ndependent value of their own. Mr
Bohn enumerates two hundred and sixty-two different editions of
Shakespeare. It was therefore a matter of necessity to make a selection.
In the following remarks we pass briefly in review the editions which we
have habitually consulted.

Whenever any commentary was known to us to exist in a separate form, we
have always, if possible, procured it. In some few instances, we have
been obliged to take the references at second-hand.

The first Folio (F1), 1623, contains all the plays usually found in
modern editions of Shakespeare, except _Pericles_. It was 'published
according to the True Originall Copies,' and 'set forth' by his
'friends' and 'fellows,' John Heminge and Henry Condell, the author 'not
having the fate common with some to be exequutor to his own writings.'

In an address 'To the great variety of Readers' following the dedication
to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, the following passage occurs:

'It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the
Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne
writings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death
departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the
office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and
so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with
diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the
frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even
those are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes;
and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who,
as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of
it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered
with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in
his papers.'

The natural inference to be drawn from this statement is, that all the
separate editions of Shakespeare's plays were 'stolen,' 'surreptitious,'
and 'imperfect,' and that all those published in the Folio were printed
from the author's own manuscripts. But it can be proved to demonstration
that several of the plays in the Folio were printed from earlier Quarto
editions, and that in other cases the Quarto is more correctly printed
or from a better MS. than the Folio text, and therefore of higher
authority. For example, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, in _Love's
Labour's Lost_, an