35X27 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION THE characteristic features of this edition of A Midsummer-Night's Dream are, first, an attempt to produce a text in advance of anything which has hitherto been published; and, secondly, an attempt to elucidate some of the long-standing difficulties connected with the interpretation of well-known passages in the play. Such, e.g., are (a) the corrections of “fair spirit," II. i. I ; of “room good fairy," II. i. 58; of "lack-love kill-courtesy," II. ii. 76; of "No, No, he'll . . .,” III. ii. 257; "poor simple duty," v. i. 91; of " lily mows," v. i. 328: (b) the elucidations of "hold or cut bow-strings," I. ii. 112; "the human mortals want their winter cheer," II. i. 101; the source of the wellknown "fearful wild-fowl,” III. i. 33; the attempted elucidation of "wondrous strange snow," v. i. 59; and the true meaning of "late deceased" in v. i. 53. It remains to be seen how far the judgement and knowledge of the editor fall short of attaining that ideal standard of textual criticism which every editor of Shakespeare worthy of the name ought always to keep in mind; a standard which is only to be attained, to quote the words of Dr. H. H. Furness (New Variorum ed., Preface, xxi), by the exercise of that "exquisite nicety demanded at the present day in emending Shakespeare's text,-a nicety of judgment, a nicety of ix knowledge of Elizabethan literature, a nicety of ear, which alone bars all foreigners from the task, and, beyond all, a thorough mastery of Shakespeare's style and ways of thinking, which alone should bar all the rest of us." It can only be attained by the exercise, as Mr. Churton Collins puts it, in his essay on "The Porson of Shakespearean Criticism" (Essays and Studies, 1895, p. 281), "of that fine and rare faculty, if it be not rather an exquisite temper and harmony of various faculties, which seems to admit a critic for a moment into the very sanctuary of genius. In less figurative language, it is the faculty of divining and recovering, as by the power of some subtle sympathy, the lost touch-the touch of magic, often in the expression of poetry so precarious and delicate, that, dependent on a single word, a stroke of the pen may efface, just as a stroke of the pen may restore it." If the standard cannot be attained, it can at least be kept in sight. But the critic of this latter day does not keep the ideal in sight. He is usually satisfied to print the old corruptions, and to adopt the despairing position of Dr. Furness when he says (Preface, p. xxii), " Moreover, by this time the text of Shakespeare has become so fixed and settled that I think it safe to predict that unless a veritable MS. of Shakespeare's own be discovered, not a single future emendation will be generally accepted in critical editions. Indeed, I think, even a wider range may be assumed, so as to include in this list all emendations, that is, substitutions of words, which have been proposed since the days of Collier. . . . There is the text, and we must comprehend it if we can." Now the text of Shakespeare is by no means “fixed and settled." Far from it. Even in A Midsummer-Night's |