The second Quarto was in all likelihood an edition authorized by Shakespeare and his 'fellows,' and intended to supersede the surreptitious and imperfect edition of 1597. The play so published, we believe, as we have said, to be substantially identical with the play as at first composed; it seems however to have been revised by the author. Here and there a passage appears to have been rewritten. Compare, for example, (Q1) Sc. 10, lines 11-30 (p. 169 of the reprint) with the corresponding passages of the later editions, Act II. Sc. 6, lines 16-36. In this place assuredly the change must be attributed to the author; but we know of no other passage of equal length where the same can be affirmed with certainty. The words 'newly corrected, augmented, and amended,' found on the title-page of the second Quarto, may be accepted as the statement of a fact, when thus confirmed by internal evidence. Otherwise we know that the assertions in titlepages or prefaces of that time are not to be relied on, nor in this case would the words necessarily mean more than that this second edition was more correct and more complete than the first. In fact, the added matter amounts nearly to a quarter of the whole. The title-page of the second Quarto, Q2, is as follows: THE | MOST EX-| cellent and lamentable | Tragedie, of Romeo | and _Iuliet_. | _Newly corrected, augmented, and | amended_: | As it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted, by the | right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine | his Seruants | LONDON. | Printed by Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby, and are to | be sold at his shop neare the Exchange. | 1599. | This is unquestionably our best authority; nevertheless in determining the text, (Q1) must in many places be taken into account. For it is certain that Q2 was not printed from the author's MS., but from a transcript, the writer of which was not only careless, but thought fit to take unwarrantable liberties with the text. In passing through his hands, many passages were thus transmuted from poetry to prose. Pope felt this strongly, too strongly indeed, for he adopted the text of the first Quarto in many places where Capell and all subsequent editors have judiciously recurred to the second. Nevertheless there is no editor who has not felt it necessary occasionally to call in the aid of the first. We think that M. Tycho Mommsen rates the authority of the second Quarto too highly. Any rare form of word or strange construction found in this edition alone, and corrected in all that follow, may more probably be assigned to the transcriber (or in some cases to the printer) than to Shakespeare, whose language is singularly free from archaisms and provincialisms. The third Quarto, Q3, was published in 1609, with the following title-page: