Modern-spelling editions as opposed to old-spelling editions are divided into two kinds: one is partially modernized texts or semi-popular editions and the other fully modernized texts or popular editons. A complete and absolute modern-spelling Shakespeare edition has not yet appeared because full modernization involves not a few difficult problems. Some old-spelling forms are easy to modernize. Words like lanthorn(e), murther, parfit, and vild whose interchangeable alternative forms lantern, murder, perfect, and vile also occur within the same original texts can be modernized without any loss unless rhyme is involved. It is also easy to modernize the past tense and past participial ending-ed/ `d to-ed when it is non-syllabic and to-ed when syllabic. In Shakespeare`s day a number of words were often spelt differently in accordance with a compositor`s spelling preferences, text-space, type-shortage, or the exigencies of line justification. For example, hear was spelt hear, heare, and here; then as then and than; whose as whose and who`s; to as to and too. Even these cases which demand a choice between two exclusive meanings can be easily modernized because context makes the choice quite easy. But difficulty arises when the ambiguity of an original edition embraces two modern words which are not clearly related in form or sense. The word trauail, for instance, embraces two modern words travail and travel. No matter which one the editor chooses, he will need an annotation. Some words with final s raise a similar difficulty. Cats in an Elizabethan text may stand for modern cats, cat`s cats`, or cat is, and the sense of a pas-sage can bear more than two of these exclusive meanings. In his Riverside Shakespeare edition which is widely recognized as the definitive edition as far as semi-popular Shakespeare editions go, Evans preserves ``a selection of Elizabethan spelling forms that reflect, or may reflect, a distinctive contemporary pronunciation`` like fift or sizt (fifth or sixth), Bullingbrook(e) (Bolingbroke), conster (construe), and vild (vile) because those forms suggests, if not Shakespeare`s own preferences, ``the kind of linguistic climate in which he wrote`` and this approach of his avoids, he said, ``the unhistorical and sometimes insensitive levelling that full-scale modernization (never consistent itself) imposes``. In 1978 Oxford University Press launched a project for a modern-spelling Oxford Shakespeare with Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor as General Editor and Associate General Editor respectively. Wells made public his modernizing principles and method in his Modernizing Shakespeare`s Spelling published in book form in 1979 together with Taylor`s Three Studies in the Text of ``Henry V``. Wells is quite sure that he sees `no virtue in an attempt to suggest a ``kind of linguistic climate`` and that he is capable of modernizing Shakespeare without committing an ``insensitive levelling`` by making provision for special cases created by wordplay, scansion, rhyme, and so forth. He also sees no advantage in preserving ``a selection of Elizabethan spelling forms`` which would create a need for many more glosses. What he proposes to do is to modernize almost all the semantically indifferent variants (like banket/banquet) and as to semantically significant variants (like courtesy/curtsy/court` sy/curt` sy/cursie, metal/mettle, and travel/ travail) where Shakespeare`s use is significantly ambiguous, he is to ``adopt the primary sense, and annotate``. But he is to retain stage dialects and those old spellings which ``helps the reader to see that a word is not what he might otherwise suppose``. He also refuses to mod ernize ``sallets`` to ``salads`` in Hamlet`s ``no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury``, for then we lose the sense of ``something tasty`` and mar metre and rhyme as well. Aphetic forms like Edgar`s cham (=-Ich am) and forms of a characterizing touch and those of representing the speech of uneducated characters, foreigners, etc. are also preserved. Wells will modernize such proper names as Bullingbrook(e), Gertrard, Chatillion, Alanson, Rone (or Roan), Callice which have all been retained by Evans. As to the past tense and past participial ending ed, he prefers the method of representing the syncopated form by-ed and the unsyncopated form by either-ed or-ed to that of representing the former by-`d and the latter by-ed. When these endings occur in prose he means to print the normal modern form. On the whole, Wells` proposal with its considerable number of exceptions does not live up to his ambition for a fully modernized Shakespeare edition although there can be no doubt that he will modernize Shakespeare as fully as he can and certainly more than any one has ever done so far. In conclusion, there could be no doubt that Wells` Oxford edition will be a big step forward to a complete and absolute modern Shakespeare edition although it is not likely to come out in the near future.