Plays of Shakespeare Author:William Shakespeare 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: INTRODUCTION TO THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. THIS is among the plays of Shakespeare mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598. How long before that time it was written we... more » have no means of knowing; but, judging by the qualities of the workmanship, we cannot well assign the writing to a much earlier date. In July of the same year (1598), the play was registered in the Stationers' books, but with a special proviso, " that it be not printed without license first had from the Right Hon. the Lord Chamberlain " The theatrical company to which Shakespeare belonged were then known as " The Lord Chamberlain's Servants ;" and the purpose of the proviso was to keep the play out of print till the company's permission were given through their patron. The play was entered again at the same place in October, 1600; his lordship's license having probably been obtained by that time. Accordingly, two distinct editions of it were published in quarto form in the course of that year. These editions were by different publishers, and were most likely printed from different manuscripts, though the printer was the same in both. The play was never issued again, that we know of, till in the folio of 1623, where the repetition of various misprints shows it to have been reprinted from one of the quarto copies. Except in one instance, there is little difficulty about the text, nor has there been mucli controversy on that score. That exception is in Act iii. scene 2, where all the old copies have " the beauteous scarf veiling an Indian beauty." My own judgment of the passage is given in a note. A few varieties of reading are noted in the margin. In this play, again, the Poet shows the same indifference to mere novelty of incident, which 1 have remarked in the case of As You Like It. Here, as there, he drew largely from...« less