Never judge a book by its cover, antiquarian bookstore edition

Well, this certainly looks unprepossessing.  It's a battered library discard.

This can't possibly be of any interest.

Still, it can't hurt to look inside...

Huh.  A handwritten TOC! Is this someone's personal bound anthology of...something? Let's see...

It's Shakespeare! Er, sort of.  What else?

The book turned out to be a collection of thirty-six plays, mostly melodramas (Gothic, historical, etc.), from the first third of the nineteenth century, with the earliest dating from 1813.  There are some recognizable names in here, including Thomas Dibdin and Thomas Holcroft.