If a little knowledge is a datgerous thing, too much knowledge must often be a confounded nuisance. Such may well be the feelings of others beside the present writer in reading the 'Morning Post's'"' rather patronizing notice of the revival of "Cymbeline." That " 'Cymbeline' has never been a really popular play" means nothing. Used it not to be said among theatrical managers that ''Shakespeare spells ruin"? That it does not rank with "Hamlet" and "Lear" also matters little. 'Won samper arcus": if Apollo was not always at his highest stretch, why expect Shakespeare to be?' But when we read that '"Cymbeline" was possibly some one else's play which the London manager sent up to Stratford (no doubt by aeroplane in order to shorten what was then a fortnight's journey) for Shakespeare to lick into shape, which licking he did in the most perfunctory way, then old playgoers who recall Henry Irving's and Miss Ellen Terry's production of it in 1896 feel like protesting violently. We suppose that the "Morning Post's" critic has some authority for his conjecture, although there is so little _trustworthy information about Shakespeare's life, that the article sounds altogether rather like a bit of the "modern" Biblical criticism. But he does not improve matters by describing "The Tempest"' as "a positive scandal." So great a critic as Gervinus ranks "The Tempest" as containing some of the richest examples of Shakes-pear's thought and genius.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.