Works of John Ford EDITED BY WILLIAM GIFFORD WITH ADDITIONS BY REV. ALEXANDER DYCE NOW RE-ISSUED WITH FURTHER ADDITIONS IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON LAWRENCE AND BULLEN 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN WORKS OF JOHN FORD, WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, Esq. A NEW EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS TO THE TEXT AND TO THE NOTES BY THE REV. ALEXANDER DYCE. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: JAMES TOOVEY, 177 PICCADILLY. NOTE. THE revision of Gifford's edition of Ford was the last service rendered by Alexander Dyce to students of the English Drama. His preface, wherein he speaks of "the languor and weakness consequent on a very long and serious illness," is dated February 15th, 1869. He died on the 15th of the following May, engaged to the end on his translation (twenty years' unavailing labour) of Athenæus, and on a third edition of his Shakespeare. On the 4th December, 1868, he had written to his friend John Forster"I suspect that I am very gradually dying, and if such is the case I certainly have no reason to make any childish lamentation, for I have lived a great deal longer than most people who are born into this world, and I look back on my past existence without much disapprobation." Gifford was so intent on denouncing the inaccuracies of others that he frequently failed to secure accuracy himself. The hectoring tone that he chose to adopt has been generally, though not universally, discarded by later scholars. In reading the old dramatists we do not want to be distracted by editorial invectives and diatribes. Gifford's detailed exposure of Weber's deficiencies was rightly suppressed by Dyce. |