Transcriber’s note Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of the corrections made can be found at the end of the book. Formatting and special characters are indicated as follows: _italic_ SHAKESPEARE’S TREATMENT OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE AND OTHER ESSAYS THE MERMAID SERIES THE BEST PLAYS OF THE OLD DRAMATISTS. _Literal Reproductions of the Old Text_ WITH PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE Boards, =3/6= net; Cloth, =5/-= net each THOMAS DEKKER, JOHN DRYDEN, BEN JONSON, THOMAS OTWAY, Etc. _Send for a copy of the Prospectus of the Mermaid Series_ T. FISHER UNWIN LTD. LONDON SHAKESPEARE’S TREATMENT OF LOVE & MARRIAGE AND OTHER ESSAYS _By_ C. H. HERFORD HONORARY PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE _First published in 1921_ (_All rights reserved_) TO MY STUDENTS, PAST AND PRESENT, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 1901-1921 PREFACE THE following essays, mainly concerned with famous and familiar names, are less heterogeneous, and it is hoped less hackneyed, than some of the titles may suggest. They are all occupied ultimately with some aspect of a single problem in what I would call the psychology of poetic experience, did not the phrase imply a scientific rigour of method hardly as yet achieved, in this region, by psychological science itself, and in any case beyond the reach of the present writer. How is the gift of imaginative creation affected by the presence in the same mind of one or other of the spiritual energies which have a different, even an alien, perhaps incompatible, aim or goal; or simply by a bias of ingrained ethical habitudes or ideals? What terms does poetry make with philosophy, or religion, or patriotism, or politics, or love, when one of these is urgent, also, in the mind of a poet? I say ‘terms’ advisedly, for nothing is more certain than that the outcome is determined by a process of give and take. Every complex experience involves a certain compromise among its disparate or contending factors; a compromise in great part, indeed, involuntary, resulting from the fact that, even in the least integrated personalities, the field of consciousness is a continuous unity, into which no fresh element enters without modifying, and being itself modified by, the rest. In the class of cases with which we are here concerned the modification may be loss or gain, or both together. We think of Dante or Lucretius as great philosophical poets, and many people assume,