Representative English Comedies, v. 1. From the beginnings to Shakespeare

Representative English Comedies, v. 1. From the beginnings to Shakespeare

v "'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ... nor ginger hot i' the mouth?' Or knowest not that while man, casting the dice with Fate and Mistress Grundy, imagineth a new luck, there shall be new comedy? Why, then, reprint these old?" In part, because the comedies of a nation are for literature as well as for the footlights, and literature, in most cases, begins after the footlights are out. In part, because old comedies make good reading, not only for lovers of fiction and the stage, but for the student of society and the historian. Until rival forms of literary art began to usurp their function, comedies werein England, not to speak of other and older landsthe recognized and cherished exponent of the successive phases of contemporary life. For us they still are living sketches of the social manners, morals, vanities, and ideals of generations of our ancestors; history "unbeknownst" as written by contemporaries. Unfortunately, many of these old comedies are inaccessible to the public; and, therefore, we venture to hope that the general reader may find such a collection as the present acceptable, whether he care to enter upon a historical and technical study of the subject or not. To the student of literary history, however, this series will, we trust, justify its existence for quite another reason. For the aim of this volume and those which will follow is to indicate the development of a literary type by a selection of its representative vi specimens, arranged in the order of their production and accompanied by critical and historical studies. So little has been scientifically determined concerning evolution or permutation in literature that the more specific the field of inquiry, the more trustworthy are the results attained,hence the limitation of this research not merely to a genus like the drama, but to one of its species. What is here presented to the public differs from histories of the drama in that it is more restricted in scope and that it substantiates the narrative of a literary growth by reproducing the data necessary to an induction; it differs from editions of individual plays and dramatists, on the other hand, because it attempts to concatenate its texts by a running commentary upon the characteristics of the species under consideration as they successively appear. It is an illustrated, if not certified, history of English comedy. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49710
Author: Gayley, Charles Mills
Release Date: Aug 15, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Gayley, Charles Mills, 1858-1932