The pages that follow embody an attempt to present the verse forms of the Poema as transmitted in the manuscript in greater completeness than was possible in the study recently published in the “Revue Hispanique,” and to invite a more detailed and serious investigation of this subject than is usually bestowed upon it. It is only on the basis of a strictly critical discussion of all the questions involved in the elucidation of the text of our epic, in its relation to other contemporary narrative documents and poetic works, that the difficult problem of its verse structure can be brought nearer to a satisfactory solution. Nothing can be more contrary to the spirit of science than to judge an admittedly anomalous and doubtful form without the light shed upon it by the organic whole to which it belongs, or to explain the fissures between hemistichs of three and twelve syllables with the supposition of the equalizing effect of musical rendition when there is no evidence of such rendition and the sense has suffered as much as the metrical symmetry.

It is a widely accepted commonplace in Marlowe criticism that the character of Tamburlaine was essentially created by Marlowe himself. From this assumption it was easy to advance a step further and declare that in creating this character the dramatist was actually drawing his own spiritual portrait, so that we may accept the figure of the Tartar conqueror as a faithful expression of Marlowe's own personality. Indeed, from this point of view Tamburlaine, being free from the hampering restrictions of flesh and blood, might be regarded perhaps as more genuinely Marlowe than Marlowe in the flesh.

Lyly's authorship of the songs in his plays was challenged two decades ago by Dr. Greg, who presented apparently decisive evidence that they are post-Lylian. Since then, however, the question has been re-opened by Mr. Lawrence's interesting discussion—recently accepted as convincing by Dr. Reed—which casts doubt on Dr. Greg's implied attribution of some or all of the songs to Dekker, and re-affirms Lyly's claims.

Henry porter and his one extant play, The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon, are included in nearly all the catalogues of dramatists since 1600, but none of them give us any information about the man, although Francis Meres in 1598 mentioned him along with Shakespeare as “the best for comedy amongst us,” and critics since that time have compared the Two Angrie Women not unfavorably with Shakespeare's early comedies. The popularity of Porter's plays may be inferred from the fact that he appears no less than twenty-four times between 1596 and 1599 in Henslowe's accounts with the Admiral's Men. The extent of his dramatic work is not accurately determined, but five plays are credited to him alone or to him in collaboration with Chettle or Ben Jonson.

Animals as theatrical performers before the Restoration have received scanty attention from commentators on English drama. The entertaining quality of performing animals off the stage during the early periods of the drama is well known. Bearwards, ape-leaders, and owners of trick horses and dogs roamed early Tudor and Elizabethan England. Along with minstrels, jugglers, mountebanks, and acrobats they contended with stage-players for popular favor. The Elizabethan love for bear-baiting has been so frequently discussed that it needs no reiteration. The dual use of Henslowe's Hope Theatre for animal shows and regular plays is an indication of the importance of this type of spectacle. Professor Strunk and Dr. Graves have shown that highly trained apes were often employed as entertainers in Elizabethan England; and, as the latter points out, even the histrionic talents of the lowly ass were not neglected.

In The Drinking Academy, or the Cheaters' Holiday (ca. 1620?), Act I, Scene 2, occurs the following phrase: “tho Harmus and Pactolus rowle ther golden wandes into thy cofers.” In a footnote (ed. cit., p. 843), Pactolus (mod. Bagouly) is properly explained as the “Lydian river in which King Midas bathed”; cf. Ovid, Met., xi, 85ff., but the equating of Hermus with Hormuz (Ormuz), an island in the Persian Gulf and famous in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an emporium of commerce can, however, scarcely be correct. Indeed, the figure in question obviously calls for two rivers, not an island and a river. Rather than the Island of Hormuz and the Pactolus River, are meant the river Hermus (, mod. Sarabat, emptying into the Gulf of Smyrna) and its tributary, the Pactolus. It is difficult to imagine how the Island of Hormuz could roll down golden wands (lege sands?).

Readers of the earlier plays of Shakespeare (c. 1590-1600) cannot fail to notice the existence in them of two old cronies, who are forever strolling into the story from outside. Usually, they make their appearance together, and whatever the nature of the play, they, at any rate, abide the same. They are both amiable, honest simpletons, smacking of the village-green. Sometimes they are servants, sometimes minstrels, and sometimes constables and watchmen. If we scan them more closely, we shall find that each has a separate individuality. One is garrulous, complacent and, on occasion, lachrymose; he is brim-full of the wisdom of the ale-house, and loves to lecture and patronize his companion. This old fellow is a mere shadow to his wiser gossip. It is his business to ask simple-minded questions or to listen in simple-minded wonder to the dogmatic wisdom of his friend. In short, his main duty is to be the cause that wit and comicality express themselves through the mouth of his friend.

The critics have emphasized the “romantic” aspects of Shakespeare's work to such an extent as almost to ignore any possible connection of his plays with the people of his day and the problems that occupied their minds. His characters are treated as sheer creations who live in a sort of vacuum. But there are numerous indications that Shakespeare was not utterly detached from the life that was going on about him.

The belief that we have in the non-Shakespearean verse of the First Quarto of Hamlet an extensive portion of the lost play commonly and I think rightly attributed to Kyd throws discredit upon the originality of Shakespeare, and I hope to show in this paper that it is based upon an impossible theory of composition. So much has been written upon this subject that I must assume familiarity with such matters as the references of Nash and Lodge to the early play, omit mention of many conflicting points of view, and proceed at once to the more recent discussions of the particular problem before us.

“A happy ende,” thus runs the burden of a song by one of the “uncertain” authors of Tottel's Miscellany—“A happy ende exceadeth all.” It is a sentiment, so we are often reminded, by no means unknown to the greatest of the Elizabethans. Indeed, according to the concensus of critical opinion, All's Well That Ends Well would seem to be the false divinity that, from first to last, shaped the ends of all too many of Shakspere's comedies. Thus, Mr. H. C. Hart, in the Arden edition of Love's Labour's Lost, states that that play disintegrates (has “broken down”) by the time the last scenes get under way; and Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, speaking, in effect, for a host of others, holds that the ending of The Two Gentlemen of Verona “blows all character to the winds.” “For stage effect Valentine must surrender his true love to his false friend with a mawkish generosity that deserves nothing so much as kicking.” A more or less similar judgement has been pronounced upon some of the great romantic comedies, the problem plays, and the dramatic romances. As You Like it, for instance, is marred, according to Swinburne, by that “one unlucky smear on one corner of the canvas . . . . the betrothal of Oliver to Celia,” a “sacrifice” (like the concluding marital sacrifices in Much Ado, All's Well, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, and other plays) falsely motivated by “the actual or hypothetical necessity of pairing off all the couples” so as “to secure a nominally happy and undeniably matrimonial ending.”—“In the fifth act,” says Hartley Coleridge, “ladies have no discretion”—nor gentlemen either, if we may believe his fellow critics. By the fifth act, as Quiller Couch would have it in the outburst already referred to, “there are no Gentlemen in Verona”; and so, allowing only for change of scene, as the case may require, to Messina, Roussillon, Vienna, Sicily, or Ancient Britain, says many another commentator. “Kill Claudio,” the command of Beatrice to Benedick, springs out of a fine and humanly altogether excellent moment of white-hot anger, but Coleridge and Dr. Johnson would do as much in cold blood for Angelo in Measure for Measure. Helena (in All's Well), says Lounsbury, is “untrue to her sex” in pursuing and finally marrying Bertram; and “frankly unfeminine,” according to Professor Brander Matthews' account of the conclusion of A Winter's Tale, is Hermione's forgiveness of her husband “without one word of reproach.” Hartley Coleridge, finally, urges that “the exhibition of such madness of heart” as that of Leontes in this play—to which instance Mr. G. C. Macauley adds that of Posthumus in Cymbeline—“should be confined to the sternest tragedy,” since such sinners could “surely never again be worthy of a restoration to happiness.” And all this sacrifice of poetic justice and psychological truth, this “holocaust of higher and better feelings” (to quote Swinburne once more) is exacted by our “theatrical idol,” the conventional happy ending: “the liquorish desire to leave the board of fancy with a palatable morsel of cheap sugar on the tongue.” In a word, the unhappy happy ending (“nominally happy and undeniably matrimonial”)—this really would seem to have been the fatal Cleopatra for which Shakspere lost his sense of humor—not to mention his artistic conscience—and was content to lose it.

The British Museum possesses two sets of Shakespeare's plays which were annotated by S. T. Coleridge. Coleridge's copious marginalia were utilized by his nephew, H. N. Coleridge, for Literary Remains, but with a great deal of rewriting, which was in part, but only in part, necessary. Of the fragments here printed, the first has not, I believe, appeared before; the second has been printed with alterations and large omissions; the third has been altered.

Middleton's London comedies of his early period, 1604-1614, have, throughout the course of English dramatic criticism, inspired curiously diverse comments.

The early comedy of Middleton is as light, rancid, and entertaining as anything in Elizabethan drama. It is irresponsible rather than immoral, and does not exactly recommend, or approve of, the trickeries and debaucheries which it represents, in a life-like way, under improbable conditions. . . . . His aim is at effect, and he rarely fails in his aim. . . . .1

Gifford long ago complained that “the modern editions of Massinger offer a very inadequate representation of his works,” and Dr. Greg recently remarked—and to a considerable extent demonstrated—that this is “unhappily still true.” Having recently read the manuscript facsimile of Massinger's admirable Believe as You List and compared the text with that of Arthur Symons in the “unexpurgated edition” (save the mark!) published in 1889, I am prepared to confirm the opinion of Gifford and Greg and to supply the student of Massinger with a comparatively long list of corrections to errata contained in Mr. Symons' text. They are as follows:

1. In twenty-five instances in which Massinger wrote the aphetic form 'em his modern editor prints the word them. Twenty-three of these follow words ending with a consonantal sound, and only two follow vowel sounds (study, see).

I use the term lyric in the sense of form rather than of inspiration and should say stances except that the word was not applied to the lyric monologues until 1630. My subject is the origin of the monologues, written in other meters than the alexandrine couplet, that are found in the plays of Corneille and his contemporaries. The most familiar examples are those of the Cid and Polyeucte. They are usually of a contemplative nature, but do not necessarily contain a soul struggle.

No english deist has been more discussed in connection with Voltaire than Bolingbroke. For Bolingbroke was an important political figure, who had definite personal relations with Voltaire, and whose name appears with great frequency in Voltaire's works. Yet no other English deist was so falsely quoted by Voltaire, and no other important deist, with the possible exception of Thomas Chubb, seems to have had less direct influence on the course of Voltaire's deistic criticism. Critics have spoken so long of Bolingbroke as master and of Voltaire as pupil that a tradition has been established, for which there seems to be no foundation in fact.

Mm. edmond et Jules de Goncourt ont inventé trois choses, ils le disent du moins: le naturalisme, la vogue du XVIIIe siècle, et le japonisme. Pour nous en tenir à la littérature, ils se flattent un peu; cependant Germinie Lacerteux est de 1865, et suivait Renée Mauperin, qui est de 1864.

With these words Professor Lanson began the section of his Histoire de la littérature française devoted to the Goncourt brothers. It would be permissible in a manual intended for the man in the street to halt at this point in order to discuss the Goncourt claims to have founded Naturalism without investigating the vogue of the eighteenth century and of things Japanese in literature. Here, however, it is proposed to go a little farther, to investigate first the Goncourt claims to be the first French artists to appreciate the work of the Japanese, and secondly to call attention to a kind of literary “Japonisme,” concerning which Professor Lanson is silent.