The present paper is intended to form a postscript to the last section of my study of the authorship of the Prick of Conscience, published in 1910. In the earlier article the traditional attribution of the poem to Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, was attacked, and in conclusion a clue was followed which seemed to lead towards the Speculum Vitae, a similar Middle-English poem still unedited. A connection between the two poems had apparently been built up by J. Ullmann, in an elaborate analysis of similar stylistic peculiarities found in both, and he had used the evidence, thus apparently deduced, to urge the ascription (found in one copy of the Speculum) to Rolle, then always credited with the authorship of the Prick of Conscience. Ullmann's conclusion as to the common authorship of the two poems was used in the discussion as to the authorship of the latter by turning them about: since two other copies of the Speculum gave the work to William of Nassington, it was suggested, when Rolle's authorship of the Prick of Conscience seemed impossible, that the true author might be found in Nassington, who was possibly the author of the very similar Speculum. However, since the latter work was not in print, and had not at the time of writing been accessible to me in manuscript, the discussion as to the connection between the two works could only be incomplete and tentative.

Stage history has generally been regarded by the student of the arts as a thing apart. It has been assumed that the stage has developed its own art, influenced only by the art of the stage in other lands or in other times. In general, this assumption seems to me unjustified. Rather, the stage should, I believe, be regarded as giving expression in its art to the dominant artistic theory of the time. It is only in its medium of expression that the art of the stage differs from the other arts; its fundamental artistic theory is that held in common with the other arts. Certainly, it seems to me, it is only in this fashion that one can account for the changes in the theory of dramatic presentation that came about within the compass of the eighteenth century. It is my purpose in this paper, therefore, to show the development of the theory of acting in England in the eighteenth century, and to show that in its development the theory of acting followed the general artistic theory of the day.

The foregoing paragraph from Miss Alice 0. Fletcher's account of Indian music reads like a travesty of the accepted view of primitive song, its character and authorship. There is the familiar primitive “horde,” engaged in festal singing, without onlookers. Yet instead of collaborative composition, improvisation, and communal ownership of the ensuing “ballad,” we have individual authorship and ownership, and individual singing. This is the testimony of a specialist who has spent many years among the people of whom she writes, studying and recording their songs and their modes of composition. Easily recognizable is the homogeneous primitive group, singing in festal ceremony; but this group does not conduct itself in the way which literary historians have insisted that we should expect.

Notwithstanding the pre-eminence of George Henry Boker in our dramatic literature before the Civil War, an eminence not seriously threatened in America except by Robert Montgomery Bird, no accurate account of his life has been published and nowhere is available even a trustworthy statement of the productions of his plays. Several of his dramas remain unpublished in manuscript and even their existence is known apparently to but few. I shall not. attempt here to go into detail concerning his life, but will endeavor to give the facts concerning his plays that have come to light in the course of my examination of the Boker manuscripts kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. George Boker, the daughter-in-law of the dramatist.

The discovery by Mr. Arundell Esdaile of the fragmentary morality Love Fayned and Unfayned has contributed to the history of English drama a document of peculiar interest. The play can, I believe, lay claim to unique significance as reflecting a phase of religious controversy otherwise unrepresented in the drama. Although the fragmentary character of the material renders analysis difficult, the 243 extant lines contain evidence on the basis of which the play may be characterized as an allegorical defense of the sect of Anabaptists. It seems further to reflect, in one aspect, the influence of a group with which the Anabaptists had certain affinities,—the Family of Love.

Scholars have always recognized that there is a large degree of appropriateness in the assignment of the various Canterbury Tales to their respective tellers, and in a few cases an appropriateness also to the situation. Recently there have been determined efforts to extend the application of these principles as far as possible. Conspicuous among these is the position asserted with great emphasis and confidence by Professor Kittredge, who would have us believe that Groups D, E, and F of the Canterbury Tales constitute a “complete and highly finished” “act” in Chaucer's “Human Comedy;” that the Wife's Prologue is a fling at the Clerk; that this gentleman finds it “gall and wormwood” and in his Tale and Envoy makes a deliberate and a studied reply; that during the Merchant's Tale the Wife is “still in the foreground,” and even “holds the centre of the stage”; and that the Franklin, by a process that is “manifestly deliberate,” carries the debate to “a triumphant conclusion by solving the problem.”

The proposal of Dr. P. W. Long to connect Lady Carey with the Amoretti of Spenser, interesting as it is, has perhaps not met with universal acceptance. It seems to rest on too slender a thread of evidence for overthrow of the traditional and more natural explanation of the sonnets as belonging to Spenser's own courtship. Without debating that question, however, so far as Dr. Long's suggestion rests upon a public promise of Spenser to “display” “in ampler wise” his “good will” to Lady Carey, I propose another explanation of how that promise was fulfilled. In addition I shall attempt a somewhat fuller examination than has hitherto been made of Spenser's volume called Complaints.

In a recently published volume I have referred to the curious relationship that subsists between the legend of St. Wulfhad and St. Ruffin, which is known to us through the Cottonian ms. Nero C. XII, and a set of verses dealing with the founders and benefactors of Stone Priory in Staffordshire, which has been preserved by Dugdale in the Monasticon. In my Saints' Legends I had not the space to present in detail the evidence by which these two documents are connected, nor to discuss freely the interesting problems that they suggest. The evidence is of such a character, and the problems involved are so novel, that a further consideration of the matter seems desirable.