NOTES, EXAMINATION PAPERS, AND PLAN (SELECTED.) ос BY BRAINERD KELLOGG, A.M., Professor of the English Language and Literature in the Brooklyn Col PUBLI LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, WITH NOTES. Uniform in style and price with this volume. MERCHANT OF VENICE. KING HENRY V. AS YOU LIKE IT. JULIUS CESAR. KING LEAR. MACBETH. TEMPEST. HAMLET. KING HENRY VIII, COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY CLARK & MAYNARD. EDITOR'S NOTE. THE text here presented, adapted for use in mixed classes, has been carefully collated with that of six or seven of the latest and best editions. Where there was any disagreement those readings have been adopted which seemed most reasonable and were supported by the best authority. Professor Meiklejohn's exhaustive notes form the substance of those here used; and his plan, as set forth in the "General Notice" annexed, has been carried out in these volumes. But as these plays are intended rather for pupils in school and college than for ripe Shakespearian scholars, we have not hesitated to prune his notes of what ever was thought to be too learned for our purpose, or on other grounds was deemed irrelevant to it. The notes of other English editors have been freely incorporated. B. K. 3 GENERAL NOTICE. "AN attempt has been made in these new editions to interpret Shakespeare by the aid of Shakespeare himself, The Method of Comparison has been constantly employed; and the language used by him in one place has been compared with the language used in other places in similar circumstances, as well as with older English and with newer English. The text has been as carefully and as thoroughly annotated as the text of any Greek or Latin classic. "The first purpose in this elaborate annotation is, of course the full working out of Shakespeare's meaning. The Editor has in all circumstances taken as much pains with this as if he had been making out the difficult and obscure terms of a will in which he himself was personally interested; and he submits that this thorough excavation of the meaning of a really profound thinker is one of the very best kinds of training that a boy or girl can receive at school. This is to read the very mind of Shakespeare, and to weave his thoughts into the fibre of one's own mental constitution. And always new rewards come to the careful reader in the shape of new meanings, recognition 3 |