IV. _Modern British Drama_--edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1811. The text of this reprint of _The Fatal Dowry_ is Gifford’s. V. _Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford_--edited by Hartley Coleridge, 1840 (_et seq._). This follows the text of Gifford. VI. _The Plays of Philip Massinger._ From the Text of William Gifford. With the Addition of the Tragedy Believe as You List. Edited by Francis Cunningham, 1867 (_et seq._). The Fatal Dowry in this edition, as in the preceding, is a mere reprint of the Second Edition of Gifford. VII. _Philip Massinger._ Selected Plays. (Mermaid Series.) Edited by Arthur Symons, 1887-9 (_et seq._). In addition to the above, _The Fatal Dowry_ appeared in _The Plays of Philip Massinger_, adapted for family reading and the use of young persons, by the omission of objectionable passages,--edited by Harness, 1830-1; and another expurgated version was printed in the _Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor_, 1810. Both of these are based on the text of Gifford. The edition of Coxeter is closest of all to the Quarto, following even many of its most palpable mistakes, and adding some blunders on its own account. Mason accepts practically all of Coxeter’s corrections, and supplies a great many more variants himself, not all of which are very happy. Both these eighteenth century editors continually contract for the sake of securing a perfectly regular metre (e. g.: _You’re_ for _You are_, I, i, 139; _th’ honours_ for _the honours_, I, ii, 35; etc.), while Gifford’s tendency is to give the full form for even the contractions of the Quarto, changing its _’em’s_ to _them’s_, etc. Gifford can scarce find words sharp enough to express his scorn for his predecessors in their lack of observance of the text of the Quarto, yet he himself frequently repeats their gratuitous emendations when the original was a perfectly sure guide, and he has almost a mania for tampering with the Quarto on his own account. Symons’ _Mermaid_ text, while based essentially on that of Gifford, in a number of instances departs from it, sometimes to make further emendations, but more often to go back from those of Gifford to the version of the original, so that on the whole this is the best text yet published. There has been a German translation by the Graf von Baudisson, under the title of _Die Unselige Mitgift_, in his _Ben Jonson und seine Schule_, Leipsig, 1836; and a French translation, in prose, under the title of _La dot fatale_ by E. Lafond in _Contemporains de Shakespeare_, Paris, 1864. DATE