The Shakespeare-Expositor: An Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Shakespeare-Expositor: An Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays, by Thomas Keightley
THOMAS KEIGHTLEY,
EDITOR OF THE 'PLAYS AND POEMS OF SHAKESPEARE.'
LONDON:
J. RUSSELL SMITH, 36 SOHO SQUARE.
1867.
Printed by Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
The object of this volume is to form a manual for the use chiefly of those who, not being possessed of a voluminous annotated edition, are fain to content themselves with the simple text. But even those who have a perfect Shakespeare library cannot well dispense with it; for my original corrections, which are very numerous, are nowhere else to be found.
It was originally intended to form the complement to my Edition of the Plays, and as such I had announced its immediate appearance. Why it did not appear has been explained in Notes and Queries (3 S. vii. 175), and the statement there made was incontrovertible; for it was the simple truth. The delay, however, has been no injury, but rather a benefit to it. Its relation to the Edition now is that, while it is perfectly independent and suited to any edition, the Edition without it is somewhat like what a Euclid would be without diagrams or demonstrations, as the reader will meet with numerous alterations of the text, and be quite ignorant of how or why they were made. Moreover the errors and oversights which escaped me in it will be found here all corrected.
It is certainly very disheartening to those who devote their time and labour to the elucidation of our Classic authors to find how small the number is of those readers who are at all anxious to understand them perfectly. The great majority, in fact, are quite satisfied if they can get at the general meaning of a difficult or obscure passage, and so glide over it. Still I am not without hope that among the tens of thousands who buy, and I presume read, these Plays, there may be found a few, a very few, hundreds who may wish to understand what they read, and will therefore possess themselves of this volume. Profit is not dreamed of, but it is hoped that loss may not be incurred.