Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE, K.G., LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL, ETC. ETC. ETC., PRE-EMINENT IN HIS APPRECIATION OF THE GOOD AND Advertisement. THE text on which this edition of Shakespeare is based is that of Collier, carefully compared with the folio of MDCXXIII. and the impressions of Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Boswell, and Knight. Dyce's remarks have also been consulted. Of the numerous editions in one volume, there is, perhaps, hardly one of which it may not be said that the size is too great, or the print too small. It occurred to the Publisher that considerable improvements yet remained to be made on the plan of the Englishman's Vade-mecum. He thought that by printing the names of the characters at full length, in the centre of the text, and in red ink, considerable relief would be afforded both to the memory and the eye of the reader, and that particular passages might be referred to with peculiar ease. He ventures, therefore, to hope that the present edition of Shakespeare may be found, in purity of text, to equal, and in convenience of form to excel, any of its countless and multiform predecessors. |