PREFATORY NOTE

Summary

WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE VISION IN THE LAST ACT

By undertaking full responsibility for the ensuing volume Mr J. C. Maxwell once again places me very much in his debt. And subscribers will be glad to learn that he is already busily engaged upon Henry VIII; that King Lear for which Professor Duthie and I are jointly responsible and Coriolanus which I am tackling single-handed are both now in the press; and that when these three are published, some time in 1960, it is hoped, or earlier, they will complete the tale of thirtyseven plays belonging to the accepted canon. After that will follow the Poems and the Sonnets, which Mr Maxwell and I plan to share between us, while Mr Peter Ure has kindly consented to edit for me the uncanonical Two Noble Kinsmen which many consider to be by Shakespeare and Fletcher working in collaboration, and which thus has probably as much right as Pericles to be included in the Works. It begins to look therefore as if this edition, hopefully launched as a tenyear project in 1921, under the sporting title of The New Shakespeare, may reach its conclusion some forty years later.

Unlike most previous editors, Mr Maxwell can find, he tells us, no grounds for believing that Shakespeare was not the sole author of Cymbeline.