Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[blocks in formation]

THE

COMEDIES, HISTORIES, TRAGEDIES,

AND POEMS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

EDITED BY

CHARLES KNIGHT.

"It is a thing scarcely believable how much, and how boldly, as well the
common writers that from time to time have copied out his works, as also
certain that have thought themselves liable to control and emend all men's
doings, have taken upon them in this author; who ought with all reverence
to have been handled of them, and with all fear to have been preserved from
altering, depraving, or corrupting."

Udall's Preface to Erasmus's Apophthegms (applied there to Plutarch).

THE SECOND EDITION.

VOLUME I.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO., LUDGATE STREET.

MDCCCXLII.

London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Stamford Street.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small]

IN presenting to the public a second impression, with corrections and alterations, of the edition of Shakspere,* of which the publication commenced in 1838, under the title of The Pictorial Edition,' it may be desirable here to state the prin

6

6

* We have placed at the head of this preface the autograph of " WILLIAM SHAKSPERE," copied from his undoubted signature in the volume of Montaigne's 'Essays,' by John Florio, which has been purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum. In the folio of 1623 the name is spelt Shakespeare; but the more usual spelling of late years has been Shakspeare. This orthography was adopted by the commentators in the belief that the poet had so written his name; but this was an error, and acknowledged as such by Malone (Inquiry,' &c., page 121). Sir Frederick Madden has shown, in a letter published in The Archæologia,' volume xxvii., that in the five other acknowledged genuine signatures in existence, namely, in the three attached to his will, and the two affixed to deeds connected with the mortgage and sale of a property in Blackfriars, "the poet always wrote his name SHAKSPERE, and, consequently, that those who have inserted an e after the k, or an a in the second syllable, do not write the same (as far as we are able to judge) in the same manner as the poet himself uniformly would authorize us to do." In the Stratford Register, says Sir F. Madden, both at his baptism and burial, the name is spelt Shakspere. We may add that, in the same registers, the entries of the baptism of his three children, and of the burial of his son (which entries were most probably made under his own inspection), are spelt Shakspere. We subjoin a fac-simile from the register of burials:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

944-4

« AnkstesnisTęsti »