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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE PLAYS EDITED FROM THE FOLIO OF MDCXXIII, WITH VARIOUS
READINGS FROM ALL THE EDITIONS AND ALL THE COMMENTATORS,
NOTES, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
THE TEXT, AN ACCOUNT OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF

THE ENGLISH DRAMA, A MEMOIR OF THE POET,
AND AN ESSAY UPON HIS GENIUS

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE

VOL. IX.

BOSTON

LITTLE BROWN AND COMPANY

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

RICHARD GRANT WHITE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York,

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON

STEREOTYPED AT THE

BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

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THE Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the beginning of their loues, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus Prince of Licia. Written by William Shakespeare. LONDON Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules Church-yeard, ouer against the great North doore. 1609." 4to. 46 leaves. “THE Historie of Troylus and Cresseida. the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe. Shakespeare. LONDON Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules Church-yeard, ouer against the great North doore, 1609." 4to. 45 leaves.

As it was acted by Written by William

The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida occupies twenty-eight pages, in the folio of 1623. Its pages are not numbered, except the third and fourth, which are numbered "79" and "80." The reverse of its twenty-eighth page is blank. It is not there divided into Acts and Scenes, and is without a list of Dramatis Personæ. The division was made and the list supplied by Rowe.

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TROILUS AND
AND CRESSIDA.

INTRODUCTION.

THE

HE evidence as to the authorship of this play and the time when it was produced is somewhat peculiar. The publication both of the quarto and the folio impressions was attended by certain unusual and significant circumstances, which, combined with the diverse style of the play itself, have been heretofore made the subject of investigations so ingenious and so thorough, that to the present editor is left only the task of selecting from the labors of his not always accordant predecessors those passages which, in his judgment, present the conclusions warranted by the facts of the case.

And first, as to the quarto impressions, Mr. Collier remarks:

"The play was originally printed in 1609. It was formerly supposed that there were two editions in that year, but they were merely different issues of the same impression: the body of the work (with two exceptions, pointed out hereafter) is alike in each; they were from the types of the same printer, and were published by the same booksellers. The title-pages, as may be seen on the opposite leaf, vary materially; but there is another more remarkable alteration. On the title-page of the copies first circulated, it is not stated that the drama had been represented by any company; and in a sort of preface headed, A never Writer to an ever Reader. News,' it is asserted that it had never been staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar;' in other words, that the play had not been acted.* This was probably then true; but as Troilus and Cressida' was very soon afterwards brought upon the stage, it became necessary for the publishers to substitute a new title-page, and to suppress their preface: accordingly a re-issue of the same edition took place, by the

*See this preface, or address, at the end of this Introduction.

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