oth Quarto and Folio are good but vary widely, the Cambridge
editors seem more eclectic than their general theory warrants, and the
punctuation is still archaic, clinging to the eighteenth-century
tradition. But the acceptance of this careful and conservative text has
been a wholesome influence in Shakespearean study.

The only completely reedited texts which have been issued since the
revised Cambridge edition are that of the Oxford Shakespeare, by W. J.
Craig, on principles very similar to the Cambridge, and the Neilson
text, originally published in one volume in 1906 and revised and
reprinted in the Tudor Shakespeare. The massive volumes of Dr. H. H.
Furness's _New Variorum Shakespeare_, begun in 1871 (17 volumes issued),
now reprint the text of the First Folio, and show marked traces of the
tendency to follow this authority without due discrimination. This
monumental abstract of all previous criticism is of great value to the
professional student of Shakespeare, and its textual apparatus has the
advantage over the Cambridge edition of recording not only the first
occurrence of a reading, but the names of the chief editors who have
adopted it. It thus gives a compendious history of editorial judgment on
all disputed points.

[Page Heading: Recent Editors]

The conjectural emendation of Shakespeare still goes on, but since Dyce,
comparatively few suggestions find general acceptance. More progress has
been made in interpretation through the greater accessibility of
contemporary documents and the advance in recent years in our knowledge
of Elizabethan theatrical conditions. But, in view of the circumstances
under which the original editions were printed, there will always be
room for variations of individual opinion in many cases, both as to what
Shakespeare wrote and as to what he meant.

CHAPTER VIII

QUESTIONS OF AUTHENTICITY

Owing to the conditions of publication described in Chapter VII there
are questions as to the authenticity of a number of the poems and plays
ascribed to Shakespeare. Of the poems, "The Ph[oe]nix and the Turtle"
and "A Lover's Complaint" have been sometimes rejected as unworthy, but
there is no other evidence against the ascription to him by the original
publishers. The case of _The Passionate Pilgrim_ is different and is
interesting as illustrating the methods of piracy practised by
booksellers and as affording the only record of a protest by Shakespeare
against the free use whi