Collier Shakespeare

On Halloween I asked for research into which edition added a stage direction for Hamlet to put down Yorick’s skull.  Bardfilm tells me it was added in the Collier edition, but then disappeared before I could ask for more info on Collier.  So, I had to go look for myself.

Interesting!  From the Wikipedia page:

Collier used these opportunities to effect a series of literary fabrications. Over the next several years he claimed to find a number of new documents relating to Shakespeare’s life and business. After New Facts, New Particulars and Further Particulars respecting Shakespeare had appeared and passed muster, Collier produced (1852) the famous Perkins Folio, a copy of the Second Folio (1632), so called from a name written on the title-page. In this book were numerous manuscript emendations of Shakespeare, said by Collier to be from the hand of “an old corrector.” He published these corrections as Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare (1852) and boldly incorporated them in his next edition (1853) of Shakespeare.

More information here.  Did this guy just forge his sources? If there’s such controversy over his edition why would the Moby edition, which is based on the 1864 Globe edition (thanks JM), have this line?

I would have thought the authenticity of this edition would have been seriously called into question just by looking at the first scene of Romeo and Juliet, anyway:

SAMPSON 

Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals. 

GREGORY 

No, for then we should be colliers. 

SAMPSON 

That would be awesome. 

GREGORY 

This is what I’m sayin, right? Colliers are the coolest. 

SAMPSON 

I hear you.  Ain’t nothing wrong with being a collier. Colliers rule. 

GREGORY 

You know who doesn’t rule, though? Montagues.

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