SHAKESPEARIAN MUSIC. I HAVE perused with much interest the articles in the October and December numbers of SHAKESPEARIANA on dramatic music to Shakespeare, etc. I venture to suggest the following additions to the lists there given : ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. Kaffka's opera, Antoine et Cleopatre, was produced at Berlin, in 1780, not at Breslau, 1781. ADDITIONS. Kleopatra, opera in four acts, by Wilhelm Freudenberg, produced at Magdeburg in 1882. Antonius und Kleopatra, grand opera, by Fürsten von Wittgenstein, produced at Graz, 1883. AS YOU LIKE IT. Tausch, incidental music to As You Like It, was produced at Düsseldorf in 1859. ADDITIONS. Viola, opera, by Richard Heuberger. Cesario, opera, by Steinkühler, Düsseldorf, 1848. Cesario, opera, by Taubert, 1874. CORIOLANUS. Coriolano, opera, by Cavalli, produced at Wien in 1717, not at Parma in 1660. Coriolano, opera, by Niccolini, produced at Mailand in 1809, not in 1810. Coriolanus, overture by Beethoven, produced at Wien in 1807. ADDITIONS. Coriolan, incidental music by F. L. Seidel, produced at Berlin, 1811. Coriolano, opera, by Graun, Berlin, 1749. Coriolano, opera, by Lavigna, Parma, 1806. HAMLET. Stadtfeldt's Hamlet, produced at Brussel, 1857, not at Darm stadt. ADDITIONS. Music to Hamlet, by Mangold, Darmstadt, Overture to Hamlet, by Emanuel Bach. Hamlet, opera, by Mareczek, Brünn, 1841 (not 1843). HENRY VIII. Henry VIII., opera, with Ballet, by Saint-Saens. JULIUS CÆSAR. Schumann's Overture, Düsseldorf, 1852. Music to Julius Cæsar, by Henning, Berlin, 1830. Julius Caesar, by Keiser. Guilio Casare, opera, by Händel, London, 1724. Guilio Casare, by Perez, etc., is correct. KING JOHN. Music to King John, by Schneider, Berlin, 1823. KING LEAR. Music to King Lear, by André, Berlin, 1778 (not 1780). MACBETH. Music to Macbeth, by André, Berlin, 1778 (not 1780). Music to Macbeth, by Seidel, Berlin, 1809. Music to Macbeth, by Weyse. Music to Macbeth, by Mangold, Darmstadt, 1830. Overture to Macbeth, by Skeletti. Overture to Macbeth, by Raff (MSS.) Macbeth, Symphonic Poem, by Pierson, supposed to have been composed in 1870. Macbeth, opera, by Chélard, Paris, 1827. MERCHANT OF VENICE. Music to Merchant of Venice, by Mangold. Music to Merchant of Venice, by Mühldorfer. Overture to Merchant of Venice, by Titl, Amsterdam. Merchant of Venice, opera, by Piusuti, Bologna, 1873. Music to Merchant of Venice, by Sullivan, Manchester, 1873. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. Overture to Merry Wives of Windsor, by Titl. Overture to Merry Wives of Windsor, by Damcke, Potsdam, 1841. Merry Wives of Windsor, opera, by Ritter, Mannheim, 1794. Merry Wives of Windsor, comic opera, by Dittersdorf. There is a manuscript Overture to Henry IV., by Joachim. (Grove, 2:35.) My authority for the preceding corrections and additions is, for the most part, A. Schaefer's Historisches und systematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke zu den Dramen Schillers, Goethes, Shakespeares, Kleists und Körners. Leipzig: Karl Merseburger, 1886. WILLIAM MACDONALD. Circular Letter. FROM MRS. HENRY POTT, 81 CORNWALL GARDENS, QUEEN'S GATE, S. W. SIR: Permit me to draw your attention to some facts which have recently come under my notice with regard to the original edition of the collected "Shakespeare " plays, known as the First Folio of 1623. In the spring of 1888, when Mr. Donnelly was in this country, he received from Mr. James Cary, of New York, some papers explanatory of a discovery claimed to have been made by that gentleman of certain wheel-ciphers in the original folio of "Shakespeare." These ciphers are various, but one chief system depends upon certain marks and dots which Mr. Cary indicated, as being placed over, or under, or between certain letters and figures, or before the names of the characters. These peculiar and suspicious markings the cryptographer had been led to observe whilst endeavoring to find the desired clue to the arrangement of words in the great cryptogram. Mr. Donnelly compared Mr. Cary's descriptions with his own "Staunton" fac-simile, but he could not find such marks as Mr. Cary pointed out, consequently he could make nothing of the wheel-ciphers submitted to him, and this he reported to Mr. Cary. It so happened that I had to a great extent tabulated the so-called "printer's errors," and "accidents," and "misprints "of the First Folio, as shown in the reduced fac-simile; and for which the late Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps wrote a preface. When, therefore, Mr. Donnelly showed me Mr. Cary's work, I recognized many of the indications given, and we saw at once that with regard to certain particulars, there were undoubted discrepancies between this Halliwell-Phillipps fac-simile and many of the original copies of the 1623 folio, to be found in the great libraries of England and America. At that time Mr. Donnelly was disinclined to enter into a totally new line of research, and one which required almost microscopic minuteness of investigation. Thus the correspondence with Mr. Cary passed into my hands. I soon found that the HalliwellPhillipps fac-similes from which Mr. Cary and I were working differed in a vast number of particulars from other "fine" original folios which I have examined. The differences were in all cases additions. In other words, there were in the original folio from which our fac-similes were taken, a quantity of marks, neatly and distinctly made, and some figures turned hind-side before, which do not exist in ordinary folio copies. Since it is manifestly impossible that the photograph could represent more particulars than were contained in the thing photographed, two alternatives only suggested themselves. Either these extra marks were printed after the rest of the work (in which case there would have been two editions of 1623), or, more probably, these significant markings must have been put in with a pen, by some member of the secret society for whose information the cipher narrative was contrived. It became necessary, then, to ascertain if these peculiarities. had been noted by bookworms and close students of "Shakespeare" texts, and also, from what copy the "reduced facsimile" was photographed. I wrote to the late Mr. HalliwellPhillipps describing some of the marks in question, and asking, 1. Had he any reason to doubt that all the copies of the First Folio which had passed through his hands were absolutely and invariably identical? 2. From which copy in what library was his reduced fac-simile taken? In a long and courteous. letter written shortly before his death, Mr. Halliwell-Phillippsreplied to the first of these questions, that he had never observed any differences; to the second, that he did not know: he had never seen the copy from which the "reduced fac-simile was taken. I then wrote to the publishers, Messrs. Chatto & Windus, from whom I learnt that the fac-simile in question was copied by a photographic process, from an original folio bought by them of Mr. Hayes, bookseller, of Manchester, and that they believed the original to be now in the private library of Mr. Robert Roberts, of Boston, Lincolnshire. Correspondence with this. |