BRIAN PARKER'S article ‘Bowers of Bliss’ attempts to place the 1986 Oxford edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare in its scholarly, intellectual, and theatrical context, and in the course of doing so offers a number of criticisms of the procedures adopted in that volume, with particular reference to its use in the theatre. Of course, single-volume editions of the complete works are rarely selected for theatrical use, but a number of directors have chosen to base productions on this edition, having photocopies made of the text on which they are working. For them, at least, the edition has seemed to have something special to offer. It seems to me that Professor Parker's criticisms are based on imprecisions of detail and on logical fallacies, and I should like to attempt to correct them.