“La pitié est souvent un sentiment de nos propres maux dans les yeux d'autrui.”—La Rochefaucauld, Maximes.

“Le meilleur serait de prendre conseil de la raison.”

Pascal, Lettres Prov. 9.

Philippe de Rémi, Sieur de Beaumanoir, of Clermont County in Picardy, author of narrative and lyrical Poems, and of the Coutumes de Beauvaisis, though scarcely among the inédit, is still little known to general literary history. He is, as his first modern editor, the Count Beugnot, quoted from Nicolle, of those “qui laissent des traces et cavent ce qu'ils manient.” As Beugnot adds, “le sillon qu'il a creusé dans la jurisprudence française, pour ne pas être visible à tous les yeux, n'en a pas eu moins de profondeur.”

The fact that Pericles was Dot included in the First Folio has thrown discredit upon Heminge and Condell; for even if, as has been conjectured, difficulties of copyright prevented their publishing this very popular play, it is felt that they should not have claimed that they presented in their volume all of Shakespeare's dramas. Since the play could scarcely be ignored, as some of the earlier dramas of divided authorship might have been, the most natural conjecture seems to be that Pericles was generally regarded as substantially another man's play. I believe that in 1623 not only those friends and fellows of Shakespeare who had access to his papers (and who made no other mistake so far as we can determine), but many of those who were urged to buy, would think of the play as “Heywood's Pericles,” in a way that they would not think of “Fletcher's Henry VIII”—nor of any play in the Folio as being essentially the work of an important living dramatist. Most critics believe that Shakespeare was only the reviser of the piece, and assign to him Acts III-V without the choruses and brothel scenes. This leaves only 754 lines, including some we do not really prize and which may not be his. If these scenes were a mere revamping of scenes already in existence, we need not bother about the omission of Pericles from the Folio; if Shakespeare was the original composer of those scenes, and wrote the brothel scenes also, we are put to shifts to explain it. Of course no such consideration would prevent the play's being printed in quarto as Shakespeare's, for we know that in the case of other dramas no warrant at all was needed.

One of the minor critical problems with regard to the early quartos and folios of Shakespeare relates to those textual irregularities in which the name of an actor appears in place of that of a character, suddenly transporting the reader from the land of make-believe to the Elizabethan tiring-room, and establishing a direct line of connection between the plays and the companies for which they were written.

For well nigh a century and three-quarters the authorship of The Taming of the Shrew has been a Shaksperian problem; Warburton was apparently the first to question that it was the work of a single author. According to him The Shrew represents the work of Shakspere to the extent “that he has, here and there, corrected the dialogue, and now and then added a Scene.” This view was held by Steevens, who believed, however, that Shakspere's hand was visible in almost every scene, particularly in those scenes between tamer and shrew. In 1857 Grant White proposed the theory of dual composition: a collaborator supplied the love element of the underplot, whereas to Shakspere belonged “the strong, clear characterization, the delicious humor, and the rich verbal coloring of the recast Induction, and all the scenes in which Katharine and Petruchio and Grumio are the prominent figures, together with the general effect produced by scattering lines and words and phrases here and there, and removing others elsewhere throughout the rest of the play.” In general, White's theory has prevailed down to the present day; it was supported by that industrious student, Fleay, and Professor A. H. Tolman. On the other hand, not a few writers, on aesthetic or general grounds, have voiced the opinion that Shakspere worked unaided: notable among these is Miss Charlotte Porter. It is the purpose of the present study, by undertaking a more systematic investigation, to show that Shakspere is responsible for the entire play.

Our first reference to the acting of Macbeth on the Restoration stage is to be found in a list of plays drawn up by Sir Henry Herbert, the master of the revels, and dated November 3, 1663. The list includes the following item: “Revived Play. Mackbethe …. [£]1.” This reference agrees with Downes's assertion that before its presentation at Dorset Garden with “new Cloath's, new Scenes, Machines, as flyings for the Witches; with all the Singing and Dancing in it,” the play had been acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields. There, in the first house directed by D'Avenant, Samuel Pepys saw it on November 5, 1664, December 28, 1666, January 7, 1667, April 19, 1667, October 16, 1667, November 6, 1667, August 12, 1668, December 21, 1668, and January 15, 1669.

Scholarship has always delighted to render unto Shakspere and Milton individually the tribute which is their natural due. Strangely enough, however, it has neglected the relationships between them. Specifically, no one hitherto, I believe, has undertaken a systematic investigation of the range and quantity of Shaksperian recollection in Milton, much less of the quality thereof. The present paper attempts such an investigation.

The aim of the following paper is two-fold. First, its endeavor is to point out the probable source of Christopher Marlowe's posthumously published pastoral poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” and to trace the direct influence of this set of verses through English literature down to the present time. Second, the article strives to demonstrate the fact that, initiated by Marlowe's poem and its frequent imitation, a literary device, “the invitation to love,” became established in English literature and has persisted in it down to our own time. My design, therefore, may be briefly given as a discussion of “The Passionate Shepherd” and its influence, with an incidental history of the invitation to love so far as it is related to Marlowe's poem.

I

In 1833 a precocious seventeen-year-old boy, Philip James Bailey, came from Nottingham to London; and thus reached, in time and space, the very centre of the nascent Victorianism which he was destined so curiously to illustrate. Initiated by his father into liberal politics and theology, and by his own youthful reading into the spirit of romanticism, he set himself to writing endless verses that should be at once theology and romantic poetry. Bailey's Festus has been known to three generations of readers who have scarcely thought, perhaps, of the position of the work in literature or of the poet himself. The present paper is concerned with the poem Festus rather than with Philip James Bailey, although documents recently come to hand make it possible for us to follow his life in the thirties with some detail. And yet there is surprisingly little about London in Bailey's early letters. He did not, like Browning in the same decade, make his way into literary and theatrical circles; almost his only literary acquaintance seems to have been John Robertson, the editor who preserved himself like a fly in amber by telling Carlyle that “he meant to do Cromwell himself.” Although Bailey occasionally submitted his verses to the London editor as well as to his father, he seems not to have been open to suggestions.