The Project Gutenberg EBook of Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. Robertson

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Title: Montaigne and Shakspere

Author: John M. Robertson

Release Date: May 20, 2008 [EBook #25535]

Language: English

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MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE

BY

JOHN M. ROBERTSON

LONDON
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED
16, JOHN STREET, BEDFORD ROW, W.C.
1897

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE

For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a
revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared
with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in
England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the
worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at
work on the metrical tests; when Mr. Spedding was subtly undoing the
chronological psychology of Dr. Furnivall; when the latter student was
on his part undoing in quite another style some of the judgments of Mr.
Swinburne; and when Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was with natural wrath
calling on Mr. Browning, as President of the Society, to keep Dr.
Furnivall in order, we (then) younger onlookers felt that literary
history was verily being made. Our sensations, it seemed, might be as
those of our elders had been over Mr. Collier's emendated folio, and
the tragical end thereof. Then came a period of lull in things
Shaksperean, partly to be accounted for by the protrusion of the
Browning Society and kindred undertakings. It seemed as if once more men
had come to the attitude of 1850, when Mr. Phillipps had writ