The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by WilliamShakespeare by George Lyman KittredgeReview by: C. J. SissonModern Language Notes, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Feb., 1940), pp. 145-147Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2910149 .

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REVIEWS 145

mechanical.9 If he made the meeting of the wife and her lover clandestine (nos. 1 and 4), and simplified the steps leading up to the meeting (nos. 1 and 2), Chaucer made their rendezvous some- what casual, and intensified the characterizations of both the lover and the wife. And finally, if Chaucer decided to allow the wife to spend the money on array and then offer to repay her husband abed, the poet thereby made the wife more real than ever before, and gave the tale-at first intended for the Wife of Bath '0-one of its most original and feminine touches.

ROBERT A. PRATT Queens College

REVIEWS

The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Both edited by G.EORGE LYMIAN KITTREDGE. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1939. Pp. xx + 253. $.85 each.

We have been long waiting for the Kittredge Edition of Shake- speare, and at last the first two volumes are before us. The one- volume Shakespeare text published by Professor Kittredge not long ago, which furnishes the textual basis for the new Edition, gave a foretaste of his quality in its introductions to each play. Professor Kittredge's great contribution to Shakespearian scholar- ship is above all expository. Hitherto it has been delivered in the main through the living word, from the mouth of the greatest Shakespeare teacher who has ever lived. The word of Kittredge has gouie forth from the benches of his Harvard lecture-room, spread by his disciples, who number among them most great American Shakespearians, throughout the length and breadth of his own country.

A glimpse of his mind upon Shakespeare reached a wider audi- ence when his masterly tercentenary Lecture was published in 1916. And some twenty years later London heard him in his

9 This is also true of no. 3, regarding which Chaucer and Boccaccio are in agreement. It should also be noted that only Chaucer and Boccaccio present the lover and merchant as friends.

10 See J. S. P. Tatlock, The Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works (Chaucer Society, Second Series, no. 37), London, 1907, pp. 205-6.

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146 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, FEBRUARY, 1940

memorable Northcliffe Lectures at University College. A legend then became history for England as for the United States. It is not often that one can write thus about a living scholar with the certainty of general approval.

Professor Kittredge's exposition of Shakespeare-always the in- strument of a stern intellectual discipline-rests upon solid bases. A firm classical training, mastery of medieval literature, excep- tional philological competence, a life-long study and love of the plays themselves and of Elizabethan life and literature, a shrewd, humane, sensitive, and sinewy mind obnoxious to all easy brilliance: all these are ingredients in the strong working brew of his thought. Not for nothing, moreover, do the records of Saffron Walden show hlow Kittredges were rooted deep in Essex soil in the sixteenth century. Wherever he goes, Shakespeare goes with him, enlivens the way, and points the tale. If Kittredge's Old Farmer has been reading Shakespeare, the Professor follows on his tracks a step behind. The ripe fruit of fifty such years has now begun to appear before us.

I have often wondered whether it was Macbeth that first led Professor Kittredge into the exhaustive study recorded in his Witchcraft in Old and New England. It is clear, at any rate, that he is especially qualified to speak upon one aspect of the play. In his admirable Introduction he will have no truck with such fancies of the intelligentsia as make play with projections and personifica- tions, and indeed all his comments upon the supernatural here, as in Julius Caesar, are conclusive. But it is after all the Notes that record for us his expository teaching. Concerning them, it may suffice to say that I for my part propose henceforth to amend my stock piece of advice for students in doubt-to see what Dr. John- son says. For 'Johnson,' read 'Johnson and Kittredge.' Whether it be a question of interpretation, or of illuminating comment and analogy, his observations are those of a master. Consider, for instance, the notes on Macbeth iii. 4. 37, or on Jutlius Oaescar II. 1. 66-69, or a score of others.

Professor Kittredge, in his general outlook, is equally concerned with the play as a piece of literature, as a shape in Shakespeare's own vision, and as a stage-play. These is a due balance of interest, and of judgment. In this connection, I feel that Professor Kit- tredge has not, in his Introduction to Julius Caesar, given due weight to the remarkable significance of the 'Roman thought' that struck Shakespeare and to the emergence of tragedy. But with talk abroad about the poet's spiritual Rake's Progress, one may well be chary of touching upon his artistic and intellectual development.

Professor Kittredge avoids dogmatism, and prefers to state a full case with his judgment, 'taking' the reader 'with him,' to use an Elizabethan idiom. I cite an instance to the contrary with trepidation, for it is an old bone of contention. But he does in

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REVIEWS 147

fact content himself with declaring without more ado that in the Folio reading 'making the Greene one, Red,' the comma is a mis- print. Shades of differences in meaning between words in Eliza- bethan and modern usage respectively are carefully attended to, a notable and necessary feature of his commentary. I wonder if his very familiarity with Elizabethan English allowed him to pass over the word 'wink' in Macbeth without such comment. But his Glos- sarial Index is complete and helpful, in both volumes. The type here is however too small for comfort. Elsewhere the books are legibly and clearly printed. I have noted only one misprint, in Macbeth, p. xviii, note 3, 'Norms' for 'Norns.' Textual Notes are appended, giving a summary of variants and of conjectures.

The progress of English scholarship must now for a time be entrusted solely to other than English scholars. It is good to know that the lamp will be held in such hands. Here is work built to outlast all forces that silence truth, freedom, and honest purpose, and distort even Shakespeare to evil ends.

C. J. SISSON University of London

Thomas Fuller's The Holy State and the Profane State. Edited by MIAXIMILIAN GRAFF WALTEN. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1938. Vol. I, Introduction, Notes, and Appendix, pp. xvi + 282 + 56; Vol. II, A reduced facsimile of the First Edition, pp. xx + 441. $7.00.

The Formation of Thomas Fuller's " Holy and Profane States." By WALTER E. HOUGHITON, JR. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938. Pp. viii + 260. $3.00.

Mr. Walten differs from ir. Houghton as a cartographer, trac- ing the streams that combine to form a lake, differs from a limnologist who studies its hidden springs and the life in its waters. In terms of four main literary traditions-"character-writing, essay, biography, and courtesy book" (p. 7)-WValten presents Fuller as "a great constructive artist" (p. viii), while Houghton stresses " at least a dozen literary traditions-casuistry, and secular moral philosophy, courtesy and treatises of policy . . . books of estates and domestic conduct . . . biographical dictionaries and his- torical chronicles . . . rhetoric and medical works on the mind (pp. 247-8)," and even books on witchcraft. Both men are pioneers amongf the influences that formed the States, but Houghton goes much further afield than Walten. To the latter everything in the first book of The Holy State seems to belong to the subspecies of

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