But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere

Advanc'd, and made a constellation there! Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage,

Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.

But, you may ask, was there, then, no other comment and criticism of Shakespeare in his day? Yes, a plenty of comment, applause, appreciation, as that interesting work The Shakespeare Allusion Book abundantly discloses - but not criticism, unless we may so designate adjectives like "mellifluous," "honeytongued " or an occasional statement that he was possessed of a "facetious grace in writing" or was "excellent in the quality he professes " (that is acting), and in both kinds of drama for the stage." There is one exception to this general dearth, the exhorting bookseller's preface to the quarto of Troilus and Cressida, 1609, which extols the "brain that never undertook anything comical vainly " and in which this remarkable prophecy is hazarded, the poet being yet alive: "Believe this, that when he is gone, and his comedies are out of sale, you will scramble for them and set up a new English inquisition," which I take it to mean signifies a house-to-house search for these valuable contemporary quartos: assuredly here is the very spirit of divination.

Here, for what I have set forth, is then my claim for Jonson as the pod containing the seeds out of which practically all that has proved truly fruitful in our 6 Ed. Gollancz, 1909, 2 vols. passim.

aesthetic criticism and estimate of Shakespeare has actually grown. Jonson is England's first judicial critic. The bulk of his running comment on his time has been, as we have seen, unhappily lost, although we hear again and again echoes of a bon mot, an anecdote and have even the delightful code of laws of Jonson's own making in Latin and English which governed those glorious noctes ambrosianae in the Apollo room of the Devil Tavern, as earlier at the Mermaid. Of Jonson's literary creed much exists in print, theory and practice alike, in his works. As to his opinions about Shakespeare, we have but little, but what we have is precious and unmistakable, much of it, in its characteristic mixture of learning, which reined Jonson in, and the honest appreciation of a warm heart, which spurred him on. It was the latter which achieved the victory, affirmed by the critic's good sense in his mature verdict, the splendid poem which we have just discussed and which Jonson carefully signed. Importance is to be attached to Jonson's opinions, be it repeated, because he was the critical dictator of his age with scarcely a voice to dissent; and because, above all, Jonson was a competent witness of his time from his intelligence, his honesty and his unparalleled opportunities. Still again an especial value inheres in Jonson's criticism of Shakespeare because so much in Jonson was antithetical to Shakespeare's romantic temper and to the magnificent spendthrift lavishness. of his art.

Lastly, what is the Shakespeare that Jonson discloses to us? A ready writer, a lover, a happy por

trayer and knower of nature in a large sense of that abused word, which I beseech you to believe must contain human nature as well as horticulture; an artist, in the processes of his technique, a dramatist and poet unparalleled in his own age and country and even among Ben Jonson's own best beloved ancients; a great writer appreciated absolutely and to the full and for his best by his own age; one whose plays have had their triumphant trial and stand above all like achievement "by all men's suffrage." And finally a man to whom preeminently attached the adjective "gentle which, in the old tongue, be it remembered, signified one endowed with the sum total of those qualities of mind and heart which constitute the veritable gentle

man.

Why not take this honest old critic's advice as to our master poet and "read him, therefore, and again and again?" And if you are appalled by the critics and the contradictory things that they persist in telling us, why not seek refuge in the simplicity, the good sense and the sound opinion of rare Ben Jonson?

IV

THE SHAKESPEARE CANON

HERE is an old monograph extant by a logical

TH

and exhaustive professor which, listing every error, eccentricity and perversity of scholarship on the topic of Shakespearean authorship, makes out a list of sixty plays, in whole or in part at least, the product of his pen.' The cue in that old, discredited Victorian time was to lose no ascertainable scrap which by any possibility may have been his. Under this "canon the ascriptions of piratical publishers eager to turn a penny, the suggestions of scholars inflating a reputation, or of forgers attempting a sensation, all were accepted. Several plays were even attracted into the Shakespearean category because "who else was there who could possibly have written them?

But the spirit of the " Shakespeare Canon " has now changed. We have progressed in the arithmetic of the criticism of our great poet from addition to subtraction; and the game now is to question everything and by tests of style, meter and parallel, tests aesthetic and especially psychological, to deprive Shakespeare of every passage in which he is not veritably at his best

1 R. Sachs, "Die Shakespeare zugeschreibenen zweifelhaften Stücke " Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxvii, 135.

or is it, perhaps, at our best? What business has the greatest of our dramatists ever to have written below himself? When he puns execrably, or goes to pieces according to our enlightened twentieth-century opinions, when he falls below our standards of taste, or is brutal or banal — “ I don't believe he wrote that passage settles the whole matter. And if you are learned or want to seem learned, it adds immensely to the effect to add: "That elemental psychology is Marlowe's, this passage discloses the phraseology and vocabulary of Greene, that piece of banality is in the manner of Peele." And in such a juncture, never forget to mention the percentage of double endings.

However, to be fair, Mr. Robertson has written a very striking book," in which, pursuing the method of several previous books of his, he seeks to determine the limitations of Shakespeare's authorship, this time in Henry V, Julius Caesar and Richard III. Aside from a nice weighing of matters of verse, style, vocabulary, taste, construction and dramatic power, much is made of parallels, likenesses and similarities in idea and expression to plays and passages by Shakespeare's fellow dramatists. Richard III has long been thought Marlovian in conception and in style. Some have considered it not unnatural that a young aspirant for dramatic success might have knowingly endeavored to write like his most successful competitor. But Mr. Robertson will have none of this. The play to him is Marlowe's. Indeed, by his assiduous proMr. Robertson has deprived Shakespeare not 2 The Shakespeare Canon, by J. M. Robertson, 1922.

cesses,