bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Middle English Run
Authors: Mezger Fritz
Published: February 2007

The explanation of Middle English run presents many difficulties. These could easily be solved if one succeeded in proving, or at least in making probable, the existence of an Old English runnan.
Female Prologues and Epilogues in English Plays
Authors: Wiley Autrey Nell
Published: February 2007

The orator in petticoats often launched her plays with such audacity that she eclipsed the glory of the Prologue-monsieur and established the vogue of a particular kind of stage-oration which the poets called “She-Prologues” or “Female Prologues and Epilogues.” For her, Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Suckling, Dryden, Congreve, and many lesser playwrights wrote feminine orations; and as she pleaded her customary theme, “for my sake,” she made herself mistress of an art that won applause for As You Like It, Love for Love, The Way of the World, Cato, and more than two hundred other plays before 1714. A tall woman of her tongue was the She-Prologue; yet no one, I believe, has told the history of her addresses, the history of a particular type of playhouse-discourse with a vogue that touches upon the great change in the theatre resulting from the employment of actresses. Witty, saucy, beautiful, she and her playhouse-sisters with a gift for oratory harangued the pit and gallery for more than half a century: Nell 'neath a big hat, like a bug under a leaf; Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, true friends to Betterton; yes, more than twenty other women—prattling sometimes, sometimes discoursing—circumscribed the matter and manner of the female prologue or epilogue, an address by a female orator of the stage.
The Style of Drummond of Hawthornden in its Relation to His Translations
Authors: Wallerstein Ruth
Published: February 2007

William Drummond of Hawthornden is as much a translator as an original poet. This Mr. Kastner has shown in detail in the copious notes to his edition of the poet and in several special articles. He translated and adapted from a large number of Italian and French poets, as well as some Spanish and some neo-Latin writers. Yet his work, read as a whole, has a very individual note and charm of personality that unify it and give it distinction. This was not due to similarity in his sources. The poets whom he translated were widely varied in tempers and styles—so much so that some of them have made their idiosyncrasies felt in the work of other English poets and have started particular streams of influence. It is of interest to draw together all the translations and adaptations from each of the French and Italian poets, Drummond's principal sources, and make a detailed comparison of style, to see what particular contribution each made to Drummond's style, and how far we find in him Petrarchism, Marinism, and so forth. By this series of contrasts we shall be able first to define these influences more exactly. And this definition is of interest, incidentally, not only for Drummond, but for other poets such as Donne and Crashaw. Second, we shall see the particular style of Drummond emerging from among the various source poets and taking on its integral character.
Poetic Hero-Worship in the Late Eighteenth Century
Authors: Rose Ruth O.
Published: February 2007

To be perfectly accurate, this title should be considerably longer; for the late eighteenth century will be represented by only its last decade and its hero-worshippers by those remarkably misguided bards who gained an immortality of sorts by publishing their verses in the poets' corners of contemporary magazines. Apparently the desire to write poetry had then become quite uncontrollable in the breasts of most literate Englishmen, and practically everything so written could be sent off to certain acceptance by obliging periodicals. Yet some poets were still timorous enough to feel the need of authority and wise enough to find it by writing either tributary stanzas to generally admired authors or acknowledged imitations of their more familiar compositions. Others, more generous, did the same thing to express their unbounded enthusiasm; and a few even wrote in reproach and bitterness of spirit when certain contemporary authors failed to satisfy them. Whatever their motive, their poetry remains valuable as evidence of the taste of the time. And, because the process of making over the gods in one's own image, or rather in the image of what one would like to be, is always instructive, and because at this particular time the image was so distinctly that of the average man, become more or less articulate, the opportunity for research and generalization becomes irresistibly alluring.
XLII. The Date of The Flourishing of The “Wakefield Master”
Authors: Frampton Mendal G.
Published: February 2007

The date of the writing of the Secunda Pastorum and, ipso facto, of the flourishing of the “Wakefield Master,” has been variously given from “the fourteenth century or even earlier” to “the reign of Henry VI or Edward IV” the more usual dates centering about Wat Tyler's Rebellion, 1381, or the first decade of the fifteenth century. The basis of these widely differing datings has been found in the implications of various social allusions in the plays, and one of these allusions, that to horned head-dress, has been used very diversely. This fact, coupled with the fact that Professor Oscar Cargill has claimed that “there seem to be no allusions in the (Wakefield) cycle which may positively refer to any events after 1355,” led me to undertake the present study. As a result I am here proposing a date definitely later than the ones commonly chosen and advocated. Let us turn first to the evidence offered by the costume passages in the plays.
XLV. Thomas Deloney's Euphuistic Learning and The Forest
Authors: Rollins Hyder E.
Published: February 2007

Thomas Deloney's four novels are generally praised for their vigor of style and their realism. Indeed, his modern editor, Mr. F. O. Mann, in singling out for commendation “his faithful and sympathetic rendering of commonplace human life,” insists that in Deloney is to be found “the highest achievement of the Elizabethan novel.” Not infrequently, however, Deloney's “commonplace human life” yields to high-flown and altogether improbable romances of earls and ladies, princes and princesses, kings and queens, just as his ordinary familiar prose style at times is embellished with all the euphuistic tricks he was capable of imitating. In particular his apparently casual references to strange birds, queer beasts, and other wonders of nature and to historical and mythological characters give a surprising air of learning; and the notes of his various editors suggest that he was acquainted with such authors as Boccaccio, Belieforest, Pliny, Sextus Empiricus, and Cornelius Nepos.
XLVI. Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Play Manuscripts
Authors: Harbage Alfred
Published: February 2007

On Several occasions the present writer would have found a list of play manuscripts dating from 1558 to 1700 a convenience while working in the field. These manuscripts, impressive in number and in the possibilities for study which they offer, have never been catalogued with the care which has been lavished upon play publications. The manuscripts listed in Appendix N of E. K. Chambers' Elizabethan Stage are limited to those of plays provedly composed before 1616; and the notes concerning manuscripts interspersed in W. C. Hazlitt's Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old English Plays are incomplete and frequently vague. The list of manuscripts which follows has been compiled after a reëxamination of the catalogues of museums and university libraries, and application by mail to the curators of such collections as those at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library and Art Gallery. Exhaustiveness is not claimed; but the lists already existing are considerably supplemented, and in a number of instances it has been possible to supply the precise location of manuscripts which were known but unlocated by Chambers or which have changed ownership since the time of Hazlitt.
LII. The Contemporary Significance of Middleton's Game at Chesse
Authors: Moore John Robert
Published: February 2007

Thomas Middleton's Game at Chesse (1624), expressing the national hatred of Spaniard and Jesuit alike, was played nine days straight before houses packed to suffocation for the first consecutive long run in English theatrical history. With England aroused over the religious wars of the Continent and the return of Prince Charles from his unsuccessful visit to Madrid in quest of the Spanish Princess, the play appeared as a satirical allegory in the form of a game of chess, in which the English have the White and the Spaniards and Jesuits the Black men. Black secures the treacherous Fat Bishop and the White King's Pawn. Overthrow of the English Church and State seems imminent. The White Knight and the White Duke visit the Black House (Madrid), where their capture is attempted; but they checkmate the Black King and overthrow the Black forces. Its most recent editor has said that “more is known about A Game at Chesse than about any other pre-Restoration play.” Even so, some promising approaches to a fuller understanding have been overlooked.
LVI. Un Joven De Provecho: An Unpublished Play by B. Pérez Galdós
Authors: Berkowitz H. Chonon
Published: February 2007

When, in 1892, Galdós startled Spanish literary circles by his decision to turn dramatist, few of either his supporters or his detractors were aware of the fact that as far back as his student days he had already carried on a serious flirtation with the drama. Certainly in the confused discussions which his dramatic appearance as playwright precipitated in the press of Madrid, no more than an occasional passing reference was made to his previous essays at the theater. It seems that only two newspapers gave adequate space to Galdós' early preparation for the career of a dramatist and these reproduced an article by Eusebio Blasco, originally published in France. Because they are pertinent to our discussion, the principal facts in Blasco's article merit repetition.
Young's Night Thoughts in Relation to Contemporary Christian Apologetics
Authors: St. John Bliss Isabel
Published: February 2007

An Understanding of the purposes and the popularity of Young's Night Thoughts is possible only through a realization of their relation to contemporary currents of thought. For the most part critics have confined their attention to the so-called personal element and the treatment of the theme of death, and have neglected perhaps the most outstanding feature of the Night Thoughts, the interest in Christian apologetics. Though the nine poems reveal a shift in emphasis and purpose—the first five, of 459, 694, 536, 842, and 1068 lines respectively, chiefly concerned with moral reflections on life and death, and the last four, of 819, 1480, 1417, and 2434 lines, almost wholly devoted to apologetics—there is throughout a fairly definite effort to defend one phase or other of religion. This rationalistic defence of religion places the poems in the current of apologetic literature so outstanding in the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century. Analysis of Young's aims and arguments will show to what extent he is following those of the outstanding defenders of religion and demonstrate that the Night Thoughts are to be considered as largely an expression of contemporary apologetics.
John Keats and Benjamin Robert Haydon
Authors: Olney Clarke
Published: February 2007

The friendship between John Keats and Benjamin Robert Haydon is one chapter in the life of the poet which has never been satisfactorily written. A biography, like a novel, must needs have a villain; and in Haydon, Keats's biographers have one ready made. He was an egoist, a fanatic, and—worst of all—a failure; and surely, one is likely to think, whenever Haydon and Keats disagreed, Keats must have been right. The fact is that Keats and Haydon were intimate friends during the greater part of Keats's active creative life, and that each held the other, as an artist, in the highest regard. The purpose of the present study is to examine in some detail the course of this friendship and tentatively evaluate the importance of the influence of the painter on the poet.
Character Names in the Waverley Novels
Authors: Parsons Coleman Oscar
Published: February 2007

One of the longest established conventions in English literature is that of giving self-interpreting names to characters. Scores of instances might be drawn from morality plays, Elizabethan and Restoration drama, with its Justice Greedys and Lovelesses, and eighteenth-century novels and plays, with their Slipslops and Lydia Languishes. During Scott's day George Colman the Younger, in his The Heir at Law, 1808, entertained audiences with Stedfasts and Homespuns and references to Lawyer Ferret, Lady Littlefigure, Lord Sponge, Mrs. Holdbank, Lady Betty Pillory, the Hon. Mrs. Cheatwell, Lord Spindle, Master Drumstick, Mrs. Sudds, Old Latitat (a lawyer, of course), Lord Loggerhead, Lord Docktail, Twist, and Young Vats (the beau brewer). Later in the century, Dickens peopled his pages with Mr. Glibs, Surgeon Slashers, and Professor Wheezys; but, as most of his names were chosen solely for their comicality, they lack suggestive variety. Thackeray's social satire is at times unreal because of an excessive use of telltale soubriquets; this is particularly true of The Book of Snobs with its infinity of Lord and Lady Snobbingtons. George Eliot exhibits little subtlety in this field; perhaps the most obvious instances are those of Scrag Whale, an explorer, Greenland Grampus, Proteus Merman, and Professor Sperm N. Whale in Theophrastus Such. The convention has even survived to the present day, though with somewhat impaired vitality. Mr. Burthen, a carrier, Mr. Bulge, a wine merchant, Dr. Chestman, Hardman, a blacksmith, Louisa Menlove, Rootle, a dentist, Tipman, a valet, and Parson Billy Toogood appear in Hardy's novels; and the Earl of Frogs, Gosling, an apprentice, Grubb, Lady Hammergallow, Mrs. Jabber, and Mrs. Montague Pangs in those of H. G. Wells.
An Anglo-Norman Version of Grosseteste: Part of his Suidas and Testamenta XII Patriarcharum
Authors: Dean Ruth J.
Published: February 2007

A small manuscript of only five leaves in Paris, Bibl. Nat. N. A. franç. 10176, which receives a brief notice in the catalogue, contains an early, and so far as known a unique, medieval translation into French of the article from Suidas's Lexicon and of a part of the Testamenta XII Patriarcharum. Both of these works were translated from Greek into Latin by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 1235–1253. A description of the manuscript follows.
Chaucer's Prioress' Tale: an Early Analogue
Authors: Friend Albert C.
Published: February 2007

In Dr. Carleton Brown's admirable study of the narrative which supplied the basis for The Prioresses Tale he pointed out that Chaucer made use of a thirteenth-century exemplum of a Miracle of our Lady. Although the earliest extant versions are of the thirteenth century, the story had its origin before 1200. There is, however, a striking similarity between the details of Chaucer's poem and the Latin exemplum C vi, which Dr. Brown has printed from a collection of Miracles of the Virgin in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS. A.5.10, Lib. ii, Cap 87, written in the fifteenth century. This post-Chaucerian version offers a number of points for comparison: a little boy passed twice a day through the Jewry singing his antiphon. So in Chaucer: Twies a day it passed thurgh his throte, As I have seyd, thurghout the Juerie, This litel child, as he cam to and fro, Ful murily than wolde he synge and crie O alma redemptoris everemo.
A Reinterpretation of Surrey's Character and Actions
Authors: Casady Edwin
Published: February 2007

In 1538 John Barlowe, an adherent of Surrey's enemies, exclaimed, “[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey!] It ys the most folish prowde boye that ys in Englande.” Although Barlowe's companion, George Constantyne, was at one with him in his hostility to the political and religious conservatism of the Howards, he retorted ironically, “What, man, he hath a wife & childe, & ye call hym boye?” and continuing, he ridiculed Barlowe's use of the phrase “folish prowde” as equally inept. Soon after Surrey was executed, however, unfounded traditions began to modify the point of view exemplified by Constantyne's refusal to take Barlow's remark seriously. The repetition of these misleading traditions for more than three centuries has so distorted the conception of Surrey's character and the interpretation of his actions that the justice of Barlowe's remark has come to be accepted without question.
Nature and Shakespeare
Authors: Knowlton Edgar C.
Published: February 2007

Adoctrine of Nature constitutes the core of the view of life held by Shakespeare. Whether or not the sonneteer unlocked his heart, it is clear that if the works of Shakespeare are considered as an integrable whole, he laid bare many results of his probings amid the secrets of Nature. The present intent is to learn by this approach something about his philosophy of ethics, art, and politics. Indications are that, like Spenser in the Cantos of Mutabilitie, he had more than an intelligent gentleman's interest in the theme.
The Dates of Two Dryden Plays
Authors: Ward Charles E.
Published: February 2007

Although most of Dryden's plays can be dated approximately, if not precisely, two have eluded efforts to fix even a good conjectural date: Marriage à la Mode and Amboyna. Both, it is certain, appeared after The Conquest of Granada. The first acting of Marriage à la Mode is usually placed in May or June, 1672. The basis for May rests upon the assumption, made first by Malone, that the following lines from the Prologue “seem to allude to the equipment of the fleet, which afterwards engaged the Dutch off Southwold Bay, May 28, 1672.”
The Time-Scheme of Tristram Shandy and a Source
Authors: Baird Theodore
Published: February 2007

The usual criticism of Tristram Shandy denies that there is in this great novel plan, form, or method. Sterne himself supplied the text which criticism has tirelessly amplified, “I begin writing the first sentence … trusting to God Almighty for the second.” A popular history of English literature, to take one of a great many possible examples, speaks of Tristram Shandy as having “an indefinite theme, worked out by a verve that has not the slightest concern for order, unity or logic. … The work is a series of mental and verbal pirouettings.” Governor Cross, almost alone among critics, has given the book its proper place in the history of the novel by elaborating what Sterne himself repeatedly said, that Tristram Shandy is Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in a novelized form.
The Principle of the Dominant Metaphor in Goethe's Werther
Authors: Diez Max
Published: February 2007

“The affair of love, which, out of conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease.”—Fielding's Tom Jones. IT has been pointed out that a motif or idea which plays an outstanding part in a poet's imagination and recurs frequently in his invention, is likely also to manifest itself in the form of his linguistic expression. It will crop up wherever the poet embellishes his discourse with simile, wherever emotional tension drives him to metaphoric expression, i.e., to the substitution of a word which carries more feeling than the word of common usage, or to an effort to express an idea which cannot properly be conveyed by the vocables at his disposal. This principle, it appears to me, becomes particularly significant from an æsthetic point of view when it manifests itself, as it sometimes does, with unusual strength within the scope of a single work. It may then give a very decided color and tone to the language of the whole work, producing metaphor after metaphor, simile after simile, all harping on one dominant theme throughout the book and so playing a continuous accompaniment, as it were, which keeps a major theme of the composition ringing in our ears as the story progresses through other motifs. This theme then becomes a style determinant, shaping the linguistic expression throughout a work of considerable length and making for a uniformity of tone.
The Langland Myth
Authors: Cargill Oscar
Published: February 2007

It is remarkable that the one possibly contemporary statement in regard to the authorship of Piers Plowman has never been adequately examined. That is the note in the Trinity College Dublin MS. D, 4, I (Skeat's No. XLI, C-text), to the effect that the author was William Langland, the son of a gentleman, Stacy de Rokayle, who lived in Shipton-under-Wychwood as a tenant of Lord le Spenser in the County of Oxford:

Memorándum quod Stacy de Rokayle pater Willielmi de Longlond, qui Stacius fuit generosus, et morabatur in Shypton under Whicwode, tenens domini le Spenser in comitatu Oxon., qui predictus Willielmus facit librum qui vocatur Perys ploughman.
The Source of Chaucer's Melibeus
Authors: Severs J. Burke
Published: February 2007

The source of Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus is well established. This long medieval tractate on prudence is a translation—and a very close translation—of a French treatise which Chaucer read and admired so much that he put it into English dress and placed it among his Canterbury Tales. The French treatise was, in turn, an adaptation of a Latin work by Albertano of Brescia: namely, Liber Consolationis et Consilii. Chaucer's tale, however, was uninfluenced by the Latin: he was content simply to translate the French adaptation which he had under his eyes.
The Development of the Rhetoric and Metre of the Heroic Couplet, Especially in 1625–1645
Authors: Wallerstein Ruth
Published: February 2007

The purpose of this paper is to point out certain elements in the development of the rhetoric of the “classical” pentameter couplet in the middle seventeenth century and to show how the development of this rhetoric is bound up with the establishment of its formal metrical pattern. The rhetoric and metre interacted and helped to shape each other into the integral form which we know in Dryden and Pope.
Scott's Theory and Practice Concerning the Use of the Supernatural in Prose Fiction in Relation to the Chronology of the Waverley Novels
Authors: Boatright Mody C.
Published: February 2007

The question has recently been raised as to whether or not the order of the publication of the Waverley Novels is also, as Lockhart implies, the order of writing. Dame Una Pope-Hennessy, writing in the New York Saturday Review of Literature for April 23, 1932, (p. 686), appeals to lovers of Scott for help in the solution of the problem of the chronology of his novels. She states her reasons for believing that St. Ronan's Well, though later revised, was written seventeen years before Waverley. In a similar communication published in the London Times Literary Supplement for April 28, 1932, Dame Una Pope-Hennessy outlines the genesis of her skepticism as to the usually accepted chronology of Scott's novels:

Hitherto it has been assumed that novels issued from Scott's head much as Athena issued from the head of Zeus, full-panoplied for action. … Now, after re-reading and consideration, I incline to think that in Scott we have a novelist from boyhood, temporarily diverted by the study of ballads and the fashions of the hour to writing poetry, and then, when the poetic vein had been sufficiently worked, going back to his first love, prose.
The Costumbrista Movement in Mexico
Authors: Spell Jefferson Rea
Published: February 2007

When the liberal journalist Fernández de Lizardi found himself barred from further discussion of political conditions, at the close of the first brief term of freedom of the press in Mexico in 1812, he turned to descriptions of manners and customs as a means of reaching his public, not with the intention of furnishing entertainment but, like Larra two decades later, with the hope of effecting reforms. Under cover of this type of material, which seemed perfectly harmless to the censors, he portrayed in his El Pensador mexicano, during 1813 and 1814, social and educational conditions as they then existed in the capital of the viceroyalty. When this avenue of expression was gradually closed to him after 1814 by the absolutist régime, Lizardi resorted to fiction; in his three realistic novels, picaresque in form but replete with costumbrista material, he accomplished for Mexico City what Mesonero Romanos futilely planned some years later to do for Madrid through the picaresque novel. Under the free press in 1820 Lizardi turned from fiction to a defense of the constitution; in El Conductor eléctrico he published many articles similar in tone and purpose to Miñano's Cartas, which appeared in Madrid in the same year; but he contributed nothing further toward the development of the satirical sketch on manners. When the more finished costumbrista article made its appearance in Mexico almost twenty years later, the revival of the form was due, not to native initiative, but to Spanish models. The Mexican literary periodicals in which these were published coincided both in content and in point of time with their Spanish prototypes; those in which fully developed costumbrista essays appear date, in the mother country from the opening, in Mexico from the close, of the third decade.
Die Wahrscheinlichkeit Des Kunstwerks
Authors: Wolff Max J.
Published: February 2007

In dem kleinen Aufsatz “Über Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit des Kunstwerks” vom Jahr 1798 führt Goethe den Nachweis, daß “das Kunstwahre und das Naturwahre völlig verschieden” sind, und daß die Verschiedenheit so weit geht, daß der Künstler keineswegs danach streben dürfe, daß sein Werk sich wie ein “Naturwerk” darstelle und einem solchen zum Verwechseln ähnlich sei. Die Beweisführung geht von der Oper aus, dem Kunstwerk, das nach seinem Wesen von Naturwahrheit denkbar weit entfernt sei, dessen Kunstwahrheit, aber, wenn man die Wirkung als Maßstab nimmt, sich nicht bestreiten lasse. Was aber für die Oper gelte, treffe mutatis mutandis auf alle Künste zu, sie erstrebten keine Wahrheit, keine äußere Gleichheit mit der Wirklichkeit, sondern nur eine auf ihren eignen inneren Gesetzen beruhende Wahrscheinlichkeit. So treffend die Ausführungen sind, so sind sie doch nicht erschöpfend, und man muß in der eingeschlagenen Richtung einen Schritt über Goethe hinaustun. Das Kunstwerk ist nicht nur keine bloße Nachahmung der Natur, sondern wenn es das wäre, wenn es nur einen in der Wirklichkeit vorhandenen Vorgang oder Gegenstand kopierte, so würde es damit aufhören, ein Kunstwerk zu sein. Die Photographie oder die Wachsfigur im Raritätenkabinet sollen der Wirklichkeit so ähnlich als möglich sein, sie werden mit der ausdrücklichen Absicht geschaffen, den Beschauer über ihre Nichtwirklichkeit zu täuschen. Diese Absicht lässt sich jedoch nur bis zu einem gewissen Grad durchführen, die Täuschung wird niemals vollkommen sein, und daraus ergibt sich, daß die Nachbildung mit Notwendigkeit hinter dem Vorbild zurückbleibt und im Vergleich mit ihm als etwas Unvollkommenes erscheint. Bei ihrer Betrachtung drängt sich der Vergleich mit dem Original, mit der Wirklichkeit, auf, und da dieser zu ihren Ungunsten ausfallen muß, so erweckt die Nachahmung in dem Beschauer eine Empfindung der Unzulänglichkeit, also grade das Gegenteil von dem reinen Lustgefühl, das das Kunstwerk hervorrufen soll.
II: The Origin of “De Roussillon”
Authors: Misrahi Jean
Published: February 2007

Though since the beginning of the twelfth century scholars have been wondering why Girard de Roussillon was so called, few and unsatisfactory answers have been found to that question. The redoubtable Girard, called in legend de Roussillon, has nothing to do, in history or in legend, with the province of France called Roussillon. The action of the chanson de geste which bears his name never takes place in that province, nor is he ever called its lord. Why, then, is he called de Roussillon?
VIII: Camille De Morel: A Prodigy of the Renaissance
Authors: Will Samuel F.
Published: February 2007

Literary historians of the French Renaissance have long since conceded to Camille de Morel a place of distinction among the learned women of her time. Nor is this an empty honor in a century which, following the example of the Italian Renaissance, produced a goodly number of women whose thorough humanistic training and literary accomplishments have aroused the admiration of succeeding generations. The complete story of Camille de Morel, however, has never been told. She has been too lavishly praised by some and neglected by others, and it is only through diligent examination of the many traces which she left in sixteenth-century French literature that one can come to know her true nature and appreciate her learning while pardoning her shortcomings.
X: Dramatic Advertisements in the Burney Newspapers 1660–1700
Authors: Rosenfeld Sybil
Published: February 2007

A bibliography of restoration drama is much needed, and it is to be hoped that either Professor Allardyce Nicoli or Mr. Montague Summers will fulfil his promise to give us one. The advertisements in newspapers concerning the publication of plays are invaluable raw material for such a bibliography. Writers on, and editors of, individual dramatists have occasionally made use of them, but the great mass of advertisements has remained uncollected and unsought after. I have thoroughly searched the Burney Collection of newspapers in the British Museum and extracted therefrom announcements of the publication of plays. I have confined myself to plays or songs from individual plays, leaving out of account books on the drama or collections of songs in which no specific play is mentioned.
XI: The Dating of Congreve's Letters
Authors: Hodges John C.
Published: February 2007

For a man contemporary with Addison, Swift, and Pope, men quite near to us through personal letters and biographies, Congreve remains peculiarly apart and obscure. To get at his personality, more attention should be given to his letters. These, unfortunately, have not been preserved in large numbers; and the disorder in which the extant letters have remained has misled every biographer and brought about misinterpretations. Arranged in proper order, the letters clear up obscure references and give insight into the character of the writer. They deserve more careful study than they have hitherto received from biographers who have attempted to gain, and have despaired of gaining, an intimate knowledge of our wittiest dramatist.
XIII: Corneille De Pauw, and the Controversy over his Recherches Philosophiques Sur Les Américains
Authors: Church Henry Ward
Published: February 2007

History offers many examples of individuals who have occupied the center of the stage during their life-time, only to be forgotten by posterity; but in modern times few writers have risen so high, and then sunk so completely out of sight, as did the abbé Corneille de Pauw. From 1768, when his first work appeared, until the outbreak of the French Revolution, he stood in the very center of cultural discussions in Europe. Learned societies and academies devoted whole sessions to arguments over his theories; he provoked controversies which not only stirred up all Europe, but extended to China and America. His books passed through edition after edition, and were translated from the original French into English, Dutch, and German. Yet today few people have heard of him, and his name is in only the largest encyclopedias.
AOI in the Chanson de Roland
Authors: Frank Grace
Published: February 2007

A discussion of the significance of the letters AOI in the Chanson de Roland should properly begin perhaps with a description of the appearance of these letters in the Bodleian manuscript, Digby 23, of Oxford, the only manuscript in which they occur. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of determining with certainty whether these mysterious letters were invariably written by the hand (or hands) responsible for copying the text of the poem. Sometimes no differences of transcription can be perceived between a line of the poem and the AOI that accompanies it. Occasionally, however, slight variations in the forms of the letters, in the alignment, in the color of the ink, or in the thickness of the strokes would seem to indicate that the AOI was written some time after the verse beside which it stands had been penned. In the latter case, it may be that the scribe waited only until he had copied a whole page—or several pages—of text before adding the letters; it may be, on the contrary, that he waited longer, or that some other person interested in the interpretation of the poem put them there. Certain it is, at any event, that the letters occur at variable intervals: some pages are without them, some present but a single instance, others contain a relatively large number of examples.
The Date of Shakespeare's Sonnet CVII
Authors: Mattingly Garrett
Published: February 2007

Critics have generally agreed that of all of Shakespeare's sonnets cvii offers the most hope for dating by internal evidence. It runs:

Not mine own fears, nor the propehtic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,

While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;

And thou in this shall find thy monument,

When tyrants crests and tombs of brass are spent.
Jonsonian Elements in the Comic Underplot of Twelfth Night
Authors: Mueschke Paul , Fleisher Jeannette
Published: February 2007

The present study purposes to establish a direct relationship between the comic underplot in Twelfth Night and the Jonsonian comic method as first developed in Every Man in His Humour and Every Man out of His Humour. Shakespeare's name appears first in the list of actors for the former play in the Jonson Folio (1616). This is almost the only indubitable instance of Shakespeare's acting, attested by written evidence on the authority of Jonson rather than based on tradition or hearsay. His thorough familiarity with this play is, consequently, a certainty, and the production of Every Man out of His Humour by his company in the following year is sufficient evidence that his knowledge of both plays was intimate and detailed.
Shakespeare's Conception of Hamlet
Authors: Walley Harold R.
Published: February 2007

What was Shakespeare's conception of Hamlet? That is the question. It is one which inevitably resolves itself into a reconstruction of the materials at his disposal, the dramatic problems with which he had to deal, and the means whereby he sought to satisfy contemporary dramatic taste. For such a reconstruction modern scholarship provides abundant information about both the theatrical practices and intellectual interests of the time and Shakespeare's habits as a craftsman. In particular should be noted his exceptional preoccupation with character portrayal and the scrupulous motivation of action; his conformity with changing theatrical fashion, yet at the same time his reluctance to pioneer in experiment; his sensitive, if sketchy, acquaintance with matters of contemporary interest; and his success as a skilled and inspired adapter rather than as an innovator. In the application of this knowledge two principles are fundamental. First, Hamlet must not be viewed in isolation, but in close conjunction with the theatrical environment which produced it. Second, Shakespeare must be recognized as primarily a practical playwright, a business man of the theater with obligations to fulfill, specific theatrical conditions to meet, and an audience to divert. For the rest, it is a pleasant exercise for the recreative imagination to try to think oneself into Shakespeare's mind, to face the problem of Hamlet as he faced it, and to trace the solution as he must have found it.
Play Notices from the Burney Newspapers 1700-1703
Authors: Jackson Alfred
Published: February 2007

The history of the early eighteenth-century stage, although recently favored by the attention of numerous scholars, still suffers from lack of contemporary data of a reliable nature. The period is a difficult one; for it is a period where uncertainty and intricacy abound. Everything seems in an uncrystallized condition; and drama, court, and society present varied and varying modes. In many ways it is a pioneer age; in many ways it mirrors the brilliance of future achievement. No attempt is made here, however, either to explain, criticize, or defend the early years of the century, but merely to offer certain facts taken from indisputable sources. As the newspaper is the medium of this information, a brief account of contemporary journalism is prefaced.
“Vice” and “Parasite.” A Note on the Evolution of the Elizabethan Villain
Authors: Withington Robert
Published: February 2007

Buffoonery and rascality—the two outstanding qualities of the morality play “Vice”—led, under differing influences, to the Elizabethan clown and villain. In early Tudor times, “witty slave” and “parasite” came from the classical drama to an English stage which already knew a figure combining certain of their characteristics, and to an audience who recognized in them certain familiar features. The “Vice” was originally the agent or servant of the Seven Deadly Sins, and sought to entrap “Mankind”—by whatever name he was known—into the power of evil. In a sense, he was a kind of “parasite,” too, his reward depending on the success of his service, and he was the dynamic character in the old plays. Incidentally, he was also the source of much (if not all) the humor in the moralities, and was one of the first figures to reflect the life of the times in a drama which dealt chiefly with personified virtues and vices. He had, for obvious reasons, no virtue in his composition; but he was human, and his vitality gave him an attraction which has descended to some of the later representatives of this type.
The Text of Othello: An Analysis
Authors: Cameron Kenneth Walter
Published: February 2007

In 1885 Evans undertook definitely to show that the text of the first quarto of Othello was, as compared to the folio at least, quite worthless. More recent editors, on the other hand, are inclined to allow greater authority to some of the texts that precede the folio, and have not hesitated to classify the Othello as one of the “good” quartos. No detailed and analytic study, however, of this version has been made since Evans' attempt, which therefore passes in many quarters doubtless as vulgate doctrine. The present study aims at a complete classification of the variants between these two fundamental texts. In this classification scholars may differ regarding individual items, but these disagreements must be numerous and crucial essentially to alter the results. Part I consists of an enumeration of all the textual differences, and Part II of an interpretation of them with a view to evaluating the F and the Q texts.
Olivia's Household
Authors: Draper John W.
Published: February 2007

If Shakespeare's plays, as is generally admitted, are incomparably greater than their sources, their greatness must inhere mainly in his changes and additions. Most scholars have attributed this precious residue to the dramatist's imagination, which, they seem to suppose, created it from nothing. Certainly his imagination informed the whole: but the additions that he built into his originals, supplying motivation and verisimilitude, he took from the life around him; for this was the material that both he and his audience knew best: thus he elizabethanized the stories that he used, and made them reflect the popular attitude toward the characters and the themes that he portrayed; for, in an age of little learning, he could not hope, even had he wished, to educate his audience to a different point of view. Dogberry, as a constable, must be stupid; Henry V must appear as a national hero; and interest on money in The Merchant of Venice must be hateful—all to accord with contemporary fact or opinion. But modern readers see such characters and themes quite out of focus, and interpret them in modern ways.
The Quarto Version of Henry V as a Stage Adaptation
Authors: Okerlund Gerda
Published: February 2007

Some time ago, Dr. W. J. Lawrence, writing in the Criterion, stated his belief that the Shakespearean “Bad Quartos” which have in the past provoked so many conflicting explanations are in reality nothing more than unauthorized stage adaptations made directly from the full theatre manuscript by pirates who then performed the plays in the provinces. Dr. Lawrence reached this conclusion after finding certain similarities running through all the bad quartos, notably the absence of reflective passages, which would indicate abridgment for provincial performance, and the transposition of scenes, which might have resulted from the necessities of doubling. As to the bad quarto of Henry V, at least, I am convinced that Dr. Lawrence's theory is the right one. From a careful word-for-word comparison of that text with the folio text of 1623, I had myself reached the same conclusion before his article came to my attention. Since Dr. Lawrence did not attempt to show the manner in which the supposed adaptation was made, I shall here set forth the results of my own more detailed study in support of his general hypothesis.
III. Chaucer's “Troilus and Criseyde” as Romance
Authors: Young Karl
Published: February 2007

In the critical writing of the last few decades Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde has been described prevailingly as a psychological novel. Our most influentual interpreters, that is to say, draw our attention primarily to the subtle exhibition of psychology in the personages of the poem, and to the resemblance of the descriptive background to what we ordinarily call real life. By emphasizing these aspects of the Troilus they bring it into association with our modern novel. Representative of this view are such expressions as the following:

“Our first great psychological novel”; “A great psychological novel”; “An elaborate psychological novel”; “The first novel, in the modern sense”; “Its spirit and temper is that of the modern novel”; “A page out of the book of modern everyday life”;6 “[Chaucer's] first and greatest adventure into the world of every day”; “[What Chaucer adds to the Filostralo] is what we roughly call reality…. one has a sense of ordinary life going on”; “Troy is mediaeval London”; “[The Troilus] is not a romance”; “[In the Troilus Chaucer] leaves all romantic convention behind.”
V. The Twelve Profits of Anger
Authors: Kreuzer James R.
Published: February 2007

A prose text of the Twelve Profits of Tribulation (MS. Royal 17 B xvii) based on the Latin treatise, De Duodecim Utilitatibus Tribulationis ascribed to Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath (†ca. 1200), was included by Horstmann in his edition of the works of Richard Rolle. Miss Hope Allen in her study of Rolle's writings has since demonstrated that this treatise is wrongly assigned to him. Horstmann also printed the text of the Twelve Profits from MS. Rawlinson C.894, and listed several other manuscripts containing prose versions of this treatise, in both English and French.
VI. The Date of the “Wakefield Master”: Bibliographical Evidence
Authors: Frampton Mendal G.
Published: February 2007

In PMLA for September, 1935, I proposed a new and later date than customary for the flourishing of the author of the Secunda Pastorum in the Towneley cycle of mystery plays. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that the evidence of the costume allusions in his plays and the evidence of local history both pointed to the years 1425–50 as encompassing the years of his major work. At the close of that article I quoted W. W. Greg and Miss Marie C. Lyle as bibliographical authorities, the one as believing that the York Passion Group could “hardly be earlier than 1400” and the other as placing the influence of the Gospel of Nicodemus upon that group as after 1415 when Roger Burton, city clerk of York, set down in the official York Memorandum Book a description of the plays as he knew them at that time. Miss Lyle, it is true, was immediately replied to by Miss Grace Clark and partly dislodged from her position. After reviewing Miss Clark's argument as it bore on the point at issue, however, I concluded that “my case would stand.” I propose now to bring the bibliographical evidence under the review of Burton's two “lists”—the first set down, as I have said, in 1415, and the second a few years later—and also under the review of entries in the York Memorandum Book (Surlees Society,cxx and cxxv).
VIII. Sidney at Bartholomew Fair
Authors: Watson Sara Ruth
Published: February 2007

The revised Arcadia has long been recognized as a great treasure-house of sixteenth-century references. Scholars have unearthed from incidental and episodical passages many significant bits of political and social background. Like a mosaic, these pieces are gradually fitted together to complete the work; so that each fragment, no matter how small, fits into its place. Among the scholars eminent in this field are Friedrich Brie, who recognized the importance of knowledge of Elizabethan life generally to an understanding of the Arcadia; Emma Denkinger, who has investigated the impresa and emblems of Sidney's in connection with sixteenth-century literature and practice; and Edwin Greenlaw, who has revealed much political and autobiographical significance. Indeed, so great is the contemporaneity of the Arcadia that it is this aspect of the book which has a special interest, and Sidney himself may have derived greater pleasure in writing the so-called extraneous matter than in untangling his romance or in depicting characters.
XI. Henry Purcell's Dramatic Songs and the English Broadside Ballad
Authors: Lamson Roy
Published: February 2007

Henry Playford in his note to the reader in Orpheus Britannicus felt free to say:

The Author's [Purcell's] extraordinary Talent in all sorts of Musick is sufficiently known, but he was especially admir'd for the Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov'd the Passions of all his Auditors.
XIII. Kleists Amazonenstaat im Lichte Rousseaus
Authors: Wolff Hans M.
Published: February 2007

Von allen Gebilden dichterischer Phantasie, denen wir in Kleists Werken begegnen, ist wohl Penthesileas Amazonenstaat das sonderbarste. Ein eingeschlechtlicher Staat, mit künstlich geregelter Fortpflanzung, Frauen, die von Jugend auf für das Kriegshandwerk erzogen werden und ihr ganzes Leben lang Kriegerinnen bleiben—dies alles ist so phantastisch, so unglaublich, so von der Wirklichkeit entfernt, dass es fast unerklärlich scheint, wie der Dichter seinen Zuschauern ein solches Staatsgebilde mit dem Anspruch auf dichterische Wahrscheinlichkeit vorsetzen konnte. Tatsächlich ist aber der Amazonenstaat in keiner Weise so phantastisch-bizarr, wie er auf den ersten Blick zu sein scheint, denn trotz aller seiner Eigenarten ist er im Grunde nichts als ein getreues, wenn auch zum Extrem getriebenes Abbild führender rechtlicher, sozialer und pädagogischer Ideen des 18. Jahrhunderts, und insbesondere eine genaue Ausführung der Ideen Rousseaus.
XVII. Thoreau and the Organic Principle in Poetry
Authors: Lorch Fred W.
Published: February 2007

Studies of Henry David Thoreau as a man of letters have led primarily to an examination of his attitude toward nature, society, government, and religion, and, on the purely literary side, of his style. His theory of the art of poetry has received less emphatic attention, perhaps because Thoreau wrote very little verse, because he failed to embody his theory in any formal discourse, and because it is commonly assumed that in the main his theories coincide with those of Emerson. Nevertheless, Thoreau was deeply interested in the theory of poetry. His utterances concerning it may be found in every volume of his writings and would, if brought together, comprise a noteworthy body of poetic theory.