I HOPE it may not be judged an incompetent plea, in defense of the act of writing another book on Shakespeare, that the author had not meditated such a deed when it was proposed to him by the editor of the present series. On reflection, however, it seemed that there might be some justification of so agreeable an imprudence, even on the part of one who had no Shakespearean theories to propose,--or perhaps for that very reason. In the first place, some need has been felt for a compendium of the known facts respecting Shakespeare, and of the prevailing critical judgments of modern scholarship, sufficiently untechnical for the purposes of the general reader, and at the same time uncolored by any desire to prove a case. In the second place, the history of Shakespeare criticism has perhaps reached a point where one may profitably attempt some restatement of the main issues involved in the effort to adjust our view of a world-genius, whose values are absolute and timeless, to the special relationship which his work bore to his immediate audience and age.

The latter point deserves some further comment. The course of Shakespeare criticism, which began in anything like a formal way with the age of Dryden, may be roughly divided into three periods. In the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century Shakespeare's work was greatly admired, but it was observed to violate the rules of dramatic composition which prevailed in the neo-classical era; hence the common assumption was that he was a kind of inspired irregular barbarian, who through ignorance of the laws of his art failed to attain the perfection which his genius in itself would have led one to hope for. In the early nineteenth century, on the other hand, the progress of romanticism led to wholly different views of the nature of genius; it was now held that genius makes or realizes its own laws, and that any great artist must be a source for the knowledge of the rules of his art, instead of being subject to testing by rules already laid down. This doctrine (which in its milder form no modern critic would dispute) was exaggerated to the point of viewing a poet of Shakespeare's greatness as an inspired, even an infallible, artist. "He never introduces a word or a thought in vain or out of place," said Coleridge. "If we do not understand him, it is our fault or the fault of copyists... He never wrote at random, or hit upon points of character and conduct by chance; and the smallest fragment of his mind not unfrequently gives a clue to a most perfect, regular, and consistent whole." And De Quincey closed one of his essays with this apostrophe: "O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert." Against this passionate orthodoxy of the earlier nineteenth century, the scientific and historical criticism of the later Victorians and their successors of the twentieth century naturally reacted. Shakespeare's inerrancy, like that of the Scriptures, was suspected because of the application of newer methods of study; he came to be viewed increasingly as a man of his age, whose works are to be explained primarily by the intellectual, the theatrical, and even the economic conditions of the time. The notion that he was possessed of super-normal, if not positively supernatural, knowledge of the workings of the human mind and heart was now replaced by the assumption that, being an Elizabethan, he must have been limited by Elizabethan psychology. The conception of him as striking out his great creations by aid of the inner light gave way, in some quarters, to that of a business-like person who studied the theatrical market with all the keenness of a modern manager, and wrote precisely what would sell. Some keen and learned critics have gone so far in this prosaically historical method of interpretation that the sympathetic reader of Shakespeare actually trembles before their disillusioning strokes, or, when they occasionally admit some extraordinary beauty or power in Shakespeare's workmanship, feels a thrill of gratitude for the condescension, as with Biblical critics of the corresponding school. The scene of the bibulous porter in Macbeth, following close upon the murder, was so revolting to Coleridge that he would have none of it. Since it was not good, it could not be Shakespeare's; he therefore denounced it as "an interpolation of the actors." To De Quincey, on the other hand, the scene was tragically effective despite its grotesqueness, and he wrote his essay "On the Knocking at the Gate" to show how it exemplified Shakespeare's subtle and unerring psychology. The modern critic, irreverently thrusting aside these romantic guesses, points out that the scene is explained by two elementary facts; first, that the Elizabethan audience expected and demanded at least one clownish scene in every tragedy, and secondly, that at the point in question there was a convenient opportunity for such an interlude, since the spectator must be made to perceive some lapse of time while Macbeth was washing the blood from his hands. Such is the contrast between absolutism and relativity!

It may now appear somewhat more clearly what was meant in saying that the time is opportune for the reconstruction of Shakespearean orthodoxy, with a view to avoiding the excesses of both the absolute and the historical positions. Coleridge himself, though he stood near one extreme in his doctrine of the poet's infallibility, was not wanting in grasp of the historical method, and in the sentence which I have taken as epigraph for this book he set set forth the undoubtedly sound principle for using that method without abusing it. Another of his sentences much like the one just referred to, again suggests the right point of departure: "As a living poet must surely write not for the ages past, but for that in which he lives and those which are to follow, it is on the one hand natural that he should not violate, and on the other necessary that he should not depend on, the mere manners and modes of his day." The present book is written from that point of view, aiming always to distinguish those elements in Shakespeare's work which are characteristically "of an age" from those which prove intrinsically valid "for all time." It is assumed that he based his writings upon the dramatic practice, the ethics, and the psychology of his own people, and that he neither professed to be, nor was suspected by his contemporaries of being, an innovator or a prophet; but that at the same time, since he was a very great poet, he might transcend the common practice at any point, in ways which, when we once observe them, it is highly profitable to study. The corollary is that one need never be ashamed to admit either a blemish or a superlative beauty, when evidence of it actually appears. Of course there is abundant room for diffences of judgment; the way is not made clear when the right principles are accepted, and so long as Shakespeare is a vital element in the life of the English-speaking world, there can be no hardened unanimity in Shakespeare criticism. The test of these chapters must be whether they hold the balance reasonably true, representing with substantial fidelity the tendencies of the best judgment of our time, and whether the writer has avoided the sin of dogmatizing about uncertainties in the interest of any pet theory of his own. The fact is, he envies those who take arms on behalf of such theories; to do so makes for much more of eloquence and wit than the humbler task of trying to follow the via media between so many interesting by-ways.

One aspect of the historical side of the subject has been frankly neglected; namely, that concerned with the more distinctively theatrical conditions, and the dramatic technique, of Shakespeare's age and his art. These matters have been so abundantly discussed in recent years, and so effectively treated for the general reader in the works of Professors George P. Baker, A. H. Thorndike, and Brander Matthews, that they may be slighted with the better grace, in order to give space for those phases of Shakespeare, which more especially concern his position among the Master Spirits of Literature.

Plagiarisms of many kinds may be frankly admitted, in a survey so condensed as this. During the past fifty years there have been few original thoughts respecting Shakespeare's writings, and nine-tenths of them are obviously wrong. Any one of us is fortunate if he seems to find himself with a fresh and happy interpretation once a year or two, and still more fortunate if he does not presently realize that it was suggested to him by such and such a predecessor. I gladly affirm that most of the substantial ideas in this book are inherited. Despairing, in the space allowed me, of distinguishing their sources even in the instances where I was aware of them, I have abandoned all effort to give bibliographical references in the text. Any who wish them will find in the appendix, in connection with the brief general bibliography, references to those recent critical discussions of disputed matters which I have chiefly used or believe to be most worth while. But I wish more specifically here to acknowledge two or three cases of obligation. First, to Professor Felix Schelling and Barrett Wendell, who some twenty-five years ago, in their respective universities, introduced me to sound methods of interpreting Elizabethan drama in general and Shakespeare in particular, and whose books have since done the same for many a student. Then, to the unpretentious but valuable editorial material in Dr. W. A. Neilson's Cambridge edition of Shakespeare, and to Professor A. C. Bradley's monumental work on Shakesparean Tragedy, which--however one may find himself differing with details--has interpenetrated the texture of the thinking of all students of the subject during the past fifteen years. I am under many obligations to my colleagues, Professor William Dinsmore Briggs and Henry David Gray, and to Professor Joseph Quincy Adams of Cornell University, who have graciously read protions of my manuscript and made a number of valuable suggetions.

R. M. A.

Stanford University, California
August, 1921.