When Tom Jones took Partridge to the gallery
of Drury Lane, the play was _Hamlet_. The fashionable topics on which Mr.
Thornhill's friends from town would talk, to the embarrassment of the
Primroses and the Flamboroughs, were "pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and
the musical glasses." The greatest poet of the century played a leading
part in erecting the statue in the Poets' Corner. And it was an
eighteenth-century actor who instituted the Stratford celebrations.

During the entire century Shakespeare dominated the stage. He was more to
the actor then, and more familiar to the theatre-goer, than he is now. It
is true that from Betterton's days to Garrick's, and later, his plays were
commonly acted from mangled versions. But these versions were of two
distinct types. The one respected the rules of the classical drama, the
other indulged the license of pantomime. The one was the labour of the
pedant theorist, the other was rather the improvisation of the theatre
manager. And if the former were truly representative of the taste of the
century, as has sometimes been implied, it has to be explained how they
were not so popular as the latter. "Our taste has gone back a whole
century," says the strolling player in the _Vicar of Wakefield_,(7)
"Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and all the plays of Shakespeare are the only
things that go down." The whole passage is a satire on Garrick(8) and a
gibe at Drury Lane: "The public go only to be amused, and find themselves
happy when they can enjoy a pantomime under the sanction of Jonson's or
Shakespeare's name." But, whatever was done with Shakespeare's plays, they
were the very life of the theatre. When we remember also the number of
editions which were published, and the controversies to which they gave
rise, as well as the fact that the two literary dictators were among his
editors, we are prompted to ask, What century has felt the influence of
Shakespeare more than the eighteenth?

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The century's interest in Shakespeare shows itself in four main phases.
The first deals with his neglect of the so-called rules of the drama; the
second determines what was the extent of his learning; the third considers
the treatment of his text; and the fourth, more purely aesthetic, shows
his value as a delineator of character. The following remarks take these
questions in order; and a concluding section gives an account of the
individual essays here repr