brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition
with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632
notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were,
in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it
came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions,
which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which
he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the
credit he was laboring to obtain for it?

[Footnote kk: _The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of
Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration_. By J. Payne
Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.]

Again, Mr. Hamilton's collations of "Hamlet" show that no less than
thirty-six passages have been erased from that play in this folio. These
erased passages are from a few insignificant words to fifty lines in
extent They include lines like these in Act I., Sc. 2:--

"With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in
marriage,"--

and these from the same scene:--

"It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be so."

In the last scene, all after Horatio's speech; "Now cracks a noble
heart," etc., is struck out. Who will believe that any man in his
senses, making corrections for which he meant to claim the deference
due to a higher authority than the printed test, would make such and so
numerous erasures? In fact, no one does so believe.

But the collations of "Hamlet" furnish in these erasures one other very
important piece of evidence. In Act II., Sc. 1, the passage from and
including Reynaldo's speech, "As gaming, my Lord," to his other speech,
"Ay, my Lord, I would know that," is crossed out. But the lines are not
only crossed through in ink, they are "also marked in pencil." Now it
is confessed by the accusers of Mr. Collier that these erasures are the
marks of an ancient adaptation of the te