A babble of ancestral voices: Shakespeare, Cervantes and Theobald [Reprint 2015 ed.] 9783111392752, 9783111030258

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STUDIES

IN ENGLISH Volume

LXXIII

LITERATURE

A BABBLE OF ANCESTRAL VOICES Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Theobald by HARRIET C. FRAZIER

1974

MOUTON THE HAGUE - PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-83204

Printed in Belgium by NICI, Ghent

To the Memory of Joella Owens Brown (1936-1965) and Edward Emley (1916-1966)

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round. Herman Melville

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Any account of my indebtedness to others begins with my gratitude to Professor John P. Cutts of Oakland University who first acquainted me with the Cardenio-Double Falsehood problem and offered encouragement at every step in my research. Professor Samuel Golden of Wayne State University graciously lent me books and gave me useful advice on many occasions. I am grateful to the librarians at Wayne State University, The University of Illinois, The University of California, Berkeley, but especially to Miss Harriet Jameson and her courteous and efficient staff in the Rare Books Department at The University of Michigan. My thanks are also due to Professor Barbara Garcia of Mills College for particularized knowledge of Spanish; to Professor Barbara Bowen of the University of Illinois for the happy mention of the existence of Pichou's Les Folies de Cardenio, and to Miss Andrea Saxer of The University of Michigan for assistance in translating Pichou. The encouragement of Professor Thomas Fairclough of Midwestern University set the writing of this book in motion. Miss Soraya Obaid of Wayne State University propelled my work by knowledge of Arabic and more importantly, her unwavering patience in the face of the many problems which the writing involved. The University of Missouri at Kansas City is gratefully thanked for a faculty grant which paid for the typing of the revised text, and Mrs. Helen Walker has my deep appreciation for an excellent typing of that revision. Latika Mangulkar, Gary Garrett, and Robert Eberwein assisted

10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

me in the laborious task of proofreading, and Professor Camille Slights of Carroll College who read the manuscript in a late stage of revision is readily acknowledged as the person to whom must be due the absence, but not the presence, of any stuffiness and unwarranted pedantry in the text. Finally, chapters of this book have appeared in Comparative Drama and Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, and I wish to thank the editors for permission to use them in revised form here. Harriet C. Frazier

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Introductory

9 15

1. Writing and Floundering On, or, Prefatory Material . .

23

2. Theobald's Early Interest in the Elizabethans

38

3. Theobald as Shakespearian Editor

61

4. Tweedledum and Tweedledee

89

5. Don Quixote in Eighteenth Century England, or The Madness of Cardenio

107

6. The Rifling of Beauty's Stores

127

7. A Postscript on Motivation

146

Appendix : A Note on the Plates

153

Bibliography

154

Index

160

PLATES

Shakespeare Cervantes "The History of the Slave" Illustration . . . . "Cardenio" Illustration "The Unfortunate Knight of the R o c k " . . . . "The Distressed Poet" (1736) "The Distressed Poet" (1740)

opposite p. opposite p. opposite p. opposite p. opposite p. opposite p. opposite p.

16 17 96 97 113 144 145

INTRODUCTORY

In recent years there has been a renewed effort to expand the Shakespeare canon. It has long been impermissible to suggest that Shakespeare authored neither Titus Andronicus nor the Henry VI plays, and the critically minded have been dispelling the legend through most of this century that Shakespeare bid farewell to his art in The Tempest. Instead, one finds arguments for Shakespeare's authorship of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen cropping up with increasing regularity. Running through recent works of attribution with weed-like regularity has been the suggestion that another late possibility of the canon, a work entitled Cardenio (1613) may exist in altered form in Lewis Theobald's The Double Falsehood (1727). Indeed it may, or just as likely but not nearly so pleasing to the expansionist-minded, it may not. Trends about the dimensions of Shakespeare's work begin to take shape in the late Sixteenth Century. To his contemporaries, most assuredly including unscrupulous stationers, he was London's most popular playwright, and his name appears on the title page of more than one play which everyone knows he never wrote. In the pioneer days, material gain would seem to have played an inordinately large part in the motives of the attributionists. The London Prodigal, The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobbam, The Puritan Widow, A YorkShire Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Locrine are all fluttering about during or shortly after Shakespeare's lifetime, and in 1664 they are included in the Third Folio edition of his plays. Throughout the early Eighteenth Century these additional seven plays reappear in standard editions of Shakespeare such as Rowe's in 1709 and

SHAKESPEARE Appeared as a frontispiece in Pope's 1723 edition of Shakespeare. Note the similarity between this plate and that of Cervantes, including such detail as the escutcheons.

/ÌKTHA

TO

s>t: JPOX

Cwnt.vrjs.r S£

MIS

r>K

SAA^XA

Afa,

>f*t»e ft

CERVANTES Appeared as a frontispiece in the first Spanish language edition of Don Quixote published in London in 1738.

16

INTRODUCTORY

1714 and Pope's in 1728 and 1734-6. Theobald excludes the vagrant seven, and thereafter they are at times printed as a supplement to the widely agreed upon canon and at others neglected. Malone in 1780, Hazlitt in 1852, and Collier in 1878 are still suggesting that Shakespeare might have authored at least one of these orphans. Meanwhile entries in the Stationers' Register which connect Shakespeare's name with yet other uncanonical plays begin to haunt the truthful-minded in the Seventeenth Century. "The History of Cardenio by Mr. Fletcher & Shakespeare" is first entered in the Stationers' Register in 1653, and it is but one of many Shakespearian entries which has no solid counterpart in the world of extant texts. By 1691, the literary historian Gerard Langbaine is confidently asserting in his An Account of the English Dramatick Poets that Shakespeare wrote about forty-six plays. Since Langbaine is unencumbered by the most rudimentary evidence, one easily forgives his imprecision in numerical matters and remembers only the plethora of seventeenth-century attributions to Shakespeare by others innocent of evidence. The Eighteenth Century believed that poetic merit was mighty armour to take into the attribution arena, and it occurs in contemporary statements about Shakespeare's authorship of CardenioDouble Falsehood as well as a number of other eighteenth-century arguments for an apocryphal play joining the canon. The source of the questionable play looms large in Theobald's preface to The Double Falsehood, and it also occurs in every other eighteenthcentury discussion of attribution I encountered. But the most lethal weapon of the Theobalds, Capells, Stevens, and Malones is parallel passages. The Double Falsehood abounds in them, and both Capell's arguments for Shakespeare's authorship of Edward III in 1760 and Stevens' for The York-Shire Tragedy in 1780 endlessly remind that phrasing from both these plays has its counterpart in canonical Shakespeare. Frequent reference to Elizabethan proverbs makes it perfectly obvious that so many of these so-called parallels have a common source, the proverbs. Equally significant is the certainty that Shakespeare was frequently imitated, not only by his contemporaries but by later admirers as well.

INTRODUCTORY

17

The armour of poetic merit and common source is revealed as paper-thin, and the lethal weapon of parallel passages proves no mightier than a quill in the career of William Henry Ireland, the industrious child-forger of Shakespearian documents and plays. J.H. Pye wrote truer words than his laureateship realized in his prologue to Vortigern (dramatized at Drury Lane, 1796), "No fraud your penetrating eye can cheat, / None here can Shakespeare's writing counterfeit." Shortly, Edmond Malone thoroughly exposed the fraudulent Ireland. What Malone and his fellow poetic merit, common source, parallel passage enthusiasts never realized is that they had inadvertently supplied Ireland with many of the elements in his scheme. Ireland's Vortigern is in large part Macbeth manqué; its source, Holinshed's Chronicles, is Shakespeare's source for at least a dozen plays, and literary England found more poetic merit in Vortigern than lesser works of the Shakespearian canon. With overweening pride, Ireland was to explain the satisfaction he felt at 19 when Vortigern was being praised in these terms in his confessions that were to occupy him throughout his life. Nineteenth-century Shakespearian scholars were amazed that most of literary England was temporarily so deceived by that marvelous boy Ireland. The mention of source, emphasis on poetic merit, and citation of parallel passages disappear from studies of authorship. In 1833, William Spalding contents himself with an enlightened discussion of style when differentiating Shakespeare's and Fletcher's shares of The Two Noble Kinsmen. More important, Spalding's detailed examination of the text leads logically enough into a closer study of Shakespeare's metrics. Frederick J. Furnivall's The Succession of Shakespeare's Works and the Use of Metrical Tests in Setting It (1874) usefully supplements Malone's pioneering work in establishing the chronology of the canon. Furnivall never regarded metrical tests as anything more than a useful tool; he knew that the yielding of right results on twenty-five applications offered no guarantee of the same on the twenty-sixth. If one might ignore the excesses of this method, metrical tests would surely show to better advantage than they presently appear. Walter Graham's metrical analysis of Cardenio-Double Falsehood in

18

INTRODUCTORY

1920 is not maniacal; it simply carries no conviction. But the work of Frederick G. Fleay is much more than unconvincing. As the British Empire expands and Shakespeare's reputation stands at an all time high in the late Nineteenth Century, his canon visibly shrinks. Fleay's use of metrical tests and line counts leads him to question Shakespeare's unaided authorship of a startling number of canonical plays. Not only would Fleay cast out Pericles, Timon of Athens, and Titus Andronicus, but he would exclude in their present form as genuinely Shakespearian: Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar. Fleay sees "mangled meter" and an incorrect number of lines in his questionable dramas. He argues that because Julius Caesar (2440), Pericles (2386), Timon of Athens (2068), Two Gentlemen of Verona (2060), and Macbeth (1993) contain a shorter number of lines than the average play of 2857.5 lines there must be an excellent reason for this. Someone must have altered these plays, insists Fleay, because the chance of their containing fewer lines than the average is less than one in 100,000. Fleay disposes of Cardenio by deciding that it is Fletcher's Love's Pilgrimage, untroubled by the fact that Cardenio was performed at Whitehall in 1613 two months before Cervantes' Las Dos Doncellas (the acknowledged source of Love's Pilgrimage) was published in Spain. In the incapable hands of Fleay, scientific analysis becomes more of an elaborate parlor game than an aid to scholarship. The uncanonical works are more augmented by Fleay's mathematical certitudes than by Ireland's juvenile diversions. The shrinkage of the Shakespeare canon assumes larger and more striking proportions than with Fleay in the rise of antiStratfordianism. Prior to the publication of Delia Bacon's ponderous The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays Unfolded in 1857 no one had ever suggested in print that someone other than Shakespeare wrote his plays. This profoundly silly notion never entered the consciousness of any seventeenth or eighteenth-century commentator. Perhaps Miss Bacon's brand of ill-mannered abuse required the sort of Shakespearian idolatry that only a Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt could provide. It is tempting to see in Pope's, Theobald's, Johnson's, and Malone's qualified praise of Shake-

19

INTRODUCTORY

speare insufficient motivation for an eighteenth-century loony to decide as Delia Bacon did in the 1850's that Shakespeare was Lord Leicester's stable boy. But she was as convinced of Shakespeare's menial occupation as she was that his plays were the work of a group headed by Bacon, Raleigh, and Spenser. Ignatius Donnelly combined Delia Bacon's beliefs and Frederick Fleay's love of numbers in The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-called Shakespeare Plays (1888). Fleay counted

lines to discover Shakespeare had not written several plays which every schoolboy knows full well he wrote. Donnelly counted words to discover Bacon's message to the reader: Page and Word Column 516 - 167 = 349 - 22 b & h = 327 - 30 = 297 - 245 = 43 - 15 b & h = 28. 28 516 - 167 = 349 - 2 2 b & h = 327 - 248 = 79 193 - 79 = 114 + 1 = 115 + b & h = (121) (121). 516 — 167 = 349 — 22 b & h = 327 — 254 = 73 - 15 b & h = 58. 498 - 58 = 440 + 1 = 441. 441 516 - 167 = 349 - 22 b & h = 327 - 50 = 220 227 - 7 b & h = 516 - 167 = 349 - 22 327 b & h - 327. 516 — 127 = 349 — 22 b & h = 327 — 145 317 (76.2) = 182. 498 - 182 = 316 + 1 = 317. 516 - 167 = 349 - 22 b & h = 327 - 193 115 134. 248 - 134 = 114 + 1 = 115. 516 - 167 = 349 - 22b A h = 327 - 254 = 53 73 - 15b & h = 5 b = 53.

75.2

Shak'i

75.1

spur

76.1 76.2

never writ

76.1 76.2

a word

74.2

of

74.1

them

The distinct nineteenth-century midwestern twang of the nonnumerical portions of The Great Cryptogram makes clear that Bacon was not busy exposing Shakespeare therein when that indefatigable man had a few leisure moments from his work as philosopher, essayist, and statesman. The inadequacies of Donnelly's numerical portions have been demonstrated by two distinguished World War II cryptographers, William and Elizabeth Friedman in The Shakespearian

Ciphers Examined

(1957). O b -

20

INTRODUCTORY

viously, anyone can prove or disprove any Shakespearian matter by adherence to a formulated system, provided that he free himself from those haunting relevancies of the facts of the matter. Though H.N. Gibson's The Shakespeare Claimants (1962) makes clear that vicious anti-Stratfordianism lingers to the present day, the Fleay-Donnelly numerology of the Nineteenth Century has given way to new modes of determining authorship. Graphology settled the matter in Pollard's, Greg's, and others' Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More (1923). Chemical means verified the age of a manuscript in T.W. Baldwin's Love's Labor's Won (1959). If a handwritten manuscript of Cardenio survived, graphology might reveal much of interest. Chemical tests would be useful if there were a Cardenio text of any sort on which they might be run, but neither graphology nor chemistry are presently applicable to Cardenio-Double Falsehood. Linguistic analysis has come into its own in attribution questions for those who 75 years ago would have embraced metrical analysis. Between 1956 and 1962, Cyrus Hoy prepares one impressive chart after another for Studies in Bibliography which tabulate the frequency of certain units of speech in any work wherein Fletcher's authorship is questioned. Under these circumstances, the whole matter of differentiating between Fletcher and Shakespeare resolves into a count of ye, y, you, hath, doth, 'em, them, i'th, i'the, o'th, h'as, t', 's, and let's. This numbers game indicates that a preponderance of ye's in a scene, act, or play of undetermined authorship virtually insures Fletcher's hand. The boredom of linguistic analysis is a minor matter. Its failure to provide a safe detour around the great irregularity in Renaissance orthography is not. Further obstacles to its application to many an Elizabethan text appear when it is remembered that at least five, possibly eight different printers were at work on the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647 and the plays within the folio came to Moseley through various sources, principally the surviving members of the King's men. Since a single seventeenth-century printer is likely to vary the spelling of an indefinite number of words - the number of letters needed to fill the line determined much - it is difficult to view linguistic analysis of Elizabethan texts as much more than metrical evi-

INTRODUCTORY

21

dence writ large. As a result, in the pages which follow there is a conspicuous absence of linguistic analysis of Cardenio-Double Falsehood. The most recent advance in twentieth-century studies in attribution is the use of electronic computers. Since this delicate mechanism can release the investigator from needless drudgery and allow him to devote his work to the examination of evidence gathered and classified by a machine, its suggested use by a professor of Renaissance literature was initially an exciting prospect for me. My enthusiasm diminished as I conversed with persons knowledgeable about computers. Surely, the problems which Cardenio-Double Falsehood present could, through use of a computer, be demonstrated as partially soluble by a computer. But a carpenter uses a hammer to build a house, not to demonstrate that a house can be built with a hammer. Again, a computer, once it was properly programmed, could prepare an error free concordance of the works of Lewis Theobald in less than two hours, but the expense and energy required for such an effort would not be sufficiently rewarded by the results. Since Theobald's value resides in his scholarship, no one wants or needs a Theobald concordance. As I hope my sixth chapter makes clear, the human eye can chart the patterns of The Double Falsehood with sufficient accuracy and free the computer for work more appropriate to it. This book then is not a study of the accuracy of computers any more than it is an investigation of the reliability of stationers' entries, poetic merit, parallel passages, common sources, metrical analysis, graphology, chemical tests, or linguistic analysis. All too frequently Cardenio-Double Falsehood authorship debate has been primarily concerned with testing the adequacy of various methods of attribution or blackening the already darkened name of Lewis Theobald. The issue here is the authorship of the play, and this has rarely been in the forefront of arguments regarding the work. My only method has been the constant remembrance that the consideration of an apocrypha (religious, literary, or other) necessitates an attempt at fusion of two very different procedures: the close concern with the data of literature that is textual analysis

22

INTRODUCTORY

and the scrutiny of external evidence needed to establish any relationship between a work of art and the real world which engendered it and is mirrored in it. As such, any rigorous adherence to any one method in literary attribution is foredoomed to partial if not total failure. No attorney worthy of his fee or his office would plead the innocence or guilt of the accused on a solitary piece of circumstantial evidence. Apocrypha discussants have rarely committed themselves to the rigorous terms of criminal procedure when arguing for or against Shakespeare's authorship. Usually they have forgotten that dealing with any actuality (and an apocryphal play is such an actuality) requires an approach with at least as many facets as the object approached. To determine authorship requires a meshing of internal and external evidence and the fusion of fact and inference. Perhaps such sifting of material may seem uncomfortably similar to the task of Scotland Yard, but CardenioDouble Falsehood has all the mystery of a detective story, albeit, without the usual blood but with more than its share of unknowns, imponderables, and complexities.

1 W R I T I N G A N D F L O U N D E R I N G ON, OR, PREFATORY MATERIAL

Late in the year 1727, Lewis Theobald claimed to have in his possession three manuscript copies of a lost play of Shakespeare which he had revised and intended for stage presentation as The Double Falsehood. The play was initially produced on December 13, 1727 and ran for ten nights at Drury Lane Theatre in December 1727, and three performances of it are recorded during 1728. Five separate revivals of it occurred during the Eighteenth Century: (1) on December 13th and 15th, 1740 at Covent Garden; (2) on April 24th, 1767 at Covent Garden; (3) on March 31st, 1770 at Covent Garden; (4) on June 6th, 1791 at Covent Garden; and (5) on May 23rd, 1793 at Bath. Though the reaction of the audience at these revivals is not known, if we are to believe the anonymous "Dramaticus", the response of those initial spectators at the performance of The Double Falsehood was indeed enthusiastic. Dramaticus notes: The town found themselves rous'd from their effeminancy and Infatuation, and summoned, upon the Peril of forfeiting all their pretentions to common Understanding for the future, to pay their Obedience to the celebrated Name, that call's them to the Theatre. By the unanimous Applause, with which this Play was receiv'd by considerable Audiences, for ten nights, the true Friends of the Drama had the satisfaction of seeing that Author restor'd to his rightful Possession of the stage, whose Works had been such an Ornament and Income to it, in his Life-Time, and were such an invaluable Legacy to it, after his Death. Dramaticus does his best to dispel any lingering doubts as to the authenticity of the work. H e mentions "several strong testimonies, besides the Judgment of the Gentlemen, who rescu'd it from Obli-

24

PREFATORY MATERIAL

vion, and prepared it for the stage, and whose Veneration for the Genius of that Author, appears, from what he has published in Justice to him, to be too sincere, to permit him to impose a spurious piece on the World in his Name."1 However, we find a different opinion of Theobald's integrity voiced by an anonymous poet writing in The Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1731. In a satiric piece, "The Modern Poets", these scornful lines about Theobald appear: See! T... leaves the lawyer's gainful train, To wrack with poetry his tortur'd brain: Fir'd, or not fir'd, to write resolves with rage, And constant pores o'er Shakespears sacred page; - Then starting cries, I something will be thought, I'll write - then - boldly swear 'twas Shakes pear wrote. 2

Ever since Dramaticus vouched for Theobald's honesty and the anonymous poet cast considerable doubt upon it, many scholars and critics have wracked their brains to vindicate or malign Theobald's claim regarding The Double Falsehood. At times the attacks upon him have been startlingly straightforward. William Jaggard (indifferent to any proof) wastes no words when he writes: The first deliberate forgery of which record exists ... is a printed imposture, published in 1728 Probably it arose from a personal vanity; from a desire to make a name as hanger-on, in connection with the greatest of literary names. A real Shakespeare manuscript being unobtainable it seemed a simple expedient to manufacture a counterfeit. The time was opportune.3

In other instances, the defense of him has been of such a nature as to require no balancing attack. Curt Zimansky concludes his discussion of the possibility of Theobald's having possessed a manuscript, possibly an older but non-Shakespearian one which Theobald himself eventually disbelieved authentic, with this insidious comment: "Theobald was telling at least a partial truth 1 [Letter "To the Author of the British Gazetteer"], The Weekly Journal: or the British Gazetteer, No. 142, Feb. 10,1728. 2 "Poetical Essays", The Gentleman's Magazine or Monthly Intelligencer I (November, 1731). Also printed in The Grub Street Journal, No. 98 (November 18, 1731). 3 Shakespearian Frauds (Stratford-on-Avon, 1911), 1.

PREFATORY MATERIAL

25

4

but thought he was lying." The web of mystery surrounding this play is indeed a vast one. There has been a great deal of speculation on its authorship, but few speculators have encumbered themselves with the relevant facts before making their suggestions or pronouncements. A useful fact worthy of consideration is Theobald's own preface to the play. Its essentials are as follows: Theobald confidently begins with a favorable audience reaction and the kind words of Dramaticus behind him: The Success, which this play has met with from the Town in the Representation (to say nothing of the Reception it found from those Great Judges, to whom I have had the Honour of Communicating it in Manuscript;) has almost made the Purpose of a Preface unnecessary: and therefore what I have to say, is design'd rather to wipe out a flying Objection or two, than to Labour at proving it the Production of Shakespeare. ("Preface", D.F., First edition, 1728)5

And throughout the remainder of Theobald's career he remained steadfast in his intention never to labor the proof of Shakespeare's authorship; or perhaps it is fairer to state that if he ever wrote an extensive commentary, such a commentary has not survived. The means Theobald employs to wipe out the random flying objections against the authenticity of Shakespeare's authorship are few and have never compelled widespread belief. Rather they have prompted more scepticism than silence could ever effect. Theobald informs us that one of his manuscript copies is at least sixty years old, in the handwriting of Mr. John Downes (1662-1710), prompter for The Duke's Servants Theatrical Company, and initially intended for production by the famous Restoration actor, Thomas Betterton (1635-1710). Since Downes, Betterton, and Betterton's widow were all long since deceased, we have no testimony from them regarding the veracity of Theobald's assertions. Further, Theobald makes very clear his ignorance as to the where4 [Commentary on Kenneth Muir's "Cardenio"], English Literature 16601800, eds. Kolb and Zimansky (Princeton, 1962), IV, 359. 6 All quotations from the First Edition of The Double Falsehood are taken from Double Falsehood, ed. Walter Graham (Cleveland, 1920).

26

PREFATORY MATERIAL

abouts of the supposedly Betterton-owned manuscript prior to Betterton's acquisition of it. Theobald writes only, "What accident prevented this purpose of his [i.e. Betterton's stage representation of it], I do not Pretend to know: Or thro' what hands it had successively pass'd before that period of time" ("Preface", D.F., First edition). Vagueness would seem to cover all, and Theobald would have lent more credibility to his words on the manuscript had he not graced his preface with this most unlikely story: "There is a Tradition (which I have from the Noble Person, who supplied me with One of my Copies) that it was given by our Author, as a Present of Value, to a Natural Daughter of his, for whose Sake he wrote it in the time of his retirement from the Stage" ("Preface", D.F., First edition). "The Noble Person" who suggested Shakespeare sired a bastard daughter has never been identified, and he is mentioned only in Theobald's prefaces to The Double Falsehood. Theobald began his London literary and legal practice no later than 1708. Thanks largely to Swift's, Steele's, and other writers' concern that the common law did not prohibit piracy of their literary works, parliament enacted the first copyright statute in 1709. With its passage began the exclusive right given by law for a certain term of years to an author to sell his original work. Theobald knew no such property right existed in Jacobean England. Equally to the point, we know of Shakespeare's provisions for his daughters Judith and Susanna from his will, and therein resides no theatrical legacy for his acknowledged offspring. And if Shakespeare fathered a third daughter (as Rowe's unexplained and casual statement in 1709 that Shakespeare had three daughters suggests he might have) his writing of yet another play would scarcely erase his patrimonial obligation to her. As E.K. Chambers has written of Theobald's account of the inspiration behind the play, "It is absurd, not so much because of any great improbability in Shakespeare's having a natural daughter, as because he did not write his plays under conditions which left him any property in them to transmit, and in any case a play would have been an inadequate provision for the poor girl."6 Here Theobald would seem to have embellished 6 William Shakespeare: I, 542.

A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1930),

PREFATORY MATERIAL

27

in different parts in different ways, and the resulting truth in either event, of his account of Shakespeare's motivation for authoring the play is indeed meager. Not content with one manuscript, especially one with such an intriguing legend behind it, Theobald claimed to have had two other copies of the lost play. Details of these other manuscripts are even more scanty than of the first mentioned: "Two other Copies I have, (one of which I was glad to purchase at a very good Rate,) which may not, Perhaps, be quite so Old as the Former, but One of Them is much more perfect, and has fewer Flaws and Interruptions in the Sense" ("Preface", D.F., First edition). Though no early seventeenth-century manuscript has as yet been located, in recent years several arguments have been advanced to lend credibility to Theobald's claim. John Cadwalader is inclined to see in Theobald's postscript to the Countess of Oxford on December 10, 1727, evidence of Theobald's having had in his possession at least one of the three Shakespearian manuscripts he claimed to own. However, I can see no such certain evidence. The body of Theobald's letter to the Countess is an invitation for her to attend a performance of The Double Falsehood shortly to be staged, an invitation replete with twelve box tickets. As an afterthought, he writes "If your Honour has any mind to read the play in manuscript, upon the earliest intimation of your pleasure you shall command it". 7 Clearly, there is no certain evidence in this postscript of the manuscript referred to therein being other than Theobald's own version. To be certain, the manuscript which the Countess had but to command to view may have been an early seventeenth-century document, but as the matter stands and is likely to remain, there is no certainty that it was. Proof of Theobald's having owned at least one older manuscript must be based on more substantial evidence than Cadwalader's. Curt Zimansky offers us somewhat more tempting evidence. He also approaches the problem by taking notice of a contemporary statement. He calls attention to Charles Gildon's attack on Colley 7

Cited in "Theobald's Alleged Shakespeare Manuscript", MLN, V (Feb.,

1940), 109.

28

PREFATORY MATERIAL

Cibber. Gildon animadverts against the method of selecting plays for stage performance, claiming that if dice were cast, By this Means a valuable Jewel, lately brought to them by a Friend of mine, might have had a Chance of obliging the town with a noble Diversion. I mean, a Play written by Beaumont and Fletcher, and the immortal Shakespeare, in the Maturity of his Judgement, a year before he died ... There is Infallible Proof that the Copy is genuine; yet this Rarity, this noble piece of Antiquity cannot make its way to the stage, because a Person that is concerned in it, is a person who of all Persons Mr. C— does not approve.8

It is perhaps enticing to see in Gildon's reference some proof of an authentic manuscript which Theobald acquired and altered some eight years later. But the facts remain that no contemporary of Theobald has recorded seeing the older manuscript of Cardenio. Just asTheobald's contemporaries, as he tells us in his Preface, "alledg'd as incredible, that such a Curiosity should be stifled and lost to the World for above a Century" ("Preface", D.F., First edition) so does it begin to seem most unlikely today that Theobald had in his possession what he claimed. Theobald argues against another objection to Shakespeare's authorship by these means: Another Objection has been started (which would carry much more Weight with it, were it Fact;) that the tale of this play, being built upon a Novel in Don Quixot, Chronology is against Us, and Shakespeare could not be the Author. But it happens, that Don Quixot was publish'd in the Year 1611, and Shakespeare did not dye till April, 1616, a sufficient Interval of time for All that We want granted. ("Preface", D. F., First edition)

There is copious evidence to support the contention that Don Quixote was known to the English for a sufficient period to allow Shakespeare to author a play based upon it. Though Shelton's translation of Cervantes was not published until 1612 (Theobald's date of 1611 would seem to be a slight factual error), Shelton noted in his dedication of the translation that he had completed the work five or six years earlier, and he was only publishing it because of the entreaties of friends familiar with the manuscript. These facts 8

The Post-Man Robb'd of His Mail (London, 1719), 268.

PREFATORY MATERIAL

29

render superfluous all objections (and there have been several) to Shakespeare's authorship of a play based on Don Quixote on grounds that Shelton's translation was published after Shakespeare left London and began permanent residence in Stratford. However, the evidence for Shakespeare's interest in Spanish literature of any sort is indeed scanty. Though the word patine a p p e a r s in b o t h Don Quixote

a n d The Merchant

of Venice, the

scholar noting this duality is quick to add that Shakespeare may have heard the word and its appearance in his work in no way documents his knowledge of Spanish.9 Apart from this similarity in the use of a single word, there is scarcely any proof of Shakespeare's acquaintance with Spanish. In his 1733 edition, Theobald suggests several verbal similarities between canonical Shakespeare and Don Quixote, but these suggestions have never been widely shared. For the most part Shakespearian scholars, such as Sidney Lee, flatly assert that there is no evidence of Shakespeare's knowledge of Cervantes. Theobald himself seems to have been well aware of the difficulty of proving Shakespeare's acquaintance with Don Quixote. Whereas in the preface to the first edition of The Double Falsehood, Theobald's publication date is 1611, in the second edition to The Double Falsehood, we find the following subtle changes: But it happens, that the First Part of Don Quixot, which contains the Novel upon which the Tale of this Play seems to be built, was publish'd in the Year 1605, and our Shakespeare did not dye till April, 1616; an interval of no less than Eleven Years. ("Preface", D. F., Second edition) 10

Here Theobald raises more difficulties than he dispels. Though he allows Shakespeare more time in which to author a play based on Don Quixote in his revised account, Theobald casts some doubt on his integrity by the changes. Surely, a man as familiar with Renaissance literature as Theobald would be well aware that 1605 marks the Madrid, not the London, publication of the first part of Don Quixote. The precise date at which Cervantes' work might 9

Nathan Haskell Dole, "Notes and News", Poet-Lore, Vffl (1896), 224. All quotations from the Second Edition of The Double Falsehood are t aken from Double Falsehood, The Second Edition (London, 1728). 10

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have been available through Shelton's privately circulated manuscript remains vague; however, it could never be as early as Theobald claimed in his revised preface to The Double Falsehood. Theobald considers a second objection to Shakespeare's authorship of the work in the following manner: Others again, to depreciate the Affair ... have been pleased to urge, that tho' the Play may have some Resemblance of Shakespeare, yet the Colouring, Diction, and Characters come nearer to the Style and Manner of Fletcher. This, I think, is far from deserving any Answer; I submit it to the Determination of better Judgments; tho' my Partiality for Shakespeare makes me wish, that Every Thing which is good, or pleasing, in our Tongue, had been owing to his Pen. ("Preface", D. F., First edition) In his second edition, Theobald again makes a slight change. Rather than wishing every distinguished work "in our tongue" Shakespeare's, he wishes only that "which is good, or pleasing, in that other great Poet [Fletcher] had been owing to his [Shakespeare's] pen" ("Preface", D.F., Second edition). The reasons for this change are difficult t o assess. It might be argued that Theobald himself had grown less certain of Shakespeare's authorship and believed Fletcher might have had some share in the work. On the other hand, one might also argue that Theobald's Second Preface in this instance is less hyperbolic than his first. Whatever the case may have been, Theobald's mention of Fletcher assures us that some of Theobald's contemporaries believed The Double Falsehood to be of non-Shakespearian but Jacobean authorship. Though Theobald writes in his second edition to the play that, "I had once design'd a Dissertation to prove this Play to be of Shakespeare's Writing from some of its remarkable Peculiarities in the Language and Nature of the thoughts", ("Preface", D.F., Second edition) he never followed through with this intention. He omits the play from his edition of Shakespeare. Further, his lengthy correspondence makes no mention of it; nor is there included in the sale catalogue of his possessions after his death any manuscript that might have been the source of The Double Falsehood. Indeed his only mention of the play other than in his prefaces to it is a defense of Yiolante's line: "None but itself can be its parallel." Pope had

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attacked the line as too bathetic to be Shakespeare's. Theobald argues for Shakespeare's authorship first in Mist's Weekly Journal (April 27, 1728) and later partially reprints his defense of this line in his 1733 edition of Shakespeare. Otherwise, Theobald is silent regarding the authorship of The Double Falsehood. Much of Theobald's notoriety and the source of many a scholarly sneer derive from Theobald's failure to publish the original or comment on it in any detail in his 1733 edition of Shakespeare. If there were no external evidence other than Theobald's prefaces which affirmed Shakespeare's authorship of a play based on Don Quixote, Theobald's claim would surely be dismissed as a hoax. However, evidence quite independent of Theobald's prefaces connects Shakespeare's name with a play based on Don Quixote. Humphrey Moseley entered in the Stationer's Register on September 9, 1653 "The History of Cardenio by Mr. Fletcher & Shakespeare". This would seem to be solid evidence, but it too is suspect. On this same date, Moseley makes these additional Shakespearian attributions: (1) The Merry Devill of Edmonton, by W m Shakespeare and (2) Henry the First, & Hen: the 2d, by Shakespeare & Davenport. Equally important, Moseley's list of plays contains fortyone entries, all of which are generally regarded as lost plays. Various efforts have been made to identify entries on Moseley's September 9, 1653 list with extant dramas, printed under a different title. However, the case remains that considerable doubt is cast upon the reliability of "The History of Cardenio" entry, surrounded as it is by a large number of other non-extant plays, some of them mentioned only in this list. Further questions of Moseley's honesty are raised by his entry on June 29, 1660 of these supposedly Shakespearian authored plays: The History of King Stephen, Duke Humphrey, a Tragedy, and Iphis & Iantha or a marriage without a man, a Comedy. And of these plays, nothing more is known. Whether Moseley had any manuscripts or not it is impossible to determine; he seems to have been working from older stage histories of the plays. A stage history does exist, at any rate, for Cardenio. Again, the non-extant Moseley entries are thought by some (notably Tucker-Brooke) to have perished at the hands of

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Warburton's infamous cook. Warburton's list mentions fifty-three plays, but W.W. Greg argues convincingly that Warburton worked in large part from Moseley's entries and rather than Warburton's cook burning valuable manuscripts, she destroyed a list of plays which Warburton had hoped to recover. Greg has written of the Moseley-Warburton collection, "We have undoubtedly to lament the loss of a few pieces ... but by no means the dramatic holocaust that has made famous the name of 'pie-eating Somerset Herald' ", 11 Again, the research of both C.R. Baskervill and Harry Morgan Ayres suggests that the loss of the Moseley-Warburton manuscripts has a curious tradition behind it. Baskerville cites the following, dated May 30,1658 from The Apollo in Fleet Street : Much adoe I had to recover them [various verses] out of the good womans hands, who left the bottoms of her Pies (that baking) in very great jeopardy, for want of them. 12

Baskerville concludes that Warburton borrowed a current tale as well as a list of plays. Ayres uncovers the reasons given by the poet's father that Henry Bold's Latine Songs, with their English: and Poems (1685) omits some Latin and several English songs. The account is a familiar one: Some again were very hardly recovered out of the hands of an illiterate Welsh cook wench, who had designed to sacrifice them to the hoary Hen on the spit, in which service two of these... lost all their English tongue. 13

Theobald also supplies us with the tale of a destructive baker when he writes in the Preface to his 1733 edition that it has recently been rumored Two large Chests full of this Great Man's [Shakespeare's] loose Papers and Manuscripts, in the Hands of an ignorant Baker of Warwick ... were carelessly scatter'd and thrown about, as Garret-Lumber and Litter.14 11

259.

"The Bakings of Betsy", The Library, Third Series, No. 7, II (July, 1911),

12 "A Forerunner of Warburton's Cook", Modern Philology, XIII (May, 1915), 52. 13 "Another Foierunner of Warburton's Cook", Modern Philology, XTV (May, 1916), 10. 14 "Preface", The Works of Shakespeare: In Seven Volumes (London, 1733), I, xiv.

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Warburton's subsequent edition of Shakespeare (1747) documents his familiarity with all aspects of Theobald's 1733 edition. Perhaps Warburton borrowed his own tale of the bakings of Betsy from Theobald's account of the ignorant baker. Though there is no definitive proof that Moseley and Warburton stretched the truth by inventing any aspect of a legend, neither is there reliable evidence to suggest that they were not repeating folklore about "illiterate" and "ignorant" kitchen help. Theobald's ignorance of the Moseley entry is widely assumed from the early Nineteenth Century to the present. It is but a part of the general tradition of Theobald's ignorance to be found in comments by Weber, Bradford, Schevill, Oliphant, Graham, Chambers, Orgill, and Muir. Bradford's view of the matter is representative of the general opinion of Theobald's awareness: "That Theobald should have forged such a play ... with no knowledge of the Shakespeare-Fletcher-Cardenio tradition presupposes coincidences which are manifestly impossible."15 But whatever aspersions may be cast on Theobald's critical acumen by his contemporaries, the charge of ignorance is never levelled against him; dunce to be sure but not ignoramus. The literary origins of Theobald as dunce are to be found among his contemporaries. They do not begin as one might expect with Alexander Pope. Ironically, Theobald had praised Pope's translation of Homer in 1717, and John Dennis wrote of Theobald's praise of Pope, "There is a notorious Idiot, one HightWhachum ... pleased to extol the late translation of Homer." 16 But it is Pope's devastating portrait of Theobald in The Dunciad (1728) that gives such a powerful impetus to the plethora of derogatory commentary which renders Theobald fair game for the exercise of wit. His contemporaries thought him dull. Fielding writes in "Advice to the Nymphs of New S—n"(1730): Cease, vainest Nymphs, with Celia to contend, And let your Envy and your Folly end. With her Almighty Charms when yours compare, 15 "The History of Cardenio by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare", MLN, XXV (February 10, 1910), 55. 16 Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of Homer (London, 1717), 10.

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When your blind lovers think you half so fair T-b-ld shall blaze with Wit, sweet Pope be dull.17 His contemporaries regarded him as an harassed hack. William Hogarth caricatured him in unflattering terms in 1736. The etching is entitled "The Distressed Poet" - an obvious reference t o the sub-title of The Double Falsehood: The Distressed Lovers. In the etching, amidst squalor, the poet is composing "Poverty, a Poem" a reference to Theobald's "The Cave of Poverty, a Poem" (1715). A bill collector, dirty laundry, hungry cats and a dog, a wife, and a child add to the clutter and confusion in the poet's living quarters. In the background hangs a picture of Pope thrashing the notorious publisher Curll. At the bottom of the plate are the following lines f r o m The Dunciad: Studious he sate, with all his books around Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there, Yet wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair. (I, 117-120) Theobald's contemporaries considered him pedantic. Pope parodies Theobald's Shakespeare Restor'd method of emendation in a footnote of 170 lines devoted entirely to The Double Falsehood in the annotated Dunciad of 1729. Pope subjects the play to commentary such as: Act 2. Scene i. All the verse of this Scene is confounded with prose. ... O that a man Could reason down this Feaver of the blood, Or sooth with words the tumult in his heart! Then Julio, I might be indeed thy friend. Read - this fervor of the blood, Then Julio I might be in deed thy friend, marking the just opposition of deeds and words. Act 4. Scene i. How his eyes shake fire! - said by Violante, observing how the lustful shepherd looks at her. 17

Miscellanies, I (London, 1743), 54-55.

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It must be, as the sense plainly demands, ... How his eyes take fire!

(Ill, 272) 18

In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1731) Swift envisions the fate of his works in these terms : Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains: Three genuine tomes of Swift's remains! And then, to make them pass the glibber Revised by Tibbalds, Moor, and Cibber. In A Journey from this World to the Next (1743), Fielding denounces

Theobald's scholarship in this fashion: He [Shakespeare] was then interrogated concerning some other ambiguous passages in his works; but he declined any satisfactory answer, saying, if Mr. Theobald had not writ about it sufficiently, there were three or four more new editions of his plays coming out, which he hoped would satisfy everyone.19

Theobald's contemporaries are seldom charitable toward him. They accuse him of every sin except ignorance. A notice in The Grub-Street Journal (Sept. 17, 1730) states that Theobald will shortly bring out an edition of Shakespeare, "a work his very enemies will, I believe, allow him to be capable of". 20 Since the Stationers' Registers were available for inspection during the Eighteenth Century by anyone who obtained permission of the Guild, it is reasonable to suppose that a dull, pedantic hack might have availed himself of these records. Theobald's interest in antiquity, especially that portion of it which pertained to Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, is continually in evidence throughout his writings. Though proof of his acquaintance with Moseley's entry is lacking, it seems less than judicious to assume he was necessarily ignorant of it. There is, however, yet another account of Cardenio. Included 18 See The Dunciad with Notes, Variorum, and the Prolegomena of Scriblenus (London, 1729), 158-161 for the lengthy Double Falsehood not» in full. 19 The Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Edmund Gosse (New York, 1899), XI, 268. 20 The Grub-Street Journal, No. 37, n.p.nos.

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among the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library is a document entitled the Lord Stanhope of Harrington item. It reads: Item paid to John Heminges vppon lyke warrant, dated att Whitehall ix die Julij 1613 for himself and the rest of his fellowes his Majesties servauntes and Players for presentinge a playe before the Duke of Savoyes Embassadour on the viijth daye of June, 1613 called Cardenna, the some of vj, xiij iij. Item paid to the said John Heminges vppon the lyke warrant, dated att Whitehall xx die Maij 1613, for presentinge sixe severall playes, viz: one playe called A Bad beginnings make a good endinge, One other called the Capteyne, One other the Alchumist, one other Cardenno, One other the Hotspur, And one other called Benedicte and Betteris, all played within the tyme of this Accompte viz: paid Fortie powndes, and by waye of his Majesties rewarde twentie powndes, In all lx. 21

E.K. Chambers writes of this court record, "It is, of course, most unlikely that Theobald knew anything of the Cardenio record, and to some extent, therefore, that supports his story," 22 Once again, Chambers has in mind the Theobald of legend, not the industrious investigator of fact. It is not in the least unlikely that Theobald was familiar with the Lord Stanhope of Harrington manuscript. The records of the Bodleian Library reveal that the M.S. Rawlinson A. 239, fol. 47v first came to the library with the books and papers of Richard Rawlinson at his death in 1756.23 Though it is not known precisely when Rawlinson acquired this document, it had previously been owned by Samuel Pepys, and perhaps it came to Rawlinson's hands through the nephew of Pepys, a Mr. Jackson. Though Pepys requested that his voluminous library go upon the death of his nephew to a college, preferably Magdalene, it is clear that the M.S. Rawlinson A. 239, fol. 47v was not given to Magdalene at Jackson's death in 1726. Perhaps Rawlinson acquired it in 1726. It is known that Richard returned to England in April, 1726 because of the death of his brother Thomas Rawlinson, and always a voracious purchaser of manuscripts, he may have 21

Cited in E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, II, 343. Chambers, II, 541. 23 Personal correspondence from D.G. Vaisey, Dept. of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England. 22

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bought the stage history of Cardenio at this time. Despite the lack of definitive proof that Theobald (1688-1744) was acquainted with either Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755) or his brother Thomas (1681-1725), Theobald's acquaintance with one or both of these brothers is quite probable. All three were residents in a London of 200,000 population where men of similar interests knew each other; they are approximately the same age, and both Thomas Rawlinson and Theobald studied law. Further, Thomas lent manuscripts to scholars. Therefore, it seems reasonable to allow that Theobald knew of the stage history of Cardenna or Cardenno or Cardenio, perhaps independent of Moseley's entry and from an account which does not connect Fletcher's name with the work. If there is reason to entertain the possibility that Theobald was familiar with the Rawlinson manuscript then we can begin to account for his familiarity with the Cardenio-Double Falsehood material. These, then, are the particulars of the Cardenio-Double Falsehood problem which arise from a consideration of Theobald's prefaces and matters closely connected with these prefaces. Very little of the evidence thus far presented compels strong belief that Theobald ever possessed an authentic Shakespearian manuscript. On the other hand, much evidence exists to support the contention that Theobald not only had the inclination but the ability as well to author a Shakespearian play. Especially important in this regard is Theobald's career as essayist, poet, biographer, adapter, and editor, solidly bound as they are by the actualities of ink on paper.

2 THEOBALD'S EARLY INTEREST IN THE ELIZABETHANS

One is accustomed to assume that Theobald's interest in the Elizabethans began with his attack on Pope's edition of Shakespeare in Shakespeare Restored(1726). Though he reached his full flowering as an Elizabethan scholar after 1726, considerable evidence of his knowledge of Renaissance England survives from the decade preceding his extensive editing of the entire Shakespearian canon. These early Theobald ventures provide information surprisingly valuable for consideration of the Cardenio-Double Falsehood problem. The earliest surviving evidence of Theobald's interest in the Renaissance is found in a little known publication of his entitled The Censor which consists of ninety-six essays appearing on a tri-weekly basis between 1715 and 1717. Both in form and in content, they owe a considerable debt to The Spectator, and Theobald ultimately discontinued the writing of further essays because "they followed too close upon the heels of the inimitable Spectator" ("Preface", I). 1 Even though Addison helped shape The Censor, in it we find the guiding lights of Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Greek and Roman authors the most reliable source of inspiration, nay almost of divinity, for Theobald as essayist. The persona of The Censor is Ben Jonson or Theobald's "Great Ancestor" (No. 3, April 15, 1715), and in this guise, the Censor reflects throughout on matters of morals and others of less pressing concern. We know that Theobald, as a lover of antiquity, much regretted the loss of any piece of literature. He writes : 1

All quotations from Theobald's essays are taken from The Censor, 3 vols. (London, 1717).

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When upon tumbling over the first Shelves, I have discovered an uncommon Beauty and Strength of Wit in an imperfect paragraph, I grieve as much that I cannot recover the whole, as a brave man would for the Amputation of a Limb. (No. 5, April 20, 1715) One can well imagine the excitement and agitation that a person such as Theobald might have gone through if he chanced upon the stage history of a lost play of Shakespeare's such as Cardenio. Always the desire to recapture the past is strong in Theobald. Equally strong is the desire to see connections and continuity in that past. The embryo of his wish to join Shakespeare and the Classical authors is surely present in: I have not a few times diverted myself with observing how Authors in different Ages have not only slipt into the same sentiments without copying from their Predecessors; but have work'd up a Maxim with a certain Sameness of thought, and sometimes of Expression. (No. 26, June 8, 1715) At this time, Theobald contents himself with remarking on a similarity between Aeschylus and Shakespeare. In his preface to his adaption of Richard II (1720), Theobald's desire to link Shakespeare with the Classical authors is much more in evidence, and by the time he edits Shakespeare, the frequency with which he suggests that Shakespeare has read the Classical authors in the original is perhaps the greatest flaw in an otherwise remarkably sound editing of the text. It is important to remember that Theobald's interest in recovering and connecting the past starts as early as The Censor and it endures late. It may have some bearing on his insistence in his prefaces to The Double Falsehood that Shakespeare had read Cervantes. Surely, it would have been tempting to relate the greatest writers of the English and Spanish Renaissance. The Censor also makes clear that Theobald regarded Shakespeare's text with the typical ambivalence of his age. He writes: I intend not to charge [King Lear] with those errors, which all this Author's Plays lie under, thro' his being unacquainted with the Rules of Aristotle, and the tragedies of the Ancients. (No. 7, April 25, 1715) However, in this essay, Theobald narrates N a h u m Tate's plot of King Lear for the edification of his readers, not Shakespeare's.

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Again, Theobald comments of English tragedy that "The inconsistencies in plays, which shock the judgment of the discerning Critick, might generally be prevented, if Aristotle were a little better consulted by our Authors" (No. 63, March 16, 1716). However, it is to Lear's "Nothing can come of nothing" that Theobald goes when he wishes t o illustrate the folly of atheism (No. 67, March 26, 1717). And despite Shakespeare's ignorance of the rules, Theobald finds "Of all the plays, either Ancient or Modern, the tragedy of Julius Caesar... has been held in the fairest esteem and admiration" (No. 77, April 2,1717). And he is unsparing in his condemnation of "those injust Robbers, who plunder their [poets such as Shakespeare] graves and murder their Memories" (No. 73, April 9,1717). Apparently, Theobald saw no inconsistency in considerable doctoring of the Shakespearian text for stage presentation and condemnation of the text-plunderer. In addition to his comments on Shakespeare a n d the rules (variously applied) he praises Othello in a lengthy discussion because the tragedy arises from the M o o r ' s "impetuous Desire of having his Doubts clear'd, and a Jealousie and Rage, native to him which he cannot control" (No. 36, Jan. 12, 1716). He also illustrates the evils of jealousy by reference to Othello (No. 16, May 16, 1715); he deplores "the cold reception which a poor Scholar meets with, and the contempt which Patient Merit of the Unworthy takes" (No. 48, Feb. 9, 1716); Louis XIII, he terms a "learned Hamlet... [who] was never so well pleas'd as when in Bed with Greek or Latin" (No. 50, Feb. 14, 1716); and he admires Hamlet and Macbeth for the precepts of Polonius and Macduff on death (No. 54, Feb. 23, 1716). In a less serious vein, Theobald makes Shakespeare one of the voters in the election of the poet laureate with the candidates Quarles and Dryden: Ben Johnson... pronounc'd in a solemn surly Accent, as if he envied the Candidate the vote he gave, I vote for Mr. Dryden. Shakespear, with a negligent Air, and Boldness of Spirit, follow'd him, with a vast Company of Minor Poets at his Heels, who pick'd his Pockets all the way he walk'd with a low thankful bow and poll'd for Mr. Dryden. (No. 41, Jan. 24, 1716) Despite Theobald's jocular tone and the whimsy of the essay,

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he evinces considerable familiarity with the Jacobean milieu. There is a suggestion here that Theobald not only knew Jonson's Timber: or Discoveries but that he had also absorbed something of Drummond of Hawthornden's depreciation of Jonson. And the man whom Theobald recognized early that others had borrowed from remains through The Censor, "This English Poet, whose Honour must never dye till Taste and Judgment are withered in our country" (No. 26, June 8, 1715). In all there are references to Shakespeare - the vast majority of which are lavish in their praise - in a total of eighteen Censor essays. As such, Theobald is the first essayist of his century to equal, if not surpass, Dryden's admiration for Shakespeare. Certain it is that the references to other authors are neither so frequent nor so detailed, and there can be no doubt that Theobald's mind was already saturated with Shakespeare's text, his times, and his probable opinions of writers who preceded and followed him. Surely, Theobald would have been eager in the extreme to recover any piece of information regarding the author who so fully occupied his thoughts as early as 1715. Contemporary with the first Censor essays, Theobald authored "The Cave of Poverty, a Poem" (1715). In it he illustrates his ability to imitate Shakespeare's language, an ability not noted by any recent commentator. Its title page informs us that it is "Written in Imitation of Shakespeare".2 And in the typically sycophantic idiom of other dedications of the age, Theobald writes to Charles, Earl of Halifax: I am still accountable to your Lordship for an Insolence, which I am wholly at a Loss to excuse; that being so far from a Master in the idiom of my own time, I should venture to start up an Imitator of the immortal Shakespeare: I know Your Lordship's discernment will easily perceive, that my Imitation is very Superficial; extending only to the borrowing of some of his Words, without being able to follow him in the Position of them, his Style, or his Elegance. Theobald's claim that his Shakespearian imitation is "very superficial" will not withstand close inspection of the poem. "The Cave 2

All quotations are taken from "The Cave of Poverty, A Poem" (London,

1715).

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of Poverty" consists of 121 stanzas of six lines each or 726 lines, the vast majority of which are iambic pentameter, and this is, of course, the stanza and the meter of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis". As the following selection of lines makes clear, he has also borrowed from Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece" and borrowed considerably more than his stanza and meter from "Venus and Adonis". 1. O unseen shame! invisible disgrace! O unfelt sore! crest-wounding, private scar! ("Lucrece", 827-828) O faulty Riot, and Crest-wounding Shame! ("Poverty", 205) 2. Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, ("Lucrece", 817) Feast-finding Minstrell's patrons! Harlot's Tools! ("Poverty", 294) 3. Love-lacking vestals, and self-loving nuns, ("V. & A.", 752) And pale Love-lacking Nuns of rigid Clare ("Poverty", 316) 4. These blue-vein'd violets whereon we lean ("V. & A.", 125) Who shone, like blue-vein'd Violets peering thro ("Poverty", 317) 5. Once more the ruby-colour'd portal open'd, ("V. & A.", 451) 'Till Morn her Ruby-colour'd Portal op'd ("Poverty", 431) 6. Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport. ("V. & A.", 24) To rob her of the time-beguiling tale ("Poverty", 438) 7. O comfort-killing Night, image of hell! ("Lucrece", 764) O Comfort-killing State! Heart-wounding Grief! ("Poverty", 455) 8. And not Death's ebon dart, to strike him dead. ("V. & A.", 948)

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Why may not Friendly Death come end my smart, When tir'd of Life, I court his Ebon dart ("Poverty", 461-462) 9. That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes! ("Lucrece", 637) Behold, how Friendship does askaunce his Eye! ("Poverty", 470) 10. Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch, ("V. & A.", 703) Ev'n as the Dew-Bedabled lev'ret flies ("Poverty", 481) 11. Look, as the fair and fiery-pointed sun, ("Lucrece", 372) Nor when the hot and fiery-pointed Sun ("Poverty", 493) 12. But when a black-fac'd cloud the world doth threat, ("Lucrece", 547) Whilst black-fac'd Clouds ride o'er the troubled Sky, ("Poverty", 509) 13. Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed ("Lucrece", 561) Inviting Echo's pity-pleading Strains ("Poverty", 515) 14. Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally, ("Lucrece", 554) Nurse of Repose! Night-waking Sorrow's Foe ("Poverty", 549) 15. And round about her tear-distained eye ("Lucrece", 1586) Possessing thee, the tear-distained Eye ("Poverty", 551) And since something of Hamlet seems to appear in virtually every work which Theobald authored, it is not surprising that poverty causes her victims to "bear the Whips and Scorns of Time" ("Poverty", 527). The above citation of lines demonstrates the frequency with which Theobald adopted both Shakespeare's language and the positioning of his phrases. Perhaps the idea of a cave of poverty

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came to Theobald through his reading Lucrece's complaint of the "Grim cave of death" ("Lucrece", 769). Surely the following stanzas bear many points of resemblance. Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night, Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, Eater of youth, false slave to false delight, Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare; Thou nursest all and murd'rest all that are. O, hear me then, injurious, shifting Time! Be guilty of my death, since of my crime. ("Lucrece", 925-931) Sister of Envy! Heart-afflicting Fiend Daughter of Hell! and Parent of Annoy! Stern Nurse of Discontents! Oppressions's Friend! Copesmate of Dolour! Enemy to Joy! When will thy fatal thirst of Mischief cease? When wilt thou let the harrass'd World have peace? ("Poverty", 65-71)

The borrowing includes considerably more than the word copesmate. The cadence of the stanzas is nearly identical, and the frequency in both of noun-preposition-noun, the piling up of substantives whose use is adjectival, the placing of two descriptive phrases per line, and the use of verbs only in the last lines suggest that Theobald could copy some of the more minute features of Shakespeare's style as early as 1715. Especially does his imitation of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" indicate extraordinary knowledge of Shakespeare when one remembers how little known and read was any of Shakespeare's non-dramatic poetry in the early Eighteenth Century. It may have been modesty that led Theobald to assert that his borrowing from Shakespeare was superficial. Again, he may have relied on his reader's almost certain ignorance of these two long narrative poems and hoped that the credit for felicitous phrasing would be his rather than Shakespeare's. However base or noble his motives, Theobald demonstrates as early as 1715 that he could weave numerous phrases, the cadence of the line, the stanza and the meter, and even the tone of Shakespeare into a new fabric. He ransacks an Ovidian love poem and another about rape to

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write about poverty, an unmentioned subject in either of the poems to which Theobald's "The Cave of Poverty" owes so much. Obviously, Theobald was fully capable of authoring a poem in imitation of Shakespeare in 1715, and perhaps he grew more ambitious when he 'revised' The Double Falsehood. (1727). Yet another work indicative of his interest in the Elizabethans is Theobald's scarcely remembered biography of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1719. Though his account is an abbreviated one, Theobald presents with impressive accuracy Raleigh's relationship with Queen Elizabeth, marriage, military and naval adventures, trial on charges of treason, long imprisonment, and death. Theobald's narrative of these events is in essential agreement with that of Williard M. Wallace's authoritative and recent biography Sir Walter Raleigh (1959). The factual basis of Theobald's narrative leaves no doubt that he had researched his material with great diligence, and his generous quotation from Raleigh's works testifies to his extensive reading in the Raleigh canon. Theobald's account per se of Raleigh's fascinating life is of secondary interest. One is far more concerned with the relationships which Theobald promises to reveal in his Raleigh biography. The title of this work draws our attention to the particulars of Theobald's narrative. It reads: Memoirs/ of I Sir Walter Raleigh',I His Life, his Military and Na/val Exploits, his Preferments/ and Death:I In which are Inserted,/ The Private Intrigues between the/ Count of Gondamore, the Spanish! Ambassador, and the Lord Salisbury,! Then Secretary of State.

Since Theobald claimed that a literary Anglo-Spanish relationship existed when Shakespeare read Cervantes, one is naturally anxious to investigate any other Anglo-Spanish connection which he suggests. Especially is such an investigation tempting when one remembers that Gondamor began his English ambassadorship in 1613, the same year that Cardenio was staged at Whitehall. The facts of the Gondamar-Salisbury alliance, however, are not quite as intimate as Theobald's title implies. It is true that Raleigh was imprisoned, brought to trial, and confined in the tower shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth through the unrelenting duplicity of Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury. The crafty Cecil had

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prepared for Raleigh's downfall far in advance of the fact through his secret correspondence with then James VI of Scotland, correspondence in which Cecil blackened Raleigh's name in every particular to the less than kingly James. On November 17, 1603, Raleigh was accused on several charges of treason and condemned to death in 1604. Under the initial charges of which he was found guilty in 1603, he was finally beheaded on October 29, 1618. Theobald writes of Raleigh's death: "That he fell a Sacrifice to the Spanish Faction has scarcely ever been doubted by Persons of Discernment." 3 Wallace comments of the matter that Raleigh "died a victim to Spanish vengenance and the pusillanity and spite of his own King". 4 It is fact, then, that Raleigh was imprisoned in 1604 through Cecil's influence with James and that he was finally beheaded in 1618 through Gondamor's influence with the King. Theobald is on unassailable grounds when he attributes Raleigh's downfall to the combined efforts of Salisbury and Gondamor. However, the private intrigues between Cecil and Gondamor which Theobald's full title leads us to expect are rather meagerly supplied in Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh. Theobald's closest suggestion of such intrigue is "Sir Walter ... had formerly disoblig'd Salisbury (then Sir Robert Cecil) by Obstructing ... a Peace which, by Salisbury's Mediation, working with the Spanish Ambassador, was proposed at the very Close of Queen Elizabeth's Reign" (p. 19). Since Gondamor is the only Spanish Ambassador named in Theobald's account, his unsuspecting reader assumes that Gondamor is the particular ambassador with whom Salisbury negotiated in 1603. The truth of the matter, and it is a truth never to be gleaned from Theobald's account, is that Robert Cecil died, after a lingering illness, on May 24, 1612 and Gondamor began his English ambassadorship in 1613. Algernon Cecil's authoritative biography of Robert Cecil makes this solitary mention of Gondamor:

3

Lewis Theobald, Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 1719), 30. All subsequent quotations follow the quoted material. 4 Willard M. Wallace, Sir Walter Raleigh (Princeton, New Jersey, 1959), 313-314.

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"Though Salisbury never crossed swords with him, he is nevertheless Salisbury's great opponent." 5 There were private intrigues at the English Court to be sure, but these schemes were concocted between Cecil and King James in one decade and between Gondamor and King James in another. The relationsip between the English secretary of state and the Spanish ambassador which Theobald's title suggests he will describe in detail was non-existent in fact. The accuracy of Theobald's life of Raleigh precludes the possibility that his biographer might have been ignorant of the following never-mentioned: the date of Cecil's death, the date of Gondamor's arrival in England, or the crucial role which King James played in Raleigh's downfall. Theobald implies that Cecil plotted with Gondamor to bring about the death of Raleigh. As such he suggests his first non-existent relationship between a Spaniard and an Englishman in 1613 Jacobean England. Perhaps he invented a second non-existent Anglo-Spanish relationship when he asserted that late in his career Shakespeare read Cervantes. Just as Theobald wrote a life of Cato in 1713 which its title page informs us was "Design'd for the / Readers / of / Cato, A Tragedy" so was Theobald's Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh prompted by the success of George Sewell's patriotic drama The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh (1719). In the play, Sewell makes a number of fantastic embroideries on history. Sewell probably omitted mention of King James'role in the downfall of Raleigh to avoid slight to the recently deceased Queen Anne, James' great-granddaughter, whose death in 1714 ended the Stuart dynasty in England, and Theobald followed Sewell's lead with equal taciturnity regarding James. Sewell, however, brings Gondamor and Salisbury, who never met in fact, together in four different scenes to plot Raleigh's death. Indeed, in III, ii Gondamor gives Salisbury a ring as token of their plan to disgrace Raleigh. Though the historical Salisbury had been dead nearly five years before Raleigh was released from the tower in 1617, in Sewell's play, Salisbury and Gondamor grumble together in IV, ii about Raleigh's release. Theobald perceived the popularity 5 Algernon Cecil, A Life of Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury 1915), 287.

(London,

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of The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh when it was first performed in January, 1719. Equally clear is that Theobald took advantage of the popularity of Sewell's play by writing The Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh ...In which are Inserted, the Private Intrigues between the Count of Gondamore, the Spanish Ambassador and the Lord Salisbury, then Secretary of State (1719). Theobald's alteration of Shakespeare's Richard II (1720) again demonstrates his ability to combine an interest in Renaissance literature with the success of a fellow-dramatist. The many similarities which exist between Sewell's Sir Walter Raleigh (1719) and Theobald's Richard 77(1720) are not to be credited to coincidence. Both plays were performed at Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and eight of the same actors and actresses which opened Sewell's play on January 16, 1719 also appeared in Theobald's play when it was performed eleven months later on December 10, 1719. More importantly, lewell's Sir Walter Raleigh is confined to the tower through his first four acts; Theobald's Richard II is confined to the tower throughout the play. Though the historical Salisbury's daughter Frances was a cripple and the historical Raleigh's son was killed in action in Guiania, in Sewell's play, Salisbury's daughter, Olvmpia, is in love with "young Raleigh". Olympia commits suicide by stabbing herself in V, iii when she is unable to convince her father that he should spare the elder Raleigh. Similarly, Theobald's added character, Lady Piercy [sic], daughter of Northumberland, commits suicide by stabbing herself off stage in V, iii when she is unable to convince her father that he should spare Piercy's lover, Aumerle, a character whose resemblance to "young Raleigh" is surely not accidental. Finally, the lachrymose Lady Raleigh and Richard's Queen weep their way through their respective plays, faithful to their husbands whose deaths will conclude both Sewell's Sir Walter Raleigh and Theobald's Shakespearian adaptation. It is then abundantly clear that Theobald's omission of relevant fact in his Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh (1719) and his departures from Shakespeare in Richard II (1720) owe more than a little to Sewell's The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh (1719). However, there are matters of interest in Theobald's Richard II other than those which reveal his propensity to reap financial

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reward from the success of a fellow Lincoln's-Inn-Fields playwright. Theobald's full title to his Shakespearian adaptation reads: TheI Tragedy/ o// King Richard the II;/ As it is acted at the/ Theatre/ in/ Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.j Alter'dfrom Shakespeare,! By Mr. Theobald.

Since the title page of The Double Falsehood reads: "Written Originally by W. Shakespeare; / and now Revised and Adapted to the Stage / by Mr. Theobald", it is useful to distinguish among the words alter, revise, and adapt. The O.E.D. confirms the Latin etymology of all three. Alter means "to make otherwise or different in some respect, ... without changing the thing itself". To adapt is "to modify for a new use". To revise, on the other hand, is "to look again or repeatedly at, look back, to see or behold". To alter a play is to change it less radically than to revise and adapt it, especially for any one aware of the etymology of the words, and Theobald is not to be charged with ignorance of Latin. Precisely how the reviser of The Double Falsehood looked repeatedly at and modified the Shakespearian work for a new use will be deferred till a later chapter, but Theobald's intention in his Richard II (1720) is definitely the production of a play which does not significantly change Shakespeare's Richard II. In his dedication to the Earl of Orrery, he echoes Heminge's and Condell's phrasing in the First Folio. They collected Shakespeare's plays "to procure his Orphanes, Guardians", and Theobald "recommends to [his Patron's] care an Orphan Child of Shakespeare" (Sig. A2).6 He writes, Whatever Disguise I may have put upon Her, I hope, She retains those strong Lines of her Family, which may entitle Her, as a Descendant from that Great Parent, to Your generous Protection. (Sig. A2) Theobald is well aware that he is altering a canonical play. As a result, he is freed from the burden which occupies him in his preface to The Double Falsehood of proving the play Shakespeare's, and he is at liberty to discuss other matters which interest him. One might reasonably expect an essay on Shakespeare's view of history, the relationship of Richard II to the Henry IV 6 All quotations from the alteration are taken from Lewis Theobald, The Tragedy of King Richard the II (London, 1720).

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plays, or perhaps some account of Shakespeare's use of his sources. Theobald's preface is nearly devoid of any considerations remotely connected with Richard II or any other history play. Instead, he argues the case for Shakespeare's reading knowledge of Greek and Latin. Theobald is confident that Ben Jonson "Spoke with the utmost Freedom of his Memory" when he wrote that Shakespeare "had'st small Latin and less Greek" ("Preface", A 2 ). For Theobald Jonson must exaggerate in his own favor in so pronouncing because Shakespeare, who was the Father of the British Stage ... could never want those Aids to Learning, which must be necessary for a Work of so extensive a Nature. He must Know many things from Others, who went before Him; as well as observe many from his own times; and invent, perhaps many more from his own Fancy. ("Preface", Aa2)v At this stage in his knowledge of Shakespeare, Theobald is clearly ignorant of the existence of Golding's Ovid (1567), N o r t h ' s Plutarch (1579), and Chapman's Homer (1598-1616) because he knows no other "Way how [Shakespeare] should come at the Knowledge of the Greek and R o m a n stories, any other Way than by understanding the Language of their writers" ("Preface", Aa2 v ). Though he was acquainted with Holland's work, he errs considerably in dating his Suetonius when he writes, "Dr. Holland, the laborious translator, and perhaps, the First general One, began upon the Greek and Latin Authors long after Shakespeare's decease" ("Preface",) Aa2 v ). This is of course a mistake because Holland's Suetonius appeared in 1606. The case for Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek, Theobald believes, rests most securely on Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida. Lucian in Greek is the model for Timon, and Troilus and Cressida came to Shakespeare directly from Homer. Theobald argues for the latter despite his knowledge of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseyde. Of Homer being the source he writes: There lies a fair Appeal, on this Head, to his character of Thersites, the importance of Antenor to the Trojans, the Challenge of Hector to the Grecian Camp, the Death of Patroclus, and a Multitude more of Instances, which, like Witnesses in a cause, might be brought to corroborate a single Fact by Variety of concurring Circumstances. ("Preface", Bb)

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One easily enough forgives Theobald his ignorance of Benoit de Ste.-Maure, Boccaccio, and Henryson. However, there is something less than admirable about his failure to mention that in The Iliad, Pandarus, Cressida, and Troilus are of minor importance to say the least. Pandarus receives only two mentions and Troilus is dismissed in a single line of lamentation at his death. Surely, Theobald argues that Homer in the original is the source for Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida upon impossibly slender evidence. After a liberal sprinkling of his preface with Greek quotations, Theobald writes: I begin to fear least the Number of Quotations in this Essay should give it an Air rather of Ostentation than Proof ... I could, with the greatest ease imaginable, produce about 500 passages from these plays to evidence his Intimacy with the Latin Gassicks. ("Preface", A4) At face value, this sounds like a typical overstatement on Theobald's part. However, he nearly made good his promise to produce these 500 passages when he edited Shakespeare, and in his 1733 edition he suggests throughout that Shakespeare had read a Greek or Roman author in the original despite his increased knowledge of the Renaissance translations of Greek and Roman authors. As suggested earlier, there may be a connection between Theobald's burning desire to prove - despite his growing evidence to the contrary - that Shakespeare had read Greek and Latin in the original and his desire to prove that Shakespeare had read Cervantes. He placed an inordinate value on learning, and wished to make the poet he most admired as educated as was Theobald himself. Throughout his career, he is always concerned with what Shakespeare might have read, and we see the full flowering of this concern in what is, after all, an inappropriate place for it, a preface to a play based on English, not Latin or Greek, history. In all fairness to Theobald, however, he does make a brief mention of his adaptation of the play to which his essay on Shakespeare's learning is joined. He writes: The many scatter'd Beauties, which I have long admir'd in His Life and Death of K. Richard the II., induced me to think they would have

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stronger Charms, if they were interwoven in a regular Fable. For this Purpose, I have made some Innovations upon History and Shakespear . . . I think there may be reserv'd a discretionary Power of Variation, either for maintaining the Unity of Action, or supporting the Dignity of the Characters. If the little Criticks will be angry at this, I have Patience to weather their 111 Nature: I shall stand excus'd among the better Judges. ("Preface", A3) Though Theobald omits mention of the influence of the drama Sir Walter Raleigh, his Preface tells us something of the changes he effected in his adaptation of Shakespeare. We know from it that his major concern was to strengthen the unities of time and place and to add what he thought would dignify the characters. The task he seems to have set for himself did not allow him (with very few exceptions) to stray beyond the limits of Shakespeare's Richard II. Just as in "The Cave of Poverty" he chooses to imitate primarily "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" rather than the canon at large, so in his Richard II he consciously confines himself to the text of the work he adapts rather than selecting lines from Shakespeare's other plays. In the process he reduces the original from 2500 to 1575 lines. Theobald's play opens with the Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Ross, and Lord Willoughby outside the tower in conversation about the ruinous state of English affairs. Richard's Irish Wars have proved unsuccessful, and Bolingbroke has returned from his banishment. Theobald's first lines are the Duke of York's, and he addresses his fellows: Heav'n of his Mercy! What a tide of Woes Comes rushing on this ruined Land at once.

(7-., I, i, 1-2)

In Shakespeare York responds to his servingman at his news of the Duchess of Gloucester's death: God for His mercy! What a tide of woes Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!

(S., II, ii, 98-99)

In Theobald, York goes on to silence the complaints of Ross and

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Willoughby - their sentiments are Northumberland's in Shakespeare: 'lis not the business of a Subject's Tongue Rashly to censure, and traduce his King; A thousand Flatt'rers sit within a Crown, Sway'd by whose Councils Richard may have err'd: But since Correction lyeth in his Hands That did the Fault, which we cannot correct, Put we our Quarrel to the Will of Heaven. (J., I, i, 45-51) Ross responds: And see our Rights and Royalties usurp'd, Pluck'd from our Arms perforce, and given away To upstart Unthrifts! To submit to this, You cannot call it Patience, but Despair; That which in mean Men we entitle Patience, Is pale, cold, Cowardice in Noble Breasts. (7*., I, i, 52-57) Surely this dialogue flows freely between York and Ross. Without a close inspection of Shakespeare's text, it would be unnoticed that Theobald has pasted lines together from wholly different contexts. In Shakespeare, John of Gaunt tells the Duchess of Gloucester (both characters are omitted by Theobald) regarding her husband's death: But since correction lieth in those hands Which made the fault that we cannot correct, Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven. (5., I, ii, 4-6) She answers him: That which in mean men we entitle patience Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

(5., I, ii, 33-34)

Later at his death, Gaunt warns Richard, "A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown" (S., II, i, 100). When Bolingbroke returns from banishment, he defends his actions to his Uncle York by asking him,

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Will you permit that I shall stand condemned A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties Plucked from my arms perforce and given away To upstart unthrifts? (S„ II, iii, 119-122) By giving Ross and Willoughby the statements of Bolingbroke and the Duchess of Gloucester, Theobald easily arranges for the defection of these characters to Bolingbroke's side, leaving York and Salisbury to carry on a dialogue about English affairs. This exchange takes place: Salisbury: In Wales, they say, the Bay-trees all are wither'd; The Meteors fright the fixed Stars of Heav'n; The pale-fac'd Moon looks bloody on the Earth And lean-looking Prophets whisper dreadful change: Signs that too oft forerun the Death of Kings. York: Ah! Richard! with wet Eyes and heavy Mind, I see thy Glory, like a shooting Star, Fall to the base Earth from the Firmament: Thy Sun sets weeping in the Lowly West. (T., I, i, 78-85) Since Theobald's smaller canvas naturally excludes the Shakespearian scene between the Earl of Salisbury and a Welsh Captain, he easily lifts their sentiments and puts them in the mouths of different characters. The Welsh Captain in Shakespeare tells Salisbury: The bay trees in our country are all withered, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven. The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth, And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. Salisbury responds: Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind I see thy glory like a shooting star Fall to the base earth from the firmament. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west. (S., II, iv, 8-21) With the entrance of Aumerle, Theobald ranges even farther

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afield for lines to heighten the speaker. Aumerle describes Bolingbroke to his father in this way: O I remember, when he first was banish'd, Such was his Courtship to the common People; How did he seem to dive into their Hearts, With humble and familiar Courtesie, And Patient under-bearing of his Fortune, As 'twere to banish their Affections with him. With, - thanks, my Country Men, my loving Friends, As England then were in Reversion His, And he the Subject's next Degree in Hope. (T., I, i, 92-100) If the poetry seems lofty, this is because Theobald has given Aumerle Richard's lines when he speaks to Green, Bagot, and Aumerle in Shakespeare's I, iv. If York's response to his son in Theobald ("The Task we undertake / Is numb'ring Sands, and drinking Oceans Dry" [T., I, i, 101-102]) seems fatalistic, this is because York is voicing the sentiments of Shakespeare's Green in II, ii, 145-146. When Aumerle, eager to prove his mettle against Bolingbroke, wishes to encounter him in a knightly trial Or meet him, were I ty'd to run a-foot, Ev'n to the frozen Ridges of the Alps, Or any more inhospitable Spot, Where ever Englishman durst set his Foot, (T., I, i, 111-114) Theobald has borrowed Aumerle's sentiments from Shakespeare's Mowbray - yet another excluded in the adaptation. Aumerle continues his animadversions against Bolingbroke: Never did Captive with a freer Heart Cast off the Chains of Bondage and embrace His golden, uncontrol'd Enfranchisement More than my dancing Soul would celebrate This Feast of Battle with my adversary! More welcome is the Stroke of Death to me, Than Bolingbroke to England.... Mischief o'erwhelm me, if I had not rather Sigh out my English Breath in foreign Clouds, Eating the bitter Bread of Banishment,

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Than bow my Neck to voluntary Shame, And court his Injuries! (T„ I, i, 120-134) Though Aumerle's speech in no way lacks consistency, Theobald has lifted from Mowbray: Never did captive with a freer heart Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement, More than my dancing soul doth celebrate This feast of battle with mine adversary. (S„ I, iii, 88-92) From Bushy as his death comes: More welcome is the stroke of death to me Than Bolingbroke to England. (S., Ill, i, 31-32) And even Bolingbroke himself contributes: Have stooped my neck under your injuries, And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds, Eating the bitter bread of banishment. CS„ III, i, 19-20) Though the reader familiar with Richard II will remember that York tells his Duchess of Richard's entrance into London late in the action, in no way does it seem inappropriate that Aumerle tell his father in Theobald's opening scene: As, in our Theatre, the Eyes of Men, After some well-grac'd Actor leaves the Stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his Prattle to be stale and tedious: Ev'n so, or with much more Contempt, their Eyes Did scowl on Richard: No Man cry'd Heaven save him! No joyful tongue gave him his Welcome home; But some from Windows, with unrev'rend Hands, Threw Dust and Rubbish on his Sacred Head; Which with such gentle Sorrow he shook off, His Face still combating with Tears and Smiles, That had not Heav'n for some strong Purpose steel'd The Wretches Hearts, they must perforce have melted, And Barbarism it Self have pity'd him. ( T I , i, 150-163)

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Only the reader with an extraordinary memory will recall that the lines: "Where rude misgoverned hands from windows' tops / Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard's head" (S., V, ii, 4-6) are those of the Duchess of York to her husband. Even the most begrudging critic must admit that Theobald's first 150 lines of his adaptation are a tour de force of rearrangement. He uses only five characters, two of whom exit after 70 lines, and makes a wholly coherent unity of speeches from Shakespeare's Duchess of York, Bushy, Mowbray, John of Gaunt, Green, and a Welsh Captain - none of whom appear in Theobald - as well as King Richard, Bolingbroke, Salisbury, York, and Northumberland - three of whom have not yet appeared on stage. Shakespeare's lines are taken from ten different scenes of his Richard II. No mere piddler of an adapter could make such a skillful change in Shakespeare's text, and it seems less than judicious to condemn the whole of Theobald's adaptation in these terms: "This farrago was proudly regarded by Theobald as a 'regular Fable' - but all his departures from history - and from the Shakespearian original - were dramatically disastrous." 7 Surely, this is to overlook Theobald's skill in the careful rearrangement of lines which are in no way inharmonious, many of which can be detected only by the closest comparison between Theobald's and Shakespeare's texts. Comparisons between Theobald's Richard II and The Double Falsehood are also illuminating. The most prominent similarity is to be found in the emphasis in both on young romantic love, complete with a father opposed to his daughter's marriage, but this similarity is to be found in a large number of other eighteenthcentury plays. It is not the identifying mark of a Theobald- authored drama. Though Leonora of The Double Falsehood does not use her dagger, she, like Lady Piercy and Lady Piercy's predecessor, Sewell's Olympia, is armed with one. Again the dagger would seem to be a stock-property of eighteenth-century romantic tragedy. However, we find more significant similarities between Aumerle's reading of a letter on stage and a similar letter-reading in The Double Falsehood. Alone Aumerle queries: 7 Kenneth Muir, "Three Shakespeare Adaptations", Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, VIII (1959), 240.

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What Terrors lurk within this mystic Scroll, That thus I'm seized with unacquainted Tremblings, I'd strain each Nerve To trace its Horrors, tho' the Knowledge blast me. [Reads] You have my Leave still to attend the Queen, but if you any farther listen to the Duke of Aumerle's Address, expect to be the Heir only of my Curses. Your Father, as you shall in This obey him, Northumberland (T:, II, i, 73-83)

In The Double Falsehood, Violante is alone on stage as she peruses the contents of an unwelcome message. She acknowledges: To Hearts like mine Suspence is Misery. Wax, render up thy Trust: Be the Contents Prosp'rous, or fatal, they are all my Due. [Reads] Our Prudence should now teach us to forget, what our Indiscretion has committed. I have already made one Step toward this Wisdom, by prevailing on Myself to bid you Farewell. 01, ii, 24-30)

After his letter-reading Aumerle cries "Poor Piercy" (II, i, 84), and after her letter-reading Violante laments "Wretched and betray'd! Lost Violante" (II, ii, 31). Curiously, both Aumerle and Violante read the letter containing disagreeable news slightly more than seventy lines into the second act of both plays. We know the addition is Theobald's in Richard II, and he would seem to repeat the device in The Double Falsehood. The most important difference between the plays lies in a comparison of their languages. Approximately fifty percent of the lines in Theobald's Richard II are Shakespeare's, and apart from removing all mention of God and a few other minor changes in diction, Theobald frequently uses a large number of Shakespeare's consecutive lines without changing a word. As a result, verses such as the following exist in Theobald's Richard II:

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Dear Earth, I do salute Thee with my Hand, Tho' Rebels wound Thee with their Horses Hoofs: As a long-parted Mother from her Child, Plays fondly with her Tears, and smiles in meeting, So weeping, smiling, greet I Thee, my Earth, And do Thee Favour with my Royal Hands. Feed not thy Sovereign's Foe, my Gentle Earth, Nor with thy Sweets comfort his rav'nous Sense: But let thy Spiders that suck up thy Venom, And heavy-gated Toads lye in their Way, Doing Annoyance to the treach'rous Feet Which with usurping Steps do trample Thee. Yield stinging Nettles to mine Enemies, And when they from thy Bosom pluck a Flow'r, Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking Adder, Whose double Tongue may with a mortal Touch Throw Death upon thy Sovereign's Enemies. Mock not my senseless Conjuration, Lord, This Earth shall have a Feeling, and these Stones Brave armed Soldiers, e'er her native King Shall falter under foul rebellious Arms. (J., I, i, 186-206)

There are many more examples from the adaptation of the canonical play of passages of this length and power. Indeed, Paul Bertram goes so far as to suggest that "If Shakespeare's play had been lost, one would still be able to identify the slightly altered deposition scene in Theobald's version, for example, as his."8 This seems a most difficult argument to substantiate, and Bertram merely makes the suggestion without any attempt to demonstrate it. But - and this is the point - no poetry in The Double Falsehood is equal to the best of Theobald's Richard II. Equally important, when Theobald is not using Shakespeare's lines in Richard //, he writes his own, and they are free from the wooly half-echoes of Shakespeare's other plays. Some of Theobald's own lines are of surprising poetic merit. Aumerle describes Richard's followers early in the action as: In number few, but rich in Estimation, Loyal, and far above the Summer-Flies That gild their Vanities in Rebellion's Sunshine. (J., I, i, 139-141) 8 Shakespeare and The Two Noble Kinsmen (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965), 192.

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Though this is not Shakespeare, it is an excellent imitation of his manner, and the imitation is made without direct borrowing from Shakespeare's text. The Double Falsehood abounds with random Shakespearian echoes. A single example here will illustrate the method. Violante asks: Who would have thought, that such poor Worms as they (Whose best Feed is coarse Bread; whose Bev'rage Water;) Should have so much rank Blood ? (IV, ii, 58-60) Lady Macbeth's "Yet who would have thought the old / man to have had so much blood in him ?" (V, i, 44-45) looms large behind Violante's lines. No ghosts of language fill Theobald's Richard II, and both its preface and its contents make clear that Theobald was in no way concerned with Shakespeare's authorship in his 1720 adaptation of Richard II. Theobald's copious references to Shakespeare in The Censor show us his deep-rooted and early appreciation of the poet later to claim most of his attention. "The Cave of Poverty" makes clear his ability to reweave Shakespeare's phrases in a new fabric. His Memoirs of Sir Walter Raleigh reveals his knowledge of Renaissance English history as well as his willingness to omit relevant facts and imply a non-existent relationship between a Spaniard and an Englishman. His Richard II shows us that Theobald would not scruple to borrow from a fellow-dramatist, but his Shakespearian adaptation - especially its opening scene - also demonstrates Theobald's remarkable ability to rearrange Shakespeare's lines and couple them with those of his own devising. The interest in and knowledge of Shakespeare and his contemporaries which Theobald's early works show us are great indeed, but his editing of Shakespeare reveals even more fully his deepening understanding of Shakespeare's text, times, sources, and contemporaries.

3 THEOBALD AS SHAKESPEARIAN EDITOR

Though Theobald's editing of English authors embraces the Posthumous Works of William Wycherly (1728), volume one as well as portions of volumes two and three of The Works of Mr. Francis Beaumont and Mr. John Fletcher in Ten Volumes (1750), marginal corrections used by Peter Whalley's edition of The Works of Ben Jonson (1756) as well as his editing of Shakespeare, only the latter is crucial to a consideration of the 'orphan' Cardenio. Theobald's Shakespearian editorship not only earned him the undying ire of the wasp of Twickenham and gave Pope his first chief of the dunces, it also supplied Theobald's contemporaries and subsequent generations with a most amazing knowledge of their greatest dramatists. It was in 1726 that he first published Shakespeare Restor'd: or, A Specimen of the Many Errors as well committed, as unamended, by Mr. Pope in his Late Edition of This Poet. Designed Not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet publish 'd. In his introduction to Shakespeare Restored, Theobald writes, "I shall venture to aim at some little share of Reputation in endeavoring to restore Sense to Passages in which no Sense has hitherto been found". 1 There is a prophetic quality to his additional comment that hereafter "Many will be Tempted to read this Poet with a more diligent eye" (p. vi). The restorer explains that he has selected Hamlet for emending purposes because this play is so frequently performed that it is assumed to be free of error, but as he 1 Shakespeare Restor'd (London, 1726), v. All subsequent quotations from this work immediately follow the quoted material.

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so capably demonstrates in the 132 pages of its 194 which he devotes to Hamlet, the corruptions in Hamlet are surely as great as elsewhere. His method, wherever he suggests an emendation, is to support it with copious quotations from other Shakespearian plays. Whenever an additional play is used to support an emendation, Theobald uses an Ibid., and the number of "Ibids" occasionally runs as high as XXII. But despite the pedantic appearance of the page - a pedantry for which Pope more than repaid him in The Dunciad- Theobald's corrections not only appear the more sensible to the modern reader but also the more familiar. It is here that "pious Bonds" first becomes "pious Bawds" (p. 27); "they clip us drunkards" becomes "they clepe us drunkards" (p. 30); "some vicious Mole of nature" becomes "some vicious Mould of nature" (p. 33); "these slight Sallies" becomes "these slight Sullies" (p. 63); and "Pity it is true" becomes "Pity 'tis 'tis true" (p. 65). And Theobald in 1726 as well as earlier makes very clear that he is fully capable of rectifying whatever he sets out to right. As Theobald's full title suggests, his Shakespeare Restor'd was occasioned by the edition of Shakespeare which Alexander Pope produced in 1723. As Thomas Lounsbury has written of Pope's Shakespeare, "Everything about it wa s excellent but the editing. Perhaps the proof-reading should be included in the exception; for there were blunders in that which in a work so pretentious were inexcusable."2 Despite Pope's claims of diligence that he had carefully collated early quarto and folio editions, he frequently took over Rowe's uncritical acceptance of the authority of the Fourth Folio. His statement in his preface "There is also subjoin'd a Catalogue of those first Editions by which the greater part of the various reading and of the corrected passages are authorised" 3 (I, xxiii) implies great industry. However, Pope, as he tells us "discharg'd the dull duty of an Editor" (I, xxii), and as one goes through his sumptuous and beautifully printed volumes, it becomes clear that dullness permeates nearly every aspect of 2

The Text of Shakespeare (New York, 1906), 82. Alexander Pope, ed., The Works of Shakespear in Six Volumes (London, 1723), I, xxiii. All subsequent quotations from this work immediately follow the quoted material. 3

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his editorship of Shakespeare. He explains only 120 words, and many of these are incorrectly defined. For example, he defines reechy {Much Ado, I, 523) which means 'smoke-begrimed' as "valuable"; in Lear's "All germains spill at once / That make ingrateful man" germains is explained as "forerunners" - i.e. all relations (III, 55) instead of seeds. Again, when in Hamlet the Ghost describes himself as "Unhousled, unanointed, unaneled" Pope defines unaneled as "no knell rung" (VI, 370) instead of the correct 'without benefit of extreme unction'. Further, when Pope is unable to explain a word, he frequently substitutes one more familiar to him without the slightest indication that he has alcered the text. Though he writes in his preface that he has labored "with a religious abhorrence of all Innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture", (I, xxii) clearly this is not the case. For example, when Lear roars to the elements, "You owe me no subscription", Pope supplies submission instead of subscription (III, 55). Or again in Richard III, when the Duchess laments: Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen And each hour's joy wrack'd with a week of teen.

Pope substitutes anguish (IV, 394) for teen despite the necessity for rhyme in this instance. And Pope's tinkering with the text involves considerably more than substituting words of his own selection. In all but ten plays, he removes lines from the text proper and relegates them to the bottom of the page. In this manner Othello's speech before the Venetian Senate omits: And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi; and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. (VI, 491)

Hamlet's self-denunciation as a rogue and peasant slave loses: A dull and muddy metled rascal peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause. (VI, 396)

Hotspur's description of the foppish lord is deprived of: Who there with angry, when it next came there, Took it in snuff.

(Ill, 200)

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Macbeth's anguished cries to sleep exclude: innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care (V, 540)

and The multitudinous sea incarnadine Making the green one red.

(V, 541) The scene of the drunken Porter in Macbeth is cast to the bottom of the page in its entirety (V, 541). And one may find similar examples in many other plays of Pope's arbitrary text-trimming. At times whole lines or even scenes are omitted as in the instances cited above. In many other cases Pope sought to regularize Shakespeare's lines to strict iambic versification, and he effected these changes in silence. In this manner, Hamlet soliloquizes: "Possess it merely that it should come to this" (VI, 356) instead of "Possess it merely. That it should come to this". Instead of "Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman", in Pope we read "Let me not think. Frailty thy name is woman" (VI, 356). And Theobald frequently complains of the "false Nicety of Ears against the license of Shakespeare's Numbers". 4 At times Pope offers an explanation for his omission of these "low and vicious parts and passages", {Preface, I, xxi) albeit the i nsufficient one of the undesirable material being but interpolations of the players. In other instances, he is silent. Little more than whim would seem to account for the many changes Pope makes. Perhaps he always imagined "the whole heaps of trash" the product of "meer Players" {Preface I, xix). These Elizabethan actors, Pope confidently informs us: were led into the Buttery by the Steward, not plac'd at the Lord's table, or Lady's toilette: and consequently were intirely depriv'd of those advantages they now enjoy, in the familiar conversation of our Nobility, 4 Lewis Theobald, ed., The Works of Shakespeare: In Seven Volumes. Collated with the Oldest Copies, and Corrected: with Notes, Explanatory, and Critical (London, 1733), V, 57. All subsequent quotations from this work immediately follow the quoted material.

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and an intimacy (not to say dearness) with people of the first condition. {Preface, I, xix)

Pope's ignorance of Elizabethan life makes its force felt in more ways than his profoundly silly comments on the dining habits of the actors. He seems to have been equally unaware of the grammatical habits of the age. He recognized neither the double comparison nor the double negative as acceptable sixteenth-century constructions. Consequently, in The Tempest, Prospero's statement that he is "more better / Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell" becomes in Pope "more, or better" (I, 6). In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony's charge that the wound which Brutus inflicted upon Caesar was "The most unkindest cut of all" becomes in Pope's text "The unkindest cut of all" (V, 270). And whenever a double negative appears, as for example in a nor and neither construction, the nor is changed to and without the slightest indication that these words are other than Shakespeare's. Several of Pope's editing efforts are in a special category, that of ludicrous textual blunders. In A Midsummer Night's Dream his stage direction requires: Enter Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed, and Four Fairies

(I, 112)

Throughout the scene Titania and Bottom converse with both the four fairies and Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed. To this tautology should be added the most famous of Pope's wrong guesses. In Henry V, Mistress Quickly's description of the death of Falstaff includes "his nose was as sharp as a pen" and what Pope deciphered as "a table of Greenfields" (III, 422). His explanatory note is a marvel of sagacity: his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a table of green fields. These words and a table of green fields are not to be found in the old editions of 1600 and 1608. This nonsense got into all the following editions by a pleasant mistake of the Stage-editors, who printed from the common piece-meal-written Parts in the Play-house. A Table was here directed to be brought in (it being a scene in a tavern where they drink at parting) and this direction crept into the text from the margin. Greenfield was the name of the Property man in that time who furnish'd implements etc. for the actors. A Table of Greenfield's.

(Ill, 422)

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In Pope's edition of Shakespeare there is surely God's plenty to restore, but before beginning a detailed description of Theobald's 1733 edition of Shakespeare, it seems best to distinguish between Theobald's methods and those of his great mentor. Though Theobald had learned much from the great Classical editor, Richard Bentley (1662-1742), his policies regarding the text differ radically from Milton's editor. Bentley had mistakenly assumed that the blind Milton had hired an amanuensis careless of poetic decorum and indeed even of sense, and the secretary's errors were increased by an editor who had not only made accidental mistakes but deliberately interjected faulty lines of his own devising. The results of Bentley's dual misconceptions were disastrous. In Corrections and Emendations on Paradise Lost (1730), Milton's supposedly faulty lines occupy sixty pages. At times Bentley's changes are minor: a singular noun becomes plural or a plural singular; one adjective may be substituted for another; a verb moved from one part of the line to another. In other instances, the changes are radical. For example of "Adam the goodliest man of men since born / His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve" (IV, 323-324) we read, "The Doctor finds fault with the expression and has disposed it in the following manner, tho he thinks the whole is silly, superfluous, and spurious: 'Adam a goodlier Man than Men since born / His Sons, and fairer than his Daughters Eve'." 5 Or we find these changes: "No light, but rather darkness visible" (I, 63) becomes "No light, but rather a transpicuous gloom" (p. 10). "Hell heard the insufferable noise, Hell saw / Heav'n ruining from Heaven" (VI, 867) becomes "Hell heard the hideous cries and yells. Hell saw / Heav'n tumbling down from Heav'n" (p. 38). Bentley believed the following lines the work of the incompetent editor, not the poet: More lovely than Pandora, w h o m the G o d s E n d o w ' d with all thir gifts, and O t o o like In sad event, when to the unwiser Son of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd 5 Richard Bentley, Corrections and Emendations on Paradise Lost (London, 1730), 23. All subsequent quotations from this work immediately follow the quoted material.

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Mankind with her fair looks, to be aveng'd On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire. (IV, 714-719) Perhaps the absurdity of Bentley's editorial policy is best illustrated, not so much by his actual changes in the last lines of Milton's poem, but in his defense of this alteration. The poignant, They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took thir solitary way becomes the far more sprightly, They hand in hand with social steps their way Through Eden took with heavenly comfort cheered. Bentley queries and comments on these lines: Why wandering? Erratic steps? Very improper; when in the line before, they were guided by Providence. And why slow, when Eve professed her readiness and alacrity for the journey? And why their solitary way, when even their former walks in Paradise were as solitary as their way now, there being nobody besides them two, both here and there ?6 A.E. Housman's gravely ironic: "Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God's ways to man" is justifiably famous. Less well known is this Classicist's terse observation of Bentley's alterations, "There is a sort of savage nobility about his firm reliance on his own bad taste." 7 Theobald's reaction to Bentley's Paradise Lost is preserved in a letter wherein he wrote to Warburton on March 21, 1731/32: I had a very great veneration for him as a Classical Critick; and was very much afraid of him descending to the levell of Women and Children ... He has not infrequently, you know, run riot on the dead Languages; but here ... he has outdone his usual Outdoings.8 Yet to at least one of their witty contemporaries Bentley and Theobald are linked. David Mallet wrote of Bentley in 1733: 6 Cited in J. Churton Collins, "The Porson of Shakespearian Criticism", Essays and Studies (London, 1895), 285. 7 "Introductory Lecture", Selected Prose, John Carter, ed. (Cambridge, 1961), 14. 8 Cited in Richard Foster Jones, Lewis Theobald (New York, 1919), 299.

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Yet he, prime pattern of the captious art, Out-tibbalding poor tibbald, tops his part Holds high the scourge o'er each fam'd Author'd head, Nor are their graves a refuge for the Dead. To Milton lending sense, to Horace wit, He makes 'em write what never poet writ: The Roman Muse arraigns his mangling pen And Paradise, by him, is lost agen.9 Significantly, David Mallet's full title reads as follows: Of Verbal Criticism: An Epistle to Mr. Pope Occasioned by Theobald's Shakespear and Bent ley's Milton. Such linkage is wildly misleading. Obviously with Bentley's mistakes in mind, Theobald emphasizes the following of his editorial policies in 1733: Where-ever the Author's sense is clear and discoverable, ... I have not by any Innovation tamper'd with his Text; out of an Ostentation of endeavoring to make him speak better than the old Copies have done. Where, thro' all the former Editions, a Passage has labour'd under flat Nonsense and invincible Darkness, if, by the Addition or Alteration of a Letter or two, I have restored to Him both Sense and Sentiment, such Corrections, I am persuaded, will need no Indulgence. And whenever I have taken a greater Latitude and Liberty in amending, I have constantly endeavoured to support my Corrections and Conjectures by parallel Passages and Authorities from himself, the surest Means of expounding any Author whatsoever. (Preface, I, xliii) So strongly did Theobald feel about his corrections that he writes, "It will appear, my Emendations are so far from being arbitrary or capricious, that They are establish'd with a very high Degree of moral Certainty" {Preface, I, xlii). Again, he gives as his reason for attaching copious notes to the text, a desire to insure the variously amended passages retain "a State of Purity and Integrity not to be lost or forfeited" (Preface, I, xlv). Theobald's edition of Shakespeare consists of seven volumes and contains only the plays included in the First Folio of 1623. Though he occasionally makes reference to Pericles, several of the other apocryphal plays included in the Third Folio of 1664, and to The Two Noble Kinsmen, he did not see fit to include them. 9

Of Verbal Criticism (London, 1733), 10.

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And as has already been mentioned, he omits The Double Falsehood. Indeed apart from one note to Henry VI, Part / in which he argues for the integrity of Suffolk's "I could be well content / To be mine own attorney in this case" on grounds that a similar construction appears in "a posthumous play of our Author's which I brought upon the Stage. Double Falsehood: 'Nought, but itself, can be its parallel' " (IV, 188), there is no other reference to the play. And even in this solitary note in which he mentions The Double Falsehood, the play is not the focus of Theobald's interest for he includes similar constructions from eleven other works. It seems of some significance that after citing passages from Two Gentlemen of Verona and Hamlet he includes similar constructions from Beaumont's and Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, King and No King, and Bonduca before mentioning The Double Falsehood and he follows its mention with passages from Plautus, Ovid, Seneca, and Terence. He would seem in this instance to work what he considered the most immediately authoritative through the least likely to support the particular Shakespearian construction for which he argues. Again, it seems significant that "None but itself can be its parallel" has a variant first word in the line. In the first edition of The Double Falsehood, it appears as None, and in Theobald's note to Henry VI, Parti, it has become the more poetic Nought. Equally important, this line is the selfsame one which Pope attacks so mercilessly in both Bathos or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728) and the Variorum Dunciad (1729). Theobald states, "I have produced these Authorities, in Reply to a Criticism of Mr. Pope's; because in the Gaiety of his Wit and good Humour, he was pleas'd to be very smart upon me" (IV, 188). It is Pope, then, not the posthumous play of Shakespeare, that especially concerns Theobald in the one note in which he mentions The Double Falsehood in his Shakespearian editorship. In a similar context, it seems of some interest to observe that Theobald suggests the possibility of Shakespeare's familiarity with Don Quixote in two notes. His first reference occurs in a note to The Winter's Tale. Following the Clown's "But I am not to say, it is the sea; for it is now the sky; betwixt the firmament and it, you cannot thrust a bodkin's point", Theobald affixes this note:

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I will not pretend to be positive, our Author had Don Quixote here in his Eye, but Sancho facetiously says something very like this, upon the sudden Mutability of a Woman's Resolutions. Entre el si y el no de la Muger no me atrevería yo á poner una punta d"alfiler. Between a Woman's ay and no I would not undertake to thrust a pin's point. a i l , 110) Theobald's second reference to Cervantes occurs in King Lear. Following Edgar's "O, undistinguished space of woman's will", Theobald inserts a lengthy note which concludes with: This Sentiment may not be ill explain'd further from what honest Sancho, in Don Quixote, with infinite Humour says upon the Subject. Entre el Si y el No de la muger, no me atrevería yo á poner una punta d" alfiler. Betwixt a Woman's Yea and No, I would not undertake to thrust a Pin's Point. (V, 199) Here we see the same habit of thought which Theobald so copiously displays in his Censor essays and his Preface to Richard II: the desire to trace continuity and cement connections in the past. And his 1733 edition of Shakespeare is filled to overflowing with similar observations regarding Shakespeare's reading knowledge of Greek and Latin. Echoing his own phrasing of his note on Don Quixote in The Winter's Tale, he writes of a passage in All's Well that Ends Well: I won't pretend that Shakespeare is here treading in the steps of Aeschylus; but that poet has something in his Agamemnon, which might very well be a foundation to what our author has advanced. (Ill, 14) Or of verses in Antony and Cleopatra he writes: I will not venture to affirm these an imitation from the Classics, but I'll quote two hemistichs that might very probably have given rise to our author's reflexion on this Topick. (VII, 90) Or of lines in Love's Labour's Lost, he suggests: I dare not affirm this to be an imitation, but it carries a mighty resemblance ... to the beginning of Juvenal's first Satire. (II, 234) There are, in effect, a staggering number of suggestions that Shakespeare has read a particular author. Most of them, to be certain,

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deal with Theobald's greatest non-English interest, the Classics, but he has sufficient veneration for Don Quixote to wish to connect Shakespeare's name with it. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, Cervantes' reputation in eighteenth-century England is a very great one. It surely helps to explain why Theobald argues for Shakespeare's having read Don Quixote; it may also help to explain the existence of The Double Falsehood.

In all fairness, however, there are only three notes in Theobald's edition of Shakespeare which directly relate to the CardenioDouble Falsehood problem, and this paucity of information suggests that The Double Falsehood was much removed from the forefront of Theobald's interest by 1733. However, his seven volumes contain a total of 1354 notes or an average of 36.5 per play, and from the wealth of information which these 1354 notes reveal, certain it is that Theobald had enormous knowledge of the Shakespearian manner. We find several instances of his skill in supplying missing lines of Shakespeare or rearranging his lines. In Measure for Measure, the Duke's speech to Escalus, Theobald finds "an unmeasurable, inharmonious Verse ... how lame is the Sense" (I, 311). He changes Then no more remains: Put that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work

to Then no more remains, But that to your Sufficiency you add Due Diligency, as your Worth is able; And let them work. (I,. 312)

In The Merchant of Venice, he finds Launcelot's speech a piece of stubborn nonsense and inserts the words contained within the brackets: Well, if any Man in Italy have a fairer Table, which doth [promise good Luck, I am mistaken. I durst almost] offer to swear upon a Book, I shall have good fortune.

(II, 25)

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In The Taming of the Shrew, Theobald notes the existence of an incomplete half line, and he supplements the deficiency in Hortensio's statement by inserting the words contained within the brackets: "[She is a Shrew, but] wrangling Pedant" (II, 311). Again in Titus Andronicus, he finds, " 'Villain alive, and as he is', surely can never be right" (V, 382). He substitutes "damned as he is" for "as he is". We see an example of his skillful rearrangement of lines in Coriolanus. Pope's text contains: Never sound more: when drums and trumpets shall I' th' field prove flatterers, let courts and cities Be made all of false-faced soothing. When steel grows soft, as the parasite's silk, Let him be made an overture for th' wars: No more, I say; for that I have not wash'd My nose that bled, or soil'd some debile wretch, Which without note here's many else have done, You shout me forth in acclamations hyperbolical, As if I lov'd my little should be dieted In praises, sauc'd with lies. (V, 116-117) Theobald observes of this speech, "Many of the Verses in this truly fine Passage are dismounted, unnumerous, and imperfect: and [one] is no less than two foot and a half too long. For this Reason I have ventur'd to transpose them to their Measure" (VI, 28). The result of his rearrangement is as follows: May these same Instruments, which you profane, Never sound more! when drums and trumpets shall I' th' field prove flatterers, let camps, as cities Be made of false-fac'd soothing! When Steel grows Soft, as the parasite's silk, let Hymns be made An overture for th' wars! - No more, I say; For that I have not wash'd my Nose that bled, Or soil'd some debile wretch, which, without note Here's many else have done; you shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical; As if I lov'd, my little should be dieted In praises, sauc'd with lies. (VI, 28-29) Only a skillful editor, ever mindful of the sense as well as the sound

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of Shakespeare, could supply and rearrange lines with the infinite grace which characterizes these changes. Though Theobald's reputation as an editor rests primarily on his near genius for slight emendation, he was equally capable of supplying much more. Though much sport has been made of Theobald's extravagant claims for his readings in Elizabethan literature, none of his contemporaries begins to equal him in this regard. Not only was he one of the few scholars of his day with a reading knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, but his notes to Shakespeare make equally clear that he was quite familiar with Middle English, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian as well as the major literature in these languages which Shakespeare might have read. To be certain, his edition of Shakespeare is marred by his never-ceasing efforts to prove that the dramatist knew Greek and Latin. However, Theobald was very much aware of the importance of the Elizabethan translations of the Classics. He knew, as Rowe, Gildon, and Pope did not, that The Menaechmi of Plautus was translated into English. Though he errs in affixing the translation date as 1515, he nonetheless reminds his reader of the translation in the most appropriate place for it, his first note to The Comedy of Errors (III, 4). He was equally familiar with North's translation of Plutarch, and in a note to Antony and Cleopatra, we read: because our Author possibly might not have dealt with Plutarch in the Original, I'll subjoin the Version of this Passage from the old English edition publish'd in Shakespeare's time. (VI, 232)

Likewise, he knew that Shakespeare "was a most diligent Reader" (II, 416) of Holinshed, and Theobald himself adequately demonstrates his own great familiarity with this historian. We find Hall's Chronicle mentioned in connection with Richard II (III, 286) and Henry V (IV. 51). In a note subjoined to Henry VIII, Theobald correctly states that "Shakespeare in all his Historical Plays ... had [Holinshed] always in Eye, wherever he thought fit to borrow any Matter from Him" (V, 46). Not only is Holinshed mentioned as a source of King Lear, but Theobald also assumed Shakespeare's knowledge of The True Chronicle History of King Leir (V, 217). He seems to have been the first of his contemporaries

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(neither Langbaine nor Pope was informed) to connect Hamlet with Saxo Grammaticus' Historia Danica, and as a proof that the Scandinavian work provides the major outlines of Shakespeare's play, Theobald includes a generous account of the adventures of the "Hero Amlethus; his Father, Horwendillus; his Uncle, Fengo; and his Mother, Gerutha" (VII, 226). Though Pope first connects Cinthio with Measure for Measure and Othello and Bandello with Romeo and Juliet, Theobald has far more detailed information concerning Shakespeare's knowledge of the Italian novels. He knew Cinthio Giraldi's Hecatommithi was the particular work which had supplied Shakespeare with the major outlines of Measure for Measure (I, 398). However, Theobald is also aware of George Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, its printing in 1578, and he assumes that Shakespeare knew the "execrable mean Stuff" (I, 399) of Whetstone. Theobald sees the essential difference between Cinthio and Shakespeare when he comments of Othello, "The Italian seems to have design'd his Tale a Document to young Ladies against disproportion'd Marriages ... Our Poet inculcates no such Moral" (VII, 371). Though he incorrectly assumes the source of As You Like It to be Chaucer's Legend of Gamelyn (II, 187), his conjecture is closer to the truth of the matter than that of his contemporaries. The source is Lodge's Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie which Lodge in part based on The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, a Middle English poem incorrectly attributed to Chaucer. However, Theobald was acquainted with Lodge's book of poems Rosalind and suspected that this pastoral poetry is satirized in As You Like It (II, 226). When one considers the rudimentary material that would have been available to any early eighteenth-century commentator, Theobald's discovery of Shakespeare's sources is amazing. Though Pope laughs long and hard in The Dunciad for "all such reading as was never read", as George Steevens wrote in 1788, "These strange and ridiculous books which Theobald quoted, were unluckily the very books which Shakespere himself had studied." 10 10 George Steevens, "Advertisement Prefixed to the Second Edition", Prolegomena to the Dramatick Writings of Will. Shakespeare (London, 1788), 184. Hereafter cited as Prolegomena.

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However the credit for having made these valuable discoveries has not always gone to Theobald. D. Nichol Smith in 1903 was apparently so contemptuous of Theobald that he never bothered to read his edition of Shakespeare. If he had, he might have been less sparing in his praise of Samuel Johnson's source discoveries in 1765. Specifically, Smith would surely have omitted: It is especially remarkable that Johnson, who is not considered to have been strong in research, should be the first to state that Shakespeare used North's translation of Plutarch. H e is the first also to point out that there was an English translation of the play on which the Comedy of Errors was founded... There is no evidence how he came by this knowledge. The casual and allusive manner in which he advances his information would seem to show that it was not of his own getting. 11

And after praising Johnson for Theobald's discoveries, Smith confidently asserts of Theobald, "When we have spoken of his diligence, we have spoken of all for which, as an editor, he was remarkable. Pope had good reason to say of him ... that Pains, reading, study are their just pretense, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. 12

This is very far indeed from the truth of the matter. In addition to Theobald's amazing source discoveries, he provides us with a wealth of other material invaluable to the study of Shakespeare. Though Theobald's claim to have read "800 old English plays" (Preface, I, lxviii) is clearly an exaggeration (he omits this mention in his second edition of 1740), it is erroneous to dismiss this as a wholly idle boast. Virtually all of Shakespeare's later eighteenthcentury editors fall into the popular error of underestimating Theobald's vast reading. But his edition contains staggering evidence of his thorough knowledge of Shakespeare's dramatic predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. Usually it is assumed that Charles Lamb's Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets (1808) first brought to light Shakespeare's forgotten contemporaries, but Theobald had read them with great diligence nearly a hundred years earlier. His usual method of introducing these then forgotten 11 D. Nichol Smith, "Introduction", Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare (Glasgow, 1903), xx. 12 Smith, li.

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plays is to follow his list of quotations from other Shakespearian works which support the authority of the emendation proposed with the questionable word in the play of a contemporary author. Though an overwhelming number of these citations is taken from the works of Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher (the Elizabethan dramatists other than Shakespeare most familiar to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century), Theobald also cites Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Preston's Cambises, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part II, Dekker's Westward-Hoe, Webster's Duchess of Malfi, Ford's Love's Sacrifice, Marston's Antonio and Mellida, the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John in Two Parts and The Famous Victories of Henry V, the collaborative Merry Devil of Edmonton and The Sun's Darling, Day's Law Tricks and Solimon andPerseda. And the enumerative list of the works of Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher cited in Theobald's notes is indeed a long one. Of Jonson it includes: Every Man in His Humour, Every Man out of His Humor, The Poetaster, Masque of Augures, Masque of Gypsies, A Tale of A Tub, The Case is Altered, The Devil is an Ass, Bartholomew Fair, The Silent Woman, The Magnetick Lady, Cynthia's Revels, Catiline, as well as several of his non-dramatic works and translations. The mention of Beaumont and Fletcher swells to these staggering proportions: The Spanish Curate, Bonduca, Passionate Madman, Faithful Shepherdess, Sea-Voyage, Bloody Brother, Scornful Lady, Woman Pleased, The Maid in the Mill, Tamer Tamed, Monsieur Thomas, The Coxcomb, Pilgrim, MadLover, Noble Gentleman, The Maid's Tragedy, Queen of Corinth, King and No King, Cupid's Revenge, Beggar's Bush, A Wife for a Month, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Wild Goose Chase, Captain, and Custom of the Country. And in each of these works and without benefit of concordance or computer, Theobald locates the use of words among the Elizabethans which parallel Shakespeare's use. In addition, he frequently cites nondramatic works such as Stow's Survey of London, Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, Fox's Book of Martyrs, and Mandeville's Travels to illuminate Elizabethan knowledge and familiar habits of thought. All in all, one is on very dangerous grounds when chiding Theobald for "all such reading as was never read". It would seem that he,

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like Samuel Johnson, had grappled with whole and relevant libraries. The richness, exuberance, and infinite variety of Elizabethan life come magically alive in Theobald's notes. In Much Ado about Nothing, he explains Dogberry's "They say, he wears a key in his ear, and a lock hanging by it" with this comment: One of the most fantastical Modes of that Time was the indulging a favourite Lock of Hair, and suffering it to grow much longer than all its Fellows; which they always brought before ... ty'd with Ribbands or Jewels.... The Key in the Ear might be suppos'd literally: For they wore Rings, Lockets, and Ribbands in a Hole made in the Ear. (I, 476)

In The Winter's Tale, Theobald explains Autolicus' "Let me be unroll'd, and my name put in the Book of Virtue" by a reminder that "Begging Gipsies, etc. in the Time of our Author were in Gangs, that had something of the Regularity of an incorporated Body" (III, 119). In King John, he illuminates these obscure lines: my Face so thin That in mine Ear I durst not stick a Rose Lest Men should say, Look where three-farthings goes.

with a detailed explanation of the coins issued in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, noting that "these Pieces all had her Head, and were alternately with the Rose behind, and without the Rose" (III, 172). In The Merry

Wives of Windsor, Theobald illustrates

the Page's "I will not believe such a Cataian, tho' the Priest o'th Town commended him for a true man", with an account of Captain Martin Frobisher's voyages, his discovery of a passage to Cataia, and a "Project [which] fell so low in Repute, that Cataians and Frobishers became By-words for ... vain Boasters" (I, 246). In Macbeth, Macbeth's invocation to "feeling night" is nicely illuminated by Theobald's wide knowledge of Elizabethan sports. He writes: [Feeling] is a Term in Falconry, when they run a thread thro' the Eyelids of a Hawk first taken, so that she may see very little ... to make her the better endure the Hood. This they call, feeling the Hawk. (V, 428)

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In Othello, Othello's "The Hearts of old, gave hands; / But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts", Theobald explains by a detailed account of the extravagant knighting habits of James I (VII, 446). At times, we find an interesting glance backwards in Theobald. In Henry VI, Part I, he illuminates Gloucester's vilification of the Bishop of Winchester in "Thou, that giv'st indulgences to sin" with an account of the brothels on the bankside at Southwark which were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. Theobald continues: The Veneral Tumour, call'd a Winchester-goose, deriv'd its name from that Bishop giving Dispensations to Strumpets. Nor were Harlots alone permitted to exercise their Function at the Bankside; but Male-Bauds were likewise indulg'd to keep publick Houses for the Reception of such Cattle. (IV, 122)

An equally interesting note accompanies Othello's line "Naked in bed Iago and mean no harm". Theobald describes a curious religious sect of the early Church who had made their Vows ... of Chastity; and as the extreamest trial of their Virtue, scrupled not to lie naked together in Bed. Some had been excommunicated for it of the female Sex, who yet stuck to their Innocence, and offer'd to undergo any Trials of their Virginity... Some of the sect, if I remember right, were detected and brought to Punishment in [Shakespeare's] Time. (VII, 453)

Doubtless David Mallet had such notes as the above in mind when he termed Theobald "Thou sober pimp to lechery", and continued: Where antient Authors hint at things obscene The Scholiast speaks out broadly what they mean.13

Mallet would have us believe that Theobald pointed out only the obvious or the obscene in Shakespeare, and nothing of course could be further from the truth of the matter. In a note to The Merchant of Venice, Theobald comments on the frequency with which Shakespeare cites scripture (II, 6). In a note to Julius Caesar, he comments on the importance of music to the Elizabethans, 13

Mallet, 12.

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observing of it, "where Musick is either actually used or its power describ'd, 'tis always said to be ... to calm and allay all kind of Perturbations" (VI, 133). We also find his praise and knowledge of the function of music in a note to Twelfth Night (II, 482). Surely, no one could doubt that we are decidedly the richer for Theobald's copious and illuminating comments on the Elizabethan scene. Perhaps of greatest value in Theobald's edition of Shakespeare is the way in which he used his vast knowledge of Shakespeare's world to render intelligible his text. Even the most begrudging commentator on "piddling Tibbald" has called attention to his skill in emendation. J. Churton Collins calls attention to the fact that the "Globe" Shakespeare makes use of 309 emendations initially suggested by Theobald. 14 Though an exact count of the number of Theobald emendations likely to be found in any modern edition of Shakespeare is rather beside the point, it is of some interest to note that in The Tempest Hardin Craig follows Theobald's suggestion rather than Pope's slightly more than 33-1/3% of the instances wherein Theobald and Pope differ. On this basis, the figure of 309 is a conservative estimate of the readings which modern editors owe Theobald. That number may well be as high as 350 or 400. Many of the readings which modern editors owe Theobald are too insignificant when quoted out of context to be of interest. That Pope's edition contains "Each putter out on five for one" (I, 52); Theobald's "Each putter out of five for one" (I, 50); and Craig's "Each putter out of five for one" (Tempest, III, iii, 47) is not likely to prove much more than soporific fare for anyone. Even Theobald himself occasionally remarks, "Tis true, this Reading is corrupt; but the Corruption is so very little remov'd from the truth of the Text, that I can't afford to think well of my own Sagacity for having discover'd it" (I, 41). Occasionally, he also remarks: "I am afraid I betray'd him [Pope] into the Error by an absurd Conjecture of my own in my Shakespeare Restored, (V, 193). But on the whole Theobald supports his emendations with great skill and vigor, and many of them are of considerable interest, 14

Collins, 311.

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particularly to the naive reader who assumes the text of Shakespeare has always been the familiar one he knows. How far this is from the truth of the matter can be shown by the following examples of Theobald's famous emendations. Though his "a' babbled" emendation still merits an occasional objection, the brilliance of Theobald's suggestion has surely never been doubted. In a passage already quoted earlier, Pope makes the ludicrous suggestion that "a Table of Mr. Greenfield's" had mistakenly found its way into the text wherein Mistress Quickly describes the death of Falstaff. Theobald knew, as Pope did not, that stage directions never contain the name of the property man, and besides, Pistol and his comrades are "on their feet, and just setting out for France" (IV, 31). Theobald reads "a' " as a Northern dialectical form of he and substitues a "b" for a "t". With these very subtle and slight changes, Falstaff "babied of green fields", meaning that he spoke "like dying Persons, when they are losing the Use of Speech" (IV, 31). Surely, this suggestion is not implausible. What could be more likely ? The witches in Macbeth are "weyward" (V, 521) in Pope's Shakespeare. In Theobald, they become the more familiar "Weird sisters, hand in hand" (V, 392). Theobald knew, as Pope did not, that weyward means "perverse, froward, moody, obstinate, untractable" (V, 392), and this is a highly improbable epithet for the witches to adopt for themselves. Weird on the other hand means "Fates or Destinies" (V, 393). It is found in Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida in this context: "But O Fortune, executrice of weirdes" (V, 393). Further, Holinshed (Shakespeare's source for Macbeth) uses the word weird in several instances to characterize the witches. And Macbeth contains several other examples of Theobald's genius for emendation. Pope's "This bank and school of time" (V, 533) becomes in Theobald "This bank and Shoal of time", and shoal means "This Shallow, this narrow Ford of humane Life, opposed to the great Abyss of Eternity" (V, 405). Pope's "We have scorch'd the snake, not kill'd it" (V, 554) becomes in Theobald "We have scotch''d the snake" meaning "to notch, slash, hack, cut" (V, 426). Pope's "Yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to study death" (V, 593), but in Theobald they light the

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way to "dusty death", meaning "Death which reduces us to Dust and Ashes" (V, 466). Other examples of Theobald's skill in emendation are easily located. In Pope's Julius Caesar, Brutus asks Lucius: "Is not tomorrow, boy, the first of March" (V, 237). In Theobald, Brutus inquires after "The Ides of March" on grounds that despite Brutus' most contemplative nature, he could not be "mistaken a whole Fortnight in the Reckoning" (VI, 143). In Cymbeline, Pope's lines contain "Swift, swift, you Dragons of the Night! That Dawning / May ope the raven's eye" (VI, 152) with bear given as an alternate reading for ope in the margin. Theobald challenges Pope to produce any authority for ope. Clearly it is of Pope's own devising. Theobald rejects bare on grounds that dawn opens the lark's, not the raven's eye, but for dawn to bear the raven's eye, argues Theobald, means "It should rise, and shew that Colour. N o w the Raven's Eye is remarkably grey: and grey ey'd, tis known, is the Epithet universally join'd to the Morning" (VI, 371). In Pope, Hamlet wishes that "the Everlasting had not fixt / His cannon 'gainst self-slaughter" (VI, 355). In Theobald, the Everlasting is far less pugnacious and his canon opposes suicide. Theobald argues that "Heaven had fix'd its Injunction rather than its Artillery" o n grounds that a "Cannon is said to be fix'd ... when the Enemy become Masters of it and nail it down" (VII, 236). In Pope's Titus Andronicus, Marcus speaks of hands which "rear'd aloft the bloody battel-ax, / Writing destruction o n the enemies castle" (V, 470). In Theobald, these same hands write destruction on the enemy's casque (V, 344). His note clarifies: i.e. an Helmet; from the French Word, une Casque. A broken k in the Manuscript might easily be mistaken for th, and thus a Castle was built at once. But I think it is much more sensible to split an Helmet with a Battle-axe, than to cut down a Castle with it. (V, 344). However, Hardin Craig, in this instance, would rather err with Pope than shine with Theobald. The point is not that all subsequent editors have embraced Theobald's suggested readings. In all modern editions of The Tempest Ariel still sings "Where the bee sucks there / suck I " as he did in Pope (I, 68). Theobald's "Where the bee lurks,

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there / Lurk I" (1,66) has never been adopted. However, Theobald's reasoning for this reading shows the same lucidity that we find in support of emendations which have stood the test of time and the scrutiny of numerous editors. Theobald queries of Ariel's line, "Could Ariel, a Spirit of a refin'd aetherial Essence, be intended to want Food? Besides the sequent lines rather countenance Lurk" (I, 66). And neither this question nor the many other statements and queries which fill Theobald's 1354 notes to his 1733 edition of Shakespeare are the product of a dunce. Rather, whether accepted or rejected by later editors, both his emendations and comments in support of his suggested readings invariably reveal an editor acutely aware of his author. Samuel Johnson reflects the standard post-Dunciad inaccuracies about Theobald when describing him as "a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artifical light of learning".15 Theobald's skill in emending shows us far more than his ability to substitute one word for another. He was also intimately acquainted with the particulars of Shakespeare's writing techniques. He frequently comments on Shakespeare's use of hyphenated words as in his note to Timon of Athens wherein he remarks that by the use of words such as "cold-moving" and "cold-provoking" Shakespeare makes "a Compound Adjective out of a Substantive and a Participle" (V, 250). He explains in a note to Antony and Cleopatra that "It is very usual ... with Shakespeare to coin Verbs out of Adjectives" (VI, 230). Again in a note to Antony and Cleopatra, Theobald comments that Shakespeare is fond of coining Substantives out of Verbs without giving them the Deflections of Nouns: So he uses Affects for Affections, Impress for Impression, Impose for Imposition, Sollicits for Sollicitations, Compare for Comparison, Depart f o r Departure, Effuse f o r Effusion, Prepare for Preparation, Accuse for Accusation.

(VI, 273) Theobald was ever aware of what we now term "functional shift" and its source of vitality in Shakespeare. Reduplication of words he also recognized as characteristic of his author, particularly is

"Preface to Shakespeare", Prolegomena, 155.

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"where he intends either to assert or deny, augment or diminish, or add a Degree of Vehemence to his Expression" (VII, 234). Further, he is always aware of the mixed imagery in Shakespeare's plays. We find his comment in a note to The Merchant of Venice on the "loose and licentious ... blending of different Metaphors" (II, 38). And when arguing for the greater accuracy of "sea of troubles" over Pope's "seige of troubles" in Hamlet, Theobald again comments on the "great licentiousness of our Poet in joining heterogeneous metaphors" (VII, 285). He is well aware of the anachronisms in Shakespeare, and in a lengthy note to Troilus and Cressida lists copious examples of "the mention of Persons and things, before either the first were born, or the latter thought of" (VII, 43). His knowledge of Elizabethan English also included a recognition that many words with a derogatory connotation by the Eighteenth Century were respectable if not honorific in Shakespeare's time. He captures the emotional tone of Othello's "Excellent Wench - Perdition catch my soul" by a reminder that earlier "Wench, lass, and Girl were not used in that low and vulgar Acceptation as they are at this time ... but very frequently with Dignity" (VII, 431). Indeed so minute is Theobald's knowledge of Shakespeare that he argues for the word Gemell instead of Jewel in A Midsummer Night's Dream in this fashion: If some over-nice Spirits should object to Gemell wanting its authorities as an English word, I think fit to observe ... that it is no new Thing with Shakespeare to coin and enfranchize Words fairly deriv'd; and some such as have by the Grammarians been call'd ... words used but once. (I, 131-132) It will be well to keep Theobald's observation in mind on words used but once when assessing the validity of Kenneth Muir's comments on the word absonant. It appears in The Double Falsehood and not elsewhere in Shakespeare's canonical works. We find it in this context: Home, my Lord, What you can say is most unseasonable; what sing, Most absonant and harsh: Nay, your Perfume,

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Which I smell hither, cheers not my Sense Like our Field-violet's Breath.

(I, iii, 52-56)

Muir states that absonant is "the kind of word which [Shakespeare] did use in his last period, together with a typical Shakespearian contrast between an artificial perfume and the scent of the violet".16 Theobald comments on these lines from Twelfth Night: That Strain again; - It had a dying Fall. Oh, it came o'er my Ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor! (I, i, 4-7) He praises Shakespeare for presenting the Image of a sweet South Wind blowing o'er a Violet-bank; which wastes away the Odour of the Violets, and at the same time communicates to it its own Sweetness ... Tho' [music] takes away the natural sweet Tranquillity of the Mind, yet at the same time, communicates a Pleasure the Mind felt not before. This knowledge, of the same Objects being capable of raising two contrary Affections, is a Proof of no ordinary Progress in the Study of human Nature. (Preface,

I, xix)

Theobald knew the peculiar manner and means of the dramatist whom he edited quite well enough to recognize some minute features of his style. The combination of music, violets, and words used but once is clearly no mystery to Theobald. Though Theobald is not the most impressive arranger of the order of Shakespeare's plays, he could date the works of his dramatist with sufficient skill to make these observations. He assigns The Comedy of Errors to 1591 (III, 32); the Henry IV plays he places earlier than 1595 (IV, 112); Henry V slightly earlier than 1598 because Ben Jonson mocks it in Every Man in His Humour (IV, 112). The Merry Wives of Windsor he places after Henry IV, Parts I and II on grounds that Queen Elizabeth so admired Falstaff in the Henry IV plays that she commanded Shakespeare to show the fat knight in love. In addition, Theobald owned an old quarto edition of The Merry Wives printed in 1602 16

Shakespeare as Collaborator (New York, 1960), 158.

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which carried on its title page: As it hath been diverse times acted both before her Majesty

and elsewhere (I, 223). Macbeth is dated

after the death of Elizabeth because of the compliments which it contains to James I (V, 443). However, one should add that Theobald places Henry VIII before the death of Elizabeth (V, 39). Likewise, he dates Timon of Athens before 1601 on grounds that Jack Drum's Entertainment, printed in 1601, hints at Timon (V, 303). On the whole, when Theobald ventures to date a play, he tends to place it correctly. Henry

VIII a n d Timon of Athens

are the only two notable exceptions to his general sagacity in this regard, and Theobald's incorrect assumptions about Henry VIII - that its praise of Elizabeth places it before her death - continue in the arguments of Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, and even Edmund Malone. Theobald also recognized that it was not uncommon for Shakespeare's contemporaries and immediate followers to make use of various Shakespearian lines. In a note to A Midsummer Night's Dream, he comments on the similarity between these passages: Puck.

Now the hungry lion roars And the wolf behowls the moon, Whilst the heavy plowman snores, All with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch, that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Everyone lets forth his spright. (V, i, 378-89)

and Now barks the Wolf against this full-cheek'd Moon; Now Lyons half-clam'd Entrails roar for Food; Now croaks, the toad, and night-crows shriek aloud, Fluttring 'bout the Casements of departing Souls: Now gape the Graves and thro' their Yawns let loose Imprison'd Spirits to revisit Earth. (Antonio and Mellida)

Theobald remarks of the quotation from Marston, "the whole

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Passage seems to be copied from... our Author" (1,147). Mariana's song in Measure for Measure contains this Theobald note: "This song, which, no doubt, was a great Favourite in its Time, is inserted in Beaumont [sic] and Fletcher's Bloody Brother" (I, 365). Likewise, he recognized that the gravedigger's song in Hamlet is "extracted, with a slight Variation, from ... The Aged Lover renounceth Love: written by Henry Howard Earl of Surrey" (VII, 346). Again, Theobald notes of Richard II's "Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm from an anointed king" : This Passage seems to be parodied, if not sneer'd at, in the Noble Gentleman, by Beaumont and Fletcher.... The King cannot take back What he has giv'n, Unless I forfeit it by Course of Law: Not all the Water in the River Seine Can wash the Blood out of these princely Veins. (Ill, 297)

And of the satiric intent of Beaumont's and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Theobald comments in notes to Henry IV, Part I (III, 361), Julius Caesar (VI, 202), and Hamlet (VII, 256). Again, in a note to Hamlet, we find a comment on the parody of Hamlet's "to die - to sleep" in The Scornful Lady by Beaumont and Fletcher, with the citation of these lines: Rog.

Have patience, Sir, until our Fellow Nicholas be deceas'd, that is asleep; to sleep, to dye; to dye, to sleep a very Figure, Sir. (VII, 286)

Not only is Theobald aware of the relatively free borrowing from Shakespeare, but he suspects another hand in the canonical plays in these instances. In Love's Labour's Lost, he comments of: King.

Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The musick plays, vouchsafe some motion to it. Rosaline. Our ears vouchsafe it But your legs should do it (V, ii, 215-218)

"This Verse..., I verily believe to be spurious, and an interpolation" (II, 159). Of the three Henry VI plays, Theobald observes: Indeed, tho there are several Master-Strokes in these three plays, which

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incontestibly betray the Workmanship of Shakespeare; yet I am almost doubtful, whether they were entirely of his Writing. (IV, 110) We find a lengthy comment subjoined to Titus Andronicus in which he states, "This is one of those plays which I have always thought ... ought not to be acknowledg'd in the List of Shakespeare's genuine Pieces" (V, 307). In a note to Timon of Athens, he refers to Pericles as a play ascribed to Shakespeare (V, 288). Again we find four references to The Two Noble Kinsmen without mention of Shakespeare's name before Theobald finally identifies it as "a Play in which there is a Tradition of our Author having been jointly concerned" (VI, 110). And of course Theobald will admit none of the apocryphal plays included in the Third Folio of 1664. On three occasions he argues for an emendation by citing a parallel passage from Locrine, but he invariably refers to "his Locrine" (V, 350) as "a play ascrib'd to our author" (IV, 291) or "a play attributed to him called Locrine" (VI, 9). Theobald is perhaps the most conservative of Shakespeare's eighteenthcentury editors. From the wealth of information which can be gleaned from a careful study of Theobald's seven-volume edition of Shakespeare, several conclusions relevant to The Double Falsehood are inescapable. The most important of these is the fact that not only did he not see fit to include the original manuscript of the play he earlier claimed to have adapted, but - and this is equally important - only three notes out of 1354 have a direct relationship to The Double Falsehood and its source. Second, both Theobald's awareness of the appearance of Shakespearian lines in the works of others as well as his generally conservative editorial policies suggest that within a few years after presenting The Double Falsehood he himself had seriously weakened in his view (indeed if he ever seriously held it) that Shakespeare had authored the particular Cardenio which Theobald 'owned'. Again, there can be little doubt that Theobald knew enough of Shakespeare's means and manner: his sources, vocabulary, versification, grammar, particular combinations of words, and subject matter to forge a very clever imitation of him.

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The over-riding impression one carries away from a close inspection of this edition is of profound respect for the imaginative use its editor made of his nearly inexhaustible knowledge of the Elizabethans. His genius for emendation consistently reveals a brilliantly quirkish mind. His never-failing suggestion that Shakespeare had read the Classical authors in the original begins in knowledge, but it quickly soars into the airy regions of fancy. Perhaps knowledge, quirk, and fancy combined in mysterious ways the wonders of The Double Falsehood to perform.

4 TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE

As Theobald's editing methods became more widely known and used, Theobald the scholar was forgotten and Theobald the dunce survived. By 1753, Theophilus Cibber makes but the briefest mention of Theobald as editor. Instead he spends most of his ten pages devoted to his life of Theobald ridiculing him for the series of improbabilities with which Theobald's prefaces to The Double Falsehood abound. Samuel Johnson reflects the typical inaccuracies of his day when he describes Theobald in 1765 as "weak and ignorant" and demeans his editing by observing, "I have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyric in which he celebrated himself for his achievement". Johnson adopted considerably more than Theobald's use of commas without acknowledgment. So forgotten is Theobald the editor that John Poole in Hamlet Traverstie (1811) ridicules the emendations of Pope, Johnson, and Steevens and totally omits any mention of Theobald's name. With Theobald the man slipped quietly into oblivion, the myth begins to emerge which is never suggested by his most vitriolic enemy during his lifetime, that of an ignorant Theobald. As the myth relates to The Double Falsehood it has its scholarly origins in Richard Farmer's "An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare" (1767). In his essay, Farmer asserts with his standard immodesty and misinformation, "Upon the whole, I may consider myself as the Pioneer of the Commentators", that he has collected "quotations from the elder English writers", and that he will indicate "Shakespeare's track in the ever-pleasing Paths of Na-

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ture". All of this is to bury ten fathoms deep Theobald's favorite fantasy that Shakespeare had read the Greek and Roman authors in the original. As scarcely more than an aside in his lengthy essay, Farmer comments that "After all, The Double Falsehood is superior to Theobald"; further a Mr. Victors remarks that its "plot is borrowed from a Novel of Cervantes, not published 'till the year after Shakespeare's death". 2 One need not go so far to vindicate Theobald as to write of Richard Farmer as William Maginn did in 1839: "We have only to glance upon his face ... to see that the feeble smirk of fatheaded and scornful blockheadism self-satisfied ... is its prevailing feature." 3 However, there is an equal deficiency of knowledge and taste in Farmer's asides about Theobald, The Double Falsehood, and Cervantes. From Farmer springs the ill-informed commentary on the play which eventually renders Theobald ignorant of its source. Douglas Orgill observes in 1960 that "Weber was the first to identify Don Quixote as the source of The Double Falsehood".i Actually, Henry Weber had writen in 1812 that "the play [the lost Cardenio] was never printed, but the title page points out the source to have been the novel of Cardenio in Don Quixote. "5 Presumably, Weber had mistaken Theobald's preface to The Double Falsehood for the title page of the non-extant Cardenio. Farmer, Orgill, Weber, and a host of other critics are thoroughly unaware of far more than the particularities of Theobald's prefaces to The Double Falsehood. None indicates awareness that Shelton's translation of Don Quixote (1612) was reprinted by the London publisher Knaplock in a lavish four volume edition in 1725, making the translation of Don Quixote which Shakespeare might have read available for Theobald's inspection approximately two 1 "An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare", Eighteenth-Century Essays on Shakespeare, ed. D. Nichol Smith (Glasgow, 1903), 164-170. 2 "An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare", 180-181. 3 "Dr. Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare Considered", Eraser's Magazine, No. 117, XX (Sept., 1839), 253. 4 "The Influence of Cervantes on the Plays of John Fletcher", unpubl. diss., University of Southern California 1960, 190. 5 The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, in Fourteen Volumes, ed. Henry Weber (London, 1812), I, xxiii.

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years before The Double Falsehood appeared. Equally unnoticed by both commentators on Cervantes in England and CardenioDouble Falsehood experts is Theobald's drama of acknowledged authorship which shares more than a little with The Double Falsehood. The Library of Congress Catalog of Printed Cards (1945) records that Theobald's play The Happy Captive (1741) is based on the History of the Slave narrative in Don Quixote, I, IV. Despite the availability of this information, both Muir and Bertram conclude that Theobald probably had access to a seventeenthcentury manuscript when he 'revised' Cardenio as The Double Falsehood, and they reach this conclusion seemingly unaware of the existence of Theobald's own Cervantic drama, The Happy Captive. Comparisons between the play of acknowledged authorship - The Happy Captive - and the play of disputed authorship - The Double Falsehood - strongly suggest that Theobald was the author of both. I shall compare the two plays in the following particulars: the closeness of their respective plots in Don Quixote, the effect of Don Quixote's and Sancho's disappearance from the drama, the names of the characters in the plays, the changes from Cervantes in both plot and characterization in the dramas, the emphasis in both plays on friendship, the similarities between the types of language in both plays, and finally the imitation of Shakespeare detectable in both. The first thing that strikes one about these two plays is the proximity of their sources in Don Quixote. The plot of The Double Falsehood is taken largely from Part I, Book III, Chapters ix, x, xii and Book IV, Chapters i, ii, ix, xxiv, and xxv. The plot of The Happy Captive can be traced to Part I, Book IV, Chapters x, xii, xiii, and xiv. The setting from the beginning of the action which forms the basis for the play of questionable authorship through the conclusion of the play of acknowledged authorship is the Sierra Morena or, as it is somewhat inaccurately translated, the Black Mountain. The chivalric Don Quixote and his faithful squire Sancho meet first the two pairs of The Double Falsehood lovers (Cardenio, Luscinda, Dorothea, and Fernando) and immediately afterward the lovers of The Happy Captive (The Captive and

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Zoraida). In Cervantes, the three pairs of lovers are thoroughly intertwined. The Double Falsehood lovers pity the plight of The Happy Captive lovers. Shelton translates: Cardenio, and all the rest did offer themselues and their meanes to his [the Captive's] seruice, as much as lay in them, with so cordiall and friendly words, as the Captive remained thoroughly satisfied with their good wits: but specially Don Fernando offered, that if he would returne with him, he would cause the Marquesse his brother [another character in D.F.] to be Zoraida her Godfather in Baptisme.6 While Don Quixote dines with Cardenio, Fernando, and others, the hero of The Happy Captive sups with the heroines of The Double Falsehood and Zorayda. Finally, with all the difficulties of the lovers resolved: The Ladies [including Zoraida, Luscinda, and Dorothea] being withdrawne into their Chamber, and euery one [including the Captive, Cardenio, and Fernando] laying himselfe downe where best he might, Don-Quixote sallied out of the Inne, to bee Centinell of the Castle as he had promised. (D.Q., IV, xv, 480) If the intimacy of these differing dramatic characters in their source were the only common denominator between the plays, little of significance could be derived from the association of, for example, Zoraida and Dorothea in Don Quixote. One might always argue that Theobald decided to write his own Cervantic drama after he perceived, admired, and revised the beauties of Shakespeare's Cervantic drama. However, The Double Falsehood and The Happy Captive share considerably more than acquainted characters in Don Quixote. In neither play does Don Quixote or Sancho appear, and with their departure most of the satiric scaffolding of the novel collapses. Indeed, both dramas are nearly devoid of jest. Theobald treats the plight of his lovers with the utmost seriousness. There are no discarded sonnets to love, no wind-swept letters, and no mules, alive or dead. The goatherders have become shepherds, and the 6

Thomas Shelton, trans., The History of Don Quichote, the First Parte (London, 1620), IV, xv, 473. All subsequent references to this work are cited as D.Q.

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revised bucolic scene no longer mocks the pastoral tradition. There are no distraught lovers bounding nearly naked through the mountains. We neither observe nor learn that a heroine sews, makes bonelace, and plays the harp. No one attends mass or any other religious service early or late. There are no corruptible maids to assist amorous young men. No prisoners jump in their shackles to pass the time. There are no heavily bejeweled Arabs eager for Christian conversion. The constant mockery of human folly and the constant inspection of social institutions have quite gone out of the Cervantic material in both The Double Falsehood and The Happy Captive. There is no uncompromising and allembracing value system within the plays, and their characters are spared the more serious conflicts of their Cervantic models. The use of the names in both plays is not only similar but reflects Theobald's linguistic skill and thorough familiarity with the Spanish language. In The Double Falsehood, he changes the names of Cervantes' lovers so that Cardenio, Luscinda, Fernando, and Dorothea become Julio, Leonora, Henriquez, and Violante respectively. Though in The Happy Captive Theobald retains the name Zoraida with a slight change in its spelling, he invents the name Carlos for the Captive and adds another pair of lovers: Pizarro, friend of Carlos in love with Selima, confidante of Zorayda. In both plays the names which Theobald invents for most of his characters sound typically Spanish. However, neither Julio, Leonora, Henriquez, Violante, Carlos, Pizarro, nor Selima appears as a character in Don Quixote, Parts I and II.7 The name Leonora may have been suggested by the name Leandra, a character in Don Quixote, I, IV, xxiv-xxv, who like Leonora in The Double Falsehood is confined to a convent. In the play, Henriquez (Fernando) and his brother Roderick rescue Leonora (Luscinda) from the convent so she may be reunited with her lover Julio (Cardenio). In the novel, Don Quixote wishes to rescue Leandra and reunite her with her lover Eugenio who like Julio has lost his mistress to a rival. Again, the names Eugenio and Julio slightly resemble each 7

I am indebted to Richard L. Predmore. An Index to Don Quijote (New Brunswick, N.J., 1938), for a complete list of the names of characters in Don Quixote.

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other. Theobald's substitution of Henriquez for Fernando is easily enough explained by the reminder that the F and H are interchangeable in certain Spanish masculine proper names. The ez ending in Spanish merely means son of, and the name Henriquez is as common as its English equivalent Henry. We see the same linguistic facility in Theobald's naming of characters in The Happy Captive. This play contains an Arab villain named Morat, and Zoraida's father bears the name Abdalla. In the original Spanish, Zoraida's father is Agi Morato, and presumably Cervantes had sufficient acquaintance with Arabic to know that the word Agi is an honorific title for an Arab who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Shelton, lacking knowledge of Arabic, inaccurately translated Agi Morato as Aguimorate. It seems more reasonable to assume that Theobald went to Don Quixote in Spanish for the name Morat than to assume that he derived it from Aguimorate. However, the name Abdalla suggests further that Theobald might have had a slight knowledge of Arabic. Abdalla means slave of God, and it is a common surname throughout Islam. Whatever the linguistic particulars may have been, the renaming of characters in both The Double Falsehood and The Happy Captive indicates Theobald's thorough knowledge of the Spanish language and an acquaintance with Don Quixote in Spanish. No one would suggest that such knowledge might have been Shakespeare's. The Double Falsehood and The Happy Captive share major changes from Don Quixote in both plot and characterization. Rather than the cowardly and foolish Cardenio hiding in silence throughout what he believes is Luscinda's marriage and swiftly departing town on his mule, in The Double Falsehood he is transformed into a hero of boldness and sagacity. He "advances from the Arras" (D.F., III, ii, stage direction) as her father is about to give Leonora (Luscinda) to Henriquez (Fernando) in marriage. Sounding not unlike a combination of Hamlet and Laertes, Julio squarely confronts his rival Henriquez: Ungen'rous Lord! The Circumstance of Things Should stop the Tongue of Question. - You have wrong'd me; Wrong'd me so basely, in so dear a Point, As stains the Cheek of Honour with a Blush...

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If you have Sense of Shame, or Justice, Lord, Forego this bad Intent; or with your Sword Answer me like a Man. (D.F., III, ii, 146-149, 154-156) Having sounded this challenge, Julio is more than ready to do battle, but, curiously, Theobald's stage direction specifies: "Julio is seiz'd and drag'd out by the Servants" (D.F., III, i). On the whole, The Double Falsehood presents alterations wholly out of keeping with the clarity of structure in Don Quixote. For example, in The Double Falsehood, IV, i, Julio is introduced as an insane man who, in the presence of several shepherds, commands Violante to commit suicide. However, when they meet in the next scene, he is lucid, vowing an eternity of consoltation to the wronged Violante (D.F., IV, ii, 93-104, 115-120). The precise manner in which Julio and Violante have come by their intimate knowledge of the other's affairs is far from clear in The Double Falsehood. It is a lack of clarity wholly uncharacteristic of Shakespeare's exposition of character relationships in the canonical plays. Someone has been extraordinarily remiss in supplying his audience crucial information in this apocryphal work. There are no earlier scenes in which Henriquez speaks to Julio of Violante; nor are Violante and Leonora earlier dramatized as confidantes or even acquaintances. Leonora makes but one oblique reference to Henriquez's treatment of Violante. In the context of trying to dissuade her father that she should marry Henriquez, Leonora cautions her father: "Consider, Sir, Whoe'er's th' Occasion of another's Fault / Cannot himself be innocent" (D.F., II, ii, 50-52). However, Leonora does not so much as mention Violante's name. Presumably, Henriquez's encounter with Violante and his attempts to marry Leonora take place in different cities, but one cannot be certain of the setting of Violante's seduction. We know only that it opens with the stage Direction "Enter Henriquez, and Servants with Lights" (D.F., I, iii). Most important, whatever knowledge the playwright expected of his audience prior to the meeting of his wronged lovers in IV, ii, he has made radical alterations of his Cervantic source for the meeting of Cardenio and Dorothea.

"THE HISTORY OF THE SLAVE" ILLUSTRATION Appeared in the first Spanish language edition of Don Quixote published in London in 1738.

"CARDENIO" ILLUSTRATION Appeared in the first English language edition of Don Quixote published in London in 1738.

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Equally drastic changes characterize Henriquez's seduction of Violante. Rather than the splendid satire on feigned modesty and actual coquetry in Don Quixote, the clandestine meeting of Henriquez and Violante (D.F., I, iii) is a seemingly chaste encounter between a woman at a window and a man in the street which concludes with Violante's words to Henriquez: But I wrong That which I am preserving, my Maid's Name, To hold so long Discourse. Your Virtues guide you T' effect some nobler Purpose! (D.F., I, iii, 66-69) With these words, she exits, leaving him to soliloquize on the street in these terms: I must stoop to gain her; Throw all my gay Comparisons aside, And turn my proud Additions out of Service, Rather than keep them to become my Masters. The dignities we wear, are Gifts of Pride; And laugh'd at by the Wise, as meer Outside. (D.F., I, iii, 81-86) These egalitarian sentiments conclude I, iii of The Double Falsehood. In the scene which immediately follows I, iii, Henriquez slinks past two rustics named Fabian and Lopez and suddenly ejaculates: By Force alone I snatch'd th' imperfect Joy, which now torments my Memory. Not Love, but brutal Violence prevail'd... Shame, Shame upon it! ... Hold, let me be severe to my self, but not unjust - Was it a Rape then? No. Her Shrieks, her Exclamations then had drove me from her... Fair Leonora reigns confest the Tyrant Queen of my revolted Heart, and Violante seems a short Usurper there. (.D.F., II, i, 20-37) Though Violante has last been on stage at her window with Henriquez at a respectable distance in the street, suddenly he is asking himself if he has raped her. Equally confusing is his mention of Leonora because one has had no prior knowledge of his interest in her. Fernando has no narrative of his own in Don Quixote. Prior to our meeting this very genial fellow at the inn, we receive all our

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information about him through Cardenio's and Dorothea's accounts of him. She recalls Fernando in these fluttering words: I ... found my selfe chiefly forced (how I cannot tell) to assent to his petition, by the witnesses hee invoked, the teares he shed, and finally by his sweete disposition and comely feature... I said to Don Fernando at his departure that he might see mee other nights when hee pleased by the same meanes hee had come that night seeing I was his owne, and would rest so, untill it pleased him to let the world know that I was his wife. But hee never returned againe. (.D.Q., IV, i, 289-291) Cervantes' Cardenio remembers an equally amiable Fernando who bears not the slightest resemblance to the conscience-stricken Henriquez of The Double Falsehood. The discrepancies between Fernando in Don Quixote and Henriquez of the play are so great that one suspects someone has made use of at least one other source in creating Henriquez. The relationship between Aphra Behn's Ferninand in The Amorous Prince (1671) and Henriquez in The Double Falsehood (1727) will be discussed in the next chapter. For our present purposes, the drastic changes which the author of the apocryphal play has made in Dorothea's retelling of her own folly bears a striking resemblance to the alteration of Cervantic material which Theobald makes in his work of acknowledged authorship, The Happy Captive. As in The Double Falsehood, the changes which Theobald makes in both the action and the characters of The Happy Captive reduce to the vanishing point the conflicts of its Spanish model. With the submergence of conflict the satire and the emotionally compelling aspects of the original History of the Slave narrative simply disappear. Since this narrative in large part recounts Cervantes' own experiences while a prisoner after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, its dramatic revision is to be doubly lamented. Regrettably, nothing but the barest bones of the Cervantic-feast remain in Theobald's The Happy Captive. Much of the reduction in conflict is brought about by the fact that the heroine of the play is initially the Christian slave, not the Arab daughter of the wealthy Moor. As Pizarro recalls, when Zorayda was an infant, she and her mother were captured by Corsairs in Spain and brought at an

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unspecified time to an unspecified part of the Islamic Empire. There a Moor named Abdalla purchased them and, captivated by the mother's charms, he "soften'd their Doom of Bondage" (77. C., I, ii, 26).8 Conveniently, "soon the mourning Matron dy'd" (H.C., I, ii, 27). As a result, neither her mother's present love for Abdalla nor a daughter-father relationship binds Zorayda to the man whose home she has inhabited since "earliest infancy" (H.C., I, ii, 17). Whereas Cervantes illuminates those values in his heroine which go ill together, Theobald is concerned with neither Zorayda's interest in material wealth nor her dual reliance on Allah and the Virgin Mary. Instead of the continual mention and appearance of money in Don Quixote, we know only that the Zorayda of The Happy Captive will provide the ransom. Consequently, Theobald makes not the slightest use of Cervantes' description of the Christian convert Zoraida decked in all the riches of Arabia: It were a thing impossible for mee to recount the great ... riches of attyre, wherein my beloued Zoraida then shewed her selfe to mine eyes. I will onely say this, that there hanged more Pearles at her eares, superlative faire necke, and haire, then shee hath haires on her head, about the wrests of her legges... she wore two [bracelets]... of the finest gold, wherein were inchaced so many diamonds that as she told me after, her father valued them at twenty thousand crownes; and those about the wrests of her hands, were of equal esteeme. Her pearles were many, and those most Orient. (D.Q., IV, xiii, 452-453)

Instead of the deliriously satiric intentions of the above, Theobald is anxious to absolve his Zorayda from charges of theft or any other wrongdoing. Selima reminds Zorayda of Abdalla's less than admirable past history in these terms: Did he not with rapacious Hands Seize on your Mother's Wealth and yours ? Did he not once with brutal Force Attempt, - But the protecting Heav'ns Rescued you from that Shame.