BELK SPER, NOT S HAK E SPE A RE.
Shaksper, not Shakespeare. By W. H. Edwards. (The Robert Clarke Company, Cincinnati.)—We are not inclined to take Mr. Elwards seriously; he is too thoroughgoing and too violent. We have not yet reached the stage when we accept a process of reasoning by which the whole edifice of history is to crumble into dust. Mr. Edwards cannot possibly believe that the coarse, illiterate yeoman's son could have written the plays, and he views the signatures as forgeries, such forgeries as the easygoing lawyers of the day permitted when writing was not a general accomplishment. Indeed, he regards Shakespeare and every- thing connected with him as a huge fraud. The man who wrote the plays was somebody else of the same name. The strongest objection to all this destructive analysis is that it lands its devotees in a hopeless quagmire of suspicion, wherein ao one can obtain a firm foothold. Contemporary n^gligence of
the work of the man is one of Mr. Edwards's arguments, surely a weak one. The book, with its copious extracts, its want of taste, and its occasional abuse of others, is not to be considered a contribution to Shakespeare literatare.
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