The Harvard Edition of Shakespeare's Complete

Works. By HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D., Author of the Life, Art, and Characters of Shaklspeare, Editor of School Shakespeare, etc. In Twenty Volumes; duodecimo; two plays in each volume; also in Ten Volumes of four plays each.

HUDSON'S "LIFE, ART, AND CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE (2 vols.) are uniform in size and binding with THe Harvard EdiTION, and are included with it at the following retail prices. Cloth, $4.00 per set; Half-calf, $8.00 per set.

Buyers should be careful in ordering not to confound the Harvard Shakespeare with an Old Edition made in 1851, and sold under another name.

The Harvard Edition has been undertaken and the plan of it shaped with a special view to making the Poet's pages pleasant and attractive to general readers.

Within the last thirty years great advances and additions have been made in the way of preparation for such a work, and these volumes bring the whole matter of Shakespeare up abreast with the latest researches.

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"The Edition includes The Two Noble Kinsmen,' which will be new to most readers of Shakespeare. It was first published in 1634, and has not generally been included in editions of his works. That it was his work, jointly with Fletcher, as was also Henry VIII.,' it was reserved for our own time to establish, and mainly by internal evidence, and it is difficult to read the first scene of the first act without saying, with Sidney Walker, ‘Aut Shakespearius aut diabolus,' and we are glad that Mr. Hudson gave it place and has marked the lines of Fletcher by asterisks.". The Churchman, N.Y.

The first volume contains "the Burbage portrait,” and a life of the Poet. A history of each play is given in its appropriate volume. The plays are arranged in three distinct series: Comedies. Histories, and Tragedies; and the plays of each series presented, as nearly as may be, in the chronological order of the writing.

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An obvious merit of this edition is, that each volume has two sets of notes; one mainly devoted to explaining the text, and placed at the foot of the page; the other mostly occupied with matters of textual comment and criticism, and printed at the end of each play. The edition is thus admirably suited to the uses both of the general reader and of the special student. General readers prefer to have explanations directly before them; and in at least nine cases out of ten they will pass over an obscure word or phrase or allusion without understanding it, rather than look up the explanation in another volume or another part of the same volume. Often, too, in case the explanation be not directly at hand, they will go elsewhere in quest of it, and then find, after all, that the editor has left the matter unexplained; whereas, with foot-notes they will see at once how the matter stands, and will be spared the labour and vexation of a fruitless search.

The foot-notes supply such and so much of explanatory comment as may be required by people who read Shakespeare, not to learn philology or the technicalities of the scholiast, but to learn Shakespeare himself; to take in his thought, to taste his wisdom, and to feel his beauty.

mation.

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How this edition is regarded by Our Most Eminent Shakespearians, may be judged from the following, which we are permitted to publish. Are these reviews not good evidence that this is to be "The Standard American Edition of Shakespeare?"

J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, the splendid arrangement that alone would Shakespearian, Hollingbury Copse, give a character to the work. There Brighton, England: Your kind transmission of Mr. Hudson's edition of Shakespeare has given me the greatest treat that I have had for many a day, and I can hardly express how much pleasure it affords me to possess so admirable a work. The prefaces are written with such exceptional ability and knowledge, while the division of the excellent notes into two sets is a

are of course numerous critical points on which other writers (including myself) may differ from Mr. Hudson, as well as editions more adapted for specialists, but I cannot imagine one more suitable for the public at large, and I trust that you will allow me to congratulate you heartily on its production. (Feb. 7, 1882.)