Moreover I have one request to make.  I have on my own part made it my care and study that the things which I shall propound should not only be true, but should also be presented to men’s minds, how strangely soever preoccupied and obstructed, in a manner not harsh or unpleasant.  It is but reasonable however (especially in so great a restoration of learning and knowledge) that I should claim of men one favour in return; which is this; If any one would form an opinion or judgment either out of his own observation, or out of the crowd of authorities, or out of the forms of demonstration (which have now acquired a sanction like that of judicial laws), concerning these speculations of mine, let him not hope that he can do it in passage or by the by; but let him examine the thing thoroughly; let him make some little trial for himself of the way which I describe and lay out; let him familiarise his thoughts with that subtlety of nature to which experience bears witness; let him correct by seasonable patience and due delay the depraved and deep-rooted habits of his mind; and when all this is done and he has begun to be his own master, let him (if he will) use his own judgment.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS (1623)[A]

TO THE GREAT VARIETY OF READERS

From the most able, to him that can but spell:  There you are number’d.  We had rather you were weighd.  Especially, when the fate of all Bookes depends vpon your capacities:  and not of your heads alone, but of your purses.  Well! it is now publique, & you wil stand for your priuiledges wee know:  to read, and censure.  Do so, but buy it first.  That doth best commend a Booke, the Stationer saies.  Then, how odde soeuer your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not.  Iudge your sixe-pen’orth, your shillings worth, your fiue shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the iust rates, and welcome.  But, what euer you do, Buy.  Censure will not driue a Trade, or make the Iacke go.  And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne Playes dailie, know, these Playes haue had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, then any purchas’d Letters of commendation.

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.  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 haue collected & publish’d them, and so to haue publish’d them, as where (before) you were abus’d with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious imposters, that expos’d them euen those, are now offer’d to your view cur’d,