COMEDY OF

AS YOU LIKE IT.

EDITED, WITH NOTES,

BY

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M.,

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

WITH ENGRAVINGS.

ΕΛΟΝΤΕΣ ΔΙΑ

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1882.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

THIS edition of As You Like It has been prepared on essentially the same plan as its eight predecessors in the series.

In the notes I have, as a rule, mentioned the authorities from which the material was drawn. My work was nearly finished when the "Clarendon Press" edition of the play appeared, but I am indebted to it for some notes (for which credit is in all cases given), and also for more accurate forms of certain quotations in the "Variorum" of 1821 and other early editions. In a few instances, which I have not taken the trouble to specify, I have corrected misprints in Mr. Wright's quotations.

Rev. Mr. Moberly's "Rugby" edition I have found very helpful. His notes are so good that one cannot help wishing there were more of them.

Halliwell's folio edition (for which, as on former occasions, I have to thank Dr. J. R. Nichols) has furnished me much useful matter, including the extracts from Lodge's novel on pages 120-133. I have followed his reprint closely in all respects. The quotations from Lodge in Mr. Wright's edition are taken from the reprint in Collier's Shakespeare's Library. Halliwell and Collier evidently did not use the same edition of Lodge, though the two differ little, except in punctuation.

As in former volumes of the series, I have often made Shakespeare his own commentator, but many of the illustrative passages are either given very briefly or only referred to. As the numbers of the lines in the "Globe" edition are always used in these references, the reader can easily look them up; and in school work this should be required. If any errors in the numbers are detected, I shall esteem it a favour to be informed of them.

Cambridge, March 10, 1878.