Within these
limits, and apart from mere variations in spelling and punctuation, every
variation, whether deemed important or not, is recorded in the Appendixes
to these volumes.
Of the 52 Plays in the Second Folio only 5 were published before the
death of Beaumont and 9 before the death of Fletcher. The text has,
therefore, given rise to a fruitful crop of conjectural emendations,
but it has not been deemed a part of the editor's duty to garner them.
Leaving these on one side, and desirous mainly of collecting every
alternative reading in all the Quartos and in the two Folios, the text
used in the preparation of the present edition, chosen after careful
consideration, is that of the Second Folio, obvious printers' errors
being corrected, recorded in the Appendix, and indicated in the text
by the insertion of square brackets. This text is the latest with
any pretence to authority, it includes all the plays, and it forms a
convenient limit, beyond which no notice has been taken of alternative
readings, and to which the variants, chronologically arranged from the
earliest to the latest Quartos, can easily be referred. Some of the early
Quartos no doubt offer better texts of some of the plays, especially in
the matter of verse and prose arrangement, and had it been intended to
print one text, and one text only, unaccompanied by a full apparatus of
variorum readings, something might be said in favour of a choice among
the Quartos and Folios, selecting here and there, in the case of each
play, the particular text that seemed the best.
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