1 Shakespeare: Now I've finally found my groove, writing speeches for Churchill, rewriting Tolkien's work...
2 Mercutio: Wait. This is your redraft of Tolkien??
3 Mercutio: It's brilliant! You've taken a long-winded piece of schlock that only Dungeons & Dragons nerds bothered to read and turned it into a literary masterpiece!
4 Shakespeare: I did?
4 Mercutio: Cutting the Council of Elrond down to 42 pages was a masterstroke.

That's in the Unwin paperback edition, first published in 1974. My edition is the second 1984 reprint.