A CRITICAL STUDY OF HIS MIND AND ART BY EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN NEW YORK HARVARD "I am greatly pleased to think that you intend to make me better known to the American public, and I trust Mr. William J. Rolfe's favorable opinion of the book may be confirmed by other readers." Professor DoWDEN, in a letter to HARPER & BROTHERS, December 20th, 1880. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. In the present edition, I have made such corrections as appeared needful, and have brought my statements on some doubtful points into harmony with the latest results of Shaksperian scholarship. I wish to insist upon the statement made on p. 246 that Julius Cæsar lies in point of time beside Hamlet. Both are tragedies of thought rather than of passion; both present, in their chief characters, the spectacle of noble natures which fail through some weakness or deficiency rather than through crime. Upon Brutus as upon Hamlet a burden is laid which he is not able to bear; neither Brutus nor Hamlet is fitted for action, yet both are called to act in dangerous and difficult affairs. Julius Cæsar was probably complete before Hamlet assumed its latest form, perhaps before Hamlet was written. Still, giving the reader a caution, as I did in the case of The Tempest, I am not unwilling to speak of Hamlet as the second of Shakspere's tragedies. Hamlet seems to have its roots so deep in Shakspere's nature, it was so much a subject of special predilection, it is so closely connected with older dramatic work. We acquire the same feeling with reference to Hamlet which we have for Goethe's Faust-that it has to do with almost the whole of the deeper part of the poet's life up to the date of its creation. |