The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778)/Volume 1/Preface by Heminge and Condell
THE
PREFACE
OF THE
PLAYERS.
To the great Variety of Readers.
FROM the most able, to him that can but spell: there you are number’d, we had rather you were weighd. Especially, when the fate of all bookes depends upon your capacities: and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well! it is now publique, and you will stand for your priviledges, wee know: to read, and censure. Doe so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a booke, the stationer saies. Then, how odde soever your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge your sixe-pen’orth, your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you doe, buy. Censure will not drive a trade, or make the jacke goe. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Black-friars, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne plays dailie, know, these playes have had their triall already, and stood out all appeales; and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of court, than any purchas’d letters of commendation.
It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have been wished, that the author himselfe had liv’d to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; but since it hath been ordain’d otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you doe not envie his friends, the office of their care and paine, to have collected and publish’d them; and so to have publish’d them, as where (before) you were abus’d with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos’d them: even those are now offer’d to your view cur’d and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his workes, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: and if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his friends, who, if you need, can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade yourselves, and others. And such readers we wish him.
John Heminge,
Henrie Condell.