PREFACE While the present volume purposes to present both a repertory and a synthesis of the extant critical utterances of the Elizabethan dramatists, the author wishes it understood that the work was undertaken for the sake of the repertory alone. The usefulness of this few will question. Every reader can, and will, do his own synthesizing; and if anybody disagrees with the opinions set forth by the author, or, perhaps, considers them superfluous, the latter would humbly claim that it were but the part of generosity not to grudge him the privilege of thinking while engaged in the more or less uninteresting, though useful, mechanical process of compiling. Whoever pleases may easily omit the commentary entirely. There now remains the pleasant duty of acknowledging indebtedness to those who helped the author in the prosecution of his task. He wishes to express his gratitude to Professors Francis Hovey Stoddard and Archibald L. Bouton, of New York University, for the time and scholarship which they so generously set at his disposal. To Professor Lewis F. Mott, of the College of the City of New York, he is indebted for important criticism and suggestions, and to Professor J. E. Spingarn of Columbia University, for friendly discussion of some vexed questions in the history of criticism. He is also under obligations to Professor Lawrence A. McLouth of New York University, and Professor A. V. W. Jackson of Columbia University for valuable assistance. College of the City of New York, D. K. |