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and yet we are contented from a few specimens only to form our opinions of the genius of ages gone before us. Even while we are blaming the taste of that audience which received with applause the worst plays in the reign of CHARLES the fecond, we should confider that the few in poffeffion of our theatre, which would never have been heard a fecond time had they been written now, were probably the best of hundreds which had been dismissed with general cenfure. The collection of plays, interludes, &c. made by Mr. GARRICK, with an intent to depofit them hereafter in fome public library, will be confidered as a valuable acquisition; for pamphlets have never yet been examined with a proper regard to pofterity. Moft of the obfolete pieces will be found on enquiry to have been introduced into libraries but fome few years fince; and yet those of the present age, which may one time or other prove as ufeful, are ftill entirely neglected. I fhould be remifs, I am fure, were I to forget my acknowledgments to the Gentleman I have just mentioned, to whose benevolence I owe the ufe of feveral of the fcarceft Quarto's, which I could not otherwise have obtained; though I advertised for them, with fufficient offers, as I thought, either to tempt the casual owner to fell, or the curious to communicate them; but Mr. GARRICK'S zeal would not permit him to withhold any thing that might ever fo remotely tend to fhew the perfections of that author who could only have enabled him to difplay his own.

IT

It is not merely to obtain juftice to SHAKESPEARE, that I have made this collection, and advise others to be made. The general intereft of ENGLISH literature, and the attention due to our own language and hiftory, require that our ancient writings fhould be diligently reviewed. There is no age which has not produced fome works that deserved to be remembered; and as words and phrases are only understood by comparing them in different places, the lower writers must be read for the explanation of the higheft. No language can be afcertained and fettled, but by deducing its words. from their original fources, and tracing them through their fucceffive varieties of fignification; and this deduction can only be performed by confulting the earlieft and intermediate authors.

ENOUGH has been already done to encourage us to do more. Dr. HICKES, by reviving the study of the SAXON language, feems to have excited a stronger curiofity after old ENGLISH writers, than ever had appeared before. Many volumes which were mouldering in duft have been collected; many authors which were forgotten have been revived; many laborious catalogues have been formed; and many judicious gloffaries compiled: the literary tranfactions of the darkerages are now open to discovery; and the language in its intermediate gradations, from the Conqueft to the Restoration, is better understood than in any former time.

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To incite the continuance, and encourage the extenfion of this domeftic curiofity, is one of the purposes of the present publication. In the plays it contains, the poet's first thoughts as well as words are preferved; the additions made in fubfequent impreffions, distinguished in italics, and the performances themfelves make their appearance with every typographical error, fuch as they were before they fell into the hands of the player-editors. The various readings, which can only be attributed to chance, are fet down among the reft, as I did not chufe arbitrarily to determine for others which were useless, or which were valuable. And many words differing only by the spelling, or ferving merely to fhew the difficulties which they to whofe lot it first fell to disentangle their perplexities must have encountered, are exhibited with the reft. I must acknowledge that fome few readings have flipped in by mistake, which can pretend to serve no purpose of illuftration, but were introduced by confining myself to note the minutest variations of the copies, which foon convinced me that the oldeft were in general the most correct. Though no proof can be given that the poet fuper-intended the publication of any one of thefe himself, yet we have little reason to suppose that he who wrote at the command of ELIZABETH, and under the patronage of SOUTHAMPTON, was fo very negligent of his fame as to permit the moft incompetent judges, fuch as the players were, to vary at their pleasure what he had fet down for the first fingle editions; and we have better grounds for a fufpicion that his works did materially

fuffer

fuffer from their prefumptuous corrections after his death.

It is very well known, that before the time of SHAKESPEARE, the art of making title pages was practised with as much, or perhaps more success than it has been fince. Accordingly, to all his plays we find long and defcriptive ones, which when they were first published were of great fervice to the venders of them. Pamphlets of every kind were hawked about the streets, by a set of people resembling his own AUTOLYCUS, who proclaimed aloud the qualities of what they offered to fale, and might draw in many a purchafer by the mirth he was taught to expect from THE HUMOURS OF CORPORAL NYM, OR THE SWAGGERING VAINE OF AUNCIENT PISTOLL, who was not to be tempted by the representation of a fact merely hiftorical. The players, however, laid afide the whole of this garniture, not finding it so necessary to procure fuccefs to a bulky volume, when the author's reputation was established, as it had been to bespeak attention to a few ftraggling pamphlets while it was yet uncertain,

THE fixteen plays which are not in these volumes, remained unpublished till the Folio in the year 1623, though the compiler of a work called THEATRICAL RECORDS, mentions different fingle editions of every one of them before that time. But as no one of the editors could ever meet with fuch, nor has any one else pretended to have seen them, I think myfelf at liberty to suppose the compiler fupplied the defects of the

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lift out of his own imagination; fince he must have had fingular good fortune to have been poffeffed of two or three different copies of all, when neither editors nor collectors, in the course of near fifty years, have been able fo much as to obtain the fight of one of the number,

Ar the end of the laft volume I have added a tragedy of KING LEIR, publifhed before that of SHAKESPEARE, which it is not improbable he might have seen, as the father kneeling to the daughter, when she kneels to afk his bleffing, is found in it; a circumftance two poets were not very likely to have hit on feparately; and which feems borrowed by the latter with his usual judgment, it being the most natural paffage in the old play; and is introduced in fuch a manner as to make it fairly his own. The ingenious editor of THE RELIQUES OF ANCIENT POETRY having never met with this play, and as it is not preferved in Mr. GARRICK'S collection, I thought it a curiofity worthy the notice of the public.

I HAVE likewise reprinted SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS, from a copy published in 1609, by G. ELD, one of the printers of his plays; which added to the confideration that they made their appearance with his name, and in his life-time, feems to be no flender proof of their authenticity. The fame evidence might operate in favour of feveral more plays which are omitted

here,

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