tors may be given
from _II Henry IV_, IV, i, 94-96:--

"_Archbishop_. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born, an household cruelty.
I make my quarrel in particular."

Nobody knows what Shakespeare meant to say in this passage, and no
satisfactory guess has ever been made as to what has happened to these
lines.

A knowledge of Elizabethan English has cleared up the following passage
perfectly. According to the First Folio, the only early print, Antony
calls Lepidus, in _Julius Caesar_, IV, i, 36-37:--

"A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations...."

This has been corrected to read in the second line

"On abjects, orts, and imitations."

Abjects here means outcasts, and orts, scraps, or leavings; but no one
unfamiliar with the language of that time could have solved the puzzle.

A different sort of problem is offered by such plays as _King Lear_, of
which the quartos furnish three hundred lines not in the Folio, while
the Folio has one hundred lines not in the quartos, and is, on the
whole, much more carefully copied. The modern editor gives all the
lines in both versions, so that we read a _King Lear_ which is probably
longer than Shakespeare's countrymen read or ever saw acted. The
modern editor selects, however, when Folio and quartos differ, the
reading which seems best.

{127}

FOLIO. "Cordelia. Was this a face
To be opposed against the _jarring_ winds?"

QUARTOS. "Was this a face
To be opposed against the _warring_ winds?"

In such a difference as this, the personal taste of the editor is apt
to govern his text.

We cannot here go farther in explaining the problems of the Shakespeare
text. To those who would know more of them, the _Variorum_ edition of
Dr. H. H. Furness offers a full history. In the light of the knowledge
which he and other scholars have thrown upon textual criticism, it is
unlikely that there will ever be poor texts of Shakespeare reprinted.
The work of the Shakespeare scholars has not been in vain.

+Later Editions+.--Nicholas Rowe in 1709 produced the first edition in
the modern sense. He modernized the spelling frankly, repunctuated,
corrected the grammar, made out lists of the dramatis personae,
arranged the verse which was in disorder, and made a number of good
emendations in difficult places. He added also exits and entrances,
which in e