INTRODUCTION

Summary

Coming to this comedy in our observance of the 1623 Folio's order, and in face of one of the most difficult cruxes in the Shakespearian Canon, we think it well to preface our approach to it with a brief but bold statement of the critical principles we have applied hitherto, and propose to apply, to questions of the authenticity, date, and so on of this or that play.

Our method has been accused as ‘disintegrating’ Shakespeare. We retort that no method at this time of day can, on condition of its being scholarly, do anything else, if we use the word intelligently. No one can pretend that Heminge and Condell's First Folio was a considered collection, revised by Shakespeare (after death) and bequeathed by him as his solemn claim on the worship of posterity. The First Folio has been proved—as might have been guessed from the twin names of its editors—to have been compiled from playhouse copies—piously, be it agreed, but not therefore with any exactness of research. It follows, then, that when we have an earlier Quarto of any given play, printed in the dramatist's lifetime—and not so far as we know disavowed by him—it has prima facie a good claim to be considered.