We turn to kindred evidence in the stage-directions. In "Love's Labor's Lost," Act IV., Sc. 3, when Birone conceals himself from the King, the stage-direction in the folio of 1632, as well as in that of 1623, is "_He stands aside_." But in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632 this is changed to "_He climbs a tree_," and he is afterward directed to speak "_in the tree_." So again in "Much Ado about Nothing," Act II., Sc. 3, there is a MS. stage-direction to the effect that Benedick, when he hides "in the arbour," "_Retires behind the trees_." Now as this use of scenery did not obtain until after the Restoration, these stage-directions manifestly could not have been written until after that period. Upon this point--which was first made in "Putnam's Magazine" for October, 1853, in the article "The Text of Shakespeare: Mr. Collier's Corrected Folio of 1632,"--Mr. Halliwell says (fol. Shak. Vol. IV. p. 340) that the writer of that article "fairly adduces these MS. directions as incontestable evidences of the late period of the writing in that volume, 'practicable' trees certainly not having been introduced on the English stage until after the Restoration." See, too, in the following passage from "The Noble Stranger," by Lewis Sharpe, London, 1640, direct evidence as to the stage customs in London, eight years after the publication of Mr. Collier's folio, in situations like those of Birone and Benedick:-- "I am resolv'd, I over- Heard them in the presence appoynt to walke Here in the garden: now in _yon thicket I'll stay_," etc. "_Exit behind the Arras_." But no man in the world knows the ancient customs of the English stage better than Mr. Collier,--we may even say, so well, and pay no undue compliment to the historian of that stage;[kk] and though he might easily, in the eagerness of discovery, overlook the bearing of such stage-directions as those in question, will it be believed, by any one not brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632 notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were, in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions, which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the credit he was laboring to obtain for it? [Footnote kk: _The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration_. By J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.] Again, Mr. Hamilton's collations of "Hamlet" show that no less than thirty-six passages have been erased from that play in this folio. These erased passages are from a few insignificant words to fifty lines in extent They include lines like these in Act I., Sc. 2:--