In the Quarto and Folio versions of Hamlet, Act ii, Sc. ii, occurs the following bit of byplay during Hamlet's conversation with Polonius:

In no other part of his writings was Geoffrey Chaucer more original than in the series of sketches of the pilgrims in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Though the Sources and Analogues is able to provide the source or at least an analogue for every complete tale, it gives (no information of any similar series earlier than Chaucer's time. Clearly the plan was the result of “inspiration.” Much has been written, however, on the sources of particular elements in the prologue. It may be worth while to consider in one place these and other features which contributed to the success of Chaucer's design.

In 1940 Miss Hope Emily Allen called attention to the relationship between The Tretyse of Loue and the Ancrene Riwle.1 The Tretyse of Loue, one of the six books printed at Caxton's press between the time of Caxton's death (c. 1491) and his successor Wynkyn de Worde's first book under his own name (Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection, 1494),2 is a compilation of ten devotional tracts, from the first and longest of which it takes its name. This first piece, (1) The Tretyse of Loue proper, is an expansion and adaptation of Part vil of the Riwle,3 dealing with the nature and virtue of spiritual love. The (2) Meditation on the Hours of the Cross and (3) Remedies Against the Seven Deadly Sins belong with the Tretyse by virtue of their similar dedication to a very wealthy lady4 and by the borrowings from the Riwle found in the latter. After an intermediate conclusion which may mark the end of the original compilation, there follow seven shorter tracts on various subjects. They are (4) The Three Signs of True Love and Friendship, three pages of meditations on Christ's love; (5) The Branches of the Appletree, a mystical treatise which, because of its significance in connection with the origin and provenance of the compilation, is the particular subject of this discussion; (6) The Seven Signs of Jesus' Love; (7) An Exhortation by Faith, five pages of moral exhortation; (8) Nine Articles of Master Albert of Cologne; (9) Diverse Sayings of Saint Paul and Others; and (10) The Six Masters on Tribulation.

Tillyard's interpretation of Lycidas as a tragic conflict between man's ego and his sense of finitude, resolved through a sublimation of the individual's fears and hopes in the aspirations of his group, has gained wide acceptance. Yet Tillyard, in focusing attention on the theme and its relationship to biographical data, has tended to minimize the pastoral and occasional aspects of the poem. On the other hand, the traditional over-emphasis on these aspects has long resulted in an evaluation of Lycidas as largely an allegory of college life and friendship or as a a supremely skillful exercise in a now archaic genre. Neither approach has included more than cursory consideration of Milton's imagery. This essay proposes that our understanding of Lycidas may be enriched by combining an historical and æsthetic point of view in a study of the relationship of the imagery of the poem to its other constituents. The essay will be particularly concerned with testing the hypothesis that the allusion to Orpheus in lines 56–63 is an important functional image through which Milton defined and developed his theme.

Domenico Cavalca's literary activity and his importance in Italian literary history have been questions discussed, at times even hotly, since the dawn of Italian literary historiography. However, it was only in 1905, when Guglielmo Volpi in his “Questione del Cavalca” outlined a program for future study of Cavalca's writings, that these may be said to have become a recognized field for scholarly research. The program then outlined by Volpi has in part been carried out. Alfonso Zacchi did pioneer work over a broad field, clearing the ground and opening up the question of the sources. Continuing Zacchi's work, Carmelina Naselli carried it further into the field of Cavalca's life and circumstances. Neither Zacchi nor Naselli, however, made a thorough study of Cavalca's sources, or of his manner of handling them—an aspect of the Cavalca question which calls for further elucidation, as Volpi did not fail to perceive. Nor did the afore-mentioned writers undertake to decide definitively, as Volpi (p. 318) suggests should be done, “se alcune opère attribuite al Cavalca per congettura possano esser sue.” These are the subjects I have chosen to investigate here.

The Elizabethans were familiar with scenes in which stage blood was liberally used. The tradition was old. In Cambises (1560's), “Enter Cruelty and Murder with bloody hands.” They grasp their victim:

Although Romeo and Juliet is one of the most popular and best-loved of all Shakespeare's plays, rivaled only by Hamlet, those best qualified to evaluate Shakespeare's works usually speak of it condescendingly as a nice but immature play on the theme of young love. The apologetic attitude of these critics is based upon two incorrect assumptions. Perceiving within the tragedy no intellectual framework, they have concluded that it has no central unifying theme; disturbed by the presence of various apparently discordant elements, especially in technique, they have sought to account for (or excuse) these on the basis of the author's immaturity at the time the play was written. Dowden calls this play “the work of the artist's adolescence”, and Grant White, going far in this direction, attributes certain of the most controversial passages to a period earlier by several years than the rest of the play.

Thanks to subventions from the American Philosophical Society and the Johns Hopkins University, I was able to spend three months of the year 1948 in Copenhagen, where I checked against the originals (in the Great Royal Library) Julius Zupitza's readings from the A and B transcripts of Beowulf.1 In the following I report my findings, except for those cases where I have neither additions nor corrections to make. For convenience of reference I give my readings and comments by line of verse, not by MS. page and line.21 conform to Z's practice of giving the A and B readings in italics.

Burckhardt has remarked that during the Renaissance culture and enlightenment were almost powerless against astrology, kept alive as it was by the ardent imagination of the people, and their passionate wish to penetrate the future. But what he calls the “delusion” of astral influence charmed even the cultured and enlightened, and for rather more complex reasons than he suggests. The modern scholar, in analyzing Renaissance trends, tends to denounce the mind that surrenders to such influences in a rationalist atmosphere. A belief in the occult powers of the stars over Man did not, however, necessarily betray intellectual backwardness, nor was disbelief a proof of great enlightenment. Astrology, though often tolerated by princes of the Church, generally incurred the censure of theologians, and such a fatalistic belief, denying free will and granting powers of revelation to stars named for pagan dieties, appeared to the clerical mind as an incitement to idolatry. In many cases, then, the opponents of the art were conformists, not rebels—nor were they immune to superstition. Even so formidable an enemy of the stars as Pico della Mirandola toyed with magic and the cabala, and often directed his attack at science in general. On the other hand, such a champion of astrology as Mellin de Saint-Gelays argued that Man should remain unhindered in his desire to fathom the mysterious forces of the universe. If man remains earthbound, never lifting eyes or mind heavenward, wrote Mellin, he will sink to a level beneath all earthly creatures instead of becoming their master. For the French poet, prediction by the stars is not the chief purpose of the true astrologer, but a mere accessory of his earthly and heavenly researches. Such a defense of astrology as this stems from a reluctance to forbid any phase of Man's activity in the search for truth, an attitude which, though uncritical, remains consistent with the rationalistic spirit.

Perhaps the most significant link between Shakespeare's Hamlet and the Saxo Grammaticus story about Amlethus is to be found in that part of the tale which describes the hero's feigned madness. Although the plot of the story follows a rather common pattern and even the characters, as presented by Saxo, are mostly well-known types that may be found in any number of legends, the picture of the suppressed youth who hides his superiority over his enemies behind double-talk and disguised meaning is certainly food for a poet's imagination. However, what gives the Danish story its strange attraction is precisely what makes it so difficult to understand its details. Puns and ambiguities in a foreign language are notoriously hard to understand, and even if we had the Danish original of Saxo's tale, we would probably find ourselves baffled by more than one of its word plays. Translated into flowery Latin by a man who can be shown to have misunderstood at least part of what his source offered, its real meaning has revealed itself to modern interpretation only gradually, and by no means completely.

The Irish tale recounting the fabulous adventures in “The Land of Promise” of King Cormac Mac Airt, who according to the Annals reigned in the third century A.D., survives in several recensions. The first recension forms part of the text called [Seél na Fír Flatha], Echtra Cormaic i Tir Tairngiri, ocus Ceart Claidib Cormaic, “The Tale of the Ordeals, Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise, and the Decision as to Cormac's Sword”, which has been published by Whitley Stokes on the basis of the extant copies in two late fourteenth century MSS, The Book of Ballymote and The Yellow Book of Lecan. As these two copies exhibit only minor, insignificant variations in their readings, they would seem to derive from a common exemplar or archetype. The age of this common exemplar or archetype remains, however, a matter for conjecture. The linguistic evidence at least suggests that the text as transmitted antedates the actual compilation of the MSS by some two hundred years, for linguistically it hardly can be much later in date than the version of Acallamh na Senórach, “The Colloquy of the Ancients”, which Whitley Stokes has edited. Now since Acallamh na Senórach was composed about the middle of the twelfth century, the text of the first recension in its present state of transmission probably was written sometime between A.D. 1150–1200, whereas the exemplar or archetype upon which it is based was, of course, made at an earlier period.

The New Variorum Coriolanus offers ample evidence that criticism of this play has spent its force upon two sources of conflict: the relationship between plebs and patricians and the relationship between Coriolanus and his mother. These approaches have led to interesting speculation as to Shakespeare's own point of view. But the fact remains to be reckoned with that the two disastrous relationships which most have excited critics are also exciting in North's Plutarch and that Shakespeare's most important departures from his source are in another direction. In this paper I hope to show that Shakespeare drew principally upon the military situation of his own era and country in reshaping the Plutarchan story. In this reshaping, Coriolanus emerges as a soldier whose life comprises two significantly related phases: the soldier at war and the soldier in civil life. The Roman general's difficulty in adjusting himself to a non-military career is of central importance because Shakespeare gave this problem a greater prominence and more clearly defined statement than did Plutarch. Nevertheless, Coriolanus' rôle in warfare is, in Shakespeare's design, basic to an understanding of his rôle in peace. What is more, the complexity of the former rôle has been underestimated by critics, most of whom esteem him an excellent warrior.

There can be no doubt that Raphael Hythloday, like the Utopians, is persuaded that communism is the solution for the social, economic, and political evils of the early sixteenth century. But what is the real attitude of Thomas More himself toward communism? Which of the following does the author of Utopia consider communism to be: a practical remedy? an impossible vision? an unattainable, but desirable, ideal? No definite answer can be given until one has reviewed, at least cursorily, the historical background to the views of the Renaissance toward communism.

Though much of Rossetti's original poetry is now (temporarily) out of fashion, his success as a translator has never been questioned. His renderings of the Vita Nuova and the Early Italian Poets are standard, while his translations from Vil-lon, particularly the Ballad of Dead Ladies, will probably live as long as Villon's verses. Better than anyone else, perhaps, Rossetti shows the accuracy of the truism that only a poet can translate poetry.