Excerpt from Shakespeare's a Midsummer-Night's Dream: Edited With Introduction and Notes<br><br>The Introductions are written with more freedom. They are full, and so far as they have a common spirit it is a spirit of inquiry. No question of history or criticism has been treated dogmatically when it could be treated otherwise. There is indeed no part of literary history where dogma is less in place.<br><br>It is impossible for any editor of Shakespeare to write a preface without remembering his debts. There are parts of these Introductions where I am conscious of no obligation, but wherever scholarship or learning or interpretation was needed I have found my best guides in the eighteenth-century editors, in Dr. Aldis Wright, and in the Oxford Dictionary.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.