In writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries, care has been taken to
enable the reader to judge them on their own merits. With this view
an effort has been made to illustrate their spirit by what was best
in their books, and not necessarily what would recall the
master-dramatist's works, and would expose them to the extreme
danger of being dwarfed by him beyond desert, and of fading away in
his light as moths in the sunshine. Considered from this
standpoint, they will not, however, cease to offer some degree of
interest to the Shakespearean student, for this process makes us
aware not merely of what materials Shakespeare happened to use, but
from what stores he chose them. On this account such works as
Greene's tales of real life have been studied at some length, and a
chapter has been devoted to Nash, who, high as he stands among the
older novelists, has been allowed to pass unnoticed as a tale
writer by all historians of fiction. If, therefore, a large use has
been made of the publications of learned societies devoted to the
study of Shakespeare, liberal recourse also has been had to the
depositories of old original pamphlets, to the Bodleian library
especially, where, surprising as it may be in this age of reprints,
single copies of early novels, not to be met anywhere else, are
even now to be found. Some other writings of the same kind, even
less known, such as "Zelinda," a very witty parody of a romantic
tale by Voiture, the "Adventures of Covent Garden," illustrative of
the novel and the drama in the seventeenth century, were found in
the primitive and only issue nearer at hand, in that matchless
granary of knowledge, whose name no student can pronounce without a
feeling of awe, because it is so noble, and of gratitude, because
it is so generously administered, the British Museum.
General
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