his papers." On the
other hand, scholarship has discovered more in the life of Edward
Blount to justify his claim to the chief work of editing this volume.
Whoever they were, the editors' claim to diligent care in their work
was sincere. Throughout the volume there are proofs that they employed
the best text which they could get, even when others were in print.

It is owing to this volume, in all probability, that we possess twenty
of the best of Shakespeare's plays and the best texts of a number of
the others. We are therefore glad to hear that the edition was a
success and was considered worth reprinting within nine years. It is
not improbable that this edition ran to five hundred copies. Among the
most interesting work of the editors of the volume was the prefixing of
the Droeshout engraved portrait on the title-page, and an attempt to
improve the stage directions, as well as the division of most of the
plays, either in whole or in part, into acts and scenes.

The twenty plays which appeared in print for the first time in the
First Folio were taken in all probability directly from copies in the
possession of Shakespeare's company. Their texts are, upon the whole,
excellent. In the case of the sixteen other plays the editors
substituted for eight of the plays already in print in quartos,
independent texts from better manuscripts. This act must have involved
considerable expense and difficulty, and deserves the highest praise.
Five of the printed quartos were used with additions and corrections.
In the case of _Titus Andronicus_ a whole scene was added. In three
cases only {124} of the sixteen plays already printed did the editors
follow a quarto text without correcting it from a later theatrical
copy. This conscientious effort to give posterity the best text of
Shakespeare deserves our gratitude.

The Second Folio, 1632, was a reprint of the First; the Third Folio,
1663, a reprint of the Second; the Fourth Folio, 1685, a reprint of the
Third. This practice of copying the latest accessible edition has been
adopted by editors down to a very late period. Between 1629 and 1632
six quartos of Shakespearean plays were printed,--a fact which
indicates that the First Folio edition had been exhausted and that
there was a continued market. A man named Thomas Cotes acquired
through one Richard Cotes the printing rights of the Jaggards, and
added to them other rights derived from Pavier. The old publishers,
Smeth