A LIFE OF THE POET, EXPLANATORY FOOT-NOTES, CRITICAL Barvard Edition. BY THE REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D. IN TWENTY VOLUMES. VOL. IV. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by HENRY N. HUDSON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. GINN & HEATH: 20 3K Pond Bequest -19-40 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. FIRST IRST published in the folio of 1623, and among the worstprinted plays in that volume. In many places the text, as there given, is in a most unsatisfactory state, and in not a few I fear it must be pronounced incurably at fault. A vast deal of study and labour has been spent in trying to rectify the numerous errors nearly all the editors and commentators, from Rowe downwards, have strained their faculties upon the work: many instances of corruption have indeed yielded to critical ingenuity and perseverance, and it is to be hoped that still others may; yet there are several passages that seem too hard for any legitimate efforts of corrective sagacity and skill. The matter need not be dwelt upon here, as it is set forth in detail in the Critical Notes. Of course, in a case of such extreme textual corruption, something more of scope than usual must, in all reason, be allowed to conjectural emendation. a No direct and certain contemporary notice of All's Well that Ends Well has come down to us. But the often-quoted list of Shakespeare's plays set forth by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598, includes a play called Love's Labours Won, title nowhere else given to any of the Poet's pieces. Dr. Farmer, in his Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, 1767, first gave out the conjecture, that the two titles belonged to one and the same ⚫play; and this opinion has since been concurred or acquiesced in by so many competent critics, that it might well be allowed to pass without further argument. There is no other of the Poet's dramas to which that title applies so well, while, on the other hand, it certainly fits this play quite as well as the one it now bears. The whole play is emphatically love's labours: its main interest throughout turns on the unwearied and finally-successful 3 |