Note 55 — PROLOGUE,

I do not know if any individual is here levelled at. Shakespeare has had his critics in all ages, who, like the inexpert tinker, have generally made two holes in patching one. In the end of the seventeenth century, his plays were usually acted in a sophisticated state, as altered by Tate, D'Avenant, Crowne, Ravenscroft, and others. The last, in the preface to his alteration of "Titus Andronicus," has the impudence to say, "That if the reader will compare the old play with his copy, he will find that none in all that author's works ever received greater alterations or additions, the language not only refined, but many scenes entirely new, besides most of the principal characters heightened, and the plot much increased."