of him that republishes an ancient book is, to correct what
is corrupt, and to explain what is obscure. To have a text corrupt in
many places, and in many doubtful, is, among the authors that have
written since the use of types, almost peculiar to Shakespeare. Most
writers, by publishing their own works, prevent all various readings,
and preclude all conjectural criticism. Books, indeed, are sometimes
published after the death of him who produced them; but they are better
secured from corruption than these unfortunate compositions. They
subsist in a single copy, written or revised by the author; and the
faults of the printed volume can be only faults of one descent.

But of the works of Shakespeare the condition has been far different: he
sold them, not to be printed, but to be played. They were immediately
copied for the actors, and multiplied by transcript after transcript,
vitiated by the blunders of the penman, or changed by the affectation of
the player; perhaps enlarged to introduce a jest, or mutilated to
shorten the representation; and printed at last without the concurrence
of the author, without the consent of the proprietor, from compilations
made by chance or by stealth out of the separate parts written for the
theatre; and thus thrust into the world surreptitiously and hastily,
they suffered another depravation from the ignorance and negligence of
the printers, as every man who knows the state of the press, in that
age, will readily conceive.

It is not easy for invention to bring together so many causes concurring
to vitiate the text. No other author ever gave up his works to fortune
and time with so little care: no books could be left in hands so likely
to injure them, as plays frequently acted, yet continued in manuscript:
no other transcribers were likely to be so little qualified for their
task as those who copied for the stage, at a time when the lower ranks
of the people were universally illiterate: no other editions were made
from fragments so minutely broken, and so fortuitously reunited; and in
no other age was the art of printing in such unskilful hands[1].

With the causes of corruption that make the revisal of Shakespeare's
dramatick pieces necessary, may be enumerated the causes of obscurity,
which may be partly imputed to his age, and partly to himself.

When a writer outlives his contemporaries, and remains almost the only
unforgotten name of a distant time, he is necessarily obscure. Ever