an undated Fourth Quarto and then, in the prevailing mood of scornful contempt for post-Restoration Quartos, simply designated it for convenience by the date of the only dated Quarto known to them, that of 1691, without troubling themselves to establish bibliographical distinctions, while Mr. Furness merely accepted their authority blindly without bothering to verify the reference.[1] The only other passage in which Quarto authority is cited (page 175) is free from error—as far as it goes: but, as stated above, a thorough collation of all the Quartos would have improved the reference materially. "Which (pardon me)" is indeed the reading of the 1691 Quarto (Q 6) for III, ii, 141; but it is also the reading of the [undated] Q 5, which appeared between four and seven years earlier, while the four other Quartos all agree with the Folios in printing "(Which pardon me)."
His collation also disappoints us in its lack of uniformity. He doesn't always record variant punctuation where it really affects the sense (e.g., in the complicated passage on pages 63, 64), or variant stage directions which are similarly determinative (e.g., on pages 110, 220, and 270: while on page 278 he faithfully records the trivial omission of "omnes" after "Exeunt"!). Again, he lets the Folio reading in line I, ii, 182 stand unamended, without textual or critical comment, though practically no editor has printed the line in that form since 1728. Sometimes he records an orthographical or typographical curiosity in the Folios (such as "Feaher F 2," p. 37, or "Waies F 3," p. 154), and sometimes omits others that are quite as interesting (such as "Fooliry" F 2, 1, ii, 256; "surely" F 2, F 3, I, iii, 23; "murder" F 3, F 4, II, ii, 6; "Entrals" F 3, "Entrails" F 4, II, ii, 47; etc.); of course, some of these and other similar peculiarities may appear only in the Elizabethan Club copies of the Folios, not in Mr. Furness', but it seems very unlikely that they all do.
Perhaps the most unpardonable sin, however, in a variorum edition such as Mr. Furness was attempting, remains now for our final point against him. The foremost purpose stated under
- ↑ White was the first to record this Quarto reading, in his "Shakespeare's Scholar," 1854, but in a curious form that raises a further presumption of inaccuracy on his part.
