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THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

By Appleton Morgan

Author Of "The Law Of Literature,"

"Notes To Best's Principles Of Evidence," Etc., Etc=


````Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves;

````Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves;

````Sic vos non vobis melliflcatus apes;

````Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves.

`````--_P. Virgil. Maro_=

Cincinnati, Robert Clarke & Co

1881



TO D. T. MORGAN, ESQ.,

OF WHIP'S CROSS, WALTHAMSTOW, ESSEX, ENGLAND.

My Dear Sir:

I do not know your opinion on the matter treated in these pages. Very
possibly you will disagree with every line of my Brief. But it gives me
pleasure to connect my name with yours on this page, and to subscribe
myself

Very faithfully, your kinsman,

APPLETON MORGAN.

October, 1881.




PREFACE.

|M. Guizot, in his History of England, states the Shakespearean
problem in a few words, when he says: "Let us finally mention the great
comedian, the great tragedian, the great philosopher, the great poet,
who was in his lifetime butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical
manager, and whose name is William Shakespeare. In twenty years, amid
the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of
instructing his actors, he composed the thirty-two tragedies and
comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of
human nature, and an unequaled power of imagination, terrible and comic
by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to
every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of
his experience and for ever remaining the treasure of the age--all this
being accomplished, Shakespeare left the theater and the busy world,
at the age of forty-five, to return to Stratford-on-Avon, where lived
peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing and never
returning to the stage--ignored and unknown if his works had not forever
marked out his place in the world--a strange example of an imagination
so powerful, suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing, once for all, the
door to the efforts of genius."

But M. Guizot is very far from suggesting any prima facie inconsistency
in this statement as it stands.

Since every man reads the Shakespearean pages for himself and between
the lines, much of what we are expected to accept as Shakespearean
criticism must fail of universal appreciation and sympathy. But none who
read the English tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as
to <b>who wrote</b> those pages; and it would be affectation to deny that
the intense realism of our day is offering some startling contributions
to the solution of that question.

For instance, the gentlemen of the "New Shakespeare Society" (whom
Mr. Swinburne rather mercilessly burlesques in his recent "_Studies of
Shakespeare_") submit these dramas to a quantitative analysis; and,
by deliberately counting the "male," "female," "weak," and "stopped"
endings, and the Alexandrines and catalectics (just as a mineralogist
counts the degrees and minutes in the angles of his crystals), insist on
their ability to pronounce didatically and infallibly what was written
by William Shakespeare, and at what age; what was composed by Dekker,
Fletcher, Marlowe, or anybody else; what was originally theirs, touched
up by William Shakespeare or _vice versa_, etc. It is curious to observe
how this process invariably gives all the admirable sentiments to
William Shakespeare, and all the questionable ones to somebody else; but
at least these New Shakespearean gentlemen have surrendered somewhat of
the "cast-iron" theory of our childhood--that every page, line, and word
of the immortal Shakespearean Drama was written by William Shakespeare
demi-god, and by none other--perhaps, even opened a path through which
the unbelievers may become, in due time, orthodox.

There are still, however, a great many persons who are disposed to wave
the whole question behind them, much as Mr. Podsnap disposed of the
social evil or a famine in India. It is only a "Historic Doubt," they
say, and "Historic Doubts" are not rare, are mainly contrived to exhibit
syllogistic ingenuity in the teeth of facts, etc., etc. The French, they
say, have the same set of problems about Molière. Was he a lawyer?
was he a doctor? etc.--and they all find their material in internal
evidence--e. g., an accurate handling of the technique of this or that
profession or science: parallelism, practical coincidence, or something
of that sort.

The present work is an attempt to examine, for the benefit of these
latter, from purely external evidence, a question which, dating only
within the current quarter century, is constantly recurring to confront
investigation, and, like Banquo's troublesome shade, seems altogether
indisposed to "down."

I have to add my acknowledgments to Mr. Julian Norris, for his careful
preparation of the Index to these pages.

Grandview-on-Hudson, October 2, 1881. {009}




THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH.



PART I. THE MYSTERY.

[Illustration: 9015]

HE thirty-seven plays called, collectively, "Shakespeare," are a
phenomenon, not only in English letters, but in human experience. The
literature of the country to which they belong, had, up to the date
of their appearance, failed to furnish, and has been utterly powerless
since, to produce any type, likeness, or formative trace of them; while
the literature of other nations possesses not even a corresponding type.
The history of a century on either side of their era discloses, within
the precints of their birth, no resources upon which levy could have
been made for their creation. They came and went like a meteor; neither
borrowing of what they found, nor loaning to what they left, their own
peculiar and unapproachable magnificence.

The unremitting researches of two centuries have only been able to
assign their authorship (where it rested at first) to an hiatus in the
life of a wayward village lad named William Shakespeare--who fled his
native town penniless and before the constable, to return, in a few
years, a well-to-do esquire--with a coat of arms and money in his
pocket. {010}We have the history of the boy, and certain items as to
the wealthy squire, who left behind him two or three exceedingly
common-place and conventional epitaphs (said to be his handiwork) and
a remarkable will; but, between them, no hint of history, chronicle, or
record. Still, within this unknown period of this man's career, these
matchless dramas came from somewhere, and passed current under his name.

The death of their reputed author attracted no contemporary attention,
and for many years thereafter the dramas remained unnoticed. Although
written in an idiom singularly open to the comprehension of all classes
and periods of English-speaking men, no sooner did they begin to be
remarked, than a cloud of what are politely called "commentators" bore
down upon them; any one who could spell feeling at liberty to furnish
a "reading;" and any one who supposed himself able to understand one of
these "readings," to add a barnacle in the shape of a "note." From these
"commentators" the stately text is even now in peril, and rarely, even
to-day, can it be perused, except one line at a time, across the top
of a dreary page of microscopic and exasperating annotation. But, up to
within a very few years, hardly a handful of Shakespearean students
had arisen with courage to admit--what scarcely any one of the
"commentators" even, could have failed to perceive--the utterly
inadequate source ascribed to the plays themselves.

It is not yet thirty years since an American lady was supposed to have
gone crazy because she declared that William Shakespeare, of the Globe
and Black-friars theaters in London, in the days of Elizabeth, was not
the author of these certain dramas and poems {011}for which--for almost
three hundred years--he has stood sponsor.

Miss Bacon's "madness," indeed, has been rapidly contageous. Now-a-days,
men make books to prove, not that William Shakespeare did not write
these works, but that Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, or some other
Elizabethan, did not. And we even find, now and then, a treatise written
to prove that William Shakespeare was, after all, their author; an
admission, at least, that the ancient presumption to that effect no
longer covers the case. And, doubtless, the correct view is within this
admission. For, probably, if permitted to examine this presumption by
the tests which would be applied to any other question of fact, namely,
the tests of contemporary history, muniments, and circumstantial
evidence, it will be found to be quite as well established and proved
that William Shakespeare was not the author of the plays that go by his
name, as any other fact, occurring in London between the years 1585
and 1616, not recorded in history or handed down by tradition, could be
established and proved in 1881.

If a doubt as to the authorship of the plays had arisen at any time
during or between those years, and had been kept open thereafter, the
probability is that it would have been settled by this time. But, as it
is, we may be pretty certain that no such doubt did arise, and that
no such question was asked, during the years when those who could have
dispelled the doubt or answered the question were living. When we
are about to visit a theater in these days, what we ask and concern
ourselves with is: Is the play entertaining? Does it "draw?" And, when
we wit{012}ness it, the question is: Do we enjoy it--or does it bore us?
Will we recommend our friends to come that they may be entertained, too,
and that we may discuss it with them? or will we warn them to keep away?
We very speedily settle these questions for ourselves. Doubtless we
may and do inquire who the author is. But we do not enter into any
discussion upon the subject, or charge our minds enough with the matter
to doubt it when we are told. The author's name is, not unusually,
printed on the play-bill before us; we glance at it indifferently, take
what is told us for granted, and think no more about it. If the name
happens to be assumed, we may possibly see its identity discussed in the
dramatic columns of our newspapers next morning, or we may not. If the
play entertains us, we commend it. If it drags, we sneer at it, get up
and go off. That is all the concern we give it. The evening has slipped
away; and, with it, any idle speculations as to the playwright who has
essayed to amuse us for an hour.

If, three hundred years hence, a question as to who wrote the play we
saw at Mr. Daly's theater or Mr. Wallack's theater last evening should
come up, there would be very little evidence, not any records, and
scarcely an exhibit to refer to in the matter. Copies of the play-bill
or the newspapers of the day might chance to be discovered; but
these--the internal testimony of the play itself, if any, and a sort
of tacit presumption growing out of a statement it was nobody's cue to
inquire into at the time it was made, and had been nobody's business to
scrutinize since--would constitute all the evidence at hand. How this
supposititious case is precisely all-fours with the facts {013}in the
matter of the dramatic works which we call, collectively, Shakespeare's.
Precisely: except that, on the evenings when those plays were acted,
there were no play-bills, and, on the succeeding morning, no daily
newspaper. We have, therefore, in 1881, much fewer facilities for
setting ourselves right as to their authorship than those living three
hundred years after us could possess in the case we have supposed.
The audiences who witnessed a certain class of plays at Shakespeare's
theaters, in the years between 1585 and 1606, were entertained. The
plays "drew." People talked of them about town, and they become valuable
to their proprietors. The mimic lords and ladies were acceptable to
the best seats; the rabble loved the show and glitter and the alarum of
drums; and all were Britons who gloated over rehearsal of the prowess
of their own kings and heroes, and to be told that their countrymen at
Agincourt had slain ten thousand Frenchmen at an expense of but five
and twenty of themselves. But, if M. Taine's description of the
Shakespearean theaters and the audience therein wont to assemble may be
relied upon, we can pretty safely conclude that they troubled themselves
very little as to who fashioned the dialogue the counterfeit kings and
queens, soldiers, lords, and ladies spoke; or that they saw any thing in
that dialogue to make such speculation appear worth their while. Nor can
we discover any evidence, even among the cultured courtiers who listened
to them--or in the case of Elizabeth herself, who is said to have loved
them (which we may as well admit for the argument's sake)--that
any recognition of the plays as works worthy of any other than a
stage-manager, occurred. {014}Even if it should appear that these plays
thus performed were the plays we now call Shakespeare's; had any of this
audience suspected that these plays were not written for them, but for
all time; that, three hundred years later--when the plays should not
only be extant, but more loved and admired than ever--the thinking world
should set itself seriously to probe the mystery of their origin; there
might have been some interest as to their producer manifested, and we
might have had some testimony competent to the exact point to-day.

But it is evident enough that no such prophetic vision was vouchsafed
to them, and no such prophetic judgment passed. Nor is the phenomenon
exceptional. The critic, does not live, even to-day, however learned or
cultured or shrewd, who would take the responsibility of affirming upon
his own judgment, or even upon the universal judgment of his age and
race, that any literary composition would be, after a lapse of three
hundred years, not only extant, but immortal, hugged as its birthright
by a whole world. Such a statement would have been contrary to
experience, beyond the prophecy of criticism, and therefore only to be
known--if known at all--as a Fact. Moreover, it could only be known as
a fact at the expiration of the three hundred years. Doubtless, few
critics would care, in any case, to commit themselves upon record one
way or the other in a matter so hypothetical and speculative as the
judgment of posterity upon a literary performance, and certainly nothing
of the sort occurred in Shakespeare's day, even if there were any
dramatic or literary critics to speculate upon the subject. There can be
no doubt--and it must be conceded {015}--that certain acted plays _did_
pass with their first audiences, and that certain printed plays, both
contemporaneously and for years thereafter, did pass with the public
who read them, as the compositions of Mr. Manager Shakespeare; and that
probably even the manager's pot companions, who had better call to know
him than any others, saw nothing to shake their heads at in his claim
to be their author (provided he ever made any such claim; which, by the
way, does not appear from any record of his life, and which nobody ever
asserted as a fact). If they did--with the exception only of Robert
Greene--they certainly kept their own counsel. On the one hand, then,
the question of the authorship was never raised, and, on the other
hand, if it had been, the scholars and critics who studied the plays
(supposing that there were any such in those days) could not possibly
have recognized them as immortal. If they had so recognized them, they
would doubtless have left us something more satisfactory as to the
authorship of the compositions than the mere "impression that they were
informed" that the manager of the theater where they were produced wrote
them; that they supposed he was clever enough to have done so, and they
therefore took it for granted that he did. That is all there is of the
evidence of Shakespeare's own day, as to the question--if it still is a
question--before us.

But how about the presumption--the legal presumption, arising from such
lapse of time as that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary--the
presumption springing from tradition and common report--that William
Shakespeare composed the Shakespearean plays? It is, of course,
understood that one presump{016}tion is as good as another until it is
disturbed. It is never safe to underrate an existing presumption; as
long as it stands at all, it stands as conclusive; once overthrown,
however, it is as if it had never existed.

A presumption three hundred years old may be a strong one to overthrow.
But if its age is all there is of it--if it be only strong in years--it
can yet be toppled over. Once overthrown, it is no more venerable
because it is three hundred years old than if it were only three. An
egg-shell will toss upon the crest of an angry surf, and, for very
frailty, outride breakers when the mightiest ship man ever framed could
not survive an instant. But it is only an egg-shell, for all that, and a
touch of the finger will crush and destroy it. And so, formidable as it
was in age, the presumption as to William Shakespeare's authorship of
the great dramas which for three hundred years had gone by his name, had
only to be touched by the thumb and finger of common sense to crackle
and shrivel like the egg that sat on the wall in the Kindergarten rhyme,
which all the king's army and all the king's men could not set up again,
once it had tumbled over.

But as the world advanced and culture increased, why did not the
question arise before? Simply because the times were not ripe for it.
This is the age and generation for the explosion of myths, and, as
one after another of them falls to pieces and disappears, who does not
wonder that they have not fallen sooner? For how many years has the myth
of William Tell been cherished as history! And yet there is no element
of absolute impossibility or even of improbability--much less of
miracle--in the story of an archer with a sure eye and a steady aim. Or,
in the case of physical {017}myths--which only required an exploration
by physical sense for their explosion--the maps of two centuries or
so ago represented all inaccessible seas as swarming with krakens and
ship-devouring reptiles. And it is not twenty years since children were
taught in their geographies that upon the coast of Norway there was a
whirlpool which sucked down ships prow foremost. And here, in our
midst, a cannon-shot from where we sit and write these lines, there was
believed to be and exist a Hell Gate which was a very portal of death
and slaughter to hapless mariners. But there are no krakens, and not
much of a Maelstrom; and, for twenty years before General Newton blew
up a few rocks at Hell Gate, people had laughed at the myth of its
ferocity. And again: nothing is easier than to invent a story so utterly
unimportant and immaterial that it will be taken for granted, without
controversy, and circulate with absolute immunity from examination,
simply because worth nobody's while to contradict it. For example, it
is likely enough that Demosthenes, in practicing oratory, stood on
a sea-beach and drilled his voice to outroar the waves. The story is
always told, however, with the rider, that Demosthenes did this with his
mouth filled with pebble-stones; and, as nobody cares whether he did or
not, nobody troubles himself to ascertain by experiment that the
thing is impossible, and that nobody can roar with a mouth full of
pebble-stones. And not even then would he succeed in removing the
impression obtaining with the great mass of the world, that a thing is
proven sufficiently if it gets into "print." Charles II. set the Royal
Society of his day at work to {018}find the reason why a dead fish
weighed more than a live one--and it was only when they gave it up, that
the playful monarch assured them that the fact they were searching for
the reason of was not a fact at all. It is not impossible to demonstrate
from experience, that the human mind will be found--as a rule--to prefer
wasting laborious days in accounting for, rather than take the very
simplest pains to verify even a proposition or alleged fact, which, if a
fact at all, is of value beyond itself. It was objected to the system of
Copernicus, when first brought forward, that, if the earth turned on its
axis as he represented, a stone dropped from the summit of a tower would
not fall at the foot of it, but at a great distance to the west, in the
same manner that a stone dropped from the masthead of a ship in full
sail does not fall at the foot of the mast, but toward the stern. To
this it was answered that a stone, being a part of the earth, obeys
the same laws and moves with it, whereas it is no part of the ship,
of which, consequently, its motion is independent. This solution was
admitted by some and opposed by others, and the controversy went on with
spirit; nor was it till one hundred years after the death of Copernicus
that, the experiment being tried, it was ascertained that the stone thus
dropped from the head of the mast does fall at the foot of it. And so,
if, in the case of the Shakespearean authorship, the day has come for
truth to dispel fiction, and reason to scout organic miracle, why should
we decline to look into an alleged Shakespearean myth simply because it
happens to be a little tardy in coming to the surface?

But, most of all, it is to be remembered that it is, practically,
only our own century that has compre{019}hended the masterliness and
matchlessness of the "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," and the rest of those
transcripts of nature, the prophetic insight of whose author "spanned
the ages that were to roll up after him, mastered the highest wave of
modern learning and discovery, and touched the heart of all time, not
through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting mankind up
ont of the loud kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity; who
so wrote that to his all-seeing vision schools and libraries, sciences
and philosophies, were unnecessary, because his own marvelous intuition
had grasped all the past and seen through all his present and all his
future, and because, before his superhuman power, time and space had
vanished and disappeared." * The age for which the dramas were written
had not come, in that Elizabethan era.

     *  Jean Paul Frederich Richter. {020}deed, why our question
     did not arise sooner. Nobody asked, "Who wrote Shakespeare?"
     because nobody seemed to consider "Shakespeare" as any thing
     worth speculating about. Let us pause right here to
     demonstrate this.

The tongues of the actors were tied, the ears of the audience were deaf
to syllables whose burden was for the centuries that were to come
after. The time for the question, "Who wrote them?" was not yet. For two
hundred years more--from the day of William Shakespeare's death down to
years within the memory of those now living--down to at least the date
of Lord Byron (who admits that it is the perfectly correct thing to call
Shakespeare "god-like," "mighty," and the like, but very unfashionable
to read him),--we may ransack the records of scholarship and criticism,
and unearth scarcely a hint of what is now their every-where conceded
superiority, to say nothing of their immortality. In short, we can not
rise from such a search without understanding, very clearly in Fuller,
in 1622, chronicles that William Shakespeare's "genius was jocular," his
comedies merry, and his tragedies wonderful; his wit quick, but that his
learning was very little. Evelyn notes that, in 1661, he saw "Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark," played: "but now the old plays begin to disgust this
refined age, since His Majesty has been so long abroad." * Pepys, his
contemporary, says that the "'Midsummer-Night's Dream' was the most
insipid, ridiculous play he had ever seen.... and, but having lately
read the 'Adventures of Five Hours,' 'Othello' seemed a mean thing,"
though he liked Davenant's opera of "Macbeth," with its music and
dancing. ** When spending some money in books he looks over Shakespeare,
but chooses "'Hudibras,' the book now in the greatest fashion for
drollery," instead. It is doubtful if Milton ever read the Shakespearean
plays, in spite of the eloquent verses, "What needs my Shakespeare,"
etc.; since, in "L'Allegro," he speaks of his (Shakespeare's) "native
wood-notes wild." ***

     *  Amenities of Authors--Shakespeare," p. 210.

     **  Ibid., p. 211.

     ***  Dr. Maginn, in his Shakespearean papers ("Learning of
     Shakespeare"), endeavors to explain what Milton meant by
     "native wood-notes wild."

Surely if there is any thing in letters that is not "native wood-notes,"
it is the stately Shakespearean verse, full of camps and courts, but
very rarely of woodlands and {021}pastures; besides, whatever Milton
might say of the book called "Shakespeare" in poetry--like Ben
Jon-son--he showed unmitigated contempt for its writer in prose: about
the worst thing he could say about his king in "The Iconoclast," was
that Charles I. kept an edition of Shakespeare for his closet companion.
* "Other stuff of this sort," cries the blind poet, "may be read
throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used much license in
departing from the truth of history." **

In 1681, one Nahum Tate, supposed to be a poet (a delusion so widespread
that he was actually created "poet laureate") stumbled upon "a thing
called Lear," assigned to one William Shakespeare, and, after much
labor, congratulated himself upon having "been able to make a play out
of it." ***

     *   "Amenities of Authors--Shakespeare," vol. ii, p. 208.
     Ibid., p. 209, note.

     **  It is fair to say that "stuff" may only have meant
     "matter," but it is indisputable that the passage was meant
     as a slur on one who would read "Shakespeare."

     ***  The "play" he did make out of it is to be found in W.
     H. Smith's "Bacon and Shakespeare," p. 129. {022}so meanly
     written that the comedy neither caused your mirth nor the
     serious part your concernment....

John Dryden, in or about 1700, in his "Defence of the Epilogue," a
postscript to his tragedy "The Conquest of Granada," says: "Let any man
who understands English, read diligently the works of Shakespeare and
Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either
some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; and yet
these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven." He denounces
"the lameness of their plots," made up of some "ridiculous incoherent
story,... either grounded on impossibilities, or, at least, he writes,
in many places, below the dullest writers of our own or any precedent
age." Of the audiences who could tolerate such matter, he says: "They
knew no better, and therefore were satisfied with what they brought.
Those who call theirs the 'Golden Age of Poetry,' have only this reason
for it: that they were then content with acorns before they knew the
use of bread," etc. * To show the world how William Shakespeare _should_
have written, Mr. Dryden publishes his own improved version of "Troilus
and Cressida," "with an abjectly fulsome dedication to the Earl of
Sunderland, and a Preface," ** in which he is obliging enough to
say that the style of Shakespeare being "so pestered with figurative
expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure;" that, though
"the author seems to have began it with some fire, the characters of
'Pandarus' and 'Troilus' are promising enough, but, as if he grew weary
of his task, after an entrance or two, he lets 'em fall, and the latter
part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets,
excursions and alarms. The chief persons who give name to the tragedy
are left alive. 'Cressida' is left alive and is not punished."

     *  "Works," edited by Malone, vol. ii, p. 252.

     **  "Troilus and Cressida, or Truth Found Too Late." Written
     by John Dryden, servant to his Majesty, London (4to) printed
     for Abel Small, at the Unicorn at the West End of St.
     Paul's, and Jacob Tonson, at the Judge's Head, in Chancery
     Lane, near Fleet street. 1679.

"I have undertaken to remove that heap of rubbish.... I new-modelled the
plot; threw out many unnecessary persons, improved {023}those characters
which were begun and left unfinished,... made, with no small trouble, an
order and connection of the scenes, and... so ordered them that there is
a coherence of 'em with one another,... a due proportion of time allowed
for every motion,... have refined the language, etc."

The same thing was done in 1672, by Ravenscroft, who produced an
adaptation of "Titus Andronicus," and boasted "that none in all the
author's works ever received greater alterations or additions; the
language not only refined, but many scenes entirely new, besides most of
the principal characters heightened, and the plot much increased." John
Dennis, a critic of that day, declares that Shakespeare "knew nothing
about the ancients, set all propriety at defiance,... was neither master
of time enough to consider, correct, and polish what he had written,...
his lines are utterly void of celestial fire," and his verses
"frequently harsh and unmusical." He was, however, so interested in the
erratic and friendless poet that he kindly altered "The Merry Wives of
Windsor," and touched up "Coriolanus," which he brought out in
1720, under the title of "The Invader of his Country, or the Fatal
Resentment." The play, however, did not prosper, and he attributed it
to the fact that it was played on a Wednesday. Dean Swift, in his "The
Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Strange and Deplorable
Frenzy of John Dennis," relates how the said Dennis, being in company
with Lintot, the bookseller, and Shakespeare being mentioned as of a
contrary opinion to Mr. Dennis, the latter "swore the said Shakespeare
was a rascal, with other defamatory expressions, which gave Mr. Lintot
a very ill opinion of the said Shake{024}speare." Lord Shaftesbury
complains, at about the same date, of Shakespeare's "rude and unpolished
style and antiquated phrase and wit." *

     *  Mr. De Quincy's painful effort to demonstrate that
     neither Dryden nor Shaftesbury meant what he said is amusing
     reading. See his "Shakespeare" in the "Encyclopaedia
     Britannica." Also Knight, "Studies of Shakespeare," p. 510,
     as to Dr. Johnson.

Thomas Rymer knows exactly how Othello, which he calls "a bloody farce,
the tragedy of the pocket-handkerchief," ought to have been done. In
the first place, he is angry that the hero should be a black-a-moor, and
that the army should be insulted by his being a soldier. Of "Desdemona"
he says: "There is nothing in her which is not below any country
kitchen-maid--no woman bred out of a pigstye could talk so meanly."
Speaking of expression, he writes that "in the neighing of a horse or
in the growling of a