"THE study of Shakespeare," says a recent enthusiast, "will continue to be the most noble pursuit in the large realm of English letters as long as the language lasts to which he gave form and stability." The more catholic student of literature will probably cavil at the largeness of this claim, as the philologist certainly will at the view implied in the last clause as to the source of the "form and stability" of our speech. But, notwithstanding these objections, the utterance is fairly typical of the mental attitude responsible for the greater part of modern Shakespearean literature that is not strictly scholarly. This attitude is pernicious for two reasons: it implies an idolatry of the dramatist that hinders a truly critical and discriminating approach to his work; and it tends to puff up the idolator with the feeling that engaging in this "most noble pursuit" counts to him for merit and distinction. As a result, the public is bored by mawkish adulation, or irritated by condescension and conceit. These deplorable consequences are evident in about half the books included in the present survey.

The claim on behalf of Bacon to the

1 Letters from the Dead to the Dead. By OLIVER LECTOR. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1905.

Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays by the Notable Editors of the Eighteenth Century. Edited by BEVERLEY WARNER, D. D. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

1906.

authorship of the Shakespearean plays and poems is, of course, only an eccentric development of this familiar idolatry. It is impossible for the "Baconians" to conceive that the worshiped scriptures could be the work of one whom they assume to have been an illiterate player, so they give them becoming dignity by ascribing them to the most distinguished figure of his age in the realm of pure intellect. The attempts to give plausibility to this ascription have exhibited much pretty ingenuity; but we have seen none more curious than that contained in the recent Letters from the Dead to the Dead, by "Oliver Lector." In this quaint volume we have a series of epistles exchanged by the shades of Francis Bacon, Jacob de Bruck, Henry Briggs, John Napier, Guy Fawkes, and William Shakespeare. The aim is to suggest that the overflowing product of the great Lord Chancellor's brain is to be found in many of the emblem books of the time, such as those of de Bruck, in the invention of logarithms, usually ascribed to Napier of Merchiston, in the frustrating of the Gunpowder Plot, and, finally, in the Shakespearean drama. Only the last of these claims concerns us now. Shakespeare writes to Bacon from his house in Hades, in what is meant to be the spelling of an illiterate Elizabethan, a plaintive letter telling how a certain "drie and wizardlike" sprite has propounded to him some awkward questions as to the parabolic signification of the great tragedies, the hawk-and-handsaw passage in Hamlet, and the sources of Falstaff's knowledge of Galen on the causes of apoplexy. Bacon, prophesying that William's rôle of dramatic author is nearly played out, condescendingly supplies him with answers to the queries of the skeptical ghost. The Falstaff question is met by a precise

reference to an Aldine edition of Galen, the argument being, presumably, that the player Shakespeare could not have gathered learning from such a work. The hawk passage is explained by a reference to the habits of that bird in a southerly wind, further expounded by Bacon in his History of the Windes. The four great tragedies find their real explanation when it is seen that they are expositions of the four Idols which, according to the Novum Organum, mislead the human intellect: Macbeth of the Idol of the Tribe (Mac is a tribal designation); Lear of the Idol of the Cave (Lear was pronounced Lair); Hamlet of the Idol of the Market Place (all hamlets have market places); Othello of the Idol of the Theatre (Iago acts a false part to Othello).

The notes to de Bruck's letter contain further light upon the plays. It seems that they can be coördinated with the Prerogative Instances of the Novum Organum. Thus Timon of Athens corresponds to the instance Solitary, for "Timon, disgusted with mankind, takes refuge in a cave;" Romeo and Juliet corresponds to the instance Cross, because the two lovers are 'crossed in love;" Coriolanus to Door or Gate, because "Caius Marcius is killed at the gates of Rome" (which he is not); and so forth. Comment is needless. Yet there is hope in this last exhibition of fatuity. If the "Baconians" really undertake the study of Bacon's thought, there is a chance that we may have an end of the nonsense.

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The reviewer of a book on the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare's plays is apt to be haunted by a troublesome suggestion. What if it is all a joke? When absurdity passes the possibility of caricature, ought not one to infer that the writer knows he is fooling? We confess to some such perturbation in the present instance, and wish to register the fact that we have anticipated the possibility that the present volume is merely meant to furnish such entertainment as we have found in it.

A more useful form of book-making is exemplified by Dr. Beverley Warner's

Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays. Eleven of the prefaces to the chief editions, from the First Folio to Malone, are here reprinted, with a general introduction, short biographies of the editors, and here and there an explanatory footnote. The introduction, if not entirely negligible, had better be neglected, for it abounds in inaccuracies. Thus, a writer who says, "There was no criticism properly so called in the seventeenth century," shows an unpardonable forgetfulness of Dryden. The text of the First Folio is not "the foundation for all succeeding texts;" Rowe did not "merely reprint the Fourth Folio." If the author is of the "opinion that the first edition of each play is alone of any authority,” he had better investigate the claims of the second editions of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Merry Wives, Henry V, Richard III, and King Lear. It is useless to say, as Dr. Warner does, that Shakespeare "was an omnivorous reader, but even this seems to have been limited to the novels, plays, poems, etc., out of which he was quarrying the immortal dramas which bear his name. ." Such a statement, apart from its self-contradictory nature, is incapable of proof, since we have no means of knowing what Shakespeare read, beyond the evidences afforded by his writings.

available for the

But a more serious criticism of the usefulness of Dr. Warner's enterprise appears when it is noted that his statement that these essays "have never been reader" is negaaverage tived by the existence of Mr. D. Nicol Smith's Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare. This volume, which арpeared in 1903, contains the six most important prefaces reprinted by Dr. Warner; the three valuable essays of Dennis, Farmer, and Morgann; an introduction which is a real contribution to the history of Shakespeare's reputation; and a body of scholarly notes. Thus Dr. Warner's idea, though a good one, has been anticipated, and his labor is largely wasted. That this labor was one of love is indicated by the words quoted from

his preface at the beginning of this paper.

One of the inferences to be gathered from the history of Shakespearean criticism, as it is displayed in the essays reprinted in these two volumes, is that the eighteenth century gradually learned that the most illuminating comment on Shakespeare's language is to be derived from the works of his contemporaries. For us, who are more remote from both the time and the place of Shakespeare's activity, something more is necessary than a study of the archaisms of his speech. To supply this want, Mr. H. T. Stephenson has given us, in his Shakespeare's London, a very substantial aid. After introductory chapters on the manners and customs of the Elizabethans and the early history of London, he proceeds to give an account of the city as it was in the days of the great queen, taking up in order the Water Front, the main highway through the city, the quarter north of Cheapside, Holborn, Smithfield, the Strand, and Southwark; interspersing special chapters on Old St. Paul's, the Tower, and the Military Companies; and closing with the Theatres and the Taverns. The book is thus a comprehensive account of the physical aspects of the entire city, and contains in addition much incidental material, sometimes highly entertaining, reflecting the manner of life in this most interesting period. Few volumes will do so much to supply the student of Shakespeare with what is necessary for visualizing not only the background of the life of the poet, but also the background present to the minds of him and his audience in many of his plays, even though the scenes were supposed to be laid in Verona or Ephesus or Rome. Whatever may be said about the wisdom of reading the plays without commentary and letting them produce their own effect, it is certain that that effect will never be what Shakespeare aimed to produce, unless we take pains to learn his language, and to furnish our minds with the images and interests and information which he allowed for in his immediate

audience. To this end Mr. Stephenson's work is a solid and scholarly aid; and what adverse criticism we have to offer does not affect its substantial value. The plates, so necessary to a volume of this kind, would be more useful if the date and origin of each were explicitly given; a reconstructed map of the Elizabethan city would make the whole more intelligible; and more detailed statements of authorities should be given for the serious student, who will want to know more exactly the sources of the author's information, not chiefly as a guarantee of accuracy, but for purposes of first-hand knowledge and further investigation. We are tempted to suspect that the absence of apparatus is due not to the author, whose attitude is entirely scholarly, but to the modern publisher's absurd fear of the footnote. We doubt very much if the reader of the present day is so skittish as to drop a book the moment he spies a footnote; but, however it is with ephemeral literature, surely, in a serious work like the present, a moderate amount of certification and suggestion for further study may be inserted without injury to interest. If the margin must be kept clear, resort to the bashful appendix, but give us the facts and the proof.

Readers familiar with the previous writings of Mr. Stopford Brooke will be able to form in advance a fair idea of what to expect from a work by him On Ten Plays of Shakespeare. He is widely and honorably known as the author of what is, on the whole, the best short sketch of the history of English literature. He has written the best appreciation of AngloSaxon poetry, a very sympathetic study of Tennyson, and a somewhat less satisfactory work on Browning, besides many essays and some verse. He is highly cultured, widely read, more the man of letters than the scholar. He writes easily and eloquently, but almost always with a touch of his profession. That peculiar habit of mind that comes from speaking from a pulpit, where no one can raise objections or ask for reasons, requires as a

corrective a strong native sense of exact truth, and an assiduously cultivated respect for the intellectual rights of the audience. In few clergymen are these correctives present in such force as to prevent the appearance in their writings of a tendency to assume assent to the mere ipse dixit, and to talk down to the flock. Expositions of Shakespeare in this spirit still find a large and receptive public. Diffuseness of utterance, the repetition of the obvious, the narrating of the familiar story, are perhaps inevitable and necessary characteristics of preaching; and there are many who will not object to them in such a volume as this. They are referred to here merely that the reader may know what to expect; by way of definition rather than censure. The more experienced student of Shakespeare will wish that it was possible to get at the sages showing insight and a fresh view, that occur not infrequently, without going through stretches of the familiar and needless.

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A refreshing contrast in the line of interpretative criticism is to be found in Mr. A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy. Here is a book which shows that it is still possible to write about Shakespeare SO that any layman who cares to use his brain can read, and yet without boring the most accomplished specialist. It is a discussion of the four great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, on the basis of a theory of the nature of tragedy laid down in an introductory chapter.

The bane of most modern discussion of tragedy is the tyranny of Aristotle. Now,

Aristotle's theory of tragedy was chiefly an induction based on the practices of the Greek tragedians whose work he knew. It is in no sense to depreciate the greatness of his achievement to note that, in spite of the large element of permanent æsthetic truth that lies in the Poetics, it was not to be expected that any Greek theory could continue to be forever the basis of criticism of a form of art so largely dependent as the drama is upon the conditions of the contemporary stage and the culture and interests of the contem

porary audience. The distinguishing element in Mr. Bradley's work, then, is that, knowing the Greeks, he has retained his independence, and has attempted to draw from a consideration of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies a set of inferences as to the view of the tragic fact, of the tragic hero, and of the world in which such tragedies occur, which is implied in these dramas. This is carried through with great acuteness, and serves as a basis for the interpretation of the separate plays which follows. It is impossible here to summarize the results of this analysis, or otherwise to present satisfactory proof of the validity of the impression that a careful and deliberate study of this work has left upon us; but we are impelled to state our belief that we have here a criticism which, in its combination of profundity and brilliance, of subtlety and balance, of eloquence of expression and exactness of thought, surpasses any comprehensive treatment of Shakespeare since the great critics of the Romantic Revival.

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EVERYBODY Who reads what may be said here has doubtless read also books on the art of composition. Some may, perhaps, recall the perusal of one or more of them among the less exciting incidents of college days. These books on the art of composition began though they were then of less practical import — with Aristotle some two thousand years ago; and they have been frequent ever since the revival of interest in ancient letters. It is, however, only within the last decade or so that they have come thick and fast. A reviewer who makes a specialty of dealing with these books finds a bunch of five or six arriving every season. Some of them treat of "the broad principles underlying all literature;" while others narrow down to the technique of the drama or the novel. It would ill become any one to speak with the slightest disrespect of the numerous successors to Aristotle whether critics or rhetoricians who have expanded and adjusted the ancient master to new times and new literary conditions. Their work is one of the large items in the history of letters. But it, nevertheless, seems strange that it has occurred to no one in all these twenty-odd centuries to try the public with a book on the act of composition.

For a book with this theme might be made, I should think, quite as interesting and profitable as one built on the old lines. The point of view would shift, you readily see, from the objective to the subjective; from the cold and heartless dissection of a piece of literature to the author's very self in the act of composing the poem or novel that we had just read with delight. As a result of the inquiry, we might not be able, it is true, to write a poem or a novel as good as the one just laid aside; neither, for that matter, are we likely to

write an epic because we have been told by Aristotle that the Iliad has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In either case the chances are equally against us.

It should also be admitted at the outset that the man who tries his fortune with the new theme must have a very sane head. Contemporary writers writers-especially the novelists — who talk for publication are not as trustworthy as one might desire. Not that they always intend to say what is untrue about themselves; but in the first flush of success, they suffer from a redundancy of the imagination, and consequently see things that never were on land or sea. So it might be necessary to drop from the account most authors still living. But there would still remain all the dead authors who have left behind them letters, journals, and confessions for their most intimate friends.

Authors, when you get a sight of them at their desks, fall into two or three classes distinct enough for separate treatment. There are, first of all, the men who write with a glance now and then at the clock. They are the men of business who go down to their office at eight o'clock sharp, leave for lunch at one, and sometimes return for the afternoon. Their perfect type is Anthony Trollope. When at home he was out of bed at half-past five in the morning, and seated at his desk with watch before him. For three hours thereafter, he turned off two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes, and then went to breakfast, and the real business or pleasure of the day. It was all like Hotspur's killing some score of Scots on a morning, and then complaining to his wife Kate, as he came in to breakfast with bloody hands, that life was becoming dull along the Scottish Border. Trollope repeated the feat at other hours and in other places,