KC8093 ENGLISH CLASSICS. EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, A.M. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume; Paper, 40 cents per volume. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part Copyright, 1877, by HARPER & BROTHERS. PREFACE. In this edition of Macbeth the text is the result of a careful collation of the Folio of 1623 with all the modern editions that are of any critical value. In the notes I have been under special obligations to Mr. Horace Howard Furness, who has kindly allowed me to make free use of his "New Variorum" edition of the play (Philadelphia, 1873), in which much of my work was already done to my hand, and who has given me other help which I could hardly have got elsewhere. My indebtedness to him is acknowledged on almost every page, but I do not know how to state it in full. So much has been written on Macbeth that the main difficulty has been in selecting and condensing from it; but, as in former volumes of the series, I have preferred to give too much rather than too little, bearing in mind that the great majority of readers and students have not access to a full Shakespearian library. The teacher, whether he have that privilege or not, will find Mr. Furness's edition invaluable for reference. It is a complete apparatus criticus compressed into a single volume, presenting in the most convenient form what one would else have to "turn o'er many books" to find, some of them so rare and costly as to be within the reach of only a favored few. |