University of Virginia Library

Preface 11-14.

The complete study of these manuscripts can be found in my doctoral dissertation available at the Alderman Library, University of Virginia.

On page 1 the writing stops half-way down, leaving the remainder of the page blank and omitting the first six lines of the play. Page 2, which begins with line 7 of the play, breaks off just before the end of line 30 and omits eight lines which the unused space could have contained.

"Substantive variant" means any reading variation that affects the author's meaning. A line or a passage omitted from or added to a given text is considered as one substantive reading. The figures in this table do not include agreements of the MSS against Q1.

The Huntington MSS will be treated as one and referred to as "Hn" except when variance between them makes the distinction of "Hn1" and "Hn2" necessary.

The term "shared unique reading" can be defined as agreement between two or more manuscripts that is shared by no other MS.

All of these, except for the relatively unimportant first group, are reproduced in my doctoral dissertation.

For reading # 3 above, Q1 retains the first of the crossed-out lines "We'll take up all before, and".

In my edition of the play I have included the line but emended, rather hesitantly, the word "wish" to "want".