The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 - Critical Studies

Summary

Only a small number of substantial critical studies has become available for review in the period here covered. It seems likely that the increasing difficulties of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are in part the explanation of this, since it is clear from the quantity of work appearing in journals that the race of Shakespearian commentators is in no danger of dying out. Nor do the commentators appear in any danger of running short of material, since they enjoy a constantly increasing scope in the discussion of one another’s views. If, as is probable, the journals are soon constrained to further economies in point of space, these writers will do well to sacrifice, in the first place, the element of elaborate debate which is at present fashionable among them. Critical essays now frequently take the form of a progress through veritable thickets of contemporary opinion, so that the total effect is of little more than a babel of voices. A laudable sense of academic courtesy is one factor predisposing to this, as is also, perhaps, an influence from techniques of investigation that have proved notably successful in the natural sciences. But to read extensively in interpretative studies conducted in this manner is to experience a mild intellecutal claustrophobia—or even a feeling that one is missing a good deal of the play as a result of the earnest, if not always lively, conference being conducted in the stalls. Many of those who write about Shakespeare might with great advantage—at least to themselves—write more directly. The hard fact is that when the impulse to do so is in abeyance the likelihood of interesting communication is small.