of your
purses. Well! it is now publique, & you wil stand for your priuiledges
wee know: to read, and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth
best commend a Booke, the Stationer saies. Then, how odde soeuer your
braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and
spare not. Iudge your sixe-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your fiue
shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the iust rates,
and welcome. But, what euer you do, Buy. Censure will not driue a
Trade, or make the Iacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit,
and sit on the Stage at _Black-Friers_, or the _Cock-pit_, to arraigne
Playes dailie, know, these Playes haue had their triall alreadie,
and stood out all Appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a
Decree of Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation.

It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that
the Author himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne
writings. But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death
departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the
office of their care, and paine to haue collected & publish'd them,
and so to haue publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with
diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the
frauds and stealthes of iniurious imposters, that expos'd them euen
those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their
limbes, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued
them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle
expresser of it. His mind and hand went together. And what he thought,
he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him
a blot in his papers. But it is not our prouince, who onely gather his
works, and giue them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him.
And there we hope, to your diuers capacities, you will finde enough,
both to draw, and hold you for his wit can no more lie hid then it
could be lost. Reade him, therefore and againe and againe. And if then
you doe not like him surely you are in some manifest danger, not to
vnderstand him. And so we leaue you to other of his Friends, whom if
you need can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade
your selues, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

JOHN HEMINGE HENRIE CONDELL.

[Footnote A: Little more than half of Shakespeare's plays were
published during his lifetime; and in the pub