laughed
out of court by judge, jury, and audience. It might as well be claimed
that Job wrote "Hamlet"; for, whatever doubt may be raised as to his
personal history, the folio of 1623 and the testimony of his
contemporaries have shown as clearly that Shakspere wrote the dramas
bearing his name as that Macaulay wrote a history of the Revolution of
1688.

But here come Barrett Wendell, Professor of English Literature at
Harvard, and his pupil and disciple, Ashley H. Thorndike, Assistant
Professor of English at the Western Reserve University, with a new case,
or a new brief on the old one, maintaining, with laborious industry and
mutual sympathy, that Shakspere was only an Elizabethan playwright, who
found the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at once
seized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in the
histories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music of
his blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the manner
of Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are but
adaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but an
imitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style of drama
made popular by some contemporary of more original power, he immediately
imitated his style and plot, surpassed him in phrase-making, and so
coined sterling money to build and decorate his house at Stratford.

If not the most formidable, this is the latest attack of the critics. It
should seem from our brief review of former efforts, that this has been
fully answered. But if apology is needful for further defence, let it be
found in this, that when men of eminent position as the instructors of
youth, whose word in these days of careless and superficial reading is
likely to be taken as final, undertake to change the opinion of the
civilized world as to the genius and character of its supreme mind,
their assertions should be supported by something more substantial than
references to each other as authority, more reliable than dramatic
chronology, which they themselves admit to be uncertain, more tangible
than the effort to count the lines of "Henry VIII." written by Fletcher.

The position of Professor Wendell can be most fairly stated in his own
words. After a hasty review of the early drama, he says of Shakspere:--

"The better one knows his surroundings, the more clearly one
begins to perceive that his chief peculiarity, when compared
w