Item 13 - Letter from H. B. Charlton to W. W. Greg

1 single sheet

Department of English Language and Literature, University of Manchester.—Greg’s revelation of the unreliability of facsimile editions will have drastic consequences for his own research.

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Transcript

Department of English Language and Literature. The University of Manchester. Manchester, 13.
16 April

Dear Mr Greg,

Thank you very much for the trouble you have taken for me, though the authoritative information you now send is a devastating blow to me. I hope that, if the Commons abolish capital punishment for murder, they’ll keep it for traitors & for editors of facsimiles who do not draw attention to their own or other doctorings of their facsimiles. This is not a piece of flippancy: & I think you’ll see why.

Fifteen years ago I was invited to what, in the world’s eye, is a more distinguished chair than Manchester’s. I declined, knowing that Manchester was the place in which anything I could do, I could best do. And I’ve therefore had no moment’s hesitation in refusing other feelers since then. But your information knocks the bottom out of my whole scheme of things. For when I determined to remain permanently in Manchester, I began a plan to gather here a mass of facsimiles. I’ve long been chairman of our Library Committee, & for some years, chairman of the book committee of the John Rylands. So the facsimiles I couldn’t buy for myself, I had the means of adding to accessible libraries. I felt it to be the only way to organise scholarship out of London, Oxford, & Cambridge. But the whole scheme depends on the reliability of mechanical facsimiles: & that faith, your letter convinces me, is gone. It’s like a universe toppling on one’s head.

I shall survive it, however: but how many students have I misled! The Pericles case was more or less casually put to me. Before I go out, I want to do 3 books—Browning, Shakespearian History Plays, & Shakespeare’s Romances. This winter, awaiting proofs of a book out of my Clark lectures, Sh[akespearia]n Tragedy, I began tentatively to look at the Histories & the Romances. Allardyce Nichol† asked me to give a paper at Stratford this summer on Pericles. I told him I’d write one, but wouldn’t be able to go to Stratford. So I settled into Pericles literature. All the literature convinced me that the only real problem in it was the bibliographical problem of the Quartos: and, so far, the only thing I am certain of is that Qu. 2 is indeed after Qu 1. I have doubts as to whether there is any ground for attributing any of it to Shakespeare: and if any part of it is his, I’m inclined to give it to the prize[?] scenes of the fishermen and the brothel. But these are merely moods of my last month, & want further investigation. Nor do the Wilkins, Day, Rowley claims seem to me substantial.

So, as my main problem, I’m left with this: what was the relation of Q.1. to the theatre script(s)? Till that is settled, authorship(s) must be little more than Fleay-like speculations. And how can a fellow who depends on facsimiles feel safe in saying anything on that problem? However, I’ll keep at it until I dare think I see something, or until I’m sure that I shall never see anything.

I may, of course, as one whose interests haven’t been bibliographical in the technical sense, be wrong in my certainty that Qu 1. is before Qu 2. But the kind of conviction I get is illustrated by putting side by side I. iv. 15 (Praetorius texts). Qu. 1 has toungs; Qu 2 has tongues. Qu 2 often regularises or modernises spelling. I imagine that, Qu 2 printer, seeing the Qu 1 print (and he must[,] on other grounds, {1} have had the printed Qu 1 in front of him), took it for an odd spelling of tongues & therefore printed tongues. But t in Qu 1. toungs must have been a misprint for l (either accidental or easy MSS confusion), or the word must have been loungs, or lungs, & so Qu. 2’s provenance seems in that way explicable. But, as I say, I may be just misled by my ignorance.

Yours gratefully
H B Charlton

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{1} ‘on other grounds’ interlined.

† Sic.

Formerly inserted in Greg's copy of the Shakespeare Association facsimile of the 1609 quarto of Pericles (1940) (LL 027 SHA 255), which contains annotations relating to this letter.

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.