Cymb. iv. 2.
In the following pages it will be seen that occasionally I attempt to supply the losses of lines and parts of lines. It will not, I hope, be supposed that I am so presumptuous as to expect my productions to be admitted into the text. My object has merely been, by showing how easily and naturally something could be supplied, to make the reader see more clearly that something had been lost. In three places, however (All's Well, i. 1, Tr. & Cr. ii. 1, Cor. ii. 3), I have ventured to place them in the text of my Edition.
I must, in fine, request the reader most earnestly not to pooh-pooh this principle of effacement, but to keep it steadily in mind in reading the other dramatists, as well as Shakespeare; for he will find it a most valuable aid. Among the instances of effacement at the end is to be noted that of compound words of which the last part has been lost. In five places I have thought myself justified in supplying the missing word, namely, Winter's Tale, i. 2, Rich. III. v. 3, Ham. iii. 4, Tim. i. 2, ii. 2; for it is almost only at the end of a line that we ever find reason to suspect this kind of effacement.
In editing the Plays, the additions made to the text should always be marked, so as not to mislead the reader. In my edition, and in this volume, they are always printed in italics.
8.
Addition.—Of this also we meet with instances; but, as might naturally be expected, they are not so numerous as those of omission. In the following pages I place between brackets such words as I regard as additions made by the compositor or transcriber. As proofs of such additions being made I give the following, from the reprint of the text in my own edition of Milton's Poems.
But swollen with [the] wind and the rank mist they draw.
Lyc. 126.
Which after [this] held the sun and moon in fee.
Son. xii.