arlier prints were only inserted occasionally. Further, he
completed the division of the plays into acts and scenes. Perhaps his
most important work was writing a full life of Shakespeare in which
several valuable traditions are preserved. The poems were not included
in the edition, but were published in 1716 from the edition of 1640.
He followed the Third and Fourth Folios in reprinting the spurious
plays. The edition was reprinted in 1714, 1725, and 1728.

In 1726 Alexander Pope published his famous edition of Shakespeare.
Pope possessed a splendid lot of the old quartos and the first two
folios, but his edition was wantonly careless. He did, indeed, use
some sense in excluding the seven spurious plays as well as _Pericles_
from his edition, and he undoubtedly {128} worked hard on the text. He
subdivided the scenes more minutely than Rowe after the fashion of the
French stage division,--where a new scene begins with every new
character instead of after the stage has been cleared. Pope's
explanations of the words which appeared difficult in Shakespeare's
text were often laughably far from the truth. The word 'foison,'
meaning 'plenty,' Pope defined as the 'natural juice of grass.' The
word 'neif,' meaning 'fist,' Pope thought meant 'woman.' Pistol is
thus made to say, "Thy woman will I take." Phrases that appeared to be
vulgar or unpoetical he simply dropped out, or altered without notice.
He rearranged the lines in order to give them the studied smoothness
characteristic of the eighteenth century. In fact, he tried to make
Shakespeare as near like Pope's poetry as he could.

In 1726 Lewis Theobald published _Shakespeare Restored_, with many
corrections of Pope's errors. In this little pamphlet most of the
material was devoted to _Hamlet_. Theobald's corrections were taken by
Pope in very bad part; and the latter tried to destroy Theobald's
reputation by writing satires against him and by injuring him in every
possible way in print. The first of these publications, _The Dunciad_,
appeared in 1728; and this, the greatest satire in the English
language, was so effective as to have obscured Theobald's real merit
until our own day. Theobald's edition of Shakespeare followed in 1734,
and was reprinted in 1740. It is famous for his corrections and
improvements of the text, many of which are followed by all later
editors of Shakespeare. The most notable of these is Mrs. Quickly's
remark in Falstaff's deathb