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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA There are many ways of considering a subject like the Elizabethan drama. You can take the plays by authors. Naturally, it is one of the best ways; and it is the only way that was employed up to quite recently. To use that method alone leads to queer blindnesses. And it is apt to end in the "our Shakespeare" business, an easy and unprofitable way of taking art. Then there is division by subjects, the method of Professor Schelling and of Polonius. This counteracts the evils of the first way; but it is often rather unmeaning: Measure for Measure gets grouped with the "Romantic Comedies." That is to say, the fault is in the unreality of the classes. They should rather be grouped by taste. An arrangement under purely fanciful names would be more practical. Love's Labour Lost would go with Lyly under "Court Butterfly"; Measure for Measure might jostle The Fawn or Hamlet in the "Brass-on-Tongue" sub-division of the "Leaves-a-Taste-in-the-Mouth" group. And there is the reader's way, Lamb's way, of just picking out the best plays. It has a lot to be said for it. All three methods, and others, have their com- plemental merits. But I think the most useful way of surveying material like this is by a combination, in the following way. One should divide the plays, roughly chronologically, according to their style or taste, the general Stimmung of them, with a certain reference to authorship, and distinct emphasis on the merits and possibilities of the various styles. For though, of course, when you stop to consider any particular part, these questions of influence, "schools," styles, periods, and the rest, immediately sink into their proper subordination, yet, for a rapid survey, they do correspond to certain realities. It is important to know that...