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MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



THE PLAYS ALD POEMS OF SHAKSPEARE, WITH LIFE AND GLOS- 

 SARIAL NOTES, BY A. J. VALPY, M. A. 15 VOLS. LONDON: 

 VALPY. 



MR. VALPY'S Shakspeare is a valuable acquisition to our library ; 

 we had felt for a long period the great want of a clear typed, un- 

 sophiscated ! edition of this great man's works. The successive 

 labours of Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Farmer, Warton, 

 Johnson, Stevens, Malone, Reed, Chalmers, and a host of other com- 

 mentators, had in a great measure, we may say, concealed " the live- 

 long monument" Shakspeare " piled" to his own memory. The im- 

 mensity of their notes served rather to burthen the pages of the poet 

 than render to his writings any great service, by bringing their mean- 

 ing clearer to our view. One editor would wrangle about the read- 

 ing of a passage, while another harpied over the ignorance of a 

 predecessor. This party warfare may have been pleasing to the sup- 

 posed vfctors, but became harassing to the general reader. Where 

 are the admirers of Shakspeare who regard or particularly value 

 Malone's twenty-one ponderous tomes ? We certainly do not, and we 

 are extravagant admirers of this, the greatest of all poets, the man 

 who had the deepest insight into the workings of the human heart, 

 whose female creations (his Silvias, his Julias, his Rosalinds), are as 

 dignified and beautiful in their minds as they must have been lovely 

 in their persons ; whose men stand before us " their own selves 

 proper." 



Mr. Valpy's task (by no means a difficult one) has been executed 

 with great exactness and good judgment j in the fifteen volumes the 

 notes most required have been preserved, and the historical memo- 

 randa are reduced into a neat attracting compass ; we are not with- 

 held from reading them by their length or by the diversity of their 

 opinions : all is now proper, and Shakspeare has been given to us in 

 the way we most wished to see him. 



The little that is known of Shakspeare, Mr. Valpy has collected 

 into his biographical notice ; though regarded by his contemporaries 

 as a great wit, and therefore considered to be a great man, scarcely 

 ought concerning him, save that he lived, wrote, and died, can be told 

 with truth. The small respect shown to men of genius in those 

 days (at the present it is but scantily better), and the want of taste for 

 fully appreciating the works of the great writers, cause people to be 

 careless about the talent which the country produced. Rowe gathered 

 all that can be told of Shakspeare, and his character as a poet was so 

 forcibly drawn by Dryden that it was left to succeeding writers 

 merely to expand it. 



In compliance with the prevailing and portable fashion of the day, 

 the work has been produced in the Scott and Byron school. The 

 text is illustrated with clever outline engravings from Boydell's 



