surreptitious and bad, while others are good "and were honestly
obtained." {210a} The Preface never denies this; never says that all
the quartos contain maimed and disfigured texts. The Preface draws a
distinction to this effect, "even those" (even the stolen and
deformed copies) "are now cured and perfect in their limbs,"--that
is, have been carefully edited, while "ALL THE REST" are "absolute in
their numbers as he conceived them." This does not allege that all
the rest are printed from Shakespeare's own holograph copies.

Among the plays spoken of as "all the rest," namely, those not
hitherto published and not deformed by the fraudulent, are, Tempest,
Two Gentlemen, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It,
All's Well, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Henry VI, iii., Henry VIII,
Coriolanus, Timon, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and
Cymbeline. Also Henry VI, i., ii., King John, and Taming of the
Shrew, appeared now in other form than in the hitherto published
Quartos bearing these or closely similar names. We have, moreover,
no previous information as to The Shrew, Timon, Julius Caesar, All's
Well, and Henry VIII. The Preface adds the remarkable statement
that, whatever Shakespeare thought, "he uttered with that easinesse,
that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

It is plain that the many dramas previously unpublished could only be
recovered from manuscripts of one sort or another, because they
existed in no other form. The Preface takes it for granted that the
selected manuscripts contain the plays "absolute in their numbers as
he conceived them." But the Preface does not commit itself, I
repeat, to the statement that all of these many plays are printed
from Shakespeare's own handwriting. After "as he conceived them," it
goes on, "Who, as he was a most happy imitator of nature, was a most