Print]

The second is in Heywood's _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_, 1637, the prologue to _If you know not me, you know no bodie; Or, The troubles of Queen Elizabeth_. It is as follows:

A Prologve to the Play of Queene Elizabeth as it was last revived at
the Cock-pit, in which the Author taxeth the most corrupted copy now
imprinted, which was published without his consent.