An Attempt to Determine the Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Plays.
By the Rev. H. P. Stokes, B.A. (Macmillan.)--This little book is well and honestly executed, and will be welcome to all Shakespeare students, a rapidly increasing class, as we have reason to believe. Mr. Stokes seems to have studied his sub-
ject thoroughly, and he has condensed for us the general results of the researches of Shakespearean critics, and he has not omitted to
avail himself of the recent ingenious (too ingenious, as he fairly calls them) theories of Mr. Fleay as to Shakespeare's versification. In the case of some of the plays, the dates of their composition can be ascer- tained with almost absolute certainty, and it is interesting to note how often various tests lead to the same result. In other cases, again, we are on slippery ground ; the date of Hamlet, for instance, has given rise to as much controversy as the drift and purpose of the play. The reader will here and there come across some speculations of critics which will amuse him. It appears that the Merchant of Venice has much exercised the minds of German commentators ; one thinking that its main idea is " Christian conciliatory love," another maintaining that the subject is "the dialectics of abstract rights." Critics who are bent on tying down any of Shakespeare's plays to the setting-forth of some abstract idea, which it is their business to ex- pound, will occasionally make themselves ridiculous.
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