INTRODUCTION History of the Allusion Book, p. xi. a Allusions to Shakspere's Works giving Dates, p. xvii. B Allusions to Contemporary Events, p. xix. y Allusions of Shakspere's Contemporaries, p. xix. a References to Works and Characters, p. xxii. b Shakspere, the Man and his Contemporaries, p. xxv. c Borrowings from his Works: Shakspere's Influence over his Contemporaries, p. xxxiii. 8 Allusions of Shakspere's Successors, p. xlvi. a Allusions to Shakspere himself as Poet and Playwright, p. xlviii. b Borrowings from his Works, p. lxiii. c References to Works and Characters, p. lxiii. d Alterations of his Plays, p. Ixiv. e Legends of Shakspere and his Works, p. lxvii. History of the Allusion Book.-Many and interesting are the parallels which might be drawn in political, religious and literary history between the Elizabethan and Victorian times; yet intellectually, the two eras are widely different. In the latter, together with other causes, the manipulation of natural forces in industrial development and the perfection of locomotion, turned intellectual activity into pathways of Science. The necessity for absolute accuracy began to be felt on all sides. The Victorian era is distinguished by long and patient research, by the methodical classification of data, and by the subsequent deduction of laws which might assist in the pursuit of knowledge. The influence of the exact methods of science is to be traced in many departments of intellectual labour, and particularly in what one may call the higher criticism, whether it be of literature, art, or religion. The application of scientific critical principles and research to Piers Plowman, and the works of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Shakspere, and other masters in our literature, has led, through revolutions of different magnitudes, to a wider and deeper knowledge, and a truer and worthier appreciation of the labours of our great literary men. The advance made by the Victorian Shakspereans on all that had gone before was magnificent, and the advance was made through the adoption of correct principles, and the subsequent discovery of laws, whose application elucidated difficult and complex problems. Properly speaking, we may distinguish two Victorian schools, an earlier and a later,1 the former distinguished for its antiquarian illustration, textual emendation and verbal criticism (and, unhappily, for deviations in the shape of forgeries), and the latter for its exposition of the growth and development of Shakspere's art, for illustration of his times, and the relation of his work to that of his contemporaries, besides the continuation of the labours begun by the earlier school. Adequate attention was first given by the later Victorians to the Apocryphal Plays which less critical generations had ascribed to Shakspere, and to the sources used by the dramatist; by the establishment of lineending tests, a study of style, and the collection of external evidence such as contemporary allusions and entries in the Stationers' Books, the chronological sequence of the poems and plays was worked out with an approach to accuracy. All manner of records and documents were brought together and printed, and a vast literature of Shaksperean biography, bibliography and elucidation arose. Among all these critical and historical books the publications of the New Shakspere Society have a high place. In the words of the Society's founder, that indefatigable scholar, Dr. Furnivall, "to do honour to Shakspere, to make out the succession of his plays, and thereby the growth of his mind and art; to promote the intelligent study of him, and to print texts illustrating his work and times, this New Shakspere Society was founded in the autumn of 1873." One of the most valuable books published to effect some of these purposes, was the Centurie of Prayse, a collection of Shaksperean 1 Shakespeare: Life and Work, by F. J. Furnivall and John Munro, 1908, pp. 72, 73. allusions, edited by Dr. C. M. Ingleby and generously presented by him to the members of the Society in 1874. A second edition of this book was presented by Dr. Ingleby in 1879, when Miss L. T. Smith undertook to edit it, and when the number of allusions to Shakspere and his works grew from 228 to 356. Even this, however, did not half exhaust the available allusions, for Dr. Furnivall in 1886 came out with his Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694 A.D., gathered by Members of the New Shakspere Society. And now in 1908, in this combined edition of the Centurie and Fresh Allusions, I have added some 130 new allusions to the old stock, and there are still more not in this collection. Dr. Ingleby's original idea was to have printed only those references to the poet which occurred within his lifetime, a scheme practically identical with an unaccomplished design of Dr. Grosart's, announced in 1870, for preparing a Contemporary Judgment of Poets. Ingleby's work, however, gradually grew into a Centurie, and was brought to an end with the allusions of the first great English critic, John Dryden, in 1693, it being resolved that formal criticism should be excluded. The "pre-critical century," as Ingleby called the period his collection represented, was held by him to divide itself naturally into four periods: the first extending from the earliest allusion (1592) to the poet's death in 1616; the second from then to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642; the third from the closing of the theatres to the Restoration; and the fourth from the return of the monarchy to the rise of criticism. Miss L. T. Smith and Dr. Furnivall abided by these divisions, but the latter included also Dryden's Prologue to Love Triumphant, 1694, thus exceeding the limit of 1693. Dryden's Essay Of Dramatick Poesy was published in 1668, his Conquest of Granada, containing critical remarks on Shakspere, in 1672, his great Preface to Troilus and Cressida in 1679. Before then, the remarks on Shakspere by Margaret Cavendish in 1664 show a good critical appreciation; Edward Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum, in 1675, much as it eulogises Shakspere, attempts an elementary criticism on correct grounds; Rymer's book was published in 1678; and even before any of these dates, in 1650 English criticism had taken a decided step forward in the Gondibert |