Page 12 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION

Any new recension of a play like Hamlet, which is
of universal interest and touches scholarship at number-
less points, will provoke criticism and discussion from
which the editor has much to learn. He will be fortunate
too if friends and critics do not draw his attention to
material already in print which he has overlooked. The
call for a second edition within two years of publication
comes too early for me to reap this aftermath to full
advantage. Beyond correcting a few misprints I have,
therefore, left the type of this volume as it stood in
November, 1934, gathering together in supplemen-
tary pages additional notes and observations which it
seemed profitable to Mr Child and myself to make at
this juncture, in the hope of being able to incorporate
them, with fresh additional matter, should a third edition
ever be required. When these notes concern, by way
of correction or expansion, the Introduction, Notes or
Glossary of the 1934 edition, the reader's attention will
be drawn to the fact by asterisks, in the original text,
though suchnotes, it maybe observed, form onlya part of
the new matter. Meanwhile my grateful thanks are due
to the many critics, private and pu blic, who have tendered
advice or admonition. Reasoned disagreement, indeed,
is one of the greatest of services that an editor can receive.
For even when the criticism cannot be accepted, it may,
and often does, induce further elucidation, if not fresh
discovery.

J. D. W.

September, 1936