The Second Quarto bears on its title-page, compelled to a recognition of
the former,--'Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as
it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie'; and it is in truth a
harmonious world of which the former issue was but the chaos. It is the
drama itself, the concluded work of the master's hand, though yet to be
once more subjected to a little pruning, a little touching, a little
rectifying. But the author would seem to have been as trusting over the
work of the printers, as they were careless of his, and the result is
sometimes pitiable. The blunders are appalling. Both in it and in the
Folio the marginal note again and again suggests itself: 'Here the
compositor was drunk, the press-reader asleep, the devil only aware.'
But though the blunders elbow one another in tumultuous fashion, not
therefore all words and phrases supposed to be such are blunders. The
old superstition of plenary inspiration may, by its reverence for the
very word, have saved many a meaning from the obliteration of a
misunderstanding scribe: in all critical work it seems to me well to
cling to the _word_ until one sinks not merely baffled, but exhausted.

I come now to the relation between the Second Quarto and the Folio.

My theory is--that Shakspere worked upon his own copy of the Second
Quarto, cancelling and adding, and that, after his death, this copy
came, along with original manuscripts, into the hands of his friends the
editors of the Folio, who proceeded to print according to his
alterations.

These friends and editors in their preface profess thus: 'It had bene a
thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the Author
himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings;