ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labour of an age in piléd stones :

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-y pointing pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst to th' shame of slow endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
JOHN MILTON.

UPON THE

LINES AND LIFE OF THE FAMOUS SCENIC POET, MASTER WILLIAM

SHAKESPEARE.

Those hands which you so clapped, go now and wring,
You Britons brave, for done are Shakespeare's days,
His days are done that made the dainty plays,
Which made the globe of heaven and earth to ring:
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,

Turned all to tears; and Phoebus clouds his rays;
That corpse, that coffin, now bestick those bays,
Which crowned him Poet first, then Poets' king.
If tragedies might any prologue have,

All those he made would scarce make one to this:
Where fame, now that he gone is to the grave
(Death's public tiring-house), the Nuntius is:
For though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.

HUGH HOLLAND.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE DECEASED AUTHOR, MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give

The world thy works; thy works, by which outlive
Thy tomb, thy name must; when that stone is rent
And time dissolves thy Stratford monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still; this book,
When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look
Fresh to all ages; when posterity

Shall loath what's new, think all is prodigy
That is not Shakespeare's, every line, each verse
Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.
Nor fire, nor cank'ring age-as Naso said

Of his-thy wit-fraught book shall once invade:
Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead,
Though missed, until our bankrout stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain to out-do
Passions "of Juliet, and of Romeo ;"

Or till I hear a scene more nobly take,

Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake:
Till these, till any of thy volume's rest,

Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,

But crowned with laurel, live eternally.

L. DIGGES.

ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE.

Prefixed as a Frontispiece to the first edition of his Works in folio, 1653.

TO THE READER.

This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,

Wherein the graver had a strife

With nature, to outdo the life:

O could he but have drawn his wit

As well in brass, as he has hit

His face; the print would then surpass

All that was ever writ in brass:

But since he cannot, reader, look

Not on his picture, but his book.

BEN JONSON.

II ISTORICAL SKETCH

OF THE

TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE.

every touch that woo'd its stay Hath brush'd its brightest hues away.

BYRON. The Giaour.

A COMPREHENSIVE glance at the history of the text of Shakespeare will be a fitting introduction to this complete edition of Shakespeare's works; especially for those who are not familiar with that history or with Shakespearian literature, and who doubtless form the greater number of those whom I salute as 'gentle readers.' The few whose enthusiasm or steady devotion has enabled them to wade through the heaps of rubbish which have accumulated around the works of Shakespeare, during the last century and a-half, will excuse a concession to the happy ignorance of their less learned, but perhaps not less devoted and appreciative fellow-admirers.

The Plays of Shakespeare, unlike his Poems, were, with a few exceptions, given to the world without his concurrence or even his consent. Eighteen of them, to wit:- -Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, Merchant of Venice, Richard II., Henry IV. (Part I. and Part II.), Henry V., Henry VI. (Part II. and Part III.), Richard III., Troilus and Cressida, Titus Andronicus, Pericles, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, were printed in quarto form during his lifetime. The copies of most of these plays used by the printer were, almost without doubt, surreptitiously obtained, and they are of comparatively little authority in determining the text; their office being merely auxiliary. It is worthy of notice here, that such was the value of Shakespeare's name, such his indifference to his dramatic reputation outside the theatre, and such the impunity of the press in his time, that during his life six other plays were also published under his name, which there are no grounds for receiving as his, which were repudiated by his first editors-his fellow-players and business partners in the theatre-and which have been rejected by all his subsequent editors, except Nicholas Rowe.

In 1623, seven years after his death, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's Plays was published in folio, under the title, "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies." This is known in Shakespearian literature as the first folio; and it is the only admitted authority for the text of his dramatic works. It contains all his plays except one: nineteen which had been surreptitiously or carelessly printed before its publication (one-Othello-having been published in quarto after his death), and seventeen which appeared in it for the first time. The play not included is Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and it is conjectured that the refusal of the holder of the copyright of that play to part with it, or to come into the enterprise of publishing the first folio, caused its omission. The Preface of the editors of this first folio-who, it should be constantly remembered, were Shakespeare's friends, fellow-actors, and joint theatrical proprietorsshows beyond all cavil, it would seem, that the publication was made, as its title professes

VOL. I.