Convenience of some particular Actor.  Hence much Confusion and Impropriety has attended, and embarras’d, the Business and Fable.  For there ever have been, and ever will be in Playhouses, a Set of assuming Directors, who know better than the Poet himself the Connexion and Dependance of his Scenes; where Matter is defective, or Superfluities to be retrench’d; Persons, that have the Fountain of Inspiration as peremptorily in them, as Kings have That of Honour.  To these obvious Causes of Corruption it must be added, that our Author has lain under the Disadvantage of having his Errors propagated and multiplied by Time:  because, for near a Century; his Works were republish’d from the faulty Copies without the assistance of any intelligent Editor:  which has been the Case likewise of many a Classic Writer.

    [Sidenote:  The Editor’s Drift and Method.]

    [Sidenote*:  Difference betwixt this Edition and Dr. Bentley’s
    Milton.]

The Nature of any Distemper once found has generally been the immediate Step to a Cure. Shakespeare’s Case has in a great Measure resembled That of a corrupt Classic; and, consequently, the Method of Cure was likewise to bear a Resemblance.  By what Means, and with what Success, this Cure has been effected on ancient Writers, is too well known, and needs no formal Illustration.  The Reputation consequent on Tasks of that Nature invited me to attempt the Method here; with this View, the Hopes of restoring to the Publick their greatest Poet in his Original Purity:  after having so long lain in a Condition that was a Disgrace to common Sense.  To this End I have ventur’d on a Labour, that is the first Assay of the kind on any modern Author whatsoever.  For the late Edition of Milton by the Learned Dr. _Bentley_ is, in the main, a Performance of another Species.  It is plain, it was the Intention of that Great Man rather to Correct and pare off the Excrescencies of the _Paradise Lost_, in the manner that _Tucca_ and _Varius_ were employ’d to criticize the _AEneis_ of _Virgil_, than to restore corrupted Passages.  Hence, therefore, may be seen either the Iniquity or Ignorance of his Censurers, who, from some Expressions, would make us believe, the _Doctor_ every where gives us his Corrections as the Original Text of the Author; whereas the chief Turn of his Criticism is plainly to shew the World, that if _Milton_ did not write as He would have him, he ought to have wrote so.

I thought proper to premise this Observation to the Readers, as it will shew that the Critic on Shakespeare is of a quite different Kind.  His genuine Text is religiously adher’d to, and the numerous Faults and Blemishes, purely his own, are left as they were found.  Nothing is alter’d, but what by the clearest Reasoning can be proved a Corruption of the true Text; and the Alteration, a real Restoration of the genuine Reading.  Nay, so strictly have I strove to give the true Reading, tho’ sometimes not to the Advantage of my Author, that I have been ridiculously ridicul’d for it by Those, who either were iniquitously for turning every thing to my Disadvantage; or else were totally ignorant of the true Duty of an Editor.