little better than our modern proof-sheets. And they should be dealt with accordingly by a modern critic; but only on one condition precedent: he must be Shakespeare's peer. In default of this we can only humbly erase here, and reverently suggest there, summoning to our aid all possible knowledge, lest in plucking up the tares we pluck up the wheat also. And this is really all that textual criticism for the last hundred and forty years has aimed at--merely to get at what Shakespeare really wrote. We know that he could not write sheer nonsense, and yet at times sheer nonsense mows at us from his printed page. Those who clamor for Shakespeare's text, pure and simple, divested of all notes and annotations, have no idea how much thought and time have been expended on every line,--nay, on every word, on every comma,--in the text of any good modern edition of his dramas, and with the single aim, be it remembered, of revealing exactly what the poet wrote. It must not, however, be thought that since the original texts of Shakespeare's plays are so corrupt, any criticaster has good leave to expunge or expand at will, under a roving commission to hack and hew wheresoever and howsoever it may please him, under the plea of restoring the text. On the contrary, since we cannot fulfill the condition precedent of being Shakespeare's peers, we must exercise the greatest caution in changing a reading of the Quartos or Folios, lest in condemning the text as corrupt we pass judgment on our own wit. He who the sword of Heaven would bear Must be as holy as severe. And we must be very sure that the passage is corrupt before we set about amending it. First and last, we must remember that primal elder law, that of two readings the more difficult is to be preferred. _Durior lectio preferenda 'st_ should be a frontlet between our brows. The weaker reading or the plainer meaning is more likely to be a printer's interpretation of what he failed to comprehend. But to understand Shakespeare's meaning in a degree that will authorize us to amend the text, we must understand Shakespeare's speech; that is, we must be thoroughly familiar with the words and usages of Elizabethan English; and not only with Elizabethan words and phrases, but also, as far as possible, with the very pronunciation.