what has continued it down to us may
have been the many blunders and illiteracies of the first Publishers of
his works. In these Editions their ignorance shines almost in every page;
nothing is more common than _Actus tertia_, _Exit Omnes_, _Enter three
Witches solus_. Their French is as bad as their _Latin_, both in
construction and spelling: Their very _Welsh_ is false. Nothing is more
likely than that those palpable blunders of _Hector_'s quoting
_Aristotle_, with others of that gross kind, sprung from the same root: It
not being at all credible that these could be the errors of any man who
had the least tincture of a School, or the least conversation with such as
had. _Ben Johnson_ (whom they will not think partial to him) allows him at
least to have had _some Latin_; which is utterly inconsistent with
mistakes like these. Nay the constant blunders in proper names of persons
and places, are such as must have proceeded from a man who had not so much
as read any history, in any language: so could not be _Shakespear_'s.

I shall now lay before the reader some of those almost innumerable Errors
which have risen from one source, the ignorance of the Players, both as
his actors, and as his editors. When the nature and kinds of these are
enumerated and considered, I dare to say that not _Shakespear_ only, but
_Aristotle_ or _Cicero_, had their works undergone the same fate, might
have appear'd to want sense as well as learning.

It is not certain that any one of his Plays was published by himself.
During the time of his employment in the Theatre, several of his pieces
were printed separately in Quarto. What makes me think that most of these
were not publish'd by him, is the excessive carelessness of the press:
every page is so scandalously false spelled, and almost all the learned
and unusual words so intolerably mangled, that it's plain there either was
no Correcter to the press at all, or one totally illiterate. If any were
supervised by himself, I should fancy the two parts of _Henry the 4th_ and
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_ might have been so: because I find no other
printed with any exactness; and (contrary to the rest) there is very
little variation in all the subsequent editions of them. There are extant
two Prefaces, to the first quarto edition of _Troilus_ and _Cressida_ in
1609, and to that of _Othello_; by which it appears, that the first was
publish'd without his knowledge or consent, and even before it was acted,