The inadequacy of our current literary terms is nowhere clearer than in the case of tragedy, despite the amount of energy that has been spent on efforts to define it. Beyond or below the incontestable examples—the masterpieces of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Shakespeare—stretches a wide and uncertainly bounded territory, sometimes thought of as including almost any play of a fairly serious sort, sometimes divided according as its occupants present, or fail to present, certain accepted features. The former point of view leads to regarding as vaguely tragic even plays that end in no positive catastrophe, the latter to compiling lengthy catalogs of pieces that have nothing of the tragic form but the label. At first sight it may seem that there is a radical difference between plays which end in downfall and death and those in which a threatened woe is at length and completely averted; but if we limit the name of tragedy to the former class, we are forced to deny it to pieces that have traditionally laid claim to it, and thus to show how hard is the task of drawing positive distinctions. If we feel that the Agamemnon of Æschylus is really more akin to Macbeth, than to the bloodless products of a mistakenly classicizing Renaissance, we may yet find it hard to justify that feeling on the basis of the current conceptions, or to account for numerous facts which the actual plays present. Why, for instance, are the best examples of tragedy confined almost entirely to certain well-marked periods—Greek to less than a century between Salamis and the death of Sophocles, Elizabethan either to the seven years between 1586 and the death of Marlowe or to the decade 1599–1609, French to the somewhat longer but far less well filled interval between the Cid in 1636 and Phèdre in 1677? Why, again, are tragic heroes usually of royal or noble rank? “Why is the action usually set in a more or less remote time? Are traits like these essential to the form, or merely adventitious? To answer such questions, we need to examine two matters: the nature of the material best able to yield the tragic effect, the nature of the faculty by which that material is to be contemplated. The present paper—in rather summary fashion, and with no pretence at an exhaustive review of authorities—will attempt this double task.

It is the purpose of the following paper to examine the relationship of the mediæval ballad to the dance, in origin and in traditional usage. Particular reference is had to the English and Scottish ballad type. In various preceding papers I have considered the theory currently accepted in America of the inseparableness of primitive dance, music, and song and have shown that primitive song is not narrative in character. I have also questioned the assumption that the ballad is the archetypal poetic form—this position should be assigned to the song, not the ballad—and the assumption of “communal” as against individual authorship for the English and Scottish popular ballads. The present paper examines the relation to the dance of the English and Scottish ballads. The view is widely accepted both in the Old World and in America that this, and similar ballad types, originated in the dance. The following paper canvasses the evidence for this view and makes inquiry as to its validity.

Whether or not The Dynasts is the greatest work in English literature of the last generation it is undoubtedly the most engrossing for the student of literary forms. English literature does not on the whole raise questions of form; we have been content to leave that to the Germans. But with The Dynasts we have for once out of our own native workshop a poem which drives the mind back to all the old problems that have dogged epic and dramatic literature through the centuries. And besides the old problems it raises a score of new ones which will stimulate enterprise and innovation in many a writer of to-day and to-morrow. If at the present moment the necessity of analyzing The Dynasts, complicated as the task may be, is not apparent to the reader of English literature at large, it will be apparent at no distant date.

In a previous paper the syllabic quantity of twenty-five lines of Milton's Paradise Lost was discussed. In that paper it was shown that for three different readers approximately 90% of the syllables standing in the metrically stressed position were longer than the other syllables in the same foot in the unstressed position. In the following study it is my purpose to consider syllabic duration in lyric verse of different metres. The first two selections are iambic. They were read by I and Ka respectively, both instructors in vocal expression in western universities. All times are given in tenths and one-hundredths of a second; the times of pauses are in parenthesis.

In any serious consideration of Poe's life and character it will be necessary to take account of Griswold's estimate of the poet. This estimate was set forth in two articles published during the year following Poe's death—one, an obituary notice published in the New York Tribune of October 9, 1849; the other, the memoir of Poe included by Griswold in his edition of Poe's works and first published in September, 1850. Out of these two papers sprang the bitterest of all the controversies that have been waged about Poe. Most of Poe's editors and biographers of the present generation have ranged themselves on the side of Poe and have condemned Griswold; but there have been some—and among them some that may speak with the highest authority—who have held that Griswold's estimate of Poe is essentially just and fair. The present paper attempts a fresh examination of the case in the light of the evidence collected by Poe's biographers, and also brings to bear on the case a number of documents, mainly from the periodicals of Griswold's time, that have heretofore been either overlooked or ignored.

The range of subject-matter treated in the German drama of the sixteenth century will appear wide and varied only to the scholar who does not think of the vast expanse of the Biblical field as featureless and barren. Beyond the confines of the Bible-drama there are, of course, some religious battle-plays, of the Pammachius type, the morality-plays of the Homulus-Hekastus series, a few dramas built on classical material, sundry “Türkenschauspiele,” some scattered romantic comedies, drawing on foreign or native legend and, exceptionally, plays from contemporary history; the Latin school-drama often mirrors delightfully the color and bustle of everyday life; but, in the end, all this is of secondary interest: and the fact must be recognized that sixteenth-century drama stands in the sign of the Book. It might be fairly said that there is hardly a chapter in the Bible which was not adapted for dramatic use or, at least, dragged upon the stage. As one reads the titles, the conclusion, as Froning remarks, almost inevitably presents itself: either the dramatists of those times must have possessed an extraordinary faculty of dramatic adaptation, or else they had no inkling of the demands of stage-craft.

Mr. Bateson's numerous notes on the Middle English Clannesse (Mod. Lang. Rev., xiii, pp. 377–86) renew interest in that curious, though often tantalizing poem. Worthy of acceptance, it seems to me, are those on lines 3, 30, 54, 222, 341, 379, 411, 449, 553, 630, 1048, 1261, 1483, 1566, 1735, a considerable list. About as many others are equally good, but have been proposed before. For example, the New Eng. Dict. has anticipated Mr. Bateson in his suggestions for lines 148, 214, 887, 1038, 1469, while the Cent. Dict. had preceded the NED in the note on line 1514. Besides, the NED seems to be misquoted on (1153) and penitotes (1472). The former is certainly given under tight, v. 2, with this passage among others. Nor have I found where the NED reads ryther for ryth of 1543.