With a few introductory observations respecting the Author WARWICK: W. H. SMITH AND SON, PUBLISHERS, HIGH STREET. PREFACE. It is not a matter of surprise that the works for an infinite genius should be susceptible, in one way or other, of an indefinite variety of interpretation; but, with one remarkable exception, such an observation would not be applicable to the details of his life. That exception rests in the biography of Shakespeare. It is not merely that no two persons could be found who would agree altogether upon the numerous questions in connexion with his life, which are still, and will probably be for ever, open to discussion, but each sequent biographer, it is found, surrenders the general character of his work, in a singular and even unique degree, to the control of his own individual temperament. It would thus happen that the continuity of a life of our national poet, composed under a dual management, would necessarily be disturbed by unconsonant divergencies. The publishers of Fairholt's Home of Shakespeare have therefore decided, most wisely I think, to reproduce that charming little essay in the form in which it originally appeared in the year 1847, limiting the corrections to those of a verbal or numerical description. More than this-such as the incorporation of discoveries that have rendered the opening paragraph a signal exaggeration-could hardly have been attempted without prejudice to the sustentation of the special authorship. To have taken the risk of that prejudice would also have been an offence in respect to an ever-remembered friendship. Little did either of us imagine, when spending many happy weeks together at Stratford-on-Avon in that same 1847, that one of us would have lived to be, exactly forty years afterwards, the "executor of the other's writings." |