The opening of Introduction
I.
In these volumes I seek to present a true text of the Faerie Queene, founded upon a fresh collation of the Quartos of 1590 and 1596 and the Folio of 1609. I shall call these editions by their dates for short.
The fragmentary Seventh Book appeared first in 1609: for the rest the text is based on 1596. Some typographical peculiarities--long s, &, ô, and superscribed m and n (e.g. frõ, whẽ)--have not been reproduced, but noted only where they first occur. With these exceptions, the readings of 1596 if not adopted in the text are recorded in the notes; so that text and notes together amount, in effect, to a complete reprint of 1596. No such completeness has been attempted in recording variants from 1590 and 1609. But all verbal differences are recorded, and all differences of punctuation that imply a different view of the meaning. Mere changes of spelling that answer to no change of pronunciation are, as a rule, ignored; but I have recorded such differences of spelling as seemed likely to interest students of Elizabethan phonology, grammar, and usage. The evidence of these variants must be used with caution in view of Spenser’s deliberate archaism.