Play-writing paid poorly and did not lead success. as an actor and as a shareholder in theatrical enterprises. The mere author was almost continuously hard up, as witness Greene, whose lamentations on the subject are still extant. The trade of the playwright was looked upon with disdain by the fashionable society of the period, and the social standing of actors is reflected with unquestionable to social fidelity by the attitude of the Lord in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew and of Polonius towards the strolling troupe in Hamlet. There was not as yet, to be sure, the bitter religious prejudice with which in after years both Puritanism and Catholicism insulted and ostracized even the greatest dramatists, actors and actresses.1 But even the men of letters were scornful of the player's and the playwright's art. There was an aesthetic, though scarcely an economic, demand for poems and sonnets, and a man might enhance his social standing, and perhaps secure the generous if fickle patronage of a nobleman, by dedicating to him an acceptable poem. Hence Shakespeare's careful attention to the publication of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, which were his baits for Southampton's favour. But playwriting was looked upon with scorn, and the dramatists very seldom published their plays.2 1 Voltaire's fury at the refusal of "Christian burial" to Adrienne le Couvreur, who was interred in a cattle-field, will never be forgotten. It was only with extreme difficulty that permission was obtained to bury Molière in consecrated ground. All the sacraments, et à la vie et à la mort, were rigorously refused to actors. This meant that they could not be married, since there was nothing but ecclesiastical marriage. Happily, times have changed, and the Church with them. 2 Their chief reason for this, however, was a business one. The managers deprecated publication as tending to reduce box-office receipts. It was thought that people were less Shake- When a piece was written, it was sold outright to one of the regular companies of players, and the author in selling it parted with all future power over it. The purchasing company could cobble it to any extent they chose, could cut out scenes and replace them with new ones, change the characters to suit their personnel or the public taste, or hand the whole thing over to another dramatist to be revamped. It is these facts which have given rise to the most puzzling problems in the criticism of Shakespeare. He learned his craft by working over old plays which his company chanced to have in stock. Hence, in dealing with the earlier works now extant under his name, one can never be certain how much is his, and how much is the work of a predecessor or collaborator. In the case of some of the early historical plays, it is practically certain that he and Marlowe did the cobbling together, so that we have an inextricable blending of three or more elements for the cognoscenti to exercise their wits upon. There are critics who undertake to tell us exactly, in regard to any of these plays, which lines are Marlowe's, what scenes come from Peele, where Kyd's hand is unmislikely to witness a play if they had read it. But in the absence of any copyright law, the authors and managers had no protection against publishers. Anybody who could get hold of any sort of manuscript, accurate or inaccurate, whole or mutilated, could print it and sell copies for his own profit. Hence the existence of the many Shakespearean quartos, all probably unauthorized and furiously resented by Shakespeare, and for the most part grossly defective. They were issued by "pirates," against whom he had no protection or redress. Their original cost was fivepence or sixpence apiece (ten or twelve cents: worth about a dollar at the present purchasing power of money). Perfect copies of them now range in price from $1,500 to $12,000, according to their scarcity. (See Lee, Life, 1916 edition, pp. 544 ff.) takably present, and, most confidently of all, what is and is not Shakespeare's. One's attitude towards such critics cannot be contemptuous, because their results in many cases have a high degree of probability. They do, however, impair their credit with us by knowing far too much. As regards Shakespeare, their rule (inherited from Coleridge) would seem to be a very simple one: Shakespeare never wrote anything that he ought not to have written. Taking the economic explanation as usually presented, it is difficult to understand how it can account for the rapid and uninterrupted development of a man's powers. How, for example, can it explain the difference between the poorest and the best work of Greene, or give us the secret of the growth from, say, Love's Labour's Lost to Lear and Othello, the Winter's Tale and The Tempest? We understand what is meant by the working of the law of supply and demand in regard to the multiplication and differentiation of mechanical devices, though it cannot account for the origination even of these. But we need not carry our scepticism to its full legitimate length here. Let us admit (for the sake of avoiding argument) that necessity may mother the invention of the umbrella. When the principle of umbrella-making has been hit upon, growing demand will account for the increase of the supply. Or, again, as soon as the principle of selfpropulsion has been mastered, we can readily see how numerous varieties of motor-cars will come to be manufactured. But the application of this kind of reasoning to the creations of the human spirit is simply a fallacy-one of the fallacies of materialism. The demand for mental or aesthetic satisfactions is never a demand for any one definite and Mistaken economic assumptions. specific thing. It is a demand that may be equally well satisfied in many different ways. So far as the public desire for entertainment, in response to which Shakespeare functioned, is concerned, it would have been met with equal success if he had written plays like those of Molière or Sheridan or Mr. George M. Cohan. We know precisely what his public wanted; we know, too, how far he was prepared to go in giving his public what it wanted. But the whole problem is to explain how Shakespeare came to create what nobody could possibly foresee, and therefore could not want until it was created. To talk of economic conditions accounting for the work of such geniuses as Shakespeare and Marlowe is like saying that the shape of the river-bed is the cause of the river. The economic explanation may be valid as regards conditions; it does not account for the force which utilizes conditions. The environment does not originate that which struggles with it. You may, by pointing to the circumstances, explain how Shakespeare came to write plays and sonnets instead of novels or newspaper editorials or religious tracts. But you cannot thus explain how he was able to write his plays; which is the whole question in dispute. We have to assign, if we can, the cause of the development of a qualitative excellence which had no precedent and no relation to demand. Shakespeare is the creator of the standard of taste to which his mature works appeal. We have to account for his giving the public what it did not want. The assumptions underlying the economic explanation of the products of genius are two, and are very simple: it is implied, firstly, that the greater the reward offered to a man, the better work will he do; secondly, that there is always available an indefinite reserve of potential genius of every quality, the amount of such genius actualized being determined by what the public is ready to pay. Without these two assumptions, what would be the meaning of the explanation that Shakespeare went on writing better and better plays because with each success the demand, and consequently his reward, increased? Or how, without postulating them, can one treat any great collective movement, like the Italian Renaissance, or the Elizabethan drama in general, as the result of a public demand expressed in economic terms? To reduce such reasoning to its elementary principles is to reduce it to absurdity. We are in the presence of the mystery of the spirit of man. That spirit is the source of the "explanations" which give us our control of the outer world. But we cannot turn these formulae upon their source, and account for it by means of them. The most we can do is to describe the psychological phenomena of the progress of genius. The force it manifests is at present incalculable and unpredictable. Possibly it will always remain so. The methods of physical science,the fundamental scientific concepts of quantity, number and magnitude—which apply to space and its contents, do not apply to the spirit. tions in Readers of Shakespeare will derive great help Psychologfrom a clear vision of the world in which he lived ical condiand moved. The life around him, and the history Shakewhich his nation had made and was making, intro- speare's duce us to the mental and spiritual influences that played upon him, and thus enable us to follow his unique reaction to them. One cannot say, indeed, time. "What should they know of Shakespeare who |