N NAME, Orthography of Shakespeare's . "NON SANZ DROICT," W. C. Devecmon's Review of The Baconian Theorists NURSE, JULIET'S, Irving Brown's Speculation as to Deceased Husband of . O ONCE USED WORDS in the Shakespeare Plays P PLAYS [see Shakespeare], Once-used Words in the Why perhaps not mentioned in Shakespeare's Will QUESTIONS, Some Shakespearean, for testing Reading Classes ROMAN CATHOLIC [see Catholic] R RICHARD THE SECOND, The Treasonable Play of RIIS, JACOB A., His Translation of Extracts from the Elsinore Town Records "The Sycamore Hill" S -BACON CONTROVERSY [see Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy]. SHAKESPEAREAN RAMPARTS, Opening a New Parallel before the, James Falkner, Jr. As played by Joseph Adler As played by Sir Henry Irving As played by Richard Mansfield SOME TWENTIETH CENTURY HENSLOWES "STYLE CURVES," Professor Mendenhall's Shakespeare's and Bacon's, not similar And Marlowe's, identical "THEATRE TRUST," The T "TREASONABLE PLAY OF RICHARD SECOND," The TRUST DEED of the Plays in Mrs. Shakespeare? W WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT, Dr. Morgan's Studies in 29* WELSH LINEAGE, WAS SHAKESPEARE OF? James Falkner, Jr. 73 WILL, Reason surmised why Plays not mentioned in Shakespeare's. 85 Y YEATMAN, JOHN PYм, His "Gentle Shakespeare" derives Shakespeare from the Welsh Kings Opinions as to Shakespeare's Will YIDDISH THEATRE in New York City, the Merchant of Venice at COPYRIGHT 1901 By the SHAKESPEARE PRESS NEW SH AKESP EAREA NA WEDER IRRGLAUBIG NOCH ALTGLAUBIG NUR SHAKESPEARE. 11487.20 ?... 1001) Smell fund (1-2) белсе The Editors and Publishers of NEW SHAKESPEAREANA exceedingly regret to send out this number. It is not in the least what they inte.ided and intend in the future. But it has been thought best in the face of many vexatious delays to make an initiative at once. Succeeding issues, it is expected and confidently believed, will entitle NEW SHAKESPEAREANA to a place editorially and typographically among the noble achievements of the New York Shakespeare Society. Subscriptions to March, 1902, are extended to September, 1902. NEW SHAKESPEAREANA. VOL. I. SEPTEMBER, 1901. SHAKESPEARE AS A BLAMELESS PRIG. No. I. William Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist and Man; by Hamilton Wright Mabie, New York and "I have in mind," says Herder, an immense figure of a man sitting high on a rocky summit; at his feet, storm, tempest and the raging of the sea, but his head is in the beams of heaven. This is Shakespeare! Only with this addition, that far below, at the foot of his rocky throne, are murmuring crowds who expound, preserve, condemn, defend, worship, slander, over-rate and abuse him; and of all this he hears nothing." Into this "murmuring crowd" now lightly and mincingly trips Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie. With ladylike footsteps he treads the dusty street of Shakepeare lore, and daisies of Turveydropian Deportment spring beneath his feet. As fully equipped as a gentleman, who for thirty years had been mouthing glittering generalities about the vastness of the Ocean, would be to write a Manual of Practical Navigation, is Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie to write a "Life of Shakespeare!" To spare the feelings of mariners, and to avoid reflection upon the mighty deep, this gentleman of glittering generalities might omit any mention of shoals, storms, rocks, simoons, adverse currents and dangerous latitudes, or forbear allusion to any such thing as lighthouses or bell-bouys lest he suggest a need for them. Just so Mr. Mabie will have his Shakespeare only a lush Bosom of Sweetness and Light, a model to all youth, and a veritable Sunday school in himself for the Literary Person: and any record, tradition, circumstance or surmise that could by any possibility suggest the contrary, does not, for him anywhere exist. Something of this sort impresses us as we lift this bulky volume from the mass of books that tumble over each other out of the publisher's shops. To say that it is redundant and superfluous, that it adds not even a new or newly put surmise (as "Georg Brandes" occasionally did) to the olla podrida of other people's opinions, or that the not at 1 all unusual or uncommon possession of a fluent pen, or a ridiculously bubbling optimism, or the facility for what is not inaptly called "spellbinding," are not valuable acquisitions to the general fund of Human Knowledge, is to dismiss the book as it deserves to be dismissed. But it would be unladylike to so dismiss Mr. Mabie's book. Herder's "murmuring crowds" "expound, preserve, condemn, defend, worship, slander, over-rate and abuse, his "immense figure of a man," but Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie does none of these vulgar things. Not the late P. T. Barnum himself, who bill-boarded his tight-rope dancer as "Queen of the Lofty Wire," ever plastered dead walls with half the pictorial English which Mr. Mabie contributes to the mass of exact Shakespearean scholarship. And it would not surprise us to come upon a Tumultuous Thanatopsis of Thaumaturgical Tetrahexadrons, or a Majestical Multocular of Multitudinous Megatheriums, or any other ag glomerations of Talent from the "Greatest Show on Earth!" They would glide right into Mr. Mabie's context without a ripple! Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie's "Shakespeare" is perfectly "Moral." There cannot be the slightest shadow of suspicion of doubt as to that; "No possible, probable manner of doubt, no manner of doubt whatever," as Mr. Gilbert would say. But is Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie Moral? Is it moral to supprese the truth, to misrepresent facts, to describe things as they were not, even in a Life of William Shakespeare?" For, in matters touching Shakespeare and his plays, it is mostly by way of praise that one tells the truth. Their highest praise is that we now see them to be defective, for, had they not trained us to become susceptible of higher things, we should not now preceive their deficiencies. But perhaps it would be impossible to demonstrate this to Mr. Mabie. Hence it comes that, as Mr. Malone whitewashed the Stratford bust, so Mr. Mabie will whitewash "the immense figure of the man" behind it. Moreover, he will drape Naked Truth with pantelettes, and the Young Person will be carefully attended to. To reflect that, however finely Mr. Mabie's sentences intone when read aloud, there are yet scholars to whom the truth, even the naked truth, appeals with a force almost equal to the force of declamation, elocution and rhetoric; (if he does so reflect, which we incline to doubt,) does not harrow Mr. Mabie. Even if there be scholars to cavil, are there not young ladies of both sexes and Tea-and Shakespeare Societies and circulating libraries and summer readers galore? Perish the suspicion, of course, that Mr. Mabie's "Life of Shakes peare" could possibly have been compounded as a commercial economy, being first heard of in instalments for a newspaper, the electrotypes of whose columns would cut up into plates for this book. If it had been prepared in this way, a space-writer might well, in the pressure of a call for "copy" have failed to read over his last printed instalment, which would account for some inconsistencies hereafter to be noted. This explanation too, would account for the care taken of the Young Person in these pages. Most unfortunately there are few men of the sixteenth century whose biographies must not be expurgated for the columns of a newspaper, only some of us have claimed that William Shakespeare was one of the few! The Young Person! For your space-writer |