This ebook was prepared by Les Bowler.
Begun in the winter of 1874, a first instalment of “A Studyof Shakespeare” appeared in the Fortnightly Review forMay 1875, and a second in the number for June 1876, but the completedwork was not issued in book form until June 1880. In a letterto me (January 31, 1875), Swinburne said:
“I am now at work on my long-designed essay orstudy on the metrical progress or development of Shakespeare, as traceableby ear and not by finger, and the general changes of tone andstages of mind expressed or involved in this change or progress of style.”
The book was produced at the moment when controversy with regardto the internal evidence of composition in the writings attributed toShakespeare was raging high, and the amusing appendices were added atthe last moment that they might infuriate the pedants of the New ShakespeareSociety. They amply fulfilled that amiable purpose.
EDMUNDGOSSE
September 1918
CONTENTS A STUDY OF SHAKESPEAREI. FIRST PERIOD: LYRIC AND FANTASTICII. SECOND PERIOD: COMIC AND HISTORICIII. THIRD PERIOD: TRAGIC AND ROMANTIC APPENDIXI. NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III.II. REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS ON THIS FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETYIII. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
The greatest poet of our age has drawn a parallel of elaborate eloquencebetween Shakespeare and the sea; and the likeness holds good in manypoints of less significance than those which have been set down by themaster-hand. For two hundred years at least have students of everykind put forth in every sort of boat on a longer or a shorter voyageof research across the waters of that unsounded sea. From thepaltriest fishing-craft to such majestic galleys as were steered byColeridge and by Goethe, each division of the fleet has done or hasessayed its turn of work; some busied in dredging alongshore, some takingsurveys of this or that gulf or headland, some putting forth throughshine and shadow into the darkness of the great deep. Nor doesit seem as if there would sooner be an end to men’s labour onthis than on the other sea. But here a difference is perceptible. The material ocean has been so far mastered by the wisdom and the heroismof man that we may look for a time to come when the mystery shall bemanifest of its furthest north and south, and men resolve the secretof the uttermost parts of the sea: the poles also may find their Columbus. But the limits of that other ocean, the laws of its tides, the motiveof its forces, the mystery of its unity and the secret of its change,no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to know. No wind-gaugewill help us to the science of its storms, no lead-line sound for usthe depth of its divine and terrible serenity.
As, however, each generation for some two centuries now or more haswitnessed fresh attempts at pilotage and fresh expeditions of discoveryundertaken in the seas of Shakespeare, it may be well to study a littlethe laws of navigation in such waters as these, and look well to compassand rudder before we accept the guidance of a strange helmsman or makeproffer for trial of our own. There are shoals and quicksandson which many a seafarer has run his craft aground in time past, andothers of more special peril to adventurers of the present day. The chances of shipwreck vary in a certain degree with each new changeof vessel and each fresh muster of hands. At one time a main rockof offence on which the stoutest shi