far surpassed by
Edward Capell, who issued his edition in ten volumes in 1768.
Unfortunately, the enormous labor Capell underwent did not bear its full
fruit, for he suppressed much of his textual material in the interests
of a well-printed page, and his preface and notes are written in a
crabbed style that obscures the acuteness of his editorial intelligence.
He elaborated stage directions, and carried farther the correction of
disarranged meter; but, like most of his fellow-editors in that century,
he did less than justice to his predecessors and was too indulgent to
his own conjectures. This edition was supplemented by volumes of notes
published in 1775 (1 vol.) and 1779-1783 (3 vols.).

[Page Heading: Johnson and Capell]

Before the publication of Capell's text, the antiquary George Steevens
had issued in 1766 reprints of twenty of the early Quartos; and in 1773
he produced, in association with Johnson, an edition with a good text in
which he benefited from Capell's labors (though he denies this). Through
his knowledge of Elizabethan literature he made substantial
contributions to the interpretation of difficult passages. He restored
_Pericles_ to a place in the canon, but excluded the _Poems_, because
"the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to
compel readers into their service." To the second edition of Johnson and
Steevens's text (1778) Edmund Malone contributed his famous "Essay on
the Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays," which began modern investigation
of this subject. The third edition was revised in 1785 by Isaac Reed;
and this was succeeded by the edition of Malone in 1790, in which the
vast learning and conscientious care of that scholar combined to produce
the most trustworthy text so far published. Malone was not brilliant,
but he was extremely erudite and candid, and his so-called "Third
Variorum" edition in twenty-one volumes, brought out after his death by
James Boswell in 1821, is a mine of information on theatrical history
and cognate matters, which will probably always be of value to students
of the period. The name of "First Variorum Edition" is given to the
fifth edition of Johnson and Steevens, revised by Reed in 1803, and
"Second Variorum" to the sixth edition of the same, 1813. Meantime
occasional critiques of complete editions contributed something to the
text. Johnson's edition called forth comment by Kendrick in 1765 and
Tyrwhitt in 1766, and the Johnson and Steevens