So far as the general public is concerned, the Gorgeous Gallery, which was first published in 1678, has never been reprinted; the present critical edition will therefore supply a genuine need on the part of all students of Elizabethan literature. It is based on a copy (only two are in existence) that formerly belonged to Dr. Richard Farmer and later to Edmund Malone, the Shakespearean scholar, with the remainder of whose books it found a final resting-place in the Bodleian library. The present text aims to be an exact reprint, page for page, line for line, with the exception of consistent typographical changes conducive to greater ease in reading. As a mirror of the age just before Shakespeare, it possesses for the modern reader a wealth of interest quite apart from its appeal as poetry.