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. The
stage directions in the first edition are not properly the stage
directions of a dramatist as to what should be done on the stage, but
seem rather the records of an eye-witness as to what he saw happen on
the stage. The mistakes of the reporter (or the perversions of the
actors) as seen in the first edition generally injure the play; and it
was from this circumstance--the frequency of blotches in the first
edition--that the idea gained currency that the second edition was an
example of Shakespeare's never-failing tact in bettering his own lines.

Perhaps, after all, it would little advance our understanding of the
plays, or solve the essential puzzle,--that they actually had an
author,--if we could follow every stroke of his revising pen. We should
observe, no doubt, refinement of characterization, changes of stage
effect, the addition of flourishes and beauties; but their origin and
true meaning, the secret of their life, would be as safe as it is at
present, as securely lost in the midst of all this demonstration as the
manuscripts themselves were in the destruction of the Globe Theatre.

If we must then abandon the hope of seeing Shakespeare in his workshop,
we may, nevertheless, obtain from the pirated text some notion of the
manner in which Shakespeare was staged in his own day, and of how he
fared at the hands of the early actors. Romeo and Juliet is an
exceptionally difficult play to act, and the difficulties seem to have
been about the same in Shakespeare's time as they are to-day. They are,
in fact, inherent in the structure of the work itself.