e volumes.

Of the 52 Plays in the Second Folio only 5 were published before the
death of Beaumont and 9 before the death of Fletcher. The text has,
therefore, given rise to a fruitful crop of conjectural emendations,
but it has not been deemed a part of the editor's duty to garner them.
Leaving these on one side, and desirous mainly of collecting every
alternative reading in all the Quartos and in the two Folios, the text
used in the preparation of the present edition, chosen after careful
consideration, is that of the Second Folio, obvious printers' errors
being corrected, recorded in the Appendix, and indicated in the text
by the insertion of square brackets. This text is the latest with
any pretence to authority, it includes all the plays, and it forms a
convenient limit, beyond which no notice has been taken of alternative
readings, and to which the variants, chronologically arranged from the
earliest to the latest Quartos, can easily be referred. Some of the early
Quartos no doubt offer better texts of some of the plays, especially in
the matter of verse and prose arrangement, and had it been intended to
print one text, and one text only, unaccompanied by a full apparatus of
variorum readings, something might be said in favour of a choice among
the Quartos and Folios, selecting here and there, in the case of each
play, the particular text that seemed the best. But such choice could
only be an extension of the eclectic method that has been rejected in
dealing with alternative readings, it seemed to be equally unscientific,
and, in view of the material in the Appendixes, needless.

In common with all the Quartos and the First Folio the Second Folio
has failings, which will be noted in due course, but these have been
exaggerated, and against them may be set the advantages detailed in the
address of 'The Booksellers to the Reader,' reprinted on p. lx.

It has been thought that it would be useful to students to give lists
of the different arrangements of prose and verse that obtain in the
different quartos, and these will be found in the Appendix after the
variants of each play.

The remaining volumes of this edition will follow as soon as can be
arranged.

* * * * *

The Syndics of the University Press have asked me to complete the work
begun by Arnold Glover. It was a work greatly to his mind: he spent much
labour upon it, being always keenly interested in critical, textual and
b