The Project Gutenberg EBook of Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. Robertson
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Montaigne and Shakspere
Author: John M. Robertson
Release Date: May 20, 2008 [EBook #25535]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Turgut Dincer and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+-----------------------------------------+
| Transcribers note: Old spellings of the |
| words have been retained as well as the |
| doubtful use of colons instead of |
| semicolons in many places for the sake |
| of fidelity to the original text. |
+-----------------------------------------+
MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE
BY
JOHN M. ROBERTSON
LONDON
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED
16, JOHN STREET, BEDFORD ROW, W.C.
1897
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE
For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a
revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared
with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in
England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the
worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at
work on the metrical tests; when Mr. Spedding was subtly undoing the
chronological psychology of Dr. Furnivall; when the latter student was
on his part undoing in quite another style some of the judgments of Mr.
Swinburne; and when Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was with natural wrath
calling on Mr. Browning, as President of the Society, to keep Dr.
Furnivall in order, we (then) younger onlookers felt that literary
history was verily being made. Our sensations, it seemed, might be as
those of our elders had been over Mr. Collier's emendated folio, and
the tragical end thereof. Then came a period of lull in things
Shaksperean, partly to be accounted for by the protrusion of the
Browning Society and kindred undertakings. It seemed as if once more men
had come to the attitude of 1850, when Mr. Phillipps had writ
|