SCIENCE 



[Vol. XV. No. 379 



SCIENCE; 



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Vol. XV. NEW YORK, May 9, 1890. No. 379. 



The Micro-Graphophone 



Oianni Bettini 281 

 The Society and the "Fad" 



Appleton Morgan 282 



Notes and News 286 



Letters to the Editor. 

 Kiowa County, Kan., Meteorites 



F. H. Snow 290 

 Experiments with Cave-Air 



M. B. Crump 290 

 Sunspots, Tornadoes, and Mag- 

 netic Storms James P. Hall. . . 291 



CONTENTS: 



Gorse or Furze Geo. W. Perry ; 



George M. Dawson 291 



Book-Reviews. 

 Stanley's Bmin Pasha Expedition 291 



Essays of an Americanist 292 



Electrical Engineering 292 



A Natural Method of Physical 



Training 293 



Among THE Publishers 293 



Industrial Notes. 

 The Crocker- Wheeler Arc-Cur- 

 rent Motor 294 



THE SOCIETY AND THE, "FAD." 



[Concluded from p. 286.J 



And this, possibly, may be wbeie tbe line is to be drawn 

 l)etween tbe usefulness of a poet or a dramatist to his own 

 generation and date, and his value as au embalmer of man- 

 ners to generations and dates long beyond him. Indeed, the 

 very first piece of Shakespearian criticism extant' (it was 

 written by John Aubrey prior to the year 1680, and I cannot 

 :see that the criticism of these two hundred or so years since 

 •bas practically done any thing more than indorfse it) repre- 

 ;sents Shakespeare in London in bis own day, doing just ex- 

 •tactly what Mr. Harrigan in New York has done in his. 

 ^Shakespeare, who wrote "Hamlet," did not soruple to take 

 Ms auditors into the tavern, tbe inn-yard, tbe bagnio, tbe 

 jaSI.- into tbe bum-bailiff's and the watchman's court, just 

 as Ifflr^ Harrigan has escorted his audiences into the slums, 

 .tbe opium-joints, the bar-rooms, the ten cent lodging-bouses, 

 fio the polls, tbe picnics, the chowder-parties, and the cheap 

 <exeursions of the self-respecting newsboy and boot-black. 

 Tbe ears of Mr. Harrigan's audiences are treated less coarse- 



» "He did gather humours of men daily, his comedies will remain witt as 

 'long as the English language is spoken, for that he handles mores kominum. 

 -He took in the humour of the constable at Grendon-in-Bucks which is on the 

 xoad from London to Stratford." 



ly than were those of Shakespeare. The nineteenth-century 

 theatre-goer takes its Shakespeare extremely Bowdlerized. 

 Doubtless Shakespeare went to a great many places where 

 he should not, and where, had a Shakespeare society for the 

 transcendental illumination of his works kept at bis heels, 

 he perhaps could not or would not have gone But it is 

 precisely because he did go to all these places, good or bad, 

 untrammelled, tbit his pages are of such peculiar value to 

 ourselves: preserving so much that but for him bad been 

 misunderstood, but which he recognized as worth the em- 

 balming; not minimizing for the sake of ears polite, nor yet 

 distorting into prominence for the prurient, but simply em^- 

 balming — life-size, as it was, and where it belonged —in tbe 

 great comedie humaine of those matchless dramas. From 

 courtier to courtezan, from commander to camp-follower, 

 the sovereign, the soldier, tbe statesman, the merchant, the 

 peasant, tbe clown — how they all talked and walked, and 

 lived and died, Sliakespeare has told us. King Henry dis- 

 cusses state-craft with his great ministers; we turn tbe page, 

 and Pistol and Doll Tear-sheet are burling Billingsgate at each 

 other, with Falstaff as a mocking peacemaker; two carriers 

 with lanterns are shifting their packs in an inn-yard, and 

 talking of poor Robin, the last hostler, who is dead; an- 

 other page, and Lady Percy, in Warkworth Castle, is plead- 

 ing with the noble Hotspur to dwell less upon wars and big 

 events, 



' ' Of sallies, and retires ; of trenches, tents. 

 Of palisados, frontiers, parapets; 

 Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin ; 



Of prisoner's ransoms, and of soldiers slain, 

 And all the currents of a heady fight " — 



and to give some thought to wife and home and family. 

 And in every one of these thirty-seven dramas there is the 

 same rush of movement, the same panorama of life, of color, 

 and of action, untrammelled and uninterfered with by any 

 slightest hint that tbe poet preferred or enjoyed any one 

 movement, class, or color, or life, to any other,— a simple 

 photograph — and a negative untouched! And still from out 

 this panorama may biographies be written, and still histories 

 and sociologies unfolded, simply because this negative has 

 not been tampered with. Here, too, is a faithful transcript 

 of the progress of tbe date of the procession in which Shake- 

 speare was marching along with the rest; and it is worth 

 our while to pause a moment for an example of it. Observe 

 that in the first quarto of " Hamlet '" (1603) we have a stage 

 direction, "Enter King. Queen, Corambis, and other lords;" 

 in tbe second (1604) this entry is directed to be accompanied 

 with " trumpets and kettle drums; " but, in 1623, the words 

 " Danish March " are added to this stage direction. Here is 

 a steady progress in realism: tbe play being Danish, the 

 march was to be Danish also. Again in 2 Henry VI., in its 

 first quarto form (" The Contention,'' etc.), 1594, Suffolk 

 says to bis captor, — 



' ' Hast thou not waited at ray trencher. 



When I have feasted with Queen Margaret ? ' ' 



But in the folio some thirty years later, Suffolk says, — 



' ' How often hast thou waited at my cup. 

 Fed from my trencher." 



This is a step in table etiquette. It came to be only tbe 

 servant, and not tbe nobleman, who used the trencher. The 



