SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND.• Its this wonderful book does not deliver the

more pedantic interpreters of Shakespeare from the thraldom of crankiness and mania, probably nothing ever will. Here you have extraordinarily particular knowledge culled by sane explorers from particular fields, and there is nothing from beginning to end in any department of information which encourages you to believe that the explanation of Shakespeare is to be arrived at by the solution of some biographical problem, by some tricky internal evidence, by the assumption of a literary scandal, or by any one of a hundred sensational adaptations of fancy to fact. All explanations of an admitted miracle are infinitely less satisfactory than the simple admission that a miracle is a miracle. Shakespeare was the miracle of his time, and will be a miracle of all time ; ho exceeded his age by as much as the quality of his age exceeded that of other English ages. But you can test him by the treatises and essays in this ample book, and assure yourself at every turn that ho was nevertheless the true product of his ago—that he was ignorant where his neighbours were ignorant, and that his powers of quick absorption did not exempt him from inaccuracy. Tho difference between him and his fellows was that he was a genius. It so happened. Explanation can do no more than dull the lustre of the radiant fact.

Alchemy was counted a science in Shakespeare's England, but the genuine alchemist—he who could tranemuto lase metal into gold— was overlooked. He could take another man's story, touch it, and transform it. He could thrill the mind with the sheer force of his metaphors from law and medicine and seamanship ; but his knowledge of law was sometimes inexact, his acquaintance with medicine vague, and his mastery of seamanship—except in The Tempest—short of the professional standard. Every common fact which ho saw in life. every little bit of various lore, every tell-tale look or phrase of human intercourse, was to him a stone to be used in the building of his majestic creative art. The purely analytical mind, when engrossed in the business of criticism and evaluation, continually forgets' (what it prob- ably admits out of business hours) that literary architecture is fashioned out of small and detached stuff. The analyst takes insight in the author as a claim to personal experience. He cannot bring himself to admit that a man should credibly describe the transports and hallucina- tions of a drug-taker without having himself taken drugs. This book is a splendid work of scholarly research, but the best aspect of its splendour, to our thinking, is that it gives no sanction or encouragement of any sort to Dryasdust. He must now either best the scholars of this work in open competition, or put up his shutters. Personally, we think a good many shutters will have to be put up, and that it will be some time before the pedants behind them begin to communicate again with the outer world. This book can be read by men, women, and children. They will find implicit in every page the assumption that Shakespeare belongs to them, and is to be understood of them. It is an English book. German scholars could not have produced such a work. It required the type of mind that places the humanity of Shake- speare, Moliere, and Cervantes even above their literary greatness.

The spirit of the book is expressed about equally in the fine anony- mous preface and in Sir Walter Raleigh's captivating survey of the " Age of Elizabeth." Says the writer of the preface :- " This kind of study of Shakespeare, which deals with bare, and often trivial, matter of fact, does not appeal to the metaphysician, or to any of those who covet the glow that comes from brisk exercise in large empty spaces. But no apology need be offered to the artist, for the artist knows that life is a hand-to-mouth affair, and that happiness, which is the spirit of life, is concerned not with the interstellar distances, but with that small portion of space which is more or less under our control To order it rightly and pleasantly is art. The body must be fed and clothed, and a shelter must be built for it from the weather ; when these things are done, the mind must still be occupied and humoured with play, which mimics the labours that it seeks to escape from."

It is easy to misunderstand any writer if you know nothing of his environ- ment. The writer of the preface illustrates popular misunderstanding by the list of musical instruments in the Authorized Version of the Book of DanieL It might be thought that the " cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer," and the rest were the instruments played in Nebuchadnezzar's day. But they were the music of Elizabethan England.

Eleven years ago Sir Walter Raleigh planned this book, and in 1909 Sir Sidney Lee undertook to produce it. Ho arranged for most of the chapters which we have here, and chose many of the excellent illustra- tions ; but in 1911 he was compelled to postpone his work on the book, and in 1914 to abandon it. Successive editors were withdrawn by war work, and the editing was finished by Mr. Onions, co-editor of the

Oxford Dictionary and the author of the invaluable Shakespeare Glossary. It is impossible, in the ordinary sense, to " review " a work of this kind, consisting of more than a thousand pages. We can only indicate a

few facts. The ode by the Poet Laureate on the Tercentenary Com- memoration of Shakespeare is curiously original in form, and is another claim on our gratitude to hint for his refined experimentation in verse. That we ehould be conscious less of the experiment than of what may be called a stately enthusiasm is the sign of Mr. Bridges's success. Sir Walter Raleigh, among other good phrases, says that the works of

• Shakespeare's England : an Aceetud of M. Life and Manners of his Aga. 2 vols. Oxford : at the Clarendon rms. L25a. net4

Shakespeare are " the creed of England." Englishmen may well be content to ace their temper caught up in one universal idealization by the mighty poet who preferred the study of humanity to all others, who loathed cruelty and injustice, who ridiculed pedantry and preten- sion, and cheered the world with the gladness of a May morning in his heart. What Sir Walter Raleigh says about Shakespeare's guiding principle is specially interesting :-

" He is quicker and more sensitive than the vast majority of his fellow-countrymen, or he could not be their poet and their teacher. But what he teaches was learnt in their company, whether in the City of London or in the woods and meadows of the midland counties, and is congenial to their instincts, and habits. The English love of compromise is strong in him. If it bo examined it will be found to have its origin, not in intellectual timidity, but in a deep reverence for the complexity of human nature and for the sacredness of the elemental instincts. No one over did more with the intellect than Shakespeare, but he dares not trust it. If its compelling, logic drives over the hearts of men, he refuses to follow, and declares for the rights of the heart."

One cannot help reflecting how Shakespeare would have felt and acted to-day towards those in power. Surely he would have been for the general decency of strengthening the position of the rulers so- long as

they did not mortally offend against his guiding, principles. He would not have allowed men responsible in great things to have their repu- tation impaired through being vindictively judged on the smaller counts. He would have stood for law and order and carrying-on.

The chapter on " Religion " is by the Rev. Ronald Bayne, and that on " The Court " by Mr. E. K. Chambers. Mr. J. W. Forteseue has written on " The Soldier," Lord Dillon on " Armour and Weapons," Sir J. E. Sandy-s on " Education," Sir Edward Maundo Thompson on " Handwriting," Professor G. Unwin on " Commerce and Coinage," Mr. R. E. Prothero on " Agriculture and Gardening," Mr. Arthur Underhill on " Law," Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer on " Plants," Professor Littledale on " Folklore and Superstitions : Ghosts and Fairies : Witch- craft and Devils," Mr. Lionel Oust on " Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving," Mr. W. Barclay Squire on "Music," Mr. 0. Barron on "Heraldry," and Professor C. H. Firth on "Ballads and Broadsides."

We have not nearly exhausted the list. Sir Sidney Lee himself—

we may take this as a guarantee of the scale on which specialization has been accomplished—has confined himself to the study of " Boarbaiting, Bullbaiting, and Cockfighting."

We must quote a passage from the engrossing chapter on " Shake- speare's English " by Dr. Henry Bradley, for it is too often forgotten that if Shakespeare were pronounced in the Elizabethan manner in an English theatre to-day the audience would feel that they were listening to a foreign tongue :— " One result of investigation that appears to be well established is that the pronunciation of the educated classes was considerably less uniform three hundred years ago than it is now. Several of our authorities expressly recognize the existence—in cultivated circles—of modes of pronouncing the vowels different from those which they themselves recommend ; and the wide diverge:lee in the evidence respecting the nature of certain sounds cannot always be attributed to defective observation. Even at the present day the pronunciation of English among highly educated persons is far from being absolutely uniform, though the progressive increase in facility of communication between different parts of the country, and other causes, must in the course of three hundred years have had no little effect in reducing differences. It is probably safe to assume that even in the inmost circle of the Court there were many whose speech was strongly marked by the dialectical peculiarities of the part of England from which they came, and that the pronunciation of the mercantile classes in London was much less of one type than it would have been found to be a century or two later. Besides the differences that originated in local dialects, there were others produced by fashionable affectation or caprice. We read, for instance, of modes of utterance that were favoured by ' fine ladies' (quaedane muliereultse delicatiores), and some of those who had travelled abroad took pleasure in speaking their native tongue with the accent of a Frenchman or an Italian. There were also pedants who took the written form of words as a guide to pronunciation, and insisted on sounding the letters which in unaffected speech had become silent ; and in a few words, such as fault, they actually succeeded in inducing the educated classes in general to follow their example."

We cannot too strongly commend this book to every reader of Shake- speare. It is just what such a book ought to be. We do not know whether it was an instruction to the contributors to illustrate their facts by frequent quotation from Shakespeare, but that they have done so is one of the great merits of their treatment. Wo are told of some detail of Elizabethan life, quite trivial or dull in itself, and then

we see how that small detail in Shakespeare's mind shaped itself to a use and emerged in an enchanting harmony, a piercing similitude, or an unforgettable metaphor. Take this for example from Mr. Gerald

Lascelles's chapter on " Falconry " :- " Lastly, when fully moulted at least once, they are called Haggards, and some early writers, and especially Latham, have an excegly high opinion of this class of the falcon gentle—rather more so than is entertained by modern practitioners. It stands to reason that the longer a bird has been at large preying for herself, and possibly for a young brood also, the more care, skill, and trouble will les required to train her ; she may even be unteainable, or more trouble to reclaim than she is worth. Many such have been ]mown. Shakespeare often uses the term ' haggard' to signify wildness and inconstancy If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses wore my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune. (Oa. III. iii. 260-3).1