Shakespeare: A Survey

Some of the subtlest and profoundest Shakespeare criticism has already found its way into paperback editions: we have only to cite our own Shakespeare and the Elizabethans by Henri Fluchere. But these books are tough going for the beginner, particularly the youthful beginner, and the need has been felt for a more elementary book on the subject-one that would go through Shakespeare play by play and give the student what he requires when approaching Shakespeare for the first time.

Some of the books we examined were condescendingly chatty. Others offered no more than a catalogue of the background facts. We had almost despaired of finding the ideal solution when we came upon Sir Edmund Chambers’ Shakespeare: A Survey. Here was the necessary information-bur also critical service above and beyond the call of academic duty. The tone was unpatronizing, the style limpid. Sir Edmund Chambers (1866-1954), one of the two or three most distinguished Shakespeare scholars of this century, is the author of the standard, full-scale biography of Shakespeare. When an elementary textbook is written by one of the great specialists in any field, the results can be extraordinary; we believe that, in the present case, they are.

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