^{Note 1 in page 514} Preface to Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakspeare, in The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. ?. V. Lucas, 7 vols. (London, 1903–05), iv, xi-xii. All quotations from Lamb's non-epistolary writings are from this edition, hereafter cited as Works. Quotations from Lamb's letters are from The Letters of Charles Lamb, to which are added those of his sister, Mary Lamb, ed. ?. V. Lucas, 3 vols. (London and New Haven, Conn., 1935), hereafter cited as Letters.

^{Note 2 in page 514} The significant references to Shakespeare in Lamb's works are listed here: “On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, Considered with Reference to Their Fitness for Stage Representation” (Reflector, 1812), Works, i, 97–111; “On Some of the Old Actors” (London Magazine, 1822), Works, ii, 132–141; “Shakspeare's Improvers” (Spectator, 1828), Works, i, 321–323; “G. F. Cooke in ‘Richard the Third‘” (Morning Post, 1802), Works, I, 36–38; Letter to Robert Lloyd (26 June 1801), Letters, i, 259–261; “Table-Talk in The Examiner,” x (1813), “Play-House Memoranda,” Works, i, 158–160; “My First Play” (London Magazine, 1821), Works, ii, 97–100; “On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century” (London Magazine, 1822), Works, ii, 141–147; Letter to Samuel Rogers (Dec. 1833), Letters, iii, 393–394. There are many short references scattered throughout Lamb's letters and in his important Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakspeare (1808), Works, iv. “Stage Illusion” (London Magazine, 1825), Works, ii, 163–165, although it does no more than mention Macbeth, is important to Lamb's distinction between the nature of comic and tragic acting styles.

^{Note 3 in page 514} Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespearean Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1960), i, xvi.

^{Note 4 in page 515} These points respecting Coleridge are made in Raysor, i, xxviii-xli, et passim.

^{Note 5 in page 515} Works, ii, 99.

^{Note 6 in page 515} Works, ii, 141–147.

^{Note 7 in page 515} Works, ii, 142.

^{Note 8 in page 516} Works, ii, 143–144. The view expressed here has been generally denied as simply a failure to understand either Restoration comedy or the times out of which it came and the connection between the two. But at least one highly respected critic supports Lamb's view; and such support is all the more startling because he is usually very severe on Lamb as critic. In his essay on John Ford, T. S. Eliot comments on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and “even the comedy of Congreve and Wycherley where there is almost no analysis of the particular society of the times. . . . We can partly criticize their age through our study of them, but they did not criticize it themselves” (Selected Essays, New York, 1932, pp. 178–179). See also Walter Houghton, “Lamb's Criticism of Restoration Comedy,” ELU, x (1943), 61–72.

^{Note 9 in page 516} See Works, i, 184–191, et passim.

^{Note 10 in page 516} Works, ii, 145.

^{Note 11 in page 517} At the very end of his essay “On the Tragedies of Shakspeare,” Lamb wrote that he could apply his injunction against performance to Shakespeare's comedies; but in fact he never did. In the light of his commentary on the nature of comedy and the character of the theater of his time, he may have subsequently concluded otherwise. See Works, i, 111.

^{Note 12 in page 517} The principal sources for Lamb's view of tragedy are: “On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, Considered with Reference to Their Fitness for Stage Representation” (Works, 1,97–111) ; “G. F. Cooke in Richard the Third” (Works, i, 36–38); “On Some of the Old Actors” (Works, ii, 132–141) ; and, of course, implicitly in his essay on Restoration comedy (Works, ii, 141–147), and in “Stage Illusion” (Works, ii, 163–165) in both of which he is primarily concerned with comedy. In the following discussion I am indebted to Sylvan Barnet's essay, “Charles Lamb's Contribution to the Theory of Dramatic Illusion,” PMLA, LXIX (1954), 1150–59, although I would contend, in modest disagreement with him, that Lamb's injunction against the playing of Shakespearean tragedy is finally less an absolute consideration than a result of his awareness of the theater of his own time.

^{Note 13 in page 517} It is true that Coleridge (with whom Lamb may have talked the matter over) objected in a general way to such matters in his Lectures of 1811–12, but they did not appear in print until many years later—and then only in someone else's transcript. But Lamb's objection in his Reflector essay on Shakespeare's tragedies was written in 1811 and published in the fourth Reflector, either late in 1811 or early in 1812. Hazlitt, who also shared Lamb's view, did not publish his Characters of Shakespeare's Plays until 1817, or his work on Elizabethan drama until 1820.

^{Note 14 in page 518} “On the Tragedies of Shakspeare,” Works, i, 107.

^{Note 15 in page 518} Works, i, 322.

^{Note 16 in page 519} “On Some of the Old Actors,” Works, ii, 140.

^{Note 17 in page 519} Works, iii, 145, 147.

^{Note 18 in page 519} “On Some of the Old Actors,” Works, ii, 133–134.

^{Note 19 in page 520} Works, i, 108. The 1965 “Uncle Tom” Othello of Sir Laurence Olivier raised the same problem in greenroom discussions of that controversial movie.

^{Note 20 in page 520} Works, I, 98. Part of the problem here was the star system, a regular feature of the English theater of Lamb's time. The play Lamb refers to here was Macbeth, and the “distinctness” was Kemble's and Mrs. Siddons' rather than Shakespeare's “vision.” The point of departure for the whole essay on Shakespeare's tragedies, as a matter of fact, was Lamb's annoyance at the epitaph for David Garrick in Westminster Abbey, which proclaimed Garrick and Shakespeare “twin stars” or of equal genuis. A “farrago of false thoughts and nonsense,” said Lamb.

^{Note 21 in page 520} The Papers of a Critic, 2 vols. (London, 1875), i, 46.

^{Note 22 in page 521} T. S. Eliot, “Four Elizabethan Dramatists,” in Selected Essays (New York, 1932), p. 96. This is a curiously inconsistent opinion for Mr. Eliot to give in an essay that begins by censuring Lamb for having “encouraged the formation of a distinction which is, I believe, the ruin of modern drama—the distinction between drama and literature. For the Specimens made it possible to read the plays as poetry while neglecting their functions on the stage.” There follow, then, in Eliot's essay, 103 pages of stylistic criticism of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, almost totally neglecting their function on the stage.

^{Note 23 in page 521} “Play-House Memoranda,” in “Table-Talk in The Examiner,” Works, i, 158.

^{Note 24 in page 522} Works, i, 110; my italics.

^{Note 25 in page 522} Works, i, 103.

^{Note 26 in page 523} “G. F. Cooke in ‘Richard the Third’,” Works, i, 38; Lamb's italics.

^{Note 27 in page 523} Letter to Lloyd (26 June 1801), Letters, i, 259; Lamb's italics.

^{Note 28 in page 523} Letters, i, 260.

^{Note 29 in page 524} Works, i, 38.

^{Note 30 in page 524} Works, i, 105; my italics.

^{Note 31 in page 525} “On Some of the Old Actors,” Works, ii, 136. It will be recalled that Bensley was the same actor for whose Iago Lamb had high praise. Bensley saw the comic core of Iago; here, in reverse, he apparently saw the tragic side of Malvolio. Sylvan Barnet has examined other contemporary comments on Bensley's Malvolio and finds that nobody else agrees with Lamb. See “Charles Lamb and the Tragic Malvolio,” PQ, xxxiii (1954), 178–188, esp. pp. 180–182.

^{Note 32 in page 525} “On Some of the Old Actors,” Works, ii, 134–135.