EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THIS edition of the works of Shakespeare has been prepared with a single eye to the wants of his readers. Its purpose is not to furnish material for critical study either of the Elizabethan dramatists or of the English language. It seeks rather to enable the reader of general intelligence to understand, and therefore to enjoy, what Shakespeare wrote as nearly as possible in the very way in which he would have understood and enjoyed it if he had lived in London in the reign of James I. That done, as well as the editor was able to do it under the limiting conditions of his work, he has regarded his task as ended. Editors of poets and dramatists at the best are always necessary evils; commentators at the best are rarely better than unnecessary nuisances. They are so in this present case when they presume to do all the reader's thinking and appreciation for him, and thus deprive him of the highest pleasures and richest benefits that come of reading Shakespeare; and chiefly when in doing this they grope and fumble for a profound moral purpose in these plays; which is really to insist upon such a purpose in the Italian novelli and English chronicles, which, always with the least possible trouble to himself, Shakespeare put into an actable shape.

Nor has it been deemed desirable to label Shakespeare's style, and pigeon-hole it for reference by pointing out that this is metaphor, that simile, and the others synechdoche, hendiadys, litotes, zeugma, and the like. In an edition prepared as a textbook of literature for schools all this is in place and in keeping; but in one intended merely to be read and enjoyed, it seems more than out of place and out of keeping. I have never been able to divine how such rhetorical labelling helped any one to a

greater enjoyment or a better understanding of Shakespeare or any other poet rather the contrary. On the one hand, it is mere mental gymnastics (yet mental gymnastics are not only beneficial but needful for those who are in training); and on the other, mere naming of tools, or rather and much worse the naming of work according to the tool by which it was wrought. Shakespeare himself has left us a valuable opinion upon this point:

"These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are: "

which is nothing against the study of astronomy, but much against the looking at the great lights of the world, whether in man or in nature, merely from a scientific, not to say a pedantic, point of view.

In this edition the Introductions to the Plays present, in a compact form, all that is known in regard to the origin of each, the date of its production, and the period of its action, — points these of some interest, although not of the highest importance, except to an editor or critic of Shakespeare. They are almost technical. To most readers of Shakespeare, however thoughtful and appreciative, it is of very little moment where the poet found the subject of a play, and of little more in what year it was written.

The Poems have been placed in the second volume chiefly for convenience of arrangement; but even those who are anxious upon the point of chronological sequence must admit that there they are more nearly in place than they would be immediately after the great tragedies. Almost all of them are early work; and indeed most of the sonnets were written before 1597, and bear the marks of the period that produced Romeo and Juliet. The prologues to the great love tragedy are in form and in style, and in a certain fashion of versification, exact counterparts of the sonnets; to which in tone, and often in sentiment, the play is notably correspondent. But indeed this matter of arrangement is hardly more than a question of manual convenience. Whether the poems precede the plays or follow them, or divide one sort of them from another, or are distributed through

them, is of no more importance than whether The Tempest is printed first of the plays, or Titus Andronicus: not so much, indeed; for surely it is better that The Tempest should be the door to Shakespeare than Titus Andronicus, lest any sensitive soul should shudder at the threshold and draw back. There seems to be no sufficient reason for changing the order al. though it is hardly order in which these plays were first published by Shakespeare's fellow-actors, and which has since been followed in all the popular editions, and nearly all the critical editions of consideration: and it has been here retained.

This work was planned, and has been carefully prepared, with the intention of presenting to the public for the first time an edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems which, compact, compendious, yet easily readable, and at a very moderate price, should give a text edited with scrupulous care, and, with the assistance of all the critical apparatus that exists for that purpose, set forth every fact known with regard to the poet and his writings, and add to this notes explanatory of every obsolete word or phrase and of every obscure passage; in a word, unite thorough editorial work and attractive appearance with convenience and cheapness.

To attain these ends it was of course necessary to make the notes and other extraneous parts of the book as brief as they could be, and at the same time fulfil their function. But this task has proved easier than, when it was undertaken, it was feared that it would be found. In critical editions of Shakespeare, the bulk of the annotation (exclusive of so-called æsthetic and philosophical criticism) is made up of various readings and the discussion of them; a wearisome business to all, and one which to the general reader is often tedious to offensiveness and always of little profit. He wishes simply to read and to understand his author. In this edition his wants and wishes have received prime consideration. What is here given presents results, not processes. The editor has made the best text that he could make through the study of the poet's dramas in connection with the literature and the history of his time, and of all that has been written upon them by any considerable critics; but he has given here his finished work, and not a list of the tools with which he did it, or heaps of his chips and shav

ings. He could not have made his text with more scrupulous care, nor, he believes, have presented it more acceptably to those for whom it is intended, if he had filled an octavo volume with discussions of each play. It has been very rarely deemed either necessary or desirable to refer to any other reading than the one given; and this has been done only when the case has seemed doubtful, or when some other reading would be a help to the understanding of the passage in question. The glossarial and explanatory notes have been prepared in a like spirit and with like purpose. They are intended simply to enable the reader to understand the words and phrases used by the poet, without a display of the sources whence they have been derived, and with the briefest possible diversion of the reader's attention from the author to the editor.

In determining what passages were sufficiently obscure to justify explanation, the editor, following eminent example, took advice of his washerwoman, and also of the correctors of the press in the office in which the edition was printed, to whose intelligent suggestions and thoughtful care he owes much which it gives him pleasure to acknowledge. He therefore ventures to say to any reader who may not be able to understand a passage which is left without remark, that the fault may possibly be that of some other person than the poet or the editor.

Upon one point the convenience of the reader and his uninterrupted enjoyment of the author have been carefully considered and constantly borne in mind. Explanation of obsolete words and phrases is given whenever it is needed, and as often as occasion requires. An obsolete or obscure word or phrase is not passed over in one play because it has been explained in another. There seems to be no good reason why a reader who is absorbed in the enjoyment of a passage in one play should be sent back or forth to look up in another the meaning of some word or phrase before him; or why he should be made to wait while he turns to the end of the book, or perhaps to the end of another volume, and looks through a glossary. Therefore, every word that needs explanation is explained in this edition whenever and wherever it occurs, unless, indeed, it is found twice in the same scene: in which case repetition was deemed superfluous. Explanation, however, has never been obtruded in the many