A BOOK OF HOMAGE TO SHAKESPEARE.*
Norman' could well be more impressive as a sign of the universality of the appeal made by our great English poet than this Book of Homage which Professor Gollancz has gathered from distinguished representa- tives of all nations and peoples and tongues ; and we congratulate him on the idea and the skill with which it has been carried out. There are a hundred and sixty-six contributions in thirty languages ; the less familiar of these—and they include the Bechuana dialect—being accompanied by paraphrases. The idea of " homage," we are glad to see, is construed in a liberal manner, and papers are admitted on a large variety of topics, so long as they emphasize some aperial glory of the poet whom England, above all others, delights to honour. Of the expressions of pure homage, those contributed by foreigners are perhaps the best, for Englishmen are a little shamefaced in eulogy. And a large number of the foreign tributes celebrate Shakespeare as the incarnation of the English spirit ; or, as Father Nicholas Velimirovie of Belgrade puts it more truly, " the British world is the great body in which is incarnated the Shakespearean spirit," a thesis which he expands into the reflection that the British principle is not " to uniform the world, but to multiply their own spirit by learning and under- standing all other spirits in order to be just towards all." It is plain that the present war, and the part played in it by the English people, have inclined many of the foreign " homagers " to contrast English ideals, as set forth by Shakespeare, with those professed and acted upon by our enemy. Germany, of course, can send no tribute, but Professor Herford stops the gap with an appreciative note upon the services rendered by German scholarship to Shakespearean study.
It is impossible in a short review to notice more than a few of the more important contributions. To speak first of the poetry. Mr. Thomas Hardy opens the book with some stanzas on Shakespeare's funeral, which, while they do beautiful justice to the poet, unfortu- nately do some injustice to his neighbours. A squire's dame comes into Stratford to shop while the bell is tolling, and after ascertaining who is dead, remarks " Ali, one of the tradesman's sons, I now recall . . . Witty, I've heard . . . We did not know him . . . Well, good day . . . Death comes to all."
There is abundant evidence that the relations between the Stratford burghers and the neighbouring gentry were very close ; and as the biggest people in the neighbourhood were the Raynafords, whom Drayton visited for some months every summer, and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sidney, the lesser people would take their cue from them, and not to know Shakespeare would be to argue themselves unknown. Moreover, Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, was the fashionable physician of the district. Mr. Austin Dobson has a graceful variation on the theme " Others abide our question " ; Mr. Binyon's sonnet to " England's poet " dwells on the fact that as " he was with us in our darkest pain And stormiest hour," so now "even over chaos and the murdering roar Comes that world-winning music " ; and M. Sienkiewicz supplies a prose comment by telling how in the early days of the war he found that no book could hold him but Shakespeare. M. Remain Rolland gives similar testimony. Mr. Drinkwater states the purpose of all the sacrifice of young England's life as " That in her home where Shakespeare's passion grew From song to song, should thrive the happy-willed Free life that Shakespeare drew."
Mr. Kipling, Mr. Galsworthy, and Sir Henry Newbolt pay their tributes in prose ; on the other hand, many of our Professors of Literature, rather than add one more to their many lectures, " meditate the muse," even as, according to Browning, " Rafael wrote one sonnet."
Of the literary articles, by far the most interesting are those by Mr. A. C. Bradley on " Feste the Jester," and by Mr. Clutton-Brock on " The Unworldliness of Shakespeare," as illustrated by Hamlet and King Lear. Sir Sidney Lee and Dr. Henry Bradley discourse on the poet's inventions in language ; Dr. Starkie on his " Wit and Humour " ; and Mr. Gosse on his songs. With what Mr. Gone says in praise of Shakespeare's songs we are in cordial agreement, but he is a little incautious in his reference to their predecessors. " Peele and Greene had brilliant lyrical gifts, but they did not exercise them in their dramas." Had Mr. Gosse forgotten Peele's Old Wives' Tale, which contains some of the most beautiful snatches of song in English ?
• A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Edited by Israel GOILIII1CS. Oxford : at the University Press. Me. net.1 As an outward and visible sign that homage, if it is to be worth any- thing, must be an expression of truth, we have a few gentle tourna- ments; Mr. John Bailey breaks a lance with Mr. Bradley about the character of Falstaff, and the Dean of Norwich with Sir Sidney Lee about Shakespeare's attitude to the enclosure of the common fields at Welcombe.
Of the articles by experts, all commendably short, we must single out for special praise that by Mr. Spielmann on Shakespeare's portraits ; not so much for the letterpress, which adds little to what ho has told us elsewhere, as for the pictures with which he has illustrated it. Here most of us may see for the first time the lovely first proof of the Droes- hout plate, afterwards elaborated for the Folio. It belonged to Halliwell- Phillips, but has now followed other unique things to America. Hero also we may see for the first time a print of Kneller's copy of the Chandos portrait made for Dryden, which, as Mr. Spielmann says, "adds a dignity, almost a majesty," to the swarthy original. Then Dr. Hadow, Mr. Fuller-Maitland, and Mr. Barclay Squire write on music; and we note with satisfaction that Dr. Hadow, being as much an expert in literature as in music, doss not follow Dr. Naylor in claiming that in the hundred and twenty-eighth sonnet Shakespeare used the word " jacks " correctly of the pieces of wood that held the quills by which the strings were plucked instead of incorrectly of the keys. We find it difficult to conceis 43 how any lady could play the virginal, with one hand curved over the true " jacks." The post's relations with various towns are treated in a series of interesting articles. Mr. Wheatley, dealing with London, discourses of the old playhouses and taverns, and accepts the current hypothesis that Shakespeare once lived in Bishopsgate. We have learned lately that he lodged for ten years or so in Silver Street with a Huguenot tire-maker, where he gained his horror of false hair, and, on the authority of Beeston, the actor, that at one time he " lived in Shoreditch." That is all wo can be said to know. Professor Boas, writing of Oxford, which Shake- speare regularly visited on his journeys to and from Stratford, lodging at the Crown Tavern with the Davenants, tells the story, given in more detail in the admirable catalogue of the Bodleian Shakespeare Exhibition, of the copy of the First Folio furnished to the library by the Stationers' Company in 1610, sold in 1664, and since repurchased ; with the page containing the Balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet worn away by the thumbs of the young Bachelors of Arts. The Master of Jesus, Cambridge, cannot indeed contend that Shakespeare over visited his city, but he succeeds in showing that all the technical University terms in the plays were borrowed from Cambridge, reaching him probably from the many Cambridge men who became playwrights or actors. Finally, we must call attention to a series of short notes on particular points : by Professor Ker on the pastoral idea in Shake- speare and Cervantes ; by Mr. E. K. Chambers on " the occasion of A Midsummer Night's Dream" ; by Mr. Mackail on Cloten; by Mr.
A. C. Benson on Arid ; by Mr. Kipling on the island in The Tempest ; by M. Legouis on a number of small points; and by the editor on the names Shylock, Polonius, and Malvol:o.
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