Scholarship, like most human activities, has its fashions. One mode very much in the ascendant at the moment is that which concerns itself with the relation between literary forms and other intellectual structures in a given era ; its method might be described as a combination of the history of ideas with a sort of formalism. L. A. Beaurline's recent article on Ben Jonson, in its design and strategy, illustrates this approach.1 The overall design of such a paper may be indicated as follows: the scholar describes a concept for which he claims wide intellectual acceptance; next, he shows how this concept may be traced in certain literary works. After this initial demonstration, his strategy consists primarily of moving between specific works of literature and other manifestations of the concept to show how each class illuminates the other and how each substantiates the other's status. The end of all this activity is not merely increased understanding of the temper of an age, nor is it merely a clearer view of the works under discussion; ideally, it is both.

London Stage Index and Information Bank. A pilot study is underway at Lawrence Univ. to determine the best way of providing for The London Stage 1660–1800 a cumulative index and computer-accessible information bank. This series, edited by William B. van Lennep (late of Harvard), Emmett L. Avery (Washington State), Arthur H. Scouten (Pennsylvania), Geo. Winchester Stone, Jr. (New York Univ.), and Charles Beecher Hogan (Yale), is an exhaustive calendar of plays, entertainments, after pieces, dancing, and singing, together with casts, box receipts, advertising, contemporary comment, and all available information about scenery, theatre construction, costuming, audiences, management, and production, compiled from the playbills, newspapers, and theatrical diaries of the period. Until its publication, these records, scattered all over the world, were virtually inaccessible. Now, a scholar may turn to this 11-volume, 8,000-page, 3-million-word reference work with the confidence that whatever information is missing concerning the performance of plays in London during this period is not likely to exist.