OF TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY. Adapted for Scholastic or Private Study, and for those qualifying for BY THE REV. JOHN HUNTER, M.A. One of the National Society's Examiners of Middle-Class Schools; Malone I. 157 LONDON: All rights reserved. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS IN 1609 was published the first edition of this play, and with the following title: "The famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the Beginning of their Loves, 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 Churchy eard, over against the great North doore, 1609.' In the same year the same publishers issued a second edition, entitled 'The Historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the King's Majesties servants at the Globe.' From this second issue was omitted the following extraordinary preface which had appeared in the first: A never Writer to an ever Reader.-NEWES. 'Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical; for it is a birth of your brain that never undertook anything comical vainly and were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now style them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities; especially this author's comedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit, that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit |