Since, in the play itself, these two editions are identical, we refer to them by one symbol, Q.

It appears from an entry in the Stationers' Registers, 7 Feb. 1602/3, that a play called 'Troilus and Cressida' had been acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, and this Mr Staunton conjectures may have been the same as that upon which Decker and Chettle are known, from Henslowe's Diary, to have been engaged in 1599, and may possibly have formed the foundation of the later play.

In the Folio of 1623, Troilus and Cressida stands between the Histories and the Tragedies. The Tragedies at first began with Coriolanus. Then followed Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, and it appears upon examination that the editors intended Troilus and Cressida to be next in order. With this view the first three pages were actually printed and paged so as to follow Romeo and Juliet, and the play was called 'The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida.' Whether it was found that the title of tragedy could not with propriety be given to it, or whatever may have been the cause, the editors changed its position, cancelled the leaf containing the end of Romeo and Juliet on one side and the beginning of Troilus and Cressida on the other, but retained the other leaf already printed, and then added the prologue to fill up the blank page, which in the original setting of the type had been occupied by the end of Romeo and Juliet. The rest of the play was printed with a new set of signatures and without any pagination, and was simply called 'Troylus and Cressida.'

There are very remarkable discrepancies between the Quarto and the Folio text of this play, similar in character to those which are found on comparing the two texts of Richard III. In the present case, however, they are not nearly so frequent, nor, as a general rule, so important. Some of the most important have been mentioned specially in the notes at the end of the play, and all the others recorded in the foot-notes. We find in the Folio several passages essential to the sense of the context which do not exist in the Quarto, and which therefore must have been omitted by the negligence of a copyist or printer. On the other hand we find some passages in the Quarto, not absolutely essential to the sense, though a decided improvement to it and quite in the author's manner, which either do not appear in the Folio at all, or appear in a mutilated form. Sometimes the lines which are wrongly divided in the Quarto are divided properly in the Folio, and vice versa: in this point, however, the former is generally more correct than the latter. The two texts differ in many single words: sometimes the difference is clearly owing to a clerical or typographical error, but in other cases it appears to result from deliberate correction, first by the author himself, and secondly by some less skilful hand. The main duty of an editor must be to discriminate the one from the other, and in the first case to prefer the text of the Folio, and in the second to reject it in favour of the Quarto. On the whole we are of opinion that the Quarto was printed from a transcript of the author's original MS.; that this MS. was afterwards revised and slightly altered by the author himself, and that before the first Folio was printed from it, it had been tampered with by another hand. Perhaps the corrections are due to the writer who did not shrink from prefixing to Shakespeare's play a prologue of his own.

3. Coriolanus was first published in the Folio of 1623. The text abounds with errors, due, probably, to the carelessness or the illegibility of the transcript from which it was printed.

4. Titus Andronicus was, so far as we know[A], published for the first time in the year 1600, in Quarto, with the following title-page:

The most lamenta-|ble Romaine Tragedie of Titus | Andronicus. | As it hath sundry times beene playde by the | Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke, the | Earle of Darbie, the Earle of Sussex, and the | Lorde Chamberlaine theyr | Seruants. | At London, | Printed by I. R. for Edward White | and are to bee solde at his shoppe, at the little | North doore of Paules, at the signe of | the Gun. 1600. |

[A] In the Registers of the Stationers' Company are the following entries with regard to a book called 'Titus Andronicus,' but it is more than doubtful whether any of them refer to the editions of the play of that name which have come down to us. It will be seen that the entry under the date, 19 April, 1602, speaks of a transference of copyright from Thomas Millington to Thomas Pavier, but as both the extant editions of the play, printed respectively in 1600 and 1611, were published by Edward White, the entry can have reference to neither of these.

6 February, 1593.

John Danter. Entered for his copye under handes of bothe the wardens a booke intituled, A Noble Roman-Historye of Tytus Andronicus. vjd.