Three Shakespeare Studies

REVIEWS 83 ment; the strong emphasis later in the war on a pay-as-you-go policy with recourse to "compulsory savings" (Keynes's invention ); family allowances as a post-war measure to prevent a recurrence of the social and economic disorders of the thirties; abandonment of virtually all wartime controls except those over foreign exchange; and, in the most recent inflationary movement, the reliance on credit restriction and other "indirect" controls as an alternative to price ceiliogs. Keynes's teaching also influenced international attitudes in Ottawa. It is no accident that Mr. Harrod should twice refer to the Canadian experts as the only ones, other than those of the United States and the United Kingdom, to make a material contribution, at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, to the establishment of the International Fund and Bank. These two institutions crowned with a measure of success the international plans and policies which Keynes had been urging for the preceding twenty years. At that conference Keynes was the dominating figure. Mr. Harrod records that another member of the British delegation, Professor Robbins (who was then head of the Economic Section of the War Cabinet Secretariat), wrote in his diary at the time: I often find myself thinking that Keynes must be one of the most remarkable men that have ever lived-the quick logic, the birdlike swoop of intuition, the vivid fancy, the wide vision, above all the incomparable sense of the fitness of words, all combine to make something several degrees beyond the limit of ordinary human achievement. Certainly, in our own age, only the Prime Minister is of comparable stature. He, of course, surpasses him. But the greatness of the Prime Minister is something much easier to understand than the genius of Keynes. For, in the last analysjs, the special qualities of the Prime Minister are the traditional qualities of our race mised to the scale of grandeur. Whereas the special qualities of Keynes are something outside all that. He uses the classical style of our life and language, it is true, but it is shot through with something which is not traditional, a unique unearthly quality of which one can only say that it is pure genius. The Americans sat entranced as the God-like visitor sang and the golden light played around. Perhaps even Professor Robbins was dazzled by the golden light. But was there anyone of us who knew him and was not dazzled? THREE SHAKESPEARE STUDIES H. S. WILSON Among the profusion of books about Shakespeare that pour from the presses each year, all witnessing to the continuing vitality of Shakespeare's art if not always to the sobriety of his admirers' judgment , the three studies here reviewed may be recommended as among the most distinguished of recent contributions to our understanding 84 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY and critical appreciation of the greatest of English authors.* All three works represent a uniformly high level of scholarly competence, yet they are calculated in their usefulness quite as much for the cultivated · amateur as for the more or less "professional" student of Shakespeare; and each work typifies signally though not exclusively a particular department or method of Shakespearean study. The Shakespeare Survey, a work of collaboration under distinguished editorship now in its fourth year of publication, has already become an indispensable Shakespearean reference. The study of Macbeth, the work of a lawyer who thus preserves his amateur standing among Shakespeareans , is a piece of historical scholarship of which any professional scholar might well be proud. And Professor Farnham's sequel to his valuable earlier study, The }.1edieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, upholds the honour of the teaching profession by being one of thc most thoughtful and stimulating of recent attempts to criticize the plays as an organic growth of Shakespeare's dramatic genius. Shakespeare Survey, issued under the sponsorship of the universities of Birmingham and Manchester, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and with an advisory board and panel of correspondents representing the study and production of Shakespeare's plays in many parts of the world, has aimed from its inception to comprehend all the main activities concerned with Shakespeare, to assess the...