been welcome, But printing is another story. Dr. Chambers thinks that the Shrove Sunday mentioned in the title of the 1610 Mucedorus “might be either 18 February 1610 or 3 February 1611.” But can he point to a single popular publication of the time which uses any other than what he terms the Circumcision style—perhaps better called the Pagan?
The four Indexes of Plays, Persons, Places, and Subjects are admirably workmanlike, though readers might have been grateful for the inclusion of some matters that receive only passing mention, say the Lord Warden’s men of 1543 (i. 274) and the Sion College manuscript of Shirley’s Sisters (iii. 193). In the index of plays, titles, we are told, are shortened by the omission of the word “The”: why then are ten plays buried under it as a heading?
One looks back after working through Dr. Chambers’ pages—happily there are close on two thousand of them—with a profound sense of admiration and gratitude for the brilliant qualities and patient devotion that have gone to the production of the work. It is an achievement of which few men would have been capable and any man might be proud. And I think that we should extend our respectful congratulations to the Oxford University Press for their gallant share in an onerous undertaking.[1]
I have hinted that caution is perhaps the outstanding feature of Dr. Chambers’ work. It is a quality more than usually needed in such a field as the English drama, where there has been in the past so much tainted evidence and so much unsound reasoning. Yet it must be admitted that these volumes pay the price in a certain negative quality. The certainty of history can never be the certainty of mathematics, and perpetual reservation tends to obscure the presentation. We are bound often to rely on circumstantial evidence, the value of which, I think, Dr. Chambers underrates: after all, the whole structure of natural science rests on this basis. The student eager for firm ground to stand on may be forgiven if, under the garb of the respectable civil-servant, he sees at times the “Geist der stets verneint”! To say that the “1608” Henry V., for instance, was “probably” printed in 1619, appears
- ↑ Gratitude, however, is a little tempered with disquietude, for I cannot think that the technical production is quite up to the high level the Press has taught us to expect of its work. The inking is often uneven and weak, the types imperfect and with distressing splashes of metal; and I hope the printer will take a hammer and bray small the matrix of a particular italic C—page 399 of vol. iv. is an offence to look upon. Also why is the paper full of bits of rubber? and cannot something be done to obviate smudging the print in folding?
