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BY EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D.

Fifth Edition.

SHAKSPERE:

A CRITICAL STUDY OF HIS MIND AND ART.

Large post 8vo. Cloth, price 128.

"He has an unusual insight into the broader as well as the nicer meanings of Shakspere. . . . The book contains many valuable remarks on the drama."-Saturday Review.

In Preparation.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION.

LONDON: C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

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C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1880

(The rights of translation and of reproduction

are

reserved.)

5793

REESE LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY
CALIFORNIA

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

A FEW words to explain why it has been thought well to add, to the already overwhelming number of Shakespeare studies, this translation of the first part of M. Stapfer's "Shakespeare et l'Antiquité," seem not uncalled for in these days, when Shakespeare criticism has already reached such huge proportions as to cause its very name to be received with a half weary, half impatient sigh.

We have heard a good deal lately of German commentators on Shakespeare, but no word has for a long time come to us from France-that land peculiarly famed for literary skill and for acute and delicate criticism; and, therefore, to hear what one of the first French literary critics of the day has to say concerning our great English poet can hardly fail to be of great interest and value.

Moreover, the subject of M. Stapfer's book-not Shakespeare, but Greek and Roman antiquity as represented in Shakespeare's plays-invests it with a special character, and offers many fresh and suggestive points of view; the comparative smallness of the framework admitting also of a more minute and thorough mode of treatment than would otherwise be possible.

That his book should contain any facts or details possessing the charms of novelty for English readers is scarcely likely the facts of a man's history offer but little scope for invention, but the point of importance

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with the literary critic is the use to which the facts are put, and his chief concern with otherwise trivial and time-worn details is to make them full of fresh interest and life for us, by ordering and manipulating them so as to bring the truths they serve to illustrate, or to suggest, into clear and unmistakeable prominence. Unless they float, as it were, upon a sea of thought, in the midst of fresh and invigorating breezes, among the currents and tides of conflicting opinions and ideas, they are altogether vapid and useless to him.

For those readers who only care for discussion of some obscure passage or obsolete word, there will, I fear, be nothing but disappointment in store; the aim of the book is of a purely literary character, and it offers no information of an etymological or philological nature. But though this may render it valueless to one class of readers, it enables it, I trust, to appeal the more surely to those by whom literature-in contradistinction to science, history, and to all books written entirely for the sake of imparting information, without the devotion of any special care to the manner in which the information is given-is prized as one of the most precious forms of art.

It is no easy task to translate a book in which so great a part is played by the style of the author, the charm of which, with all its lightness, point, and grace, it must be vain to hope to render in a translation. I have endeavoured, as far as might be, to convey some slight notion of it, and although the echoes of the original sound can, at best, be only few and faint, I hope the impression may somehow make itself felt that the book in its original form aims at being a work of art.

The work to which M. Stapfer has given the title of "Shakespeare et l'Antiquité," consists of two distinct and independent parts. The first part-" Greek and Latin Antiquity as presented in Shakespeare's Plays "

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