The complete works of William Shakespeare Volume 4

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...other hand, Mr. P. A. Daniel, who printed a photo-lithographic facsimile, does not accept this view. He regards the folio and the quarto as imperfect copies of a common and now non-existent original,--the quarto being a notetaker's version of that original after it had been shortened for stage purposes, and the folio a fuller but still imperfect and unauthentic version of the same. The question is still sub judice. Mr. Howard Furness has not yet included the " Merry Wives" in his Variorum Edition; but scholars seem disposed at present to espouse the theory of Mr. Daniel. With regard to the contention that the play, as we have it, is still imperfect, may be mentioned the references (Act III., Scs. 1 and 3, and Act IV., Sc. 5) to some obscure retaliation by Caius and Evans upon the Host of the Garter which appears to be connected with the " cozening Germans " who steal his horses in Act IV. It is scarcely possible that such retaliation should be confined to jeering at him in his misfortune; and it may be that Pistol and Nym, who disappear early in the play (and even their old ally Bardolph, who relates the circumstances of the horse stealing), were not unconnected with it. Unlike many of Shakespeare's works, the "Merry Wives" seems to owe but little of its plot to previous writers. Obviously time pressed; and Shakespeare was obliged on this occasion to depend more than usual upon the riches of his own imagination. Another reason which threw him upon his personal resources in this particular case would no doubt be that the scene of the play was laid at the date of representation, and his material lay about, and not behind him. But at the end of his edition of the quarto of 1602 Halliwell prints a number of tales, which may conceiv...