The following editions are undated:

The readings from Warburton's MS. notes (see vol. VII. Preface, p. xiv), now in the possession of Mr Norman Bennet (formerly Bennett), have appeared in the numbers of Notes and Queries for February 25, March 18, and April 8, 1893.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE delay in the appearance of the present volume has been

mainly due to the fact that for the last three months of 1892 I was unable to attempt any literary work, and it has only now been completed under the pressure of other duties which had the first claim upon my time. Since the publication of the last volume of the Cambridge Shakespeare in 1866, there have been discovered two editions of Venus and Adonis and one of Lucrece, which were then unknown to the editors. The readings furnished by these have been incorporated in the present edition, which it is necessary for me to say is a really new edition and not, as has been erroneously stated by some high authorities, a mere reprint of the first. The pages of copy sent to the printers would shew that the additions and corrections amount to many thousands, and that scarcely a page is free from them. A comparison of the notes on some crucial passages, as for instance The Tempest, iii. 1. 15, All's Well, iv. 1. 38, and Hamlet, i. 4. 36-38, with the corresponding notes in the first edition, will alone furnish sufficient evidence of this. My endeavour has been to include all that was overlooked in our former work, to correct what was erroneous, and to add to it what has appeared since. That I have been completely successful, I am not vain enough to hope, but I trust that although I may not have recorded all the various readings which are due to printers' errors, or all the changes of versification which have

been suggested, I have not neglected anything of real importance. In any case, should such negligence appear, it has not been intentional.

The reprints of the early quartos, which in the first edition followed the plays to which they respectively belong, have been relegated to this concluding volume in order to effect a better arrangement of the volumes which precede it. In the first edition, Henry VIII., the last of the Historical Plays, was the first play in Volume VI., which began the Tragedies. In the present edition the Comedies are in three volumes as before, the Histories in two, and the Tragedies in three, while the last volume contains the doubtful Pericles, the Poems, and the reprints of the early quartos. Of these reprints I must say a few words in self-defence, as a comparison between them and the facsimiles by photolithography which have appeared in recent years might lead to the conclusion that the reprints are incorrect. The contrary will be found to be the case, for in all doubtful instances the originals have been appealed to and followed. In minute particulars the facsimiles are by no means a certain guide, for they turn commas into full stops, notes of interrogation into colons, semicolons into commas, and render it impossible to distinguish between 'c' and 'e,' 'r' and ‘t,' ‘n’ and 'u,' 'm' and 'in,' and the like. I make no complaint against them for these imperfections, because it would have been impossible to avoid them without incurring greater cost than was consistent with the object for which the series was issued. But when in the First Part of the Contention (iv. 10. 36, p. 562) the facsimile of the first quarto contains the words 'to the King' which were only added in the third quarto; when in Romeo and Juliet (ii. 2. 53, p. 654), 'entreat' is changed to 'enter at'; and when in Hamlet not only is 'course' altered to 'coarse' (i. 1. 31, p. 700), 'becke' to 'backe' (ii. 2. 170, p. 719), 'ghest' to 'ghost' (vi. 1. 43, p. 743), but the speakers' names are changed from Mar.' to 'Ham.' (i. 5. 155, p. 712), and from 'Hor.' to 'Ham.' (iii. 2. 182, p. 730),

all confidence in the facsimiles as trustworthy authorities disappears,

In conclusion, I desire to thank the many friends who have assisted me in the work, and without whose help my difficulties would have been greatly increased. I would especially record my obligations to Mr E. Maunde Thompson, Principal Librarian, to Dr Garnett, Mr W. Y. Fletcher, and Mr W. Barclay Squire, of the British Museum; to Mr Falconer Madan, Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian, and to Mr George Parker; to Mr G. T. Pilcher and Mr A. E. Haigh of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; to the late Mr Henry Bradshaw, University Librarian, and Mr W. White, Sub-Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge; to Mr Alfred H. Huth; the Rev. W. H. Milman, Librarian of Sion College; to Dr Justin Winsor, Librarian of Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.; and above all to my constant friend Dr Horace Howard Furness of Philadelphia, whose monumental volumes are the admiration of every true student of Shakespeare.

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

5 May, 1893.

POSTSCRIPT.

As the change of notation consequent upon the discovery of two new editions of Venus and Adonis and of one of The Rape of Lucrece may cause confusion I append the following Table.

W. A. W.