rical corrections, marked in red ink, in
Capell's hand. This was done, as he tells us in a note prefixed to Vol.
I., in 1769.

He described, much more minutely than Pope had done, the places of the
scenes, and made many changes, generally for the better, in the stage
directions.

In his peculiar notation, _Asides_ are marked by inverted commas, and
obvious stage business is indicated by an obelus.

In a note to his preface, p. xxiii, Capell says:

'In the manuscripts from which all these plays are printed, the
emendations are given to their proper owners by initials and other marks
that are in the margin of those manuscripts; but they are suppressed in
the print for two reasons: First their number, in some pages, makes them
a little unsightly; and the editor professes himself weak enough to like
a well-printed book; in the next place, he does declare, that his only
object has been to do service to his Author; which provided it be done,
he thinks it of small importance by what hand the service was
administer'd,' &c.

By this unfortunate decision, Capell deprived his book of almost all its
interest and value[11]. And thus his unequalled zeal and industry have
never received from the public the recognition they deserved.

In 1774, a volume of notes[12] was printed in quarto, and in 1783, two
years after his death, appeared _Notes, Various Readings, and the School
of Shakespeare_, 3 vols. 4to.[13] The printing of this work was begun in
1779.

George Steevens, who had edited in 1766 a reprint of Twenty of the Plays
of Shakespeare from the Quartos, at a time, when, as he himself
afterwards said, he was 'young and uninformed,' and had been in the
meanwhile one of Johnson's most active and useful correspondents, was
formally associated with him as Editor in 1770 (Boswell, Vol. III.
p. 116). At Steevens's suggestion, Johnson wrote to Dr Farmer of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, requesting him to furnish a Catalogue of
all the Translations Shakespeare might have seen and used. Hence, it
seems, Farmer took an interest in the successive editions, and supplied
many valuable notes and acute conjectural readings. It was on Farmer's
authority that _Pericles_ has been re-admitted among the Plays of
Shakespeare.

The first edition of Johnson and Steevens appeared in 1773. The
improvements in this edition, as compared with those which bore
Johnson's name only, are evidently the work of the new editor, who
brought to the task dilig