udy of
all the great poetry that he knew.

[APRIL, 1920.

_Shakespeare Criticism_

It is an exciting, though exhausting, experience to read a volume of the
great modern Variorum Shakespeare from cover to cover. One derives from
the exercise a sense of the evolution of Shakespeare criticism which
cannot be otherwise obtained; one begins to understand that Pope had his
merits as an editor, as indeed a man of genius could hardly fail to
have, to appreciate the prosy and pedestrian pains of Theobald, to
admire the amazing erudition of Steevens. One sees the phases of the
curious process by which Shakespeare was elevated at the beginning of
the nineteenth century to a sphere wherein no mortal man of genius could
breathe. For a dizzy moment every line that he wrote bore the authentic
impress of the divine. _Efflavit deus_. In a century, from being largely
beneath criticism Shakespeare had passed to a condition where he was
almost completely beyond it.

_King John_ affords an amusing instance of this reverential attitude.
The play, as is generally known, was based upon a slightly earlier and
utterly un-Shakespearean production entitled _The Troublesome Raigne of
King John_. The only character Shakespeare added to those he found ready
to his hand was that of James Gurney, who enters with Lady Falconbridge
after the scene between the Bastard and his brother, says four words,
and departs for ever.

'_Bast_.--James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?

_Gur_.--Good leave, good Philip.

_Bast_.--Philip! Sparrow! James.'

It is obvious that Shakespeare's sole motive in introducing Gurney is to
provide an occasion for the Bastard's characteristic, though not to a
modern mind quite obvious, jest, based on the fact that Philip was at
the time a common name for a sparrow. The Bastard, just dubbed Sir
Richard Plantagenet by the King, makes a thoroughly natural jibe at his
former name, Philip, to which he had just shown such breezy
indifference. The jest could not have been made to Lady Falconbridge
without a direct insult to her, which would have been alien to the
natural, blunt, and easygoing fondness of the relation which Shakespeare
establishes between the Bastard and his mother. So Gurney is quite
casually brought in to receive it. But this is not enough for the
Shakespeare-drunken Coleridge.

'For an instance of Shakespeare's power _in minimis_, I generally
quote James Gurney's character in _King