Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), June 21, 1845, vol. 1, no. 25, p. ??

[page 394, column 1, continued:]

HARPER’S ILLUMINATED AND ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE. Nos. 55 & 56: Containing parts of “As You Like It,” and “Midsummer Night's Dream.” Price 25cts.

We have already expressed a favorable opinion of this truly beautiful edition of Shakespeare; but the present issue comes to us with so liberal an enrichment of wood cuts, that we cannot refrain from expressing once more our opinion of its cheapness and beauty. Here are twenty-nine spirited wood cuts, from good designs, printed with great clearness and beauty in ink of unusual brilliancy and on fine paper, accompanying a play by Shakespeare, and sold for the inconsiderable price of 25 cents. The cover to this edition of Shakespeare is a very handsome design by Catherwood, a thousand times superior to the hideous thing designed by R. W. Weir, N. A. A more thoroughly contemptible affair, exhibiting not only an utter poverty of imagination, but the most meagre acquirements in art, was never put off upon the public, than the cover which was first published by Mr. Hewitt, when this edition of Shakespeare was issued by him. Thanks to the liberality and discernment of the present publishers, we are no longer annoyed by the apparition of the Weir sisters, and the figure of Shakespeare in a canoe, on the cover of these plays. It is a disgrace to American Art, that we have never been able to produce the shadow of an ornamental design, and nothing can more plainly prove the entire inadequacy of the system of instruction adopted by our National Academy than the wretched abortions which the artists who write N. A. at the end of their names, have produced in their attempts at ornamental drawings. They prove beyond a question that they have not been grounded in the A. B. C. of art. Now that the academy has got an artist for its President, we have hopes that something better may be produced.

Mr. Verplanck is doubtless very competent to edit Shakespeare, but we have noticed some very strange readings in one or two of the earlier issues of the edition, which must have been owing either to gross carelessness, or something worse.

We take a few passages only for example. Where it is material, we point according to copy,

“Is execution done on Cawdor: or not

Those in commission yet return’d?”

This should be:

Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not

Those in commission yet return’t?

“Send forth great largess to your offices,”

Should be:

Send forth great largess to your officers.

“We would spend it in some words upon that business,” Should be:

Would spend it in some words open that business — [Without the

“We” — Macbeth was not then king.]

“The curtain’d sleep,”

Should be:

The curtain’d sleeper.

“Thy very stones,”

We think should be:

The very stones.

“And all-thing unbecoming,”

Should be:

And all things unbecoming.

“To be thus is nothing,

But to be safely thus;”

A more weighty point than a comma is wanted after “nothing.”

“To make them kings, the seeds of Banque kings!” Same after “kings” — and “seeds” should be seed.

“Now, go to the door,”

Should be:

Now to the door.

“To pray for this good man,”

Should be:

To pray for that good man.

“Whom we to gain our peace, have sent to peace,”

Should be:

Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace.

— “ the feast is sold,

That is not often voucled while ‘tis a making; ‘Tis given with welcome.”

A comma after “vouch’d” and another after “making,” in the room of the semicolon there, would have given the true reading — which is turned into nonsense by the false pointing in this

new edition.

“If trembling I inhabit then,”

Should be:

If trembling I inhibit then.

“tell me if your art

Can tell so much)

Where is the other mark of the parenthesis

“and with him,

To leave no rubs nor blotches iu the work,)

Where is the other mark of this parenthesis?

But this is painful work: we will therefore end it, for the present, by a short notice of something that, in itself, is enough to injure the whole edition in which it occurs, — we mean, in the opin on of Shakespeare's “lovers.”

The play is Twelth Night. In the first interview between Olivia and Viola, Olivia, after Viola has said, “Good madam, let me see your face,” is made to reply, “Have you any commission from your lord to negociate with my face? You are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain, and show you the picture. Look you, sir; such a one I was this present: is’t not well done!” [Unveiling.]

Now, which looks most like Shakespeare, that, or this:

“Look you, Sir: Such a one as I was, this presents. Is’t not well done?” — [Unveiling.]

The word “as,” the comma after “was,” and the additional s to the word “present,” make all the difference.