Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I must acknowledge the contributions of Robert L. Reid. He kindly read early versions of this work and made many astute suggestions for improvement, all of which have been silently incorporated into the fabric. Were it not for his inherent modesty and unstinting generosity, his name would appear on the title page. Dale B. J. Randall also used his blue pencil to good effect in several passages; Steven May contributed a Spenser reference in a manuscript hitherto unnoted and assisted with problems paleographical; Anne Lake Prescott helped keep Spenser’s “gyants” in order; and finally, Laetitia Yeandle and Barbara Krebs helped with seventeenth-century paleography—for which, many thanks to all.

For kindness and assistance in research, I also wish to thank all custodians of rare books, reference librarians, and reading room workers who helped with this work, viz., the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the university libraries of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London; the libraries of Lambeth Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sion College (London), and the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine; Oxford University’s Bodleian Library (and the libraries of All Souls’s, St. Hilda’s, Somerville, and Wadham); Cambridge University Library (and the Pepysian Library and the libraries of Emmanuel, King’s, St. John’s, and Trinity); Library of Congress, Huntington Library, New York Public Library, Newberry Library, Pierpont Morgan Library, and the university libraries of Brown (John Carter Brown), Chicago (Regenstein), Columbia (Butler), Harvard (Houghton), UCLA (William Andrews Clark), and Yale (Beinecke).

I render special thanks to the entire staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library for their continuing assistance and indulgence, and in particular to the director, Gail Kern Paster, and to her predecessors Werner Gundersheimer, O. B. Hardison, Jr., and Louis B. Wright. And let me not forget Georgianna Ziegler, reference librarian; Elisabeth Walsh, head of reading room services; and James Kuhn, electronic wizard and guru.

I should also acknowledge the generous financial contributions over the years from the Agecroft Foundation, Faculty Senate of the University of the District of Columbia, Fulbright Commission, Nannie Byrd Foundation, and National Endowment for Humanities.