As to helps to the understanding of Shakespeare, those who can understand him at all need none except a good critical edition. And by a good critical edition I mean only one which gives a good text, with notes where they are needed upon obscure constructions, obsolete words or phrases, manners and customs, and the like. Of the plays in the Clarendon Press series, "The Merchant of Venice," "Richard II.," "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear," better editions cannot be had, particularly for readers inexperienced in verbal criticism. Those who find any difficulty which the notes to those editions do not explain may be pretty sure that, with the exception of a very few passages the corruption of which is admitted on all hands, the trouble is not with Shakespeare or the editor. Shakespeare read in the way which I have indicated, and with the help of such an edition, has a high educating value, and in particular will give the reader an insight into the English language, if not a mastery of it, that is worth a course of all the text-books of grammar and rhetoric that have been written ten times over. As to editions, I shall give only one caution. Do not get Dyce's. Mr. Dyce was a scholar, a man of fine taste, most thoroughly read in English literature, particularly in that of the Elizabethan period. He was a man for whom I had a very high respect, and whom I had reason to regard with a somewhat warmer feeling than that of a mere literary acquaintance. This and my deference to his age and his position prevented me from saying during his life what there is no reason that I should not say now--that in my opinion he was one of the most unsuccessful of Shakespeare's editors. His edition is one of the worst that has been published in the last century, both for its text and, except as to their learning, for its notes. With all my deferential respect for him,[10] I was prepared for this result before the appearance of the first of his three editions. Being in correspondence with him, and on such terms that I could make such a request, I asked him to send me some sheets of his edition while it was passing through the press. He replied that he could not do this; but the reason that he gave was, not any unwillingness to confide them to me, but that it was then impossible, because after his edition was half struck off he had cancelled the greater part of it on account of changes in his opinions as to the reading of so many passages! And this after he was well in years; after having passed his life in the study of Elizabethan literature; and after having edited Beaumont and Fletcher! I was never more amazed. Such a man could have no principles of criticism. How could he guide others who after such study was not sure of his own way? With all his knowledge of the literature and the literary history of the Elizabethan period, he seemed to lack the power of putting himself in sympathy with Shakespeare as he wrote. Hence the crudity and incongruity