ABSTRACT
If a variety of editions and innumerable comments can be supposed to perfect and correct the inaccurate text of a celebrated author, sufficient, one would think, has been done to leave that of Shakespeare without a blemish. So slow however, or so inefficacious is the progress and exertion of verbal criticism when moiling in the dust and cobwebs of antiquity, so much is to be demolished, so much to be rebuilt, that it will not, except to those who place implicit confidence in the interested and unqualifyed assertions of every publisher, be a matter of much surprise to learn that, after all that had been done by the labour of Shakespeare’s numerous editors and commentators,—after all that has been urged or assumed in favour of the last edition,—as much more still remains to be done to bring his text back even to the state of correctness in which it was left by his first editors….
