The plays and poems of William Shakespeare, with the purest text, and the briefest notes. Edited by J. Payne Collier. Vol. II

The plays and poems of William Shakespeare, with the purest text, and the briefest notes. Edited by J. Payne Collier. Vol. II

Author: Shakespeare, William ; Collier, J. Payne (John Payne) (ed.)

Year: 1878

Second of 8 volumes in 4to. pp. [4], 112, 84, 100, 104, 106, 118. Half morocco, with wrappers bound in. One of 58 sets printed. Collier’s last Shakespeare edition, designed for a mature reader, with no general or individual introductions, the most perfunctory of notes on early quartos, minimal commentary, and above all an arbitrarily settled text, whose ‘purity’ was not over-sullied with citations of source. While some of the Perkins readings were signaled (mostly as ‘indisputable’), more than half of them were not. Contains: Love's labour's lost ; Midsummer night's dream ; Merchant of Venice ; As you like it ; Taming of the shrew ; All's well that ends well. See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, II, 975-980; A184.