THE DRAMATIC WORKS AND POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, with Notes, Original and Selected, and Introductory Remarks to Each Play, By Samuel Weller Singer, F.S.A. and A LIFE OF THE POET By Charles Symmons, D.D. in Two Volumes.

2 volumes. First of the edition and a very early American issue. Engraved frontispiece of the Bard and many black and white engravings throughout. Tall 8vo, three quarter contemporary black straight-grain morocco over green pebbled cloth boards, the spine with raised bands gilt lined and decorated, lettered in gilt in two compartments, marbled endpapers. 522; 596pp. A very handsome and attractive early American issuance of Shakespeare’s works, with only light aging. A very well preserved set.

Edizione: a nice early american set. “the object then of the present publication is to afford the general reader a correct edition of shakespeare, accompanied by an abridged commentary, in which all superfluous and refuted explanations and conjectures, and all controversies and squabbles of contending critics should be omitted; and such elucidations only of obsolete words and obscure phrases, and such critical illustrations of the text as might be deemed most generally useful be retained” [preface]. and so it accomplishes its goal. the editor also includes a section on the life of shakespeare, an elegy written by ben jonson, and a reprint of the bard’s famous will in which he bequeaths to his wife his “second best bed, with the furniture.”