The Art and Life of William Shakespeare

HARCOURT, BRACE

FOR the general reader, one work on Shakespeare is quite enough if he takes this one. Its stage history is sound, its criticism is judicious, its style is excellent, its bibliography is adequate, and its notes are sufficient to guide the special student as far as he wishes to go. In the few pages devoted to Shakespeare’s life, it is a pleasure to see that Mr. Spencer deals honorably with his reader; he carefully labels facts as facts and assumptions as assumptions. Mr. Spencer does not discuss the vexed question of authorship, merely anathematizing all doubters in good papal style as recalcitrant or mad. The doubters can bear up under this, however, knowing that the question is trivial. Whoever did or did not write the plays, somebody wrote them and we have them, and that is all that counts.