The metrical arrangement of each passage is marked in the notes by printing each word which commences a line with an initial capital letter. In the Folios, many substantives, other than proper names or titles, are printed with initial capitals; but, in order to avoid ambiguity, we have generally made our quotations conform, in this respect, to the modern usage. We had originally intended to give in our Preface a catalogue raisonné of all the editions of our author and other books used by us in the preparation of the present work, but this labour has been fortunately spared us by Mr Bohn's reissue of Lowndes's _Bibliographer's Manual_, the eighth part of which contains a full and accurate account of Shakespearian literature. To that work we refer our readers for more complete bibliographical details, and propose to confine ourselves to some remarks on the critical value of the principal editions and commentaries. We have, of course, confined our collation to those editions which seemed to possess an independent value of their own. Mr Bohn enumerates two hundred and sixty-two different editions of Shakespeare. It was therefore a matter of necessity to make a selection. In the following remarks we pass briefly in review the editions which we have habitually consulted. Whenever any commentary was known to us to exist in a separate form, we have always, if possible, procured it. In some few instances, we have been obliged to take the references at second-hand. The first Folio (F1), 1623, contains all the plays usually found in modern editions of Shakespeare, except _Pericles_. It was 'published according to the True Originall Copies,' and 'set forth' by his 'friends' and 'fellows,' John Heminge and Henry Condell, the author 'not having the fate common with some to be exequutor to his own writings.' In an address 'To the great variety of Readers' following the dedication to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, the following passage occurs: 'It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers.'