If this
were actually the case; if we could lay the two texts on the table
before us, convinced that one of them was Shakespeare's draft or acting
copy, and the other Shakespeare's finished work; and if, by comparing
the two, we could enter into the workshop and forge of his mind,--it
would seem as if we had at last found an avenue of approach towards this
great personality, this intellect the most powerful that has ever
illumined human life. No other literary inquiry could compare in
interest with such a study as this; for the relation which Shakespeare
himself bore to the plays he created is one of the mysteries and blank
places in history, a gap that staggers the mind and which imagination
cannot overleap.
The student who examines both texts will be apt to conclude that the
second is by no means a revised edition of the first, but that
(according to another theory) the first is a pirated edition of the
play, stolen by the printer, and probably obtained by means of a
reporter who took down the lines as they were spoken on the stage.
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