| Public Ownership. | Private Ownership. | Totals. | |
| Richard II, 1634 | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| Richard III, 1629 | 7 | 6 | 13 |
| Richard III, 1634 | 11 (18) | 6 (12) | 17 (30) |
| Romeo and Juliet, 1637 | 10 | 12 | 22 |
| Henry IV, Part I, 1632 | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Henry IV, Part I, 1639 | 8 | 11 | 19 |
| Henry IV, Part I, 1700 | 10 (23) | 6 (22) | 16 (45) |
| Love’s Labors Lost, 1631 | 9 | 12 | 21 |
| Merchant of Venice, 1637 | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| Merchant of Venice, 1652 | 7 (16) | 7 (15) | 14 (31) |
| Merry Wives of Windsor, 1630 | 6 | 4 | 10 |
| Hamlet, 1637 | 11 | 13 | 24 |
| Hamlet, 1676 (2 editions) | 9 | 10 | 19 |
| Hamlet, 1683 | 3 | 9 | 12 |
| Hamlet, 1695 (2 editions) | 4 | 7 | 11 |
| Hamlet, 1703 (2 editions) | 7 (34) | 10 (49) | 17 (83) |
| King Lear, 1655 | 7 | 7 | 14 |
| Othello, 1630 | 10 | 14 | 24 |
| Othello, 1655 | 10 | 8 | 18 |
| Othello, 1681 | 4 | 7 | 11 |
| Othello, 1687 | 5 | 2 | 7 |
| Othello, 1695 | 7 | 7 | 14 |
| Othello, 1705 | 7 (43) | 6 (44) | 13 (87) |
| Taming of the Shrew, 1631 | 12 | 9 | 21 |
| Macbeth, 1673 | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Julius Caesar, 1684 | 3 | 6 | 9 |
| Julius Caesar, Undated (4 editions) | 9 | 20 | 29 |
| Julius Caesar, 1691 | 6 (18) | 11 (37) | 17 (55) |
| 209 | 234 | 443 |
In this final period we have a total of thirty-four editions, with an average of thirteen copies apiece still extant, six of them in public ownership and seven in private. The distribution as between public and private libraries would probably have been still nearer equality if public librarians had earlier become aware of the three variant editions of the Hamlets of 1676, 1695 and 1703 and the four undated editions of Julius Caesar. In this case, however, that they left more copies to fall into private hands is no great matter. It is ihe: business of large libraries to lighten the task of the bibliographers of great writers by enabling as many editions as possible to be confronted and compared under the same roof. But when bibliography has done its work, the final cause of the editions is often achieved fd ties become of little importance. These later Shakespeare quartos have no eel of authority for the formation of Shakespeare’s text, though many of those published “petore 1660 have been laboriously collated ee variants. They do not, like our intermediate class, the editions other than the first arated: before 1623, enable us to eliminate errors from the Folios,
