Page:The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare (1790) - Vol. 1a.djvu/26

xii however, no apology is necessary: for though to explain and illustrate the writings of our poet is a principal duty of his editor, to ascertain his genuine text, to fix what is to be explained, is his first and immediate objet: and till it be establifhed which of the ancient copies is entitled to preference, we have no criterion by which the text can be ascertained. Fifteen of Shakspeare’s plays were printed in quarto antecedent to the first complete collection of his works, which was published by his fellow-comedians in 1623. These plays are, ''A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Love's Labour’s Loft, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Two parts of K. Henry IV. K. Richard II. K. Richard III. The Merchant of Venice, K. Henry V. Much ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, and Othello.''

The players, when they mention these copies, represent them all as mutilated and imperfect; but this was merely thrown out to give an additional value to their own edition, and is not strictly true of any but two of the whole number; The Merry Wives of Windsor, and K. Henry V.—With respect to the other thirteen copies, though undoubtedly they were all surreptitious, that is, stolen from the playhouse and printed without the consent of the authour or the proprietors, they in general are preferable to the exhibition of the fame plays in the folio; for this plain reason, because, instead of printing these plays from a manuscript, the editors of the folio, to save labour, or from some other motive, printed the greater part of them from the very copies which they represented as