Robert Chester's _Love's Martyr, or
Rosalin's Complaint_, to which several famous poets contributed. In dark
and noble verse it describes a spiritual marriage, suddenly ended by
death. It is too strange to be the fruit of a human sorrow. It is the
work of a great mind trying to express in unusual symbols a thought too
subtle and too intense to be expressed in any other way. Spiritual
ecstasy is the only key to work of this kind. To the reader without that
key it can only be so many strange words set in a noble rhythm for no
apparent cause.

Poetry moves in many ways. It may glorify and make spiritual some action
of man, or it may give to thoughts such life as thoughts can have, an
intenser and stranger life than man knows, with forms that are not
human and a speech unintelligible to normal human moods. This poem gives
to a flock of thoughts about the passing of truth and beauty the mystery
and vitality of birds, who come from a far country, to fill the mind
with their crying.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Shakespeare's plays were printed carelessly, often from imperfect, torn,
ill-written or stolen copies. When printed, they were seldom corrected.
When reprinted, the original errors were often made much worse. Thus,
"he met the night-mare," or "a met the night-mare," in the original
manuscript, was printed "a nellthu night more," and reprinted "anelthu
night Moore." Those who lightly read the modern editions seldom know
that years of mental toil went to the preparation of the texts so easily
read to-day.

Many English minds have paid tribute to Shakespeare. Few of them deserve
more praise than the Cambridge Editors, whose six years of labour
cleared the text of countless errors and corruptions. The correction of
a corrupt text by collation and conjecture, is one of the most difficult
and least amusing tasks that a fine mind can have. The Cambridge
_Shakespeare_, the work of William George Clark and Dr. William Aldis
Wright, gives a text not likely to be improved until the poet's
corrected manuscripts are found.

The _Life of William Shakespeare_ has been ably written by Dr. Sidney
Lee, whose judgment equals his learning.

Some of the dramatic methods of Shakespeare have been nobly studied by
Dr. A. C. Bradley in his _Shakespearean Tragedy_.

To these books and to the Shakespearean Essays in Mr. W. B. Yeats's
_Ideas of Good and Evil_, I am deeply indebted, as all modern students
of Shakespeare must be.

Our knowledge of