Note 1 — VOLUME I.
Reading edition
A third editor was afterwards added. Mr Luard’s election to the office of Registrary compelled him to relinquish his part, at least for the present; and the first volume, consequently, is issued under the responsibility of two editors only.
2. See page xxi.
3. A passage in the Return from Parnassus compared with one in Bale’s preface to his Image of Both Churches puts this almost beyond a doubt.
4. Mr Wright in his preface to Bacon’s Essays mentions that he has collated ten copies of the edition of 1625, ‘which though bearing the same date, are all different from each other in points of no great importance.’
5. Mr Bohn is mistaken in saying that the Capell copy has both titles. It has that of 1664 only, with the portrait, and B. J.’s verses underneath on the opposite page.
6. Capell’s copy now before us contains the following note in Capell’s hand-writing: ‘This copy of Mr Theobald’s edition was once Mr Warburton’s; who has claim’d in it the notes he gave to the former which that former depriv’d him of and made his own, and some Passages in the Preface, the passages being put between hooks and the notes signed with his name. E. C.’ The passage quoted from Theobald’s Preface is one of those between hooks.
7. Thomas Rymer, whose book, called A short View of Tragedy of the last Age, 1693, gave rise to a sharp controversy.
8. Capell, who might be supposed to write ‘sine ira et studio,’ denies to Theobald even this merit: ‘His work is only made a little better [than Pope’s] by his having a few more materials; of which he was not a better collator than the other, nor did he excel him in use of them.’ The result of the collations we have made leads us to a very different conclusion.
9. Notwithstanding this claim of identity, Warburton seems to have used Theobald’s text to print from. Capell positively affirms this, (Preface, p. 18).
10. Dr Johnson told Burney that Warburton, as a critic, ‘would make two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices.’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Vol. ii. p. 85. Ed. 1835). From this judgment, whether they be compared as critics or editors, we emphatically dissent.
11. We trust that in our edition the matter which Capell discarded has been presented in a well-printed book. We have found no trace of the Manuscripts here spoken of.
12. In Lowndes’s Manual (Bohm), p. 2316, we find ‘Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare. By Edward Capell, Lond. 1759.’ No such book of this date is in the Capell collection, nor is it ever mentioned elsewhere, so far as we know. In the preface to the work of 1783, it is mentioned that the first volume had been printed in 1774, but no allusion is made to any former edition.
13. These volumes, together with the whole of Shakespeare’s Plays and Milton’s Paradise Lost, written out in Capell’s own regular, but not very legible hand, are among his collection in Trinity College Library.
14. Steevens was accused of giving, under fictitious names, notes which he was afraid to sign himself.
15. The two last-named books, as well as some suggestions from correspondents, did not reach us till the first Volume was partly printed. We propose to supply all omissions in an Appendix to the whole work.
16. Aber man läuft ein gefährliches Spiel, wenn man nicht überall offen und bescheiden bekennt, dass man ganz von den Engländern abhange: ja man scheitert gewiss, wenn man mit der einen Hand allen Stoff von dem man lebt und athmet ihnen entnimmt, und mit der andern zum Dank Hohn und Beleidigung auf ihren Namen wirft. Vorrede, pp. vi. vii.