Book Description

Excerpt from The Life and Genius of Shakespeare We believe that we need make no apology for the publication of this volume. We cannot, indeed, help fearing that Shakespearian criticism, in some, at least, of its forms, has already become an overgrown excrescence. But the very rapidity with which works succeed one another in illustration of the personal and literary history of the poet, shows that the curiosity which it excites is still unexhausted. The last word has evidently not yet been told upon this subject; and any new attempt to solve the riddle - as far as it admits of solution - of Shakespeare's life and genius, will still, no doubt, be judged upon its own merits. We do not know whether we have been able to make any really useful addition to the already unmanageable stores of this branch of our national literature; and that is a matter on which we have no desire to indulge in any idle conjectures. But there are some points connected with the mode in which we have executed the task we have undertaken, on which we wish at once to offer a few words of explanation. We have, first of all, to state that we make no pretension to any profound scholarship of any kind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.