My text has, I believe, been punctuated with great care; and I suspect that this is the first time that that by no means trifling task has ever been thoroughly performed for these works, except with regard to passages which have been discussed as obscure, or which are entirely deformed by the punctuation of the first folio. Through all others, commas and colons appear to have been scattered, at some remote period, with indiscriminating hand, and not to have been disturbed till now. What I have here done is not the fruit of malice aforethought. The studies of which this work is one result, were begun, and were continued for some years, only for the pleasure they afforded, and without any ultimate purpose; as such studies, I am sure, are pursued, to a certain degree, by hundreds in Europe and America to whom Shakespeare's writings are a dearly prized inheritance. But, with a closer acquaintance, if not a more thorough understanding, of Shakespeare, and a wider knowledge of the literature of his time and the labors of his editors and commentators, came a conviction that, with all the learning and all the critical ability that had been brought to the regulation and the illustration of his dramas, they had never yet been edited upon just those principles, or presented in exactly that form, which would satisfy the greater number of his loving and intelligent readers. Then the baleful temptation to undertake the supplying of this want presented itself insidiously upon every occasion of dissatisfaction with existing editions. How many of my fellow-students must have been similarly tempted! Happy they whose occupations, whose fore sight, or whose indolence deterred them from the task! However extended and thorough his knowledge of English literature, however intimate his acquaintance with the text of Shakespeare in all its shapes, no man can form any thing like a just estimate of the time and labor which must be given to the conscientious preparation of a thorough critical edition of Shakespeare's plays, until after he has performed the task himself. And thus, with a very clear perception of the ideal at which I was aiming, but with a very imperfect conception of the difficulties which lay in the way of attaining it, I began the work of which the result is now presented to the reader. Favorably as the bulk of it has already been received, it would be unreasonable to hope that others will find less fault with it than I do myself. It has, at least, I trust, taught me charity toward my fellow-editors. The man who honestly, and with some capacity for his task, undertakes to reform abuses and to rectify errors, will generally end by apologizing for some of the very faults which, at first, he most strongly condemned. And now, the labors ended which have taxed others' patience as well as mine, I lay down from a weary hand the pen taken up blithely, and perhaps too confidently, seven years ago. I can truly say that my task has been performed as thoroughly as I expected to perform it, and even more minutely, if not so perfectly or so easily. The very proofs have required more time than I expected to give to the whole work. My place must be among those who have not attained the height of their endeavor, or even perhaps the extreme of their capacity, because they found their endeavor limited by circumstances unforeseen. Shakespearian 3 VOL. I. pursuits have not been, as some of my generous critics and kind correspondents seem to have supposed they were, my principal or even my continued occupation. This work, whatever may be its value, is the fruit of hours stolen from sleep, from recreation, from the society of friends, and from nearer and dearer companionship. Begun when our country was strong and happy in long-continued peace and prosperity, it was interrupted, near its close, by a bloody struggle which has tried and proved that strength as no other nation's strength was ever tried or proved, which threatened, though but for a brief period, to shake that prosperity to its foundations, and which, involving us all in its excitement, absorbed the best energies of every generous soul; it is finished as that strength seems to be renewed and established more firmly than before, and under the glad auguries of a peace and a prosperity which we may reasonably hope will never again be so interrupted. Here is my peace-offering. R. G. W. NEW YORK, April 23, 1865. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES AND CORRECTIONS. VOL. II. The Tempest. [In some copies the corrections proposed in these Supplementary Notes have been already made.] P. 11. P. 19. p. 26. p. 36. P. 41. p. 70. and as leaky as an unstanch'd wench": What is the meaning of 'unstanched' here? Not, it would seem, except in way of pun, that undiscussible one which is the most obvious. See, "For who can lesse than smile that sees unstanch and riveled faces To shelter coylie underneath Fannes, Tifnies, Masks, Albion's England, Chap. 101, p. 400, ed. 1606. 46 Courtsi'd when you have, and kiss'd": The dashes at the end of this line and the next should be removed. "The wild waves whist" is not parenthetical. As the Cambridge editors have remarked, Ferdinand says, "This music crept by me upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and my passion." "Of its own kind": - Read, "Of it own kind." So the folio. See the Note on "it's folly, it's tenderness," &c. Winter's Tale, Act I. Sc. 2. 1 to keep them living":- I now think that Malone was right in his conjectural reading, "to keep thee living." "And do the murther first": The assertion in the Note on this passage that murther was the uniform mode of spelling this word was incautiously and forgetfully made. p. 108. Two Gentlemen of Verona. "Nod-ay? why, that's noddy":- In support of my reading and explanation of this much mooted passage, which have been silently adopted by the Cambridge editors, see the following dialogue from The Woman turned Bully, 1675: "Good. Come hither, sirrah. Can you go to Mr. Docket's and come again presently, and not play at chuck farthing by the way? Boy. [bowing] Yes, forsooth, Madam. Good. Yet it's no matter neither. about the house? Boy. [bowing] Yes, Madam. Good. Go, send him to me quickly. Is Truepenny Act III. Sc. 2, p. 44. p. 125. "O, that shoe could speak now like an old woman":Is it at all probable that Theobald's reading, "a wood woman," which appears in almost every subsequent edition, gives the true text? For would' could not be a misprint by the ear for wood; because in would' the was pronounced. p. 131. p. 150. "Yet let her be a principality": - The Note on this passage was written with too little consideration of the subject; and a critic in the Atlantic magazine (Feb. 1859) corrects me by saying "there were three orders of angels above the principalities, the highest being the Seraphim." It is difficult to find an authoritative marshalling of the celestial hierarchy, and perhaps not less difficult to discover exactly what was meant by principalities or by powers in that order. But I wonder at my mistake; for before making it I had read this passage in Drayton's Man in the Moone: "Those Hierarchies that Jove's great will supply, Holding their places by the treble trine, Make up that holy theologike nine : Thrones, Cherubin and Seraphin that rise, With Dominations, Potestates are plac'd The second and the Ephionian last, Which Vertues, Angels, and Archangels bee." "She is not to be fasting in respect of her breath":— It must be admitted that Rowe's reading "to be kissed fasting" is more than plausible. For, "to be fasting," |