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New Particulars Regarding the Works of Shakespeare
New Particulars Regarding the Works of Shakespeare Author:John Payne Collier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NEW PARTICULARS REGARDING THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. My Dear Dyce, As I do not well know how to arrange the' materials, (miscellaneous in their nature... more », though uniform in their purpose), of my present communication, I shall refrain from making any attempt of the kind : of course, you feel so lively an interest .in all that relates to Shakespeare and his works, that an inevitable degree of desultoriness will not deter you from reading what follows with more than mere curiosity. Were such a letter addressed to me, I am not sure that I should not like it the better for the very reason which, were I more systematic in my reading, would make me like it the worse. However, you must take it " for better for worse," and we are told that, "Books are like wives, in sheets or bound, Seldom without digressions; And children, as the years come round, Are only new impressions." At all events, as you have made the one a substitute for the other, to send you any thing new of a literarynature is a species of charity, since it furnishes yon with a fresh source of enjoyment. Without more preface, therefore, I shall begin. When I was at Oxford, six or seven years ago, looking for materials for the " History of Dramatic Poetry and the Stage," I heard of the existence, in the Bodleian Library, of a Manuscript containing notes on the performance of some of Shakespeare's plays, written by a person who saw them acted during the life-time of the poet. These would have been a great prize to me, and I made long and repeated searches for them, but without success. The fact is, that I was accidentally put upon a wrong scent; and, had I been upon a right one, in that immense receptacle of rarities, I might easily have failed in making the wished-for discovery. The MSS. were not then as...« less