bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conventional Material in Munday's John a Kent and John a Cumber
Authors: Ashton J. W.
Published: February 2007

The central situation in Anthony Munday's play of John a Kent and John a Cumber (ca. 1594) is, as its title suggests, a contest between two magicians, John a Kent, a Welshman, and John a Cumber, a Scotchman. Their meeting is occasioned by a wooing contest which forms the romantic theme of the play and in which a pair of Welsh lovers (Powesse and Merridock) strive to win from the English Pembroke and the Scotch Morton the ladies Sidanen and Marian in spite of the opposition of the ladies' relatives. In his magic arts Kent, like Prospero, is assisted by an elvish sprite, who supplements and assists in Kent's display of power. Finally, for the low comedy the dramatist has included a group of rustics, who serve partly as foils for the magicians, partly as unwitting furtherers of the action. All these, as we shall see, are elements already conventional in Elizabethan drama by Munday's time, and his originality consists in his adaptation and association of these elements.
The “Lost Scenes” of Macbeth
Authors: Thaler Alwin
Published: February 2007

Professor J. Q. Adams, in his admirable edition of Macbeth, has recently contended unequivocally that “in several places” of the original text, the Folio, “portions of Shakespeare's play are lost or intentionally omitted.” Specifically, he argues that three scenes—one each in the first, second, and last acts—have been lost. For various reasons this contention challenges more detailed consideration than it seems thus far to have received. It is an integral though not necessarily a vital part of the commentary in this edition; it revives—though with a decided difference—an old and much-debated hypothesis concerning textual losses from this play; and it requires, if certain aspects of the reasoning underlying it are to be accepted, a not inconsiderable readjustment of current views as to the swift and compelling structural efficacy of the play as it stands, not to mention a fresh appraisal of no less a personage than Lady Macbeth. Yet Professor Adams's edition adheres scrupulously—except perhaps in the three instances to be noted—to the principle which prompts the present inquiry. “We ought,” says Bradley in a very similar connection, “to do our best to interpret the text”—i.e., the text as it stands—“before we have recourse to this kind of suggestion.” Granting that an able exposition of textual difficulties is a boon in itself, are the difficulties such as to justify conjecture concerning exactly what may or may not have been lost or purposely omitted, and where?
Genesis of The Borderers
Authors: Smith John Harrington
Published: February 2007

In a recently published article, Mr. J. R. MacGillivray has announced the necessity for redating Wordsworth's play. By closely checking allusions in Wordworth's letters, he is able to show that it could not have been begun before March 7, 1796, and that the letter in which the poet tells Wrangham that the first draft of it is nearly finished must have been written “some time between the beginning of December 1796 and the end of February 1797.” The play, MacGillivray feels, would have been begun not long before October 24, when Dorothy reported her brother “now ardent in the composition of a tragedy.”
Alastor Foreshadowed in St. Irvyne
Authors: Jones Frederick L.
Published: February 2007

If, as Peck supposes, “some students of … [Shelley's] poetry” will be surprised “to learn that the theme implied in the title of Alastor was in Shelley's mind as early as 1811,” these students will probably be still more surprised to learn that Shelley had already developed the Alastor idea in a manner strikingly similar to that of the poem, in St. Irvyne, written probably as early as April, 1810 and published in December, 1810. Alastor was written in September, 1815, and published in February, 1816.
II. Old French Mangon, Anglo-Saxon Mancus, Late Latin Mancussus, Mancosus, Mancessus, etc.
Authors: Holmes Urban T.
Published: February 2007

These terms all indicate a monetary unit of uncertain value and obscure origin, but Du Cange is doubtless correct in assuming that the French, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin forms are related. The earliest occurrence of mancus (or mances) in England dates from 848; the Latin mancus is found on the Continent as early as 814. The authorities are agreed that the Anglo-Saxon form came to Britain from the Continent. For me the main point of interest in this discussion is Old French mangon, best known through its first occurrence—in the Chanson de Roland:

Tenez m'espee, meillur nen at nuls horn,Entre les helz ad plus de mil manguns.

Godefroy defines it as a “sorte de monnaie d'or: il fallait deux besantz pour faireun mangon.” This estimate of value was certainly taken from the fabliau of Guillaume au Faucon:

Dist la dame, “Or avez faucon;Deux besans va'ent un mangon.”
IV. The Priamel Manuscript of the Newberry Library, Chicago
Authors: Selmer C. , Goedsche C. R.
Published: February 2007

One of the many treasures of the Newberry Library in Chicago is the valuable philological library of Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte. In this large collection is a German translation of Thomas a Kempis's famous devotional work, Imitatio Christi. This volume (Incunabulum 1699) Ein ware nachuolgung Cristi was printed by Anthonius Sorg in Augsburg in 1486, and according to Victor Collins in An Attempt at a Catalogue (London 1894), 478, is the first known German translation. At the end of the book are 66 pages of German manuscript to which the attention of the editors was called by Professor James Taft Hatfield. They are indebted also to Dr. Pierce Butler, formerly of Newberry Library, who has kindly put the manuscript at their disposal for further examination.
VII. New Poems by Sir Philip Sidney
Authors: Wagner Bernard M.
Published: February 2007

The collection of poems in MS. Harley 7392 (article 2) has proved to be a unique source for verses by Raleigh, Dyer, the Earl of Oxford, and other lesser poets writing during the period of 1570–90. The most distinguished name among them, however, and the poet with the largest number of poems, is Sir Philip Sidney. Of the thirteen pieces by him, two do not appear elsewhere; and one, though familiar from its appearance in The Phoenix Nest (1593), has not before been attributed to him. These three are reprinted below.
X. A Woman Killed with Kindness
Authors: Smith Hallett D.
Published: February 2007

Among the playwrights of the Elizabethan age, Thomas Heywood stands in a peculiar position. He is not as interesting as Webster or Chapman; he is far below Jonson or Marlowe or Lyly in artistic power; he has proved less attractive to scholars than Massinger or Beaumont and Fletcher or Marston. He wrote too much, it is said, and he was too eager to flatter the 'prentices to care about the quality of his work, either as poetry or as drama. Charles Lamb, to be sure, called him a prose Shakespeare, but Lamb could find something kind to say about any Elizabethan, and men like Heywood and Dekker were of that gentle and friendly disposition which would particularly endear them to Elia. And yet one play of Heywood's, A Woman Killed With Kindness, is reprinted in every anthology of plays of the period, always as a masterpiece of its kind. If literary immortality consists in having written a work which is always in print, of being known by name and by at least the title of that work to all historians of literature, Heywood has achieved immortality with A Woman Killed With Kindness.
XII. Conventions of Song in Restoration Tragedy
Authors: Noyes Robert Gale
Published: February 2007

From the time of the miracle cycles and the morality plays songs have been used for the embellishment of English tragedy. As the drama developed, lyrics in plays came to have functional as well as decorative or merely divertive significance, until with Shakespeare their dramatic values acquired subtlety, and songs became an integral part of the technique of comedy and tragedy. The rôle of song in the plays of Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries to 1642, and especially in those of Shakespeare himself, has been analyzed with great detail, but there has been no account of the projection of songs into the drama of the Restoration, when with neo-classic emphasis on regularity and a body of tragedies essentially classical in form, one might expect altered usage of previously established conventions or even an astringent use of song itself.
XVI. Le Theatre de Th. Gautier
Authors: Mahieu Robert G.
Published: February 2007

La critique à l'égard de Th. Gautier est loin d'avoir été toujours bienveillante. Son génie ou du moins son originalité a souvent été méconnue. Plusieurs études de mise au point ont paru, ces derniers années, restituant à Gautier sa part de gloire dans le grand mouvement littéraire du 19e siècle. On s'est occupé du poète, du romancier et du critique, mais, quand on s'est aventuré à toucher à l'œuvre dramatique, c'est pour la considérer comme étant presque une erreur, en tous cas, comme quantité négligeable. C'est pour combler cette lacune que nous avons entrepris cette étude. Th. Gautier a toujours aimé le théâtre et cela de très bonne heure. Il a eu sur l'art dramatique des idées très précises. Et en dépit des assertions des contemporains qui lui refusent en général le don du théâtre, l'étude de ses productions dramatiques révèle une originalité, qu'à moins de préventions, on ne saurait nier. On a même voulu faire croire que celles de ses pièces, qui avaient vu le feu de la rampe, n'avaient remporté qu'un succès douteux. Rien n'est plus faux. Le succès sans être bruyant a couronné ses efforts et eût pu flatter de plus ambitieux dramaturges.
Romanticism in Italy
Authors: McKenzie Kenneth
Published: February 2007

Italy, for obvious reasons, always kept closer than other countries to ancient classical literature. There the classic spirit was native, for the Italians were always conscious of being the heirs of the ancient Roman Empire; there Humanism and the Renaissance arose; there the counter-Reformation resisted the Protestant spirit of the northern countries; there Arcadian academies and pseudo-classicism flourished. But the Romantic attitude was present in many Italian writers from the Middle Ages on. Petrarch was romantic in his introspective melancholy, Ariosto was romantic in his love of picturesque adventure; yet both are classic in the perfection of their style as well as in their knowledge of antiquity. Thus the two tendencies existed side by side, frequently in the same man, although in theory Italy remained classicist until the end of the eighteenth century. The pre-romantic literature of France, England, and Germany was modified in Italy by the prevalent classical tradition, but it found there a fertile soil. As a literary movement, Romanticism in Italy is best considered as represented by a group of writers in the period which followed the collapse of Napoleon's empire.
Dryden's Epic Manner and Virgil
Authors: Brower Reuben Arthur
Published: February 2007

“A Heroic Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform.” While the solemnity of this pronouncement is certainly more characteristic of Rapin than of Dryden, the reverence for epic poetry is quite typical of the author of An Essay of Heroic Plays. As every reader of Dryden knows, the influence of Renaissance epic theory is all but omnipresent in his critical essays and prefaces. It is equally well known that the epic manner which Dryden often adopted in his verse owes much in a general way to the idea of the heroic poem. But fewer readers, I believe, realize the extent to which Dryden's epic style is directly indebted to his “master,” Virgil.
The Vogue of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
Authors: Grubbs Henry A.
Published: February 2007

One would have difficulty in finding a stranger case of the growth and decline of a vogue than that of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau as a lyric poet. Before a single verse of his poems had been published he was being referred to as “Rousseau, fameux poète.” When the first edition of his poems appeared, in 1712, he was in disgrace, in exile, but the poems were avidly read and soon he was being spoken of this way: “le seul poète qui nous reste dans notre siècle” and “il faut avouer que nous n'avons de véritable poète que Rousseau.” And yet the vogue of the so-called “grand lyrique français” has so declined that when the Tuffrau revision of the Lanson manual of French literature appeared (1931), with the announced intention of treating only important figures (“seuls les écrivains de premier plan ont trouvé place dans le manuel”), the hundred or more authors treated did not include Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. He suffered the indignity of not being even mentioned, not receiving a passing reference, not even a footnote.
Burke's Theory Concerning Words, Images, and Emotion
Authors: Wecter Dixon
Published: February 2007

Edmund Burke's youthful essay on The Sublime and Beautiful, first published in 1757, sets forth a theory that the impassioned language of poetry and oratory may rouse emotion without the entry of any clear images into the mind. This proposal—audacious if read by the light of the Augustan sunset, but prophetic of romanticism—has received occasional notice from historians of criticism because it anticipates Lessing's brilliant attack upon Wortmalerei in Laokoon (1766). But the way in which Burke seems to have invented his theory from scraps of Locke and Berkeley, left on the battlefield where the contest over abstract ideas had once been waged, has gone apparently unnoticed.
The Witch of Atlas and Endymion
Authors: Lowes John Livingston
Published: February 2007

There is an extraordinary instance of Shelley's indebtedness to Keats, which has, so far as I know, escaped notice. It is in stanzas III–VI, VII–XI, XIV, XVII–XVIII, XXI–XXII, XXXI, XXXVIII, XLII, LIII, LV, LVIII of The Witch of Atlas. And in those stanzas Shelley has drawn upon all four books of Endymion, and twice, it would seem, upon Sleep and Poetry. That there are other similar instances is not improbable. But a bare statement of this group of facts must, for the moment, suffice.
Dickens and the Evolution of Caricature
Authors: Davis Earle R.
Published: February 2007

Out of the pages of Pickwick step many of Dickens's funniest eccentrics. Characters with mannerisms and tags of speech parade through the novel, illustrating a distinctive style of characterization which is usually labelled caricature in every novel he writes later. How and why did he begin this style? Much light can be thrown upon his early narrative development by a study of Mr. Jingle, the character which has one of the most extreme of all Dickens's uses of eccentric mannerism—a rapid-fire, staccato habit of speech. Furthermore, an unbelievable anecdote usually constitutes the subject-matter of Mr. Jingle's remarks, as:

Don Bolaro Fizzgig—Grandee—only daughter—Donna Christina—splendid creature—loved me to distraction—jealous father—high-souled creature—handsome Englishman—Donna Christina in despair—prussic acid—stomach pump in my portmanteau—operation performed—old Bolaro in ecstasies—consent to our union—join hands and floods of tears—romantic story—very.
Speed as a Technique in the Novels of Balzac
Authors: Wenger Jared
Published: February 2007

The relation between Balzac's fiction and that of the popular novelists of his generation has often provoked discussion. Various opinions have been advanced: at one extreme, the over-hasty and malignant judgment of Sainte-Beuve, who persisted in classing Balzac with Sue and the feuilletonistes; at the other, the adulation of those who resent any comparison between Balzac and men of second and third rank. Perhaps, in view of the importance which attaches to questions of technique, a resuscitation of the controversy is permissible: an investigation, this time, of Balzac's treatment of violent physical action. The conclusion of such a study might prove only that Balzac differed from the popular novelists—in which case, we should be bringing merely another coal to Newcastle. If, however, our investigation of violent action can be related to the problem of the novelist's general technique, the effort may not be altogether in vain.
The Three Stages of Theodore Dreiser's Naturalism
Authors: Walcutt Charles Child
Published: February 2007

The naturalism of Theodore Dreiser may be approached through a study of his personality, the sort of experiences he had in his formative years, and the philosophical speculations which grew from his experiences and his reading. A warm, boundless human sympathy; a tremendous vital lust for life with a conviction that man is the end and measure of all things in a world which is nevertheless without purpose or standards; moral, ethical, and religious agnosticism; contact with the scientific thought of the late nineteenth century which emphasized the power and scope of mechanical laws over human desires; belief in a chemical-mechanistic explanation of the human machine—an explanation which substantiates his materialism while it does full justice to the mystery of consciousness and the vital urge;—these are the elements which Dreiser brings to the Creation of his novels. It must be emphasized that his awareness of the shifting, cyclical quality of human and natural affairs arises as much from experience as from his contact with literary models or scientific thought. His determinism, again, loses its force because he is more interested in the mystery and terror and wonder of life itself than in tracing those forces which might account for and so dispel the mystery. Science is not, to him, the wonderful high priest of benign Nature, because he has seen too many of the evils of industrialism and the malignancy of natural forces. But life is eternally seeking, searching, striving, throbbing—life is the single positive element in a cosmos of ruthless flux. And the pathetic fortunes of people in this cosmos of purposeless change are the main concern of Dreiser's novels.
Paleographical Edition of an Old Portuguese Version of the Rule of Saint Bernard (Codex Alcobacensis 200)
Authors: Carter Henry Hare
Published: February 2007

In an edition of a portion of Codex Alcobacensis 200 [ff. 195 Ro. to 219 Vo.] it was pointed out that the codex, no part of which had been edited before, is one of the oldest Portuguese manuscripts in the Alcobaça collection. It is described in part by Anselmo as follows: “Pergaminho.—277×204—[222 fl.];. . . recl. no firn de cada cad. de 10 fl.—leira gótica do séc. XV.—rubr.; iniciais a verm. e azul, filigranadas.” Burnam ascribes it to the fourteenth century and describes it as follows:

Ce ms. consiste en 212 ff. de parchemin, plus un f. de papier préliminaire, où se trouve le titre de l'ouvrage. L'écriture est à longues lignes, avec fleurons, lettres initiales rouges et bleues en alternative; le ms. est sans traits d'union ni titre courant. Presque tous les cahiers contiennent dix ff.; une fois il y en a six, deux fois huit, tous fournis de réclames, sauf le dernier.
Peripeteia and Recognition in Racine
Authors: Haley Marie Philip
Published: February 2007

The purpose of this study is to point out Racine's extensive use of peripeteia and recognition in the construction of his plots. That he relied on these two dramatic resources, which Aristotle considered “the most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy,” is hinted at in Lanson's Esquisse d'une histoire de la tragédie française.
The Significance of Fielding's Temple Beau
Authors: Rogers Winfield H.
Published: February 2007

Henry Fielding's early writing has been considered mere farce, commercial “theatre,” which has no intrinsic relation to his later ethical work. A reëxamination of his plays indicates, however, that they have a basic seriousness which in many respects anticipates his great novels. For the present I confine my discussion to Fielding's second play, The Temple Beau (1730). Though in general The Temple Beau is conventional in satire and derives from the tradition and practice of the comedy of manners, the play contains at least one important anticipation of the mature work of Fielding, his initial endeavor to find and to use a symbol which has the power to express his attitude toward life.
The Comic Sense of Flaubert in the Light of Bergson's Le Rire
Authors: Fitch Girdler B.
Published: February 2007

It is easy to overlook the comic as a major aspect of Flaubert's novels. A reader may well find that the impression they leave with him is one of tragedy and human frustration, transfigured by an amazingly unfaltering perception of the visual universe, made significant by psychological and philosophical penetration, and conveyed in a style of beauty and finality. Irony is unescapable, but the definitely comic may seem secondary. Some will continue to find this so as their familiarity with Flaubert increases, the more readily in that the conflicting sensations he evokes can be ascribed to his fondness for le grotesque triste. Other readers, however, become aware of a pervasive and profound sense of the comic, of which the grotesque triste is perhaps the climactic manifestation but far from the only one. Whereas most comedy attains its maximum effect at first presentation, Flaubert's depends rather on the thorough acquaintance of the reader with all the details and implications of the material. So closely is it knit to other elements that we often first realize its existence only when the attention we had originally given to the beauty or poignancy of a passage relaxes, permitting a fresh emphasis and a more detached viewpoint. Yet this new comic vision rather reinforces than destroys our original emotions. It is only on the greatest levels of literature that we find this intimate association of comedy with tragedy, and seldom are they as fundamentally united as in Flaubert.
The Spanish Novel of “Ideas”: Critical Opinion (1836–1880)
Authors: Eoff Sherman H.
Published: February 2007

The rebirth of the Spanish novel in the nineteenth century is commonly identified with Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda in the decade 1870–80, while the costumbristas and Fernán Caballero are looked upon as precursors of this rebirth. The purpose of the present study is to present, for some four or five decades and with attention to the novel, a prominent phase of critical tastes in Spain. Some critics looked upon the renaissance of the Spanish novel as fortunately having taken place in the novel which gave emphasis to ideas, or, as they were wont to describe it, the “philosophical” or “transcendental” novel. But the Spanish terms filosofía, trascendencia, and even trascendentalismo were very loosely used. Thus, the novel which dealt with ideas of social, moral, religious, or political significance was commonly called filosófica and trascendental, especially in the 1870's: The novel of thesis, sometimes called novela tendenciosa, was a notable manifestation of this type of “philosophical” novel. The importance attached by critics at this time to ideas of trascendencia in the novel was for the most part in keeping with the critical tastes of the preceding decades; certain novels of Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda, praised by contemporary critics for their trascendencia, seemingly were the fulfillment of an aspiration on the part of earlier critics that the novel treat of important ideas underlying society. On the other hand, the attitude toward the propagation of ideas shows a marked change in its development. In this survey of critical writings on the novel, I shall attempt to present a consensus of views on the novel which stressed ideas, to show how the common attitude developed. Much of the criticism under consideration is of little intrinsic value; it is often influenced by religious and political prejudices and shows a level of mediocrity in critical thought, particularly for the reign of Isabel II. But, considered as a whole, it reveals common traits indicative of a trend in literary tastes,—a trend which becomes of interest when viewed in the light of certain tendencies in the novel.
Tendances De Coupe Syllabique En Français
Authors: Delattre Pierre
Published: February 2007

Nous ne nous occuperons, dans cet article, que des groupes intervocaliques de deux consonnes (exemple: aspect).

La structure syllabique n'est pas quelque chose d'absolument fixe en franjais, dit M. Gougenheim en se plaant du point de vue phonologique. Il va de soi que ce manque de fixit s'attribue aussi bien la coupe syllabique. On ne s'tonnera done pas de ce que les traits qui ont affaire avec la description phontique du franais vitent parfois ce sujet et que ceux qui en parlent soient rarement d'accord. Nous n'avons pas la prtention de trancher dfinitivement la question mais simplement d'tablir les tendances les plus apparentes de coupe syllabique en franais moderne. Dans ce but, nous avons relev des exemples de tous les groupes intervocaliques de deux consonnes qui peuvent se trouver dans la langue franjaise et nous les avons assembls dans le tableau I qui suit.
XXXVIII. Un Commentaire Sur Un Vers De Gautier D'Aupais
Authors: Levy Raphael
Published: February 2007

Le poème courtois intitulé Gautier d'Aupais est assez singulier. Il ressemble à Jehan et Blonde par le thème, au Lai de l'Ombre par les procédés, à Cligés par les monologues, à Amadas et Ydoine par les allusions et à Brun de la Montaigne par la forme métrique. Il est écrit en 48 laisses monorimes qui se composent de 876 vers dodécasyllabiques. L'objet de cette étude est d'expliquer un vers difficile qui se trouve dans la laisse xxxi du poème et par là de résoudre un problème tant littéraire que linguistique.
XLI. The Sonnets in Tottel's Miscellany
Authors: Parker William R.
Published: February 2007

In Tottel's Miscellany there are 310 poems, including the thirty-nine added in the second edition of 1557. Of these 310, ninety-six are noted as by Wyatt, forty by Surrey, forty by Grimald, and 134 by “Vncertain auctours.” There are fifty-four sonnets in Tottel. Wyatt contributed twenty-seven, or exactly half. Surrey contributed fifteen; Grimald, three; the uncertain authors, nine. Rather more than one out of every six poems in the book is a sonnet. It is interesting that, among these fifty-four sonnets, fourteen different rime patterns are to be found. These constitute eloquent evidence of the mood of experimentation in which the English sonnet was conceived. It is a mistake to assume that Tottel contains only two types of sonnets, the Italian (or Petrarchian) and the English (or Shakespearian). Even if we define the first type loosely (and we must, when dealing with its early manifestation), there remain fifteen sonnets in the Miscellany which more or less defy classification. It is instructive to consider the various rime patterns in some detail. From them we may get, not only a suggestion of how the English sonnet evolved, but also a clue to the authorship of at least two sonnets by uncertain authors. A study of rime patterns is a narrow approach to the whole problem of sonnet technique, but, when applied to the English sonnet in its infancy, it has an unusual usefulness.
XLII. Agudos and Esdrújulos in Italianate Verse in the Golden Age
Authors: Clarke Dorothy Clotelle
Published: February 2007

Much has been written for and against or concerning the use of agudos, or oxytones, and esdrújulos, or proparoxytones, in rime in Italianate verse (seven and eleven syllable lines) by the poets of the Spanish Golden Age. The names of Buceta and Zerolo on the esdrújulo, and Menéndez y Pelayo and Rodríguez Marín on the agudo, are outstanding. Nothing has been done, however, so far as I know, to correlate the use of the two chronologically. A short résumé of the history of opinion and criticism of their use may shed some light on the matter.
XLIII. Elizabethan Acting
Authors: Harbage Alfred
Published: February 2007

THE Elizabethan style of acting is discussed nowhere in the four volumes of The Elizabethan Stage, and the word acting itself is missing from the subject-index. It is as if Sir Edmund Chambers would crown his generosities by leaving us a playground—one precinct free for untrammeled guessing. The sport is active, and two teams are discernible on the field, but the teams are not playing with each other: they are not defending their own inferences or attacking those of their opponents. The purpose of the present essay is not to end the game but to organize it—at least so far as that can be done by one who enters a game not as a referee but as a player. The most conspicuous Shakespearian criticism of recent years is based largely upon assumptions about the style in which the plays were originally acted, so that even a partisan discussion of these assumptions may prove useful. What follows is an attempt to define two alternate styles of acting—formal acting and natural acting; to attack the case for natural acting on the Elizabethan stage and to defend the case for formal acting; and, finally, to suggest the manner in which the issue bears upon contemporary criticism.)
XLIV. Hamlet and the Mouse-Trap
Authors: Lawrence William Witherle
Published: February 2007

Ils disputèrent quinze jours de suite, et, au bout de quinze jours, ils étaient aussi avancés que le premier; mais enfin ils parlaient, ils se communiquaient des idées, ils se consolaient.—Candide.

Some twenty years ago, in an analysis of the Play-Scene, I remarked that it was extraordinary that so important a part of Hamlet had received so little attention. Oddly enough, interest in this scene was just beginning in good earnest, and much important criticism and lively controversy have followed in the intervening years. We might hope, then, that at the present day we should be clearer in our minds, and that the scholar, the actor, the stage-manager, and the “general reader” would now be happily in accord.
XLV. Notes on Ben Jonson's English
Authors: Neumann Joshua H.
Published: February 2007

In a well-known passage in the Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668), Dryden, pursuing his critical “examen” of The Silent Woman, tempers his extravagant praise of Ben Jonson's dramatic skill with serious criticism of his language.

If there is any fault in his language, ‘twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously in his comedies especially; perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them: wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours.
XLVII. Molière Et Le Monologue Tragique, D'aprèS Un Passage De L'étourdi
Authors: Scherer Jacques
Published: February 2007

Dans la ière scène du iiiême acte de l'Etourdi, le rusé valet Mascarille se demande s'il doit continuer à intriguer pour son maître Lélie, qui, par ses “étourderies,” fait échouer à chaque fois ses ingénieuses combinaisons, et il prononce le monologue suivant:

Taisez-vous, ma bonté, cessez votre entretien,

Vous êtes une sotte, et je n'en ferai rien.

Oui, vous avez raison, mon courroux, je l'avoue;

Relier tant de fois ce qu'un brouillon denoue,

C'est trop de patience, et je dois en sortir,

Après de si beaux coups qu'il a su divertir.

Mais aussi, raisonnons un peu sans violence:

Si je suis maintenant ma juste impatience,

On dira que je cède à la difiiculté,

Que je me trouve è bout de ma subtilité;

Et que deviendra lors cette publique estime

Qui te vante partout pour un fourbe sublime,

Et que tu t'es acquise en tant d'occasions

A ne t'être jamais vu court d'inventions?

L'honneur, ô Mascarille, est une belle chose!

A tes nobles travaux ne fais aucune pause,

Et quoi qu'un maitre ait fait pour te faire enrager,

Acheve pour ta gloire, et non pour l'obliger.

Mais quoi! Que feras-tu, que de l'eau toute claire,

Traversé sans repos par ce démon contraire?

Tu vois qu'è chaque instant, il te fait déchanter,

Et que c'est battre l'eau de prétendre arreter

Ce torrent effréné, qui de tes artifices

Renverse en un moment les plus beaux édifices.

Eh bien! pour toute grâce, encore un coup du moins,

Au hasard du succès sacrifions des soins;

Et s'il poursuit encore è rompre notre chance,

J'y consens, ôtons-lui toute notre assistance.
XLVIII. Bernard Mandeville on Gin
Authors: Anderson Paul Bunyan
Published: February 2007

Dr. Bernard Mandeville in reissuing in 1714 the doggerel verses which he had first published in 1705 under the title, The Grumbling Hive: Or, Knaves Turn'd Honest, added extensive prose remarks and a provocative title, The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, but he failed to stir a ripple of protest in English complacency, or even to attract attention by his bold thinking. In 1723, publishing his materials once more with extensive additions, by which he had industriously doubled the bulk of his book, Mandeville at last received his reward in the storm of abuse which burst about his head. He was recognized as the disturber of every acceptable idea which good men then took for granted. The Fable of the Bees became notorious. It was read widely in English and translated into French and German. Throughout the century it was thought to merit discussion, and if possible, vigorous refutation by the men in Europe distinguished for either piety or intelligence. By many readers Mandeville was held to be a monster of impiety, a low rogue too vile to be counted human.
XLIX. Shelley and Claire Clairmont
Authors: Smith John Harrington
Published: February 2007

Students of Shelley's highly complex and puzzling personality have always found it necessary to be concerned with the “sisters of his soul.” No great amount of attention has, however, thus far been paid to Claire (Clara Mary Jane) Clairmont, daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by a previous marriage, companion of Shelley and Mary on the elopement, and thereafter for long intervals a member of the Shelley household. Gossip involving the poet with her was current during his lifetime; veiled charges of misconduct with her were sometimes brought against him, even in print. Partly as a result of a reaction against the virulence and obvious prejudice of these attacks, partly because Claire's liaison with Byron distracted attention from Shelley, but chiefly because it was the settled policy of Shelley's family that in all biographies written with their co-operation the poet's union with Mary should be represented as an ideal one, the Victorian tendency was to deny Claire any real importance for Shelley. Such was Dowden's doctrine, as will hereafter be made abundantly clear; and Dowden has determined the course for subsequent biographers. W. E. Peck either intentionally avoids developing a theory of Shelley-Claire relationships, or fails to do so. In that part of his biography in which he comes closest to committing himself, he shows the Dowden influence.
L. Carlyle's Marginalia in Sterling's Essays and Tales
Authors: Tuell Anne Kimball
Published: February 2007

Nowhere, perhaps, are the Carlyle marginal annotations more suggestive and diverting than on his copies of Essays and Tales by John Sterling, in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection at the Harvard College Library.

This Sterling is, of course, Carlyle's John Sterling, subject of the Carlyle Life to be issued three years later. Commonly known only as a young man for whom two unnecessary biographies were written, Sterling appears on further acquaintance to be delightfully representative of his time. Though the chronicle of his years is largely a record of vain Sittings in search of health, ending in slow death by tuberculosis, he managed throughout to keep his soul singularly alive and sensitive. A brilliant leader of the famous “Apostles” at Cambridge, he shared the undergraduate idealism there of the 1820's. As part owner of the young Athenaeum in 1828 and 18295 he did his bit at “uplift” in journalism.
LII Mrs. Browning's Rhymes
Authors: Smith Fred Manning
Published: February 2007

For many years critics have been finding fault with Mrs. Browning's rhymes. Asserting that she “richly deserves the place generally accorded her as the foremost poetess of England,” that her Sonnets from' the Portuguese take “rank with Shakespeare's Sonnets and Rossetti's House of Life as one of the three great English sonnet cycles,” that “some of her social poems seem written in blood,” that she is at times “not only original but an equal of the greatest,” and that “her poem ‘The Great God Pan’ is almost perfect,” yet critics repeat the Victorian criticism of her rhymes. Saintsbury considers her “proficient in all the qualities which distinguish the poet from the prose-writer with the exception of ear for rhyme”; and this is what he says of these rhymes: “The dullness or falseness of her ear for consonance of sound was quite unparalleled, and she, with all the advantages of gentle birth, feminine sex, country breeding, and an almost scholarly education, confuses rhymes in a manner usually supposed to be limited to the lower class of cockneys.” Other critics have said her rhymes are “inadmissible,” “eccentric,” “illegitimate,” “slovenly false,” “vicious,” “feeble and commonplace,” “careless and perverse,” “painful,” “really shocking,” and that “few, if any, poets have sinned more grievously or frequently against the laws of metre and rhyme.”
LIV. Gedanken Zu Hofmannsthals Begriff Der “Konservativen Revolution”
Authors: Schumann Detlev W.
Published: February 2007

Wenige Jahre vor seinem Tode suchte Hugo von Hofmannsthal in seinem Aufsatz Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation (1927) Rechenschaft abzulegen über die innersten Kräfte, die dem deutschen Geist jener Epoche Richtung gaben. Indem er sich nun hier gegen Schluss zu weitester Sicht erhebt, heisst es (S. 442):

Ich spreche von einem Prozess, in dem wir mitten inne stehen, einer Synthese, so langsam und grossartig—wenn man sie von aussen zu sehen vermöchte—als finster und priifend, wenn man in ihr steht. Langsam und grossartig dürfen wir den Vorgang wohl nennen, wenn wir bedenken, dass auch der lange Zeitraum der Entwicklung von den Zuckungen des Aufklärungszeitalters bis zu uns nur eine Spanne in ihm ist, dass er eigentlich anhebt als eine innere Gegenbewegung gegen jene Geistesumwälzung des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, die wir in ihren zwei Aspekten Renaissance und Reformation zu nennen pflegen. Der Prozess, von dem ich rede, ist nichts anderes als eine konservative Revolution von einem Umfange, wie die europäische Geschichte ihn nicht kennt....
Lx: Understatement in Old English Poetry
Authors: Bracher Frederick
Published: February 2007

One of the most striking features of the style of Old English poetry is the frequent use of rhetorical understatement. A. H. Tolman was apparently the first to point out this stylistic trait, and more recently passing references to it have been frequent. The following article attempts an investigation of its origin, occurrence, and uses.
Lxiv: The Identity of Francesco Cieco da Ferrara
Authors: French Reginald Foster
Published: February 2007

Francesco Cieco da Ferrara, author of the Mambriano, has been an enigmatic figure in Italian literature. It is strange that so little is known of this important intermediary between Boiardo and Ariosto. Long after his death, it is true, some definite but extravagant things were written about him by literary men who probably felt the need of dressing up the poor poet: he was an eminent jurist, a theologian and philosopher. But we know only Cieco the minstrel, and common sense would question the truth of these assertions. Again, almost a hundred years after his death, the family name of Bello was bestowed upon Cieco by Francesco Buonamici, a philosopher and astronomer whose information about Italian literary matters was scant and inaccurate. Although scholars like Rua have followed the Bello clue without success, this cognomen has come down into our library catalogues and even into Rua's own edition of the Mambriano, Would it not be good sense to dismiss the Bello christening as the tardy and offhand mistake of an astrologer?
Lxix: Jakob von Graviseth's Heutelia
Authors: Friederich Werner Paul
Published: February 2007

Graviseth's anonymously published Heutelia, only superficially mentioned in manuals of Swiss literature (except Ermatinger's), deserves a short analytic study both on account of its interest as a state-satire preceding the Age of Enlightenment and on account of the rarity of its editions, which are not accessible to scholars in America.

The book, published in 1658, does not greatly point to the past, although its satirical trends, its realistic and grobianistic elements, and its dislike of monks and women do indeed remind us of the esprit gaulois of Rabelais and the mentality of Fischart and the pamphleteers of the Reformation. More important is the political aspect of this diary of a critical journey through Switzerland; and the whole tenor of Heutelia, the penetrating analyses of men and their institutions, the sharp attacks against the vices of the ancien régime and the bigoted intolerance of the church, make the book an early forerunner of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. Its style is still baroque and its vocabulary full of foreign words; but in its keen political criticism this book inaugurates an era of greater liberalism. Graviseth, a German aristocrat from the Palatinate who had become citizen of Bern, may well be likened to Albrecht von Haller, because both of them, though aristocrats to the core, tried equally discreetly to work for greater social justice for all. Haller's state-novels attempt it in the realm of pure thought, in carefully worded philosophical and political dialogues; while Graviseth, much more realistic and earthy, mingles jokes and coarseness in his paragraphs, ridiculing the masses for their materialistic viciousness.
Lxx: Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough
Authors: Lynch Kathleen M.
Published: February 2007

Among the shadowy figures that make up the circle of Congreve's most intimate friends, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, seems to have suffered most from the gossip of her own age and from the more detached but still biassed estimates of later critics. Not one of her contemporaries spoke a really decisive word in her favor; and the biographers of Congreve have preferred to dismiss her as an amusing eccentric. But one critic, Leigh Hunt, has cared to linger over this minor portrait, commenting on “the slow yet sensitive mind” of the Duchess and concluding that she loved Congreve “with all the heart she had, and a great deal of obstinacy.”
Lxxii: Montaigne as a Source of la Fontaine's Fable: la Mort et le Mourant
Authors: King Paul C.
Published: February 2007

In his Seconde Lettre à Monsieur de Voltaire sur ses Jugemens Littéraires Clément de Dijon makes the following statements:

J'aime dans Montaigne sa Philosophie douce et riante, sans morgue et sans pédanterie, qui répand l'enjouement sur les choses les plus sérieuses. Cette Philosophie est celle de La Fontaine qui a beaucoup imité Montaigne … Voyez que le ton de Montaigne vous découvre un homme gaiement préparé a faire bonne contenance contre la mort.
Lxxiii: Addison and Some of his Predecessors on “Novelty”
Authors: Thorpe Clarence DeWitt
Published: February 2007

When Addison in his essay on the imagination made novelty a source of aesthetic pleasure, along with beauty and grandeur, he was not announcing a discovery. Previous critics had repeatedly noted the efficacy of the varied and strange, the wonderful, and the surprising in achieving desired poetic effects. Addison's idea of novelty includes these elements. The new or uncommon diverts our minds with “the Strangeness of its appearance”; the novel “fills the Soul with an agreeable Surprise”; variety, in the essay on the Imagination and in the criticism of Paradise Lost alike, is a virtual synonym for novelty; and the wonderful, or the marvelous, almost invariably applies to that which possesses both grandeur and novelty—to anything that excites “admiration.”
Lxxv: The Union of the Arts in Die Braut Von Messina
Authors: Clark Robert T.
Published: February 2007

It has been quite some time since the charge that Schiller's Braut von Messina is a fate-tragedy à la Zacharias Werner was completely dismissed. We can also disregard the mixture of mythologies frowned upon by A. W. Schlegel, since in our day mythologies, like universes, threaten to become relative. The idea that the Braut is a pure imitation of the Greek tragedy, and that its dramatist was following Sophocles particularly, has fallen by implication, since attempts to point out the sources have gone down into ignoble failure.

On the other hand, we may today accept the brilliant critical statement of Wilhelm Dilthey, that the Braut is “das Mittelglied zwischen dem antiken Drama und der neuen Form des musikalischen Drama, die Wagner in den Nibelungen schuf.” This idea has been expanded by Josef Nadler, who does not fail to exclaim against the obstinate misinterpretation to which this drama, together with the Jungfrau von Orleans, has consistently been subjected. Nadler sees in the Braut the culmination of a tendency noticeable in the operatic tones of the Jungfrau, a tendency toward the creation of tragedy out of the spirit of music.
Lxxvi: Remy de Gourmont Critique
Authors: Denkinger Marc
Published: February 2007

Il y a trois mois s'éteignait Alfred Valette, le directeur du Mercure de France depuis sa fondation, exactement un jour et vingt ans après Remy de Gourmont. Des fondateurs de la vivante revue qui célébrera dans quatre ans ses noces d'or avec la littérature, un seul survit aujourd'hui, M. Ernest Reynaud. On écrira un jour l'histoire de la vie littéraire d'avant-hier; le rôle, joué par le Mercure, revue et maison d'édition, se révélera considérable, non seulement à l'égard des lettres, mais de la pensée. Au centre d'une phalange d'hommes de talent, on verra se détacher deux figures, Valette et Gourmont, l'un le directeur identifié à sa fonction, qui communiqua au Mercure sa propre solidité, l'autre, l'auteur des Promenades littéraires, des Promenades philosophiques, des Epilogues, qui lui passa quelque chose de ses goûts universels; l'un, l'homme de jugement et d'action, l'autre l'homme de réflexion. Valette et Gourmont furent les consuls du Mercure de France des vingt-cinq premières années. Il se trouve que les dernières lignes écrites par Valette furent un témoignage d'amitié, rendu à la mémoire de l'autre consul, à l'occasion du vingtième aniversaire de sa mort. Quand elles sortirent de presse, Valette n'était plus.
Lxxvii: The Significance of Tolstoy's War Stories
Authors: Manning Clarence A.
Published: February 2007

The attempts to analyze the significance of Count Leo Tolstoy and to understand the workings of his mind have not yet reached any satisfactory conclusion. The riddle of the man's personality and the sources of his power still defy careful labelling, for the inconsistencies of his thoughts and actions have been swept away from sight by the blasts of his genius. Out of the confusion has emerged a great Tolstoy, but it is difficult to unite this legend with the man as we know him in sober history and in fact. This difficulty is recognized by many modern students. Thus Aldanov frankly calls his small but suggestive volume Zagadka Tolstogo (The Riddle of Tolstoy), and Alexander Nazaroff in Tolstoy, the Inconstant Genius also emphasizes the contradictions in his life and allows them to speak for themselves. The effect is surprising, but not as unkind as it might seem.
Lxxviii: Edouard Rod and André Gladès
Authors: Wadsworth James Raymond
Published: February 2007

The critics and biographers of Edouard Rod have almost without exception failed to mention the emotional experience which inspired his best novels. Beuchat, in describing Rod's sojourn at Geneva from 1886 to 1893, does refer briefly and inadequately to his love for André Gladès. His statement, which suggests only incompletely the influence of André Gladès on the composition of Rod's novels, needs to be amplified and clarified. For, notwithstanding Rod's own confession that she more than any other person influenced his subsequent literary career, other critics have ignored the existence of André Gladès and have consequently failed to give a complete and accurate interpretation of his work and its sources of inspiration.