otchet or the scent of any supposed allusion that may spring up in the
way of its confident and eager quest. To start a new solution of some
crucial problem, to track some new undercurrent of concealed significance
in a passage hitherto neglected or misconstrued, is to a critic of this
higher class a delight as keen as that of scientific discovery to
students of another sort: the pity is that he can bring no such certain
or immediate test to verify the value of his discovery as lies ready to
the hand of the man of science. Whether he have lit upon a windfall or a
mare's nest can be decided by no direct proof, but only by time and the
general acceptance of competent judges; and this cannot often be
reasonably expected for theories which can appeal for support or
confirmation to no positive evidence, but at best to a cloudy and
shifting probability. What personal or political allusions may lurk
under the text of Shakespeare we can never know, and should consequently
forbear to hang upon a hypothesis of this floating and nebulous kind any
serious opinion which might gravely affect our estimate of his work or
his position in regard to other men, with whom some public or private
interest may possibly have brought him into contact or collision.

* * * * *

The aim of the present study is simply to set down what the writer
believes to be certain demonstrable truths as to the progress and
development of style, the outer and the inner changes of manner as of
matter, of method as of design, which may be discerned in the work of
Shakespeare. The principle here adopted and the views here put forward
have not been suddenly discovered or lightly taken up out of any desire
to make a show of theoretical ingenuity. For years past I have held and
maintained, in private discussion with friends and fellow-students, the
opinions which I now submit to more public judgment. How far they may
coincide with those advanced by others I cannot say, and have not been
careful to inquire. The mere fact of coincidence or of dissent on such a
question is of less importance than the principle accepted by either
student as the groundwork of his theory, the mainstay of his opinion. It
is no part of my project or my hope to establish the actual date of any
among the various plays, or to determine point by point the lineal order
of their succession. I have examined no table or catalogue of recent or
of earlier date, from the time of Malone onwards,