The reader being now convinced, as I hope, that Shakespeare was distinguished from his contemporaries by an exceptional love of the rhythms produced by resolution, so that no preference for the plain norm is likely to have restrained him from introducing a resolved foot when its presence would be natural and unobjectionable, we may now proceed to discuss a question that is of cardinal importance in connexion with his versification,—how far the early texts are to be trusted in this respect. By “the early texts” I mean the Quartos and the First Folio.

As has been already said, the Folio is for twenty plays our sole authority. On comparison with the Quartos it is found to exhibit the same bias against resolutions as do modern editors, whose judgement, it may be supposed, has been largely influenced by it. While its text differs from that of the Quartos in numberless places and ways, its most characteristic differentia consists in the persistent elimination of this feature of the verse. In some plays this seems to have been done in almost every place where there was opportunity, so that only those resolutions would appear to have survived which were fortunate enough to escape notice. Other plays have suffered less.