I. FIRST PERIOD: LYRIC AND FANTASTIC
II. SECOND PERIOD: COMIC AND HISTORIC
III. THIRD PERIOD: TRAGIC AND ROMANTIC
APPENDIX
I. NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III.
II. REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS ON THIS FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE
NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY
III. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS




A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE.


I.


The greatest poet of our age has drawn a parallel of elaborate eloquence
between Shakespeare and the sea; and the likeness holds good in many
points of less significance than those which have been set down by the
master-hand. For two hundred years at least have students of every kind
put forth in every sort of boat on a longer or a shorter voyage of
research across the waters of that unsounded sea. From the paltriest
fishing-craft to such majestic galleys as were steered by Coleridge and
by Goethe, each division of the fleet has done or has essayed its turn of
work; some busied in dredging alongshore, some taking surveys of this or
that gulf or headland, some putting forth through shine and shadow into
the darkness of the great deep. Nor does it seem as if there would
sooner be an end to men's labour on this than on the other sea. But here