which proves that the remainder of these pageants were not played the same year as the preceding twenty-eight mysteries. In offering the first edition of the Coventry Mysteries to the members of the Shakespeare Society, I am anxious to state that I have endeavoured to give the reader as faithful a copy of the original manuscript as was possible, with all its errors and defects. These are not few, for the MS. is evidently the work of a scribe who was not very well acquainted with his copy. He makes barbarous work of the few Latin passages which occur, and verbal errors are of frequent occurrence; and yet, on mature deliberation, I came to the conclusion that it would be more advisable to leave these corrections for the notes, and thus give the reader an opportunity of forming his own opinion on passages which are certainly corrupt, but which may possibly admit of more than one method of explanation. The frequent occurrence of the double letter _ff_ in the manuscript, and in places where it could not be used for the capital letter, implies a dialectical distinction, the exact meaning of which has not yet been discovered. I have carefully preserved them in the text. The Glossary will be found useful to those who are learned in the philology of our early language, as there are many words of very unfrequent occurrence; but I have constructed it more especially with a view to the wants of those who have not made our early poetry a matter of study. In doing so, I thought that I should be consulting the best interests of the Shakespeare Society, as a large majority of its members belong, in all probability, to the latter class. J. O. HALLIWELL. Alfred Place, London, June 21st, 1841. FOOTNOTES [1] I am not without hopes of one or two more collections turning up. In MS. Addit. 4791, fol. 157, is given a list of the plays represented at Dublin on Corpus Christi day, 1468, which differs materially from the contents of any known series. The play of the “Sacrifice of Abraham,” in Trinity College, Dublin, may be one of these. It has been printed by Mr. Collier. [2] Wood’s Athenæ, by Bliss, vol. ii., p. 458. Hegge does not allude to the MS. in any of his writings. [3] MS. Cotton. Julius, C. iii., fol. 193. James was then resident at Oxford. [4] In the old catalogue of the Cottonian library, commenced in the year 1621, in MS. Harl. 6018, there is no notice of the present MS. I find, however, in a list of books “lent out of my study befor this 23 Aprill, 1621,” an entry which may be interesting to the reader: “Ælfricus Grammar Saxon to Ben: Jonson.” This was doubtlessly “the most ancient grammar written in the Saxon tongue and character,” which Kynaston saw in his hands. See Gifford’s Jonson, vol. ix., p. 254. [5] Collected from the records of the corporation. Mr. Sharp has also printed a Coventry play of a later date, which does not contain the dialectical peculiarity mentioned above.