was not twenty-three when his brother made him king of Westphalia-than he is, in 'The Grand Duchy of Berg,' on Caroline Murat, whose morals were not much better than those of her young brother. With regard to his criticisms of Jerome's 'baseness' to Miss Paterson, Jerome was only a boy when he contracted his illegal marriage in America, and in consenting to its annulment he was only aping the ways of ruling families more ancient than the Bonapartes. We wonder if the author is aware that it was at the Pavilion at Brighton, in the town of Mrs Fitzherbert, that English society showed its sympathy for the basely treated 'Mrs Paterson, late Madame Jerome Bonaparte,' who danced in the royal quadrille at Princess Charlotte's birthday party. A point of more legitimate historical interest, which might have been mentioned in connexion with Jerome being made a king and his consequent marriage with Princess Catherine of Würtemberg, is that, after the death of Princess Charlotte, the issue of the ex-king and queen of Westphalia would have been close to the succession to the British Crown, had the belated marriages of George III's sons proved barren-Catherine being granddaughter of Augusta, elder daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

·

Our space does not permit us to do more than mention the book which stands last on our list, Napoléon à Bayonne.' It is a detailed account from local chronicles, most of which had never seen the light before, of Napoleon's sojourn at Bayonne, where he arrived on April 14, 1808, and took up his quarters at the Château de Marrac, which he did not leave until he had sent thence the Spanish royal family into exile at Valençay, and had placed Joseph on their throne. This most interesting narrative of the turning-point of Napoleon's career, to which his eventual downfall may be traced, is the work of a writer little known to fame even in his native land. M. Ducéré, the sub-librarian of the city of Bayonne, is an example of those modest functionaries, often found in the French provinces, who, with great industry and literary skill supply historians with material of the highest value without reaping any public reward for their services.

Art. VIII.-THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE.

1. Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen. Von Dr Cecil Brodmeier. Weimar: Buchmann, 1904.

2. Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der englischen Volksbühne zur Elisabeth- und Stuart-Zeit. Von Dr Paul Mönkemeyer. Hannover und Leipzig: Hahn'sche Buchhandlung, 1905.

3. Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shakespeareschen Theaters nach den zeitgenössischen Dramen. Von Dr Richard Wegener. Halle: Niemeyer, 1907.

4. Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging: a Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Literature. By George F. Reynolds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1905.

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5. The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist. By George Pierce Baker, Professor of English in Harvard University. London and New York: Macmillan, 1907. 6. The Stage of the Globe. By E. K. Chambers. (Appendix to vol. x of The Works of William Shakespeare.') Stratford-on-Avon : The Shakespeare Head Press, 1904. ONE of the main tendencies of modern thought has been to emphasise the intimate relationship between an organism and its environment, and the impossibility of thoroughly understanding the one apart from the other. In the field of literature, the drama is so manifestly and peculiarly a product of social conditions that the criticism which considered Shakespeare as a sort of isolated miracle has long ago been discredited and abandoned. No one now denies that the Elizabethan drama must be seen in its true perspective, as a part of English history, before its meaning and value can be properly estimated. But in the case of drama, as distinct from other forms of literature, there is a material as well as an intellectual and social environment to be taken into account. A play is destined for performance in a theatre, and a practical playwright can no more disregard the actual structure of his stage than a composer can disregard the range and quality of the instrument for which he is writing. There are innumerable cases in which, if we want to grasp a

dramatist's reason for doing thus, or thus, and not otherwise, we must recall in imagination the actual mechanism of performance which he had in view. Hence the keen interest which scholars have taken in investigating the true structure of the Attic theatre in the fifth century, which has been obscured by the facile acceptance of unauthoritative traditions, and by deductions from architectural remains of a later period. But our knowledge of the Greek theatre is not a whit more imperfect than our knowledge of the English theatre before the Civil War. The theatrical manners and customs of the period have been to some extent studied, and imaginative historians, founding on passages from prologues, epilogues, 'inductions,' and pamphlets, have drawn animated pictures of the typical Elizabethan audience. But, whatever the value of these pictures, they deal with social, not with technical, conditions-with the environment in front of the house,' as we should nowadays put it. Of the structure of the stage and the actual mechanism of presentation, little is known with any approach to certainty. The need for such knowledge, however, is now vividly realised in many quarters, Investigations are being made, points of controversy are being minutely scrutinised, and it is not unreasonable to hope that a thorough sifting of the evidence may before long enable us to reconstruct the main outlines of the Elizabethan stage, even if certain details must always remain obscure.

The need for thorough investigation has been brought home to us, not only from the literary, but from the theatrical side. The modern Shakespearean revival,' with its gorgeous scenery, its spectacular interludes, and, in many cases, its ruthless mangling of the text, is evidently quite unlike anything foreseen or intended by Shakespeare. The question whether, if he could have foreseen, he would have approved, need not be here discussed. One may hold that he would not entirely have disapproved, and may yet sympathise with those who wish to see his plays performed, occasionally at any rate, under stage conditions more nearly approaching those which he must have had in his mind's eye. From this desire various artistic enterprises have taken rise. We have had in England the meritorious Elizabethan Stage Society, directed for many years by Mr William Poel.

Several American universities have made efforts in the same direction, and one or two German theatres, notably the Court Theatre at Munich, have given numerous performances on what they call a Shakespeare-Bühne.' But there has been a striking lack of unanimity as to the precise characteristics of the 'Shakespeare-Bühne'; and the English performances, at any rate, were arranged with an arbitrariness, often bordering on eccentricity, which greatly impaired their value as serious reconstructive endeavours. All these experiments, in fact, have proved little or nothing, except the urgent need for that systematic examination of all the data of the case which cannot now be long delayed.

Partial and provisional efforts in this direction have already been made, and we propose to pass in review some of the more recent studies of the subject. All except one brief essay are of German or American origin. In England, investigation has not got much beyond the point at which Collier and Halliwell-Phillipps left it. Mr E. K. Chambers' admirable work on The Mediæval Stage' stops short, as its title imports, on the threshold of the Renaissance. The one English essay that stands on our list* comes also from the pen of Mr Chambers, and appears among the appendices to the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare. It runs to no more than ten pages; and in such a space it is impossible to go very deep into this complicated enquiry. Mr Chambers may be said rather to summarise its difficulties than to offer any solution of them. His criticisms of certain German and American theories are very acute; but his attempt to argue away the pillars which are commonly conceived to have supported the 'shadow' or half-roof over the stage of the 'public' theatres strikes us as more daring than successful. His exposition of the probability of a wide divergence in the arrangements of different theatres seems, on the face of it, convincing; but the tendency of investigation is to rebut this initial probability, and to encourage the belief that the great majority of dramatists, in constructing their pieces, kept in view a normal or typical stage. There are exceptions, especi

* Mention should be made, however, of several learned and valuable papers contributed (in English) to the German periodicals 'Anglia' and Englische Studien,' by Mr W. J. Lawrence, of Dublin.

ally in plays written for the Children of Paul's,' but they are not more than sufficient to prove the rule.

Among the German studies, Dr Paul Mönkemeyer's dissertation, though not the first in order of time, may conveniently be treated first. It is quite rightly entitled, 'Prolegomena zu einer Darstellung der englischen Volksbühne.' It consists of three chapters, preliminary to a larger work which the author has in hand. The first deals with The stage of the English popular drama before the erection of permanent theatres in London (1576).' It is, in fact, a careful survey of the transition from the medieval mystery-stage to the stage of Shakespeare's immediate predecessors. This is an essential part of any thorough-going enquiry, and Dr Mönkemeyer's treatment of it is very intelligent and suggestive. The second and third chapters consist of a general examination of the material with which the student has to deal, and consideration of its evidential value. Much that the author has to say on this point is sufficiently obvious, and yet has been very commonly overlooked. He insists, for example, on the fact that plays acted only at Court, or at one of the universities, cannot be cited in evidence of the practices of the regular theatres. Malone's fundamental error in believing that the Elizabethan stage, like the modern stage, could be shut off by a front curtain, arose from his neglect of this obvious principle. He based his belief mainly on the line, Now draw the curtaines for our scene is done,' which occurs at the end of Tancred and Gismunda '—a play never acted (it would seem) by professional players, but presented by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple before Queen Elizabeth in 1568. It is clear that from such a play as this no deductions are to be drawn with reference to the common stage. A more difficult question arises in the case of certain plays as to which our information is insufficient. For instance, Dr Mönkemeyer would reject The Divil's Charter,' by Barnabe Barnes, which was published in 1607, As it was plaide before the King's Majestie, upon Candlemasse night last by his Majesties Servants. But more exactly renewed, corrected and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure

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* We say 'common' rather than 'public' stage, for the latter term involves an ambiguity in this context, and should be reserved for the ⚫ublic' or unroofed as distinct from the 'private' or covered theatres.