The Furness Variorum 347 evidence accumulated by the present writer in the course of a closer examination of the volume occasioned by his editing Julius Cffsar for the Yale Shakespeare 1 and collating Mr. W. A. White's six post-Restoration quarto editions for a further article that he now has in hand. This evidence of Mr. Furness' unfitness for his task may be considered under six headings: errors in the use of the English language, errors in judgment, errors in fact, bibliographical errors, typographical errors, and errors in collation. And these charges really seem to need demonstration somewhat in extenso, for Mr. S. A. Tannenbaum, whose excellent review in The Dial for July 16, 1913, exposed so many of Mr. Furness' inaccuracies, still accorded the volume much more praise than blame and actually gave it a clean bill of health in this concluding verdict: "On the whole, the volume before us is one of the best editions of this play that has 2 ever been published, and a worthy fellow to its predecessors in the 'Furness Variorum Shakespeare.' ' The following array of evidence should show how far Mr. Furness falls short of deserv- ing this commendation for the way in which he has performed his task. I. ERRORS IN THE USE or THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE The Preface exhibits numerous deplorable solecisms and infelicities. For instance, a long and ill-balanced sentence on the second page concludes with this anacoluthon: "and it was not until Halliwell in 1865 pointed out a passage in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601, wherein there is a refer- ence to the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony on the death of Caesar, and, though Weever does not mention Shakespeare's play, his use of the word 'ambitious' as that of Brutus, and his saying how Mark Antony by his eloquence showed Caesar's virtues, point pretty clearly to the fact that he had before him the memory of a very striking scene." Ten lines below, this awkward sentence appears: "It is, I think, well-nigh impossible to assign the date within limits closer than these two years, 1 The Yale Shakespeare, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 2 None of Mr. Tannenbaum's findings against Mr. Furness will be reprinted in the present article; the reader is therefore referred to The Dial, vol. LV, no.
650, for important corroborative evidence in this case.
