but not of much. Few books, a very few, are necessary for
the intelligent and earnest student of Shakespeare, and those almost
every such student can obtain for himself. As I have said, a good
critical edition is all that is required; and whoever desires to wander
into the wilderness of Shakespearian commentary will find in the public
libraries ample opportunities of doing so. I have observed that those
who read Shakespeare most and understand him best do not use even
critical editions, except for occasional reference, but take the text by
itself, pure and simple. An edition with a good text, brief
introductions to each play, giving only ascertained facts, and a few
notes, glossological and historical, at the foot of the page, is still a
desideratum. Quiet reading with such an edition as this at hand will do
more good than all the Shakespeare clubs ever established have done. I
have seen something of such associations; and I have observed in them a
tendency on one hand to a feeble and fussy literary antiquarianism, and
on the other to conviviality; a thing not bad in itself, and indeed,
within bounds, much better than the other; but which has as little to
do as that has (and it could not have less) with an intelligent study of
Shakespeare. There is hardly anything less admirable to a reasonable
creature than the assemblage at stated times of a number of
semi-literary people to potter over Shakespeare and display before each
other their second-hand enthusiasm about "the bard of Avon," as they
generally delight to call him. Now, a true lover of Shakespeare never
calls him the bard of Avon, or a bard of anything; and he reads him o'
nights and ponders over him o' days while he is walking, or smoking, or
at night again while he is waking in his bed. If he is too poor to buy a
copy offhand, he saves up his pennies till he can get one, and he does
not trouble himself about the commentators or the mulberry tree. He
would not give two pence to sit in a chair made of it; for he knows that
he could not tell it from any other chair, and that it would not help
him to understand or to enjoy one line in "Hamlet," or "Lear," or
"Othello," or "As You Like It," or "The Tempest." These remarks have no
reference of course to such societies as the Shakespeare Societies of
London, past and present. They are associations of scholars for the
purpose of original investigations, and which they print for the use of
their subscribers, and for the