copy of Mr. Knight's Pictorial Edition, and having studied Shakespeare himself alone for so many years, I thought that I might with indifference read a commentator again. From Mr. Knight's labors I derived great satisfaction: his were altogether different comments from those which still fretted in my memory. I found that his Shakespeare and mine were the same; and I read with a new pleasure his remarks upon the different Plays:-a pleasure which I need hardly say was repeated and heightened by subsequent acquaintance with the criticisms of Coleridge, Wilson, Schlegel, and Hazlitt. But I learned from him a fact of which my determination had kept me ignorant, or rather, made me forgetful,-that the text of Shakespeare before the date of his edition was filled with the alterations and interpolations of those very editors whose labors had impressed me so unpleasantly; and finding that in some of the few passages which had been obscure to me, the obscurity was of their creating, not of Shakespeare's or even his printers', I instantly began the critical study of the text. From that time to this, excepting my indispensable daily duties, I have done little else than labor in this field. Mr. Halliwell's excellent catalogue of Shakesperian literature pointed out the work before me, and all the necessary books which I was not able to procure immediately were attainable to me in the yet unopened Astor Library, through the kindness of Dr. Cogswell, or in the noble dramatic collection of Mr. Burton. Both of these libraries contain fine copies of the original

folio edition of Shakespeare's plays; and Mr. Burton's is not wanting in a copy of any edition of even the least critical value, from the date of the original to the present day, while it abounds in the rarest and most valuable editions of our earlier as well as later dramatists, poets, and prose writers whose works can in any way throw light upon the text of Shakespeare and the history of our drama or our language. With the early dramatists, and the poets from Robert of Gloucester and Piers Ploughman, I had already a familiar acquaintance, and I was thus enabled to give my attention to literature purely Shakesperian. What knowledge my five years of hard labor has given me of the mass of mingled learning and ignorance, sense and folly, with which Shakespeare has as nearly as possible been overwhelmed, the following pages will partly show:-and but partly; for the mere reference to it all would make a volume in itself; and a very unnecessary and wearisome volume it would be. But it is not because I have gone through such preparation that I have written this book; but because before I undertook the task I had studied Shakespeare himself with constant devotion during the whole of my thinking life, and had not discovered the need of any comments or explanations at all, except in a few passages, nearly every one of which my more recent studies have shown me were obscured by the labors of those editors who lived before the expiration of the first quarter of this century, or by the carelessness of the printers of the first edition, or their inability to decipher the manu

script which was furnished to them. During my study of the text in the original folio and in Steevens' reprint of the quartos, it was my habit, in all passages in which they differed from the editions in common use, to enter their readings upon the margins of my copy of Shakespeare; and as I read the commentators and editors I did the same with their noteworthy conjectural emendations, adding my own solution of the difficulty in many cases in which it seemed to me that there was either no difficulty at all, or that the simplest means of solving it had been neglected. It was impossible that such a course of study should be pursued by one who was in the almost daily habit of committing his thoughts upon other subjects to paper, without the accompaniment of written notes. These gradually accumulated upon me, sometimes in the shape of mere memorandums, sometimes extending themselves almost into short essays; and they, with the exception of the pages devoted to the consideration of Mr. Collier's folio, form the bulk of the ensuing volume. They were written with no intent that they should see the light in this form, if at all; for the most devoted student of Shakespeare will shrink from adding the weight of his thoughts to the burden under which the text of the great dramatist has so long groaned. But as, after the appearance of the two papers in Putnam's Magazine upon Mr. Collier's folio, it was suggested to me by some whose judgments I respected, that a book written in the same spirit upon the text of Shakespeare, would be

welcomed by all those who were giving attention to a subject which had derived renewed interest from recent events, and would help to beget an universal habit of more direct communion with him, to a disregard of the notes of editors and commentators; and as the effect of what I had written, if it were to have effect at all, would be to lead to the reception of the simple and obvious meaning of his lines, I determined to prepare for publication selections from and expansions of the notes of my studies. This I have done; and in this volume you see the result. The book was not deliberately made; but, like Topsy, it "growed." Unlike that young lady, however, it was not "raised on a spec;" for you need not be told that, were five editions to be sold, it would not pay me day laborer's wages for the mere time I have devoted to the preparation of it.

But though the result of accumulation rather than of projection, the book is not without unity of purpose; that purpose being to show that the obvious signification of Shakespeare's poetry is not only the true sense but the best, and that therefore no thinking man, of ordinary information and intelligence, needs the aid of editors and commentators to help him to the full understanding and enjoyment of nearly every passage which came from Shakespeare's pen. People are apt to forget that Shake- L speare wrote his plays to please the promiscuous public of London, at a time when the general diffusion of knowledge was infinitely less than it is now.

He wrote to make money by interesting such a public, and of course to be understood by it; and he was understood. The general public of his day, those who, in the words of his fellow actors, judged their "sixpen'orth" and their "shilling's worth" as well as those who judged their "five shillings' worth at a time, or higher," crowded the theatre to hear his plays, while Jonson's more learned and labored, though not more finished, dramas were played to empty benches. Leonard Digges, a contemporary of both the poets, has left us some verses, which you have doubtless seen before, and which have value as a testimony to Shakespeare's power of pleasing the people of his time.

"So have I seen, when Casar would appear,
And on the stage at half-sword parley were
Brutus and Cassius, O how the audience

Were ravished! with what wonder they went thence!
When, some new day, they would not brook a line

Of tedious, though well labor'd Catiline;

Sejanus, too, was irksome, they prized more

"Honest" Iago, or the jealous Moor.

And though the Fox and subtil Alchymist,

Long intermitted could not quite be mist,

Though these have sham'd all th' ancients, and might raise
Their author's merit with a crown of bays,

Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire

Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea coal fire,

And door-keepers: when, let but Falstaff come,

Hal, Poins, the rest,-you scarce shall have a room,
All is so pester'd; let but Beatrice

And Benedick be seen, lo! in a trice

The cock-pit, galleries, boxes, all are full,

To hear Malvolio that cross garter'd gull.

Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look: