'grant' for 'shield' is
read by Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, and others, but the first
only is mentioned: '_shield_] F1. _shield:_ F2 F3 F4. _grant_ Pope.'

The conjectures made by annotators or by editors, but not introduced by
them into the text, are distinguished by the addition of 'conj.,' as
'Farmer conj.,' 'Johnson conj.' &c. 'Steevens (Farmer conj.)' indicates
that the reading in question was first suggested by Farmer, and first
introduced into the text by Steevens. If, however, the person who first
made the conjecture, afterwards became an editor, and gave it in his own
text, while, in the mean time, it had been adopted by some other editor,
the 'conj.' is omitted. Thus, for example, 'Theobald (Warburton)' shows
that Warburton was the first to propose such and such a change, that
Theobald first incorporated it in the text, and that Warburton
afterwards gave it in the text of his own edition. We have designated
the readings derived from Mr Collier's corrected copy of the second
folio thus: 'Collier MS.' not 'Collier MS. conj.,' as in this case we
could consult brevity without danger of misleading any one.

We have arranged the names both of Editors and of Commentators (as far
as was possible) in order of time. It has frequently happened that
several persons have hit on the same conjecture independently. In such
cases we have assigned it to the earliest, determining the priority by
the date of publication.

The metrical arrangement of each passage is marked in the notes by
printing each word which commences a line with an initial capital
letter. In the Folios, many substantives, other than proper names or
titles, are printed with initial capitals; but, in order to avoid
ambiguity, we have generally made our quotations conform, in this
respect, to the modern usage.

We had originally intended to give in our Preface a catalogue raisonne
of all the editions of our author and other books used by us in the
preparation of the present work, but this labour has been fortunately
spared us by Mr Bohn's reissue of Lowndes's _Bibliographer's Manual_,
the eighth part of which contains a full and accurate account of
Shakespearian literature. To that work we refer our readers for more
complete bibliographical details, and propose to confine ourselves to
some remarks on the critical value of the principal editions and
commentaries. We have, of course, confined our collation to those
editions which seemed to possess an i