DYCE, ALEXANDER (1798-1869), British dramatic edi tor and literary historian, was born in Edinburgh on June 3o, 1798. He was educated at Edinburgh high school and Exeter college, Oxford. He took holy orders, and became a curate at Lantegloss, in Cornwall, and subsequently at Nayland, in Suffolk. In 1827 he settled in London. His first books were Select Translations from Quintus Smyrnaeus (1821), an edition of Collins (1827), and Specimens of British Poetesses (1825). He issued annotated editions of George Peele, Robert Greene, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Marlowe, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with lives of the authors and much illustrative matter. He completed, in 1833, an edition of James Shirley left unfinished by William Gifford, and contributed biographies of Shakespeare, Pope, Akenside and Beattie to Pickering's Aldine Poets. He also edited (1836-38) Richard Bentley's works, and Specimens of British Sonnets (1833). His carefully revised edition of John Skelton, which appeared in 1843, did much to revive interest in that trenchant satirist. In 1857 his edition of Shakespeare was published by Moxon; and the second edition, much improved, was issued by Chapman and Hall in 1866. He also published Remarks on Col lier's and Knight's Editions of Shakespeare (1844) ; A Few Notes on Shakespeare (1853) ; and Strictures on Collier's new Edition of Shakespeare (1859), a contribution to the Collier controversy (see COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE), which ended a long friendship. He undertook the publication of Kempe's Nine Days' Wonder for the Camden Society; and the old plays of Timon and Sir Thomas More were published by him for the Shakespeare Society. He was associated with Halliwell-Phillips, John Payne Collier and Thomas Wright as one of the founders of the Percy Society, for publish ing old English poetry. Dyce also wrote Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856). He died on May 15, 1869. He bequeathed his valuable library, containing amongst other treasures many rare Elizabethan books, to the South Kensington Museum.