Theoretically it is true that the application of the genealogical method to a sizable number of manuscripts descended from a single archetype would allow the almost perfect reconstruction of that archetype. Families, groups, and subgroups could be distinguished without hesitation, and readings could be determined with very little recourse to editorial ingenuity. Unfortunately such conditions are not to be found in actual practice. When the text critic has made a systematic record of all variants to be found in the MSS that he has collated, he must determine which of the great quantity of variational groups are genetic—that is, which groups actually reflect in their common readings the genealogy of their transmission. This operation requires the elimination of variational groups formed by the mere possession of the right reading, and random groupings formed by the accidental coincidence of readings.

Commentators on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, in addressing themselves to a variety of problems, have arrived at equally varied conclusions about the quality of the play. Behind all of these comments, however, whether favorable or unfavorable, lies one common assumption: that the play, on the surface at least, is not entirely satisfactory and therefore requires a somewhat exceptional elucidation. It is conceded even by defenders of the play that there are apparent moral inconsistencies which need to be resolved, that many questionable actions must be accounted for if the Duke and Isabella are to be saved as completely “good” characters. For example, attention is frequently called to the shifty delays and intrigues of the Duke, to Isabella's self-righteous prudery which would at once sacrifice a brother—indeed would violently damn him for asking her to yield her virginity to save him—and sanction the substitution of Mariana for herself. Also there is some question whether the play conforms adequately to a legitimate dramatic genre. Shakespeare has been charged with taking the stuff of tragedy and forcing it into the mold of comedy by asking his audience to accept Angelo's last-minute repentance and marriage to Mariana. Finally, there are certain apparent inconsistencies in the dramatic action, which suggest to some commentators a possible corruption of the text. For example, at the beginning of the play the Duke characterizes Angelo as without blemish; yet later he reveals that Angelo wrongly deserted Mariana before the start of the action. Similarly, Mariana states that she has often been comforted by Friar Lodowick (the disguised Duke), although we know that the Duke has just adopted this disguise.

When a literary critic's judgments are never dull, it is inevitable that they will often be surprising. A more striking example is hardly to be found among the great critics than Dr. Johnson's remarkable comparisons of Fielding and Richardson. Many later judges, unwilling to do justice to Richardson, and contenting themselves with a cool recognition of his historical importance, have nonetheless been willing that Johnson should admire him extravagantly. That his evaluation of the novelist would be less impartial than theirs is easily understood, both because of the two men's friendship and because of eighteenth-century literary tastes, so different from our own. But Johnson's utter obtuseness towards Fielding is annoying to the modern critic, not merely because Fielding's reputation has far outstripped that of his rival, but also because he was immensely admired in Johnson's own lifetime. The Age of Reason gloried in the author of Tom Jones, yet here is the supreme critic of the century delivering himself of the most inflexibly contrary opinion. What are we to think of this?

Any discussion of Voltaire's attitude toward Homer, a figure admired L and condemned for a great variety of reasons during the neoclassic period, must touch ultimately on several different questions. Voltaire's reaction to primitive manners and customs as represented in the Homeric poems, his understanding of history and chronology, the method of his mind in approaching, again and again between 1727 and 1772, a traditional admiration of the first importance—all these subjects and more are involved in a study whose immediate purpose is to show that Voltaire held a consistent view of Homer. And they all prepare a still more com-prehensive question: whether Voltaire defended or neglected the cause of poetry at a time when an opinion of Homer was not far from being equivalent to an opinion of the essential literary art.

The fifth edition of Attilio Momigliano's Storia della Letteratura Iialiana (Milan, 1946) still insists on the mainly ornamental function of the Decameron frame story: “II motivo del verde e dei fiori che inghirlandano la lieta compagnia, ha per lo più la superficialità e la povertà di un ornamento: è più decorazione che pittura. Ed è questo il carattere di tutta l'intelaiatura del libro : un largo affresco aristocratico da guardare nel decoro del complesso senza meditazione e senza analisi” (pp. 79 ff.). Yet a number of modern critics have seen in the cornice more than an ornament and have considered it rather an organic part of the entire work. Some of these writers see symbolic significance in the brigata's departure (or escape) from the stricken city to more ideal places, and their assumptions seem to be borne out by the statements of Boccaccio, who actually leaves no doubt about his artistic intention and consciousness in writing the frame story. However, it seems strange that even those critics who see symbolic significance in the brigata's departure from the city should look at the remainder of the cornice as a single setting and should overlook entirely the group's wanderings from garden to garden. Although a detailed study of these gardens has not hitherto been made, they and the group's peregrinations suggest symbolically the philosophy of the whole work and are thus essential to its interpretation.

Guillén de Castro in his Mocedades del Cid presents us with a characterization of his hero which differs radically from the Cid of the Romancero and the Crónicas. He transforms the renowned medieval warrior into a courtly knight. Ernest Mérimée in the Première Partie des Mocedades del Cid de Guillen de Castro (Toulouse, 1890, page cvi) takes note of the metamorphosis and attributes it to the playwright's inventive genius. But in his brochure, The Cid Theme in France in 1600 (Minneapolis, 1920), Gustave L. Van Robsbroeck casts some doubt on this point of view by bringing to light a novel by Antoine Du Périer, La Eayne et l'Amour d'Arnoul et de Clayremonde (Paris, 1600), containing features similar to the Castro story including the element of courtliness, which, of course, obviously antedate the play. His conclusion is that “There existed a common source—probably a Spanish source—for both the Eayne et L'Amour d'Arnoul et de Clayremonde and Las Mocedades del Cid” (p. 15). Barbara Matulka further enlarges on the subject in her The Cid as a Courtly Hero: from Amadis to Corneille (New York, 1928, pp. 6–40). She notes an early treatment of the courtly Cid theme in Feliciano de Silva's Florisel de Niquea (1532–51) representing books x, xi, and xii of the Amadis series, and cites Jimenez de Ayllon's Los Famosos y Herôicos Hechos del Invencible Cavallero el Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar (1568) to show that the Cid had been introduced to court prior to the Mocedades and to point out that Ayllon's epic contains situations and details similar to those found in the play. These works, Miss Matulka claims, have been influential through intermediary links between them and our dramatic piece. There is no question but that she is partially correct in her contention, and this we shall endeavor to prove through the discussion of materials which she failed to utilize at the time she made her investigation.

It is proposed here to recall a tragic maritime adventure which has been told and retold in history, epic, and drama and to observe the individual and characteristic ways in which the event—heroic in its proportions—was reduced and adapted to the more intimate confines of the stage by Tirso de Molina and by a contemporary dramatist presumed (perhaps mistakenly) to be Lope de Vega.

In the introduction to his edition of Guillaume le Clerc's Fergus (Halle, 1872) Ernst Martin surmised that Guillaume had composed his romance for a patron, Alan of Galloway, presumably while at the court of this powerful noble, in order to glorify Alan's ancestors, Fergus of Galloway and Somarled of Argyle. The validity of this hypothesis, reaffirmed by Margaret Schlauch in her article on “The Historical Background of Fergus et Galiene,” has been challenged, as far as I know, only by E. Brugger, and then merely in passing. Any close connection between Guillaume and Alan—or even between Guillaume and Galloway —seems so improbable to me that I wish to re-examine the problem, first reviewing the evidence which has led scholars to accept—or at least not to reject—the theory advanced by Martin and supported by Schlauch.

Of the Rewards -which Richard Steele received from the victorious Whig party soon after the accession of George I, doubtless the most important were a seat in the House of Commons and the governorship of the Royal Company of Comedians acting in Drury Lane. These two rewards provided Steele's principal employments for the rest of his life: he became an active Parliament man, participating in debates in Commons and serving on Parliamentary committees; and at times he shared with the actor-managers the responsibility for running Drury Lane. It is understandable that politics and the theatre should provide the most frequently recurring themes in his writing during his later years. The years 1715 to 1718 are not exceptions. To these years belong a periodical, The Town Talk, which according to Steele himself was “designed to be helpful to the stage.”1 Chit-Chat, the brief sequel to The Town Talk, is on the other hand almost exclusively political. So also are several other essays—some which Steele published and others which he evidently did not publish—on controversial measures under debate in Parliament. Steele's writing during these years—as indeed during most of his life—had the immediacy of purpose which we associate with journalism; he wrote on subjects of current concern to himself.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the literary, folkloristic, and social significance of the “peasant-tournament,” a type of mock-epic generally neglected by literary historians. Perhaps the two outstanding examples of this genre are The Turnament of Totenham and the tournament in Heinrich Wittenwiler's Ring, both of which appear to date from the first half of the fifteenth century. The Turnament is an alliterative burlesque written sometime before 1456 by an unknown English author, who set the scene of his work at Tottenham, a village near London. Its 234 verses tell of a peasant tournament in which doughty village swains contend for the hand of Tyb, the reeve's daughter. The tournament of Lappenhausen is the opening episode in Wittenwiler's Ring, an amazing comic-didactic poem written in northeastern Switzerland about 1420. The Ring tells of the love, courtship, and marriage, of Bertschi Triefnas and his lovely hunchbacked, flatfooted, goitered sweetheart, Metzli Ruerenzumph. In the opening scene, which comprises about a thousand verses (vv. 105-659, 830-1279), Bertschi and his twelve companions ride to the village green and challenge all comers to joust in the name of womanhood. Finding no one who dares withstand them, they joust with each other until joined by Neidhart of Reuental, a peasant-hating nobleman who arrives in disguise and gives them a thorough drubbing.

The meaning of the four dialogues entitled Cymbalum mundi (published in 1537) is still enigmatic and it is to be feared that the aura of mystery which hovers over this witty, graceful work of incipient French humanism has repelled many readers whereas the Joyeux devis et nouvelles récréactions of the same author have, from La Fontaine to the present day, found a sympathetically appreciative public. It is our conviction that when some of the clouds which weigh heavily on the Cymbalum have been dispersed, this work, so full of genuine esprit gaulois and of a levity borrowed from Greece, will emerge in its true light.

Those who have suggested theories of the number of days Chaucer intended the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales to last have either confined themselves to a consideration of the journey to Canterbury or have assumed that it would take the pilgrims the same length of time for their return. Thus Miss Rickert, finding that groups such as the one described by Chaucer ordinarily traveled thirty miles in a day, “insisted on two days each way.” And Manly, after discussing the time it took the pilgrims to reach Canterbury and arriving at no definite conclusion, decided that the question was of no importance, “since the whole conception of a series of tales told while riding by so large a group of pilgrims is, however entertaining, entirely unrealistic.” The conception, though perhaps unrealistic, has been accepted by generations of readers as thoroughly as any artistic postulate. The stage of the Canterbury Tales is the road from London to Canterbury, and the acts of the finished work would have been the days of the pilgrimage. The evidence for Chaucer's intentions is slight, yet, with the confirmation provided by contemporaries familiar with conditions of pilgrimage, it is sufficient to indicate a five-day journey.