depravations that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better
destiny, by giving them to the world in their genuine state.

Of the plays which bear the name of Shakespeare in the late editions,
the greater part were not published till about seven years after
his death, and the few which appeared in his life are apparently
thrust into the world without the care of the authour, and therefore
probably without his knowledge.

Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, their negligence
and unskilfulness has by the late revisers been sufficiently shown.
The faults of all are indeed numerous and gross, and have not only
corrupted many passages perhaps beyond recovery, but have brought
others into suspicion, which are only obscured by obsolete
phraseology, or by the writer's unskilfulness and affectation. To
alter is more easy than to explain, and temerity is a more common
quality than diligence. Those who saw that they must employ conjecture
to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it a little further.
Had the authour published his own works, we should have sat quietly
down to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but
now we tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not to
understand.

The faults are more than could have happened without the concurrence
of many causes. The stile of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical,
perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players
by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them; they
were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still multiplied
errours; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the actors,
for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed