But no man in the world knows the ancient customs of the English stage
better than Mr. Collier,--we may even say, so well, and pay no undue
compliment to the historian of that stage;[kk] and though he might
easily, in the eagerness of discovery, overlook the bearing of such
stage-directions as those in question, will it be believed, by any one
not brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition
with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632
notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were,
in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it
came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions,
which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which
he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the
credit he was laboring to obtain for it?

[Footnote kk: _The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of
Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration_. By J. Payne
Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.]

Again, Mr. Hamilton's collations of "Hamlet" show that no less than
thirty-six passages have been erased from that play in this folio. These
erased passages are from a few insignificant words to fifty lines in
extent They include lines like these in Act I., Sc. 2:--

"With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in
marriage,"--

and these from the same scene:--