"The Players' Shakespeare": A
New Memorial Edition Exactly three centuries ago, in 1623, the works of Shakespeare were first printed in a collected form. In this rare volume, know.x as the First Folio and, in its perfect state, more greatly desired "y collectors than any other book in existence, John Ileminge and Henrie Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends and fellow actors, made the first effort towards a complete and authentic text.
Before its appearance several of the plays kad been issued im quarto from pirated versions. In their address "to the great variety. of readers" the editors, if they can be so described, remarked that the public had been ''abused with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, mained and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injuricus impostors, that exposed them.' These, they claimed, were offered "oured, and perfect of their limbes: and all the rest absolute in their rumpers, as he conceived them."
At long intervals during the next fifty years appeared, -with typographical variations, three reprints "f this text, known as the second. third and fourth folios, but it was not until the eighteenth century that any attempt at editing in the modern sense was made. Nicholas Rowe at the beginning of that century, was responsible for the frst critical version of the plays, and after him came a long line of notable editors, including Alexander Pope, Dr. Johnson, and many ethers whose names though not so well known to the general: public, are familiar to every Shakespearcan scholar.
The work of these critics testifies to the absorbing interest which Shakespeare has for the student of literature. Yet, curiously enough. though from the time of the Restoration his plays have boom ecnstantly presented on the stage, there has been utile evidence in book form of. the ever widening appeal which the poet has made, and still makes, to the theatre goer and to the actor. It was this aspect of the matter which Messrs Benn Brothers Ld., had in nund vhen the plan of "The. Players' Shakespeare" was conceived.
In explaining the objects of this new edition of Shakespeare's dramatic work, Mr. Victor Gollancz, under whose direction. it is being published, places first the idea of kunging the theatre into the library. The plays occupy separate volumes which are illustrated by_ artists who, all of them interested in the modern stage and working under the general editorship of Mr.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.