A WINTER'S TALE

THE TEMPEST

KING HENRY VIII

This order once adopted it has not been nough to follow it in the arrangement of

extra-dramatic bits;" for many of these, ough varied in phrasing, color and depth, e too closely knit in substance to be interrupted by others falling between them in the mere order of time. Such bits must perforce be grouped together. But these groups themselves fall readily into a chronological arrangement; for each has its centre of most intense meaning in some play or poem of more or less definite date.

The resulting compilation has been still more completely crystallized by division into two main parts: the first a series of quotations dealing with Shakespeare's outlook on the Elizabethan world, on its ways and its opinions; the second revealing what appears to be his own living experience of heart, mind and spirit. The first division, called in this book "The Poet's World," shows less change with

Introduction

Introduction

the changing years than the second division,
"The Poet's Mind." In the first
In the first part, there-
fore, chronology often gives place to the
sequence of logic: while the quotations in each
group fall into the order of Shakespeare's
works, the groups themselves often follow as
subject leads to subject. In the second part,
however, the chronological sequence is hardly
relaxed except in such cases as that of Shake-
speare's marriage, where the known facts of
his life date his impressions at a time far
earlier than that of their main outcropping
in his works.

Some relaxation of the experimental method has clearly been necessary in compiling this volume. Tact, quite as often as science, has been the editor's guide; and tact implies a personal equation. Impersonal as the editor has striven to be, the picture of Shakespeare in this volume is doubtless, therefore, seen through a colored medium. Shakespeare's struggle between mind and passion shows perhaps more darkly, the story behind the sonnets seems perhaps more dim, than some critics may like. Personal preju

dice of some sort, however, could not have been escaped; and be it said that few quotable "bits" have been omitted, whose inclusion might not emphasize as Shakespeare's some event of merely imaginary biography. Except for the sonnets, this collection, indeed, has at least that objectivity which fullness tends to give. And uncertain though it be, the mental autobiography incarnate in this book may bring the reader into closer sympathy with Shakespeare's life than any slight study of his poems or plays.

The Shakespeare of this volume is passiontorn, sensitive, trusting in sanity; wise less in mind than in colossal human knowledge. If this "Wisdom of Shakespeare" brings Whim near to the reader's heart, our task is well done.

One practical word. In this text the final ed has been eliminated except where meant to be pronounc'd. This caution too. As even casual students know, many a word whose meaning in Shakespeare's plays seems clear had been completely transformed in the inter

Introduction

Introduction

vening years. While we know, then, that Hamlet's bodkin is a dagger, we may some of us forget that sanctimonious had the meaning which holy conveys to men of today. A glossary, therefore, has been appended to this book. The unscholarly wise will glance down its columns.

HENRY COPLEY GREENE.