66 PART II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



plays to increase their technical knowledge and insight, we 

 may ignore this aspect. 



However, is it consistent with the nature of things that a 

 mere actor should be the author of incomparably great plays? 

 Well, a high percentage of the dramatists of his day were 

 temporarily or permanently actors. Not only f therefore, does 

 Shakespeare's authorship not militate against his having been 

 a dramatist, but it is almost what we should expect. As a 

 matter of fact, his intimacy with the stage, and his regular 

 income derived therefrom, were probably powerful aids to his 

 producing good plays. 



And how is his obscurity to be explained? We answer, by 

 the general fact that there is not one Elizabethan playwright, 

 except Ben Jonson, who was a critic as well, of whom we 

 possess any but the most meager record. Even Beaumont and 

 Fletcher, who belonged to families noted in their day, are 

 without a private history for us. Nor is this difficult to under- 

 stand. In those days there were no daily papers or other 

 periodicals, nor did that age command other means of counter- 

 acting this deficiency. Hence playwrights, who were tabooed 

 socially, lived and died, without fame noising abroad their 

 private ventures and adventures. In reality, their very plays 

 were ordinarily not their property, and in rare cases only did 

 they publish or supervise the publication of their works. It 

 was even common for plays to be published without author's 

 name, as if the author was of no consequence. 



We should, further, remember that Shakespeare was not 

 regarded by his own age as in any way unique or strikingly 

 different from other playwrights. From the documents which 

 have escaped the ravages of time, we are bound to conclude 

 that he was considered as one dramatist among a number, 

 though one of the first caliber. Shakespeare had therefore no 

 valid reason why he should conceive himself as differing mark- 

 edly from his fellow playwrights, or why he should not seek 

 to retrieve his family's financial losses. 



Yet how could such a plain bourgeois write exquisitely, as 

 Shakespeare did? This, too, should be answered in the light 

 of his time. His manner of writing was that of a school of 

 playwrights, and the utmost that one could say is that whilst 

 he was on the whole the first of the school, he exhibited no 

 stateable peculiarities, except those of frequent superiority. 

 That is, practically all that has been said about Shakespeare, 

 is literally true of his fellow playwrights. Circumstances have 

 concealed this, but an impartial study of the school of Eliza- 

 bethan playwrights renders this manifest. His genius is there- 

 fore first and foremost an expression of his age, and is a social, 

 and not an individual, product. 



If the above be conceded, it might still be argued that it is 

 incumbent on us to connect the actor with the author, and 



