CAPELLI, EDWARD, the well-known critic and annotator of Shakespeare, was born at Troston in Suffolk in 1713. Through the influence of the Duke of Grafton, he was early appointed to the office of deputy-inspector of plays, with a salary of £200 per annum. Shocked at the inaccuracies which had crept into Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare, he projected an entirely new edition, to be carefully collated with the original copies. After spending three years in collecting and comparing a vast number of scarce folio and quarto editions, he published his own edition in 10 vols. 8vo, with an introduction, which was written in a style of extraordinary and romantic quaintness, and which was afterwards appended to the prolegomena of Johnson's and Steevens's editions. The work was published at the expense of the principal booksellers of London, who gave him £300 for his labour. Three other volumes of Notes and various readings of Shakespeare, which he had announced in his introduction, under the title of The School of Shakespeare, were published under the editorial superintendence of Mr Collins, in 1783, two years after Capell's death. They contain the results of his unremitting labour for thirty years in collating the ancient MSS., and throw considerable light on the history of the times of Shakespeare, as well as on the sources from which he derived his plots. Besides the works already specified, he published a volume of ancient poems called Prousions, and an edition of Antony and Cleopatra adapted for the stage.