The Contending Lovers is a folk-tale of love rivalry— but of love rivalry with a difference. Because it has certain uncommon distinctions, among them a provocative love problem which is usually left wholly unsolved, I have previously attempted to show in brief fashion its affinity with Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and to prove by especial reference to Il Paradiso degli Alberti, a work cut of Chaucer's own period, that the Parlement should be regarded as a poetical and highly sophisticated version of the folk-tale. But the curious and interesting features of The Contending Lovers will support a self-sufficient study in folk-lore, and such a study is primarily the aim of the following pages. The Parlement will occasionally be admitted to the discussion, especially in conclusion, since relationship to Chaucer necessarily gives the folk-tale itself an enhanced interest, but only casual arguments will be made for this relationship. The material, now studied in detail, is meant to form its own argument.

A vague suggestion has been in the air of late that there is a more than casual similarity between the so-called Ludus Coventriae and the plays of the Digby Manuscript. The following paper is an attempt to render that suggestion somewhat more concrete and to define the nature of that relation. First, however, it is clearly necessary to deal with the questions of the structure and development of the Ludus Coventriae before its external relations may be considered. Miss Swenson's recent careful study is perhaps most valuable in its metrical analysis; but even this must be tested in the light of Miss Block's somewhat more fruitful examination of the manuscript, which in turn neglects the metrical form of the plays. Miss Swenson is led to believe that the “tumbling” lines mark the chief additions to the cycle; but the changes noted by Miss Block which are indicated by manuscript disturbance go far beyond these in certain respects. We are justified, therefore, in using the evidence from both sources as a basis for a new study, with the hope that further and more specific conclusions may be reached.

From time immemorial, it would seem, music and drama have been closely associated, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that music has ever been the handmaid of drama. The import and significance of the choral odes in the Greek theatre, the charming uses of song in Shakespeare's plays, the development of music as a dramatic medium, culminating in the work of Richard Wagner—these phenomena are familiar to all. Yet it may fairly be said that not all the possibilities of the union of music and drama have yet been realized. In musical comedy the dramatic element is negligible; in opera the music is our chief interest. It has remained for a little-known Austrian dramatist to point the way to a new type of play, in which music shall be subordinated, yet indispensable, taking its definite share in the action without usurping the whole stage.

In the minds of most students of literature, William Godwin's name is associated with the drama, first, through his own two unsuccessful attempts at playmaking, Antonio (1800) and Faulkener (1807), and, secondly, through Colman's dramatization of Caleb Williams under the title The Iron Chest, and Wordsworth's The Borderers, an exposure of the ethical fallacies of Political Justice. In the present paper, I wish to point out some additional and less familiar facts with respect to Godwin's relation to the stage. I take it that the overshadowing interest in Godwin must always remain his influence upon the great young poets of his time; yet it may not be amiss to specify some of his other less important points of contact with the literary life of his age. I shall not be concerned with the anarchic radicalism of Political Justice, but with the relationship of some of Godwin's novels to certain isolated dramas in England, France, and America; and as connected with these matters I shall, at the same time, give an account of Godwin's intercourse with the American tragedian, Thomas Cooper. These items should be of value in forming a more complete estimate of the nature and extent of Godwin's influence as a whole.

It is a familiar maxim in criticism that the strength of a work of art is measured not by its weakest part, as a chain is by its weakest link, but by its strongest. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is judged by its magnificent speeches and its awe-inspiring close, not by the fooleries of Mephistopheles. Paradise Lost is supremely great despite the long-winded discourses of the later books. It sometimes happens, however, that the excellence that gives a work its position in literature lifts its actual faults into the category of virtues. The average reader is so carried away by the supreme art of the great passages that he does not notice the blemishes. The critic instead of recognizing faults as spots on the sun refuses even to admit that they exist, contending that what are regarded as faults are really special beauties. Usually in time these matters are adjusted so that the man and the work are set into their proper niches. When a piece of literature has stood the test of time for two hundred and fifty years and only once has a considerable voice been raised in unfavorable criticism, and that over one hundred and fifty years ago, he would seem to be a very daring critic who would say that the lone voice was right and all the others wrong. Especially so when the work so criticized is Milton's Samson Agonistes. One takes courage, however, from the fact that the first critic who presumed to find fault with this play was Dr. Johnson.