i 94 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 



The rehabilitation of the lists restores confidence in the evidence which they furnish as 

 to the court performances of some of Shakespeare's plays, but it does not affect the 

 approximate dates assigned to those plays in the article on " Shakespeare " in the 

 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1 since it was assumed in that article that, even if the lists 

 were forgeries, they probably rested upon genuine originals. Several original docu- 

 ments have also been published in the Collections of the Malone Society, which was 

 founded in 1907 for the express purpose of assisting the study of the drama, and has 

 continued to produce an annual output of volumes. This society has also printed from 

 the manuscripts accurate texts of many important documents for which scholars have 

 hitherto had to rely, not without fear and trembling, on the versions of J. P. Collier. 



The new material described above, while illuminating as to the conditions in which 

 Shakespeare's work was done, adds practically nothing that bears upon his personality. 

 In this direction there is but little to record. Dr. Paul Wislicenus in Shakcspeares 

 Totcnmaskc (1910) and Dokumente zu Shakespeares Totenmaske (1911) has revived the 

 old controversy with regard to the so-called Kesselstatt " death-mask," but has not 

 succeeded in bridging the evidential hiatus which separates that interesting work of 

 art from any claim to be an authentic presentment of the poet's features. Some atten- 

 tion has also been called to the theatrical tradition preserved by Aubrey with regard to 

 Shakespeare's private life. The Malone Society in its Collections for 1911 has pub- 

 lished a facsimile of Aubrey's original memorandum, together with a critical notice 

 which renders possible some correction of the references to the subject in the Encyclopae- 

 dia Britannica. Two main points emerge. One is that the reading of Aubrey's state- 

 ment, first made known a good many years ago, and since overlooked, is not quite accu- 

 rate. What Aubrey learnt of Shakespeare was not that, " if invited to court, he was in 

 pain." The word " court " is a mistake for " writ," quite intelligible on a hasty reading 

 of the manuscript, and the tradition really is that Shakespeare was thought " the more 

 to be admired because he was not a company keeper, lived in Shoreditch, would not 

 be debauched, and if invited to, writ he was in pain." The amended version is no less 

 favourable to the decency of Shakespeare's demeanour and perhaps makes him out a 

 little less churlish in his attitude towards a royal command. The other point is that the 

 passage, from its place on a page of rough notes not wholly devoted to Shakespeare, 

 might conceivably refer to John Fletcher, who is also dealt with on the page. But the 

 probability is still that it refers to Shakespeare. Aubrey's informant was evidently 

 not John Lacy, who first came to London long after Shakespeare, but an actor of an older 

 generation, William Beeston, whose father, Christopher Beeston, had been a " fellow " 

 of Shakespeare in the Chamberlain's company, and who himself, as a boy, might well 

 have known the poet. 



The most notable contribution to the critical study of Shakespeare has been that of 

 Prof. A. C. Bradley, whose Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909) and subsequent British Acad- 

 emy lecture on Coriolanus have confirmed the high reputation won by his Shakespear- 

 ean Tragedy. Mr. John Masefield's William Shakespeare (1911) has the interest which 

 always belongs to the interpretation of one poet by another. A courageous attempt at 

 a complete Shakespeare Bibliography (1911) has been made by Mr. W. Jaggard; and an 

 acute and searching study of the bibliographical problems surrounding the early editions 

 of the plays is to be found in Shakespeare Folios and Quartos (1909) by Mr. A. W. Pollard 

 of the British Museum. It is Mr. Pollard's avowed object to bring about a more 

 optimistic judgment than has sometimes prevailed with regard to the circumstances in 

 which the early editions and particularly the Folio of 1623 came into existence, and to 

 the probabilities that the texts handed down in them represent a reasonable approxi- 

 mation to what Shakespeare actually wrote. In this task, with the aid of a wide 

 knowledge of seventeenth century printing methods, he is fairly successful, although he 

 perhaps rather exaggerates the extent of the antecedent pessimism which he sets oui 

 to vanquish. In a fascinating chapter, which sets out the results of earlier investigations 

 by himself and Dr. W. W. Greg, he tells the almost romantic story of the train of bib- 



1 E. B. xxiv, 772 et seq. 



