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THE INFLUENCE OF BEAUMONT

AND FLETCHER ON SHAKSPERE

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph. D.
Associate Professor of English, Western Reserve University

WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

PRESS OF OLIVER B. WOOD

1901

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PREFACE.

This volume is based on a portion of a dissertation on "Some Contemporary Influences on Shakspere," which was presented to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University to fulfill a requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. That dissertation dealt with the relations of As You Like It to pastoral and Robin Hood plays, and of Hamlet to tragedies of revenge, as well as with the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere's romances. This last division has been rewritten and considerably enlarged and forms this volume. My conclusions in regard to the indebtedness of the romances to the contemporary drama are thus offered without the support which might perhaps have been afforded by the co-ordinate investigations. · A study, however, of Shakspere as an adapter requires less apology now than it would have four years ago when I first began this work. Shaksperean criticism has made a decided advance since then toward the adoption of the point of view and methods of historical criticism. Mr. Sidney Lee's discussion of the sonnets as a representative of a current literary form has opened the field and pointed the way for future students of the plays. My incentive to a historical study came entirely from the lectures of Professor Barrett Wendell at Harvard University and from his suggestive study, William Shakspere. While the hypothesis in regard to the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher with which I began my work was the immediate result of my reading and, so far as I know, has never been advanced before, whatever merit there may be in the general method and point of view of this essay is due to the instruction and example of Mr. Wendell. I venture to hope that, however my conclusions may be estimated, the investigation on which they are based will be of some interest in illustrating the application of the historical method to the study of Shakspere.

In condensing the results of my work for publication, it has been necessary to omit some investigations not closely connected with the main thesis and merely to note the results of others. Among these

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