The period from the 1690s to the 1730S is one in which the theoretical system of Neo-classicism was applied with energy and with few reservations. It is entirely fitting that the span of this volume coincides with the writing career of Charles Gildon, whom we might take as its representative critic, since he expresses the same attitudes as Dryden, Rymer and Dennis, while also (if more in his earlier than later work) showing some of the independent spirit which characterises the minority view, and of which Farquhar, Rowe and Addison are occasional exemplars. If the work of Gildon seems a limited attraction, the other writer whose career coincides with the time-span of this volume, Lewis Theobald, is of another magnitude. For long derided by Pope and his coterie-an adverse judgment that extended, alas, as far as Dr Johnson and Malone-Theobald deserves finally to be recognised as the best all-round editor of Shakespeare in this period or any other. While Johnson and Malone have their own special claims on our attention neither of them excelled in the whole range of scholarship, as Theobald did, nor applied their knowledge in such an imaginative way to the clarification of Shakespeare's text. If an editor may be allowed to express a hope, it is that this volume should permit the reinstatement of Theobald as one of the three or four major figures in the development of our understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare.