persist in some minor misdemeanours. Correspondence with Dr
Gary Taylor was most helpful with the idiosyncrasies of the
original compositors, and Mrs Christine Buckley was helpful with
editorial policy. More recently I have been particularly grateful to
Frances Whistler of the Arts and Reference Division of the Oxford
University Press for the warm support that transforms cliffs into
bowling greens; and to Jane Robson whose copy-editing dotted
my erratically Weïrd Sisters with remarkable care and considera-
tion. Dr R. V. Holdsworth allowed me to see his unpublished work
on Middleton's collaborations with Shakespeare, and he and his
wife were lavish in hospitality while he conducted me through a
host of notes for his study of Macbeth. The Music Adviser to this
series, Dr F. W. Sternfeld, gave valuable advice on the original
music for the play and put me in touch with Dr Christopher
Field who proved a most lucid guide through the maze of
misinformation which once surrounded the later music used in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The sources of illustra-
tions are acknowledged below, but I must mention here the
friendly and helpful letters of the great theatrical photographer,
Angus McBean.

To all these, and to many others whose names appear in later
pages, I have much reason to be grateful; and I must acknow-
ledge too a further host of critics, historians, novelists, parodists,
and friends whose ideas have long since become part of my own
mind so that I cannot know from where or from whom they
came. I can, however, recognize a very long-standing debt to my
historian brother, Professor Christopher Brooke, who added to it
by reading and commenting on parts of the Introduction as well
as answering emergency calls for help. Still more personal is my
debt to my wife, Julia Lacey Brooke, for her sympathy which
shares in so much of my enthusiasm for poetry and theatre, and
constantly turns horrid imaginings to present laughter.

NICHOLAS BROOKE
Norwich, Thessaloniki, Harwood-in-Teesdale, and Spitalfields,
August 1989

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