Shakespeare To-day

REVIEWS is not the pl,ace to review the book critically in detail. It should prove invaluable for all those in any way interested in the conduct of international and Commonwealth relations, but, unlike Professor Toynbee's book,it is primarily a reference work and of little interest to the general reader. ' SHAKESPEARE TO-DAY'" R. S. KNOX No one will deny the value, in the far-flung thriving business of Shakespeare study, of something in the nature of a periodic general stock-taking. Only by knowing where we stand can we decide how profitably to advance. Moreover, if the period surveyed be broad enough, an~ther purpose is served. We have vividly brought home to us the variability of what is deemed profitable, and this not merely by the nature of the new work undertaken but also by the changed -valuation set on work already done. It is now fully ten years since such a survey was made by Professor Herford in his Sketch oj Recent Shakespearean Investigation. There the achievement of the preceding thirty years was reviewed and we were made interestingly aware of the growing conflict between the older idealist critics and the young aggressive realists. Since then the pace has quickened. Another stock-taking is obviously warranted, and seems to be promised in their preface by the editors of A Companion to Shakespeare Studies. They were; we are told, in search of a programme for the Shakespeare Association, and this set them looking for new avenues of scholarship to explore. "That led to a consideratio 'n of recent work, its sufficiency or its prospects, and that to the assembling of the present material." The resuIt scarcely corresponds to, the promise of the preface. In 'only a few of the fifteen essays which make up the volume is the treatment such as to permit the work's being gauged in "its sufficiency 'or its prospects." Mr. Isaacs naturally had to write to plan in his chapters summarizing criticism from the time of Coleridge', and the whole course of Shakespearean scholarship. He even offers the programme sought, and to carry it out calls for the organization of co-operative methods among the Shakespeare Associations and *A Companion 1o Shakespeare SlutiieJ, edited by H. 'Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison, Cambridge University Press. Art and Artifice in Shakespeare: .A Study in Dramatic ContraJt and Illusion, by E. E. StolJ,Cambridge University Press. ' 265 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY the universities, for this is demanded by the new objectivity of research. As he sees it, there is still a gigantic task ahead before' we can hope for a satisfying and scholarly account of "The Mind and Art of Shakespeare." Nor is the task merely of new exploration , for the whole mass of nineteenth-century scholarship, he believes, has once more to be thrown into the melting-pot. But he is optimist enough to envisage a time when, through the labours of this precise research, we shall say "Behold1" Mr. T. S. Eliot, who writes a companion essay on the earlier criticism, is sensibly more cautious. He admits such progress as results from improved texts and the increased knowledge of Shakespeare and his environment, but he holds it imprudent to pretend "that we are approximating towards a final goal of understanding after which there will be nothing new to he said." Indeed Mr. Eliot isnot interested in any possible finality, but in "the whole pattern formed by Shakespeare criticism from his own time to ours." The best of one age is not better than that of another; it is merely different. "Shakespeare criticism will always change as the world changes." Other contributions which, in subject and treatment, are fully pertinent to the editors' quest, are Mr. Pollard's brimming chapter on ,,'Shakespeare's Text" and the essay by Mr. Rylands on IlShake_ speare the Poet." Apart from Coleridge's subtle remarks, and Bradley's and Raleigh's, all given by the way) the poetry of the plays has been strangely neglected. Only very recently has any careful study been made of Shakespeare's poetic processes on the level of the language; and that a new light can thereby be 'thrown on...