MR. KNIGHT, in his introduction to All's Well, remarks that "there are several examples of corruption in the text; but, upon the whole, it is very accurately printed, both with regard to the metrical arrangement and to punctuation." One might almost suspect that the editor's manuscript had somehow got mixed up, and that this was part of the preface to some other play. At any rate, the editors generally agree with Staunton that "of all the plays of Shakespeare this appears to have suffered most from the negligence of transcribers and compositors." Mr. Grant White says: "The folio is the only source of the text, which appears there in a very unsatisfactory state. Indeed, there is no play of Shakespeare which gives the reader and the editor more fruitless trouble than this. No other is more deformed by the corruption of important passages; and this corruption is doubtless chiefly due to two reasons: first, the involved, disjointed, and elliptical style in which the author wrote much of the matter which he added at the revision of the play; and, next, the fact that the play was printed from the very copy in which the author himself had made these alterations and additions, which, there can be little doubt in the mind of any man of letters, or any printer of experience, were in many cases interlined in a manner that, however clear to the poet himself, was obscure enough to a compositor who did not know exactly what his author would be at:--and as to proof-reading, the folio had none of it." Mr. Hudson, in his new "Harvard" edition (published since most of this book was in type), reckons All's Well "among the worst-printed plays" in the folio, the text being "in a most unsatisfactory state." He adds: "Of course, in a case of such extreme textual corruption, something more of scope than usual must, in all reason, be allowed to conjectural emendation." For myself, where conjectural criticism seems entirely at fault, I prefer, with White, to give the original text "in its corrupted form," instead of substituting one of half a dozen or more "emendations," all equally plausible, but all mere guesses at what Shakespeare might have written; "for," as White adds, "only the reasonable certainty that we are restoring the poet's own words justifies a change in that text: and the reader of Shakespeare can better pass by a line as incomprehensible, than accept a comprehensible line which is not Shakespeare's." That, in my humble opinion, is sound doctrine. It recognizes the value of emendation, but fixes its proper limits. Emendation is often easier than interpretation, and has been the first resort of many editors, when it should always be the last, and in rare cases of hopeless corruption should not be attempted at all.

While I am conservative in my text, sticking to the only authority unless there appears to be good and substantial reasons for deserting it, I intend to give the editors who differ from me a fair field in the Notes. The opinions of all the leading critics are there set forth, and the reader is free to adopt the lection or explanation that commends itself to him, whether it is accepted by me or not.

For most of the illustrations in this volume I am indebted, as often before, to Knight's "Pictorial Shakspere."

Cambridge, Jan. 15, 1881