Excerpt from Shakespeare Questions: An Outline for the Study of the Leading Plays It would be easy to expect more from this book than it is designed to give. It offers little criticism or information and it is not intended for use to the exclusion of lectures, books of reference, or notes. Indeed, it avoids, in as far as possible, the material commonly found in these indispensable helps and guides to the study of Shakespeare. It cannot take the place of a gifted interpreter nor can it make the men and women of the plays live and move before an inert mind or a listless imagination. It is primarily analytical in method, and although much has been done in the general questions to insure a comprehensive view of each play, the work of final synthesis has been left, as it always must be left, to the individual student. I am aware of many objections that may be urged against a book such as the present, but I have yet to discover any method of teaching and studying Shakespeare as effective as the one upon which the book is based. The pure lecture system leaves the student too much upon his own resources and gives that impression of haziness and generality which leads to frequent and legitimate complaints against some methods of teaching English literature. The use of wide collateral reading is essential to the success of any method, but every teacher of the plays knows the danger of losing sight of Shakespeare while threading the jungle of Shakespearean scholarship. Reliance upon notes, dissection of the plays line by line and word by word in disconnection dead and spiritless," use of the text as an exercise-book in etymology, phonetics, antiquities, and prosody, is probably the worst method of all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.