Friedrich Vogt fasste seine Ausführungen über Carl von Kraus' bahnbrechendes Reinmarwerk wie folgt zusammen (AfdA. 40 [1921], 126 f):

Several recent articles have called attention once more to the problems presented by Spenser's Mutabilitie. Two of them, by Ronald B. Levinson and Evelyn May Albright, deal with certain portions of a series of three essays which I published several years ago, and concern Spenser's use of materials drawn from various sources on the general subject of what Mr. Grierson has called metaphysical poetry. Three others, by Miss Albright, H. M. Belden, and by Miss Albright in reply to Mr. Belden, raise questions concerning the dating of the poem and its relation to Harvey's criticism of the first draft of the Faerie Queene. Since with the single exception of the problem of historical allegory, no topic in Spenser criticism is of comparable interest just now, it is important to review the present state of the inquiry and to consider what remains to be done.

In view of the present controversy over Spenser's Cantos of Mutabilitie, it may be worth while to examine these cantos from the purely prosodic and styltistic points of view, to see if such a study throws any light upon the time of their composition. This will not necessarily be of any value in determining whether or not they were old material revamped, but there may be some satisfaction in knowing the approximate date when the cantos assumed their present form. I have accordingly undertaken such a study, and the conclusions are given herewith.

Until further biographical information is disclosed the problem of the personal relations of Spenser and Sidney remains open to conjecture. Mainly two objections oppose the natural assumption that the two men were intimate in personal and literary matters: first, Spenser's vagueness, or perhaps reticence, when in a letter to Harvey, October, 1579, he speaks of being “in some use of familiarity” with Sidney; and second, his unaccountable delay in joining the chorus of grief at Sidney's death. These facts, and others less important, have been cited as indicating the absence of intimacy; while on the other hand effort has been made to explain them in such a way that the pleasing picture of friendship might not be damaged.

It is my contention in this paper that Spenser's Muiopotmos is an allegory of the life and death of Sir Philip Sidney much like Astrophel. My reasons, in brief, are the following. The two poems tell fundamentally the same tale. The symbolical meaning of the butterfly is peculiarly suited to Sidney. The episode of Astery favors the supposition that it alludes to Stella. The departures from classical authority noticeable in the episode of Arachne combine to allegorize an important event in Sidney's life.

For a man of so questionable a reputation, Gadshill in Henry IV, Part 1, has been happy in escaping undue attention. He is, truly, one of Falstaff's “gentlemen of the shade.” His shady presence is of some interest, however, if only because he has kept good company for so long.

In the current texts of the play, Gadshill favors us with his actual person in three scenes. But his existence is amplified elsewhere in the play by the reference of other characters to him, directly and indirectly. Falstaff and Poins both mention him by name in the second scene of Act I; and the number of the robbers (excluding Hal and Poins) is six times given as four by the Prince and Falstaff, in the course of the second Act.

In her article “Shakespeare's Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,” Miss Evelyn May Albright seeks to establish a “vital connection” between Shakespeare's Richard II and John Hayward's Henry IV. Such a connection she thinks would prove Shakespeare's interest in and adherence to the Earl of Essex in his quarrel with the Queen and certain of her counsellors. In presenting her case, however, Miss Albright has failed to give full evidence which, if given in an unprejudiced manner, would destroy the value of her conclusions. It is my purpose in this paper to supply the evidence available concerning both the playing of Shakespeare's Richard II on February 7, 1601, and the publication of Hayward's Henry IV. This account will, I think, show that there is no evidence of any connection between either Hayward and Shakespeare or Shakespeare and Essex.

In a series of discussions of the problem of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, published between 1915 and 1917, Professors Tatlock, Lawrence, and Rollins, applying essentially the same critical method, argued that since the bulk of the material in this play had become fixed by tradition, Shakespeare found himself compelled to treat it as he did. Rollins quotes with approval the following statement by Tatlock:

In the course of collecting the material for a biography of Thomas Heywood, I came upon a passage which suggests that possibly the Earl of Southampton at one time patronized a theatrical company. The passage occurs in Heywood's A Funeral Elegie, upon the Much Lamented Death of the Trespuissant and unmatchable King, King James (1625):

Henry, Southampton Earle, a souldier proued;
Dreaded in warre, and in milde peace beloued.
Oh giue me leaue to resound
His memory, as most in dutie bound,
Because his servant once.

Critics of the Elizabethan drama are not agreed in identifying the author of The Puritan. According to modern opinion the initials, “W.S.,” which appear in the ascription on the title page of the play do not refer to William Shakespeare, Wentworth Smith, or William Smith. On the other hand, for neither Thomas Middleton nor John Marston, both of whom have been proposed as its author, has a clear case been established. The purpose of this paper is to present further evidence in support of Middleton's authorship.

On a shelf in the magnificent New York library of Dr. Rosenbach is a somewhat dilapidated little vellum-bound manuscript, measuring about 5¾ x 7½ inches, which appears to have been written at the beginning of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The pages are not numbered and there is no list of contents. The front leaf is defective at the bottom, and the first few leaves have been stained by damp on the upper right corner so that some words can no longer be deciphered.

L'Influence de l‘œuvre de l'abbé Prévost dans la littérature secondaire de son siècle ne semble pas avoir été suffisamment reconnue. Cette influence fut considérable bien qu'affaiblie et comme obscurcie plus tard par le roman de mœurs anglais qu'il introduisit lui-même en France, et surtout par la renommée éclatante et plus durable de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui, tout en coordonnant nombre d'idées éparses dans l‘œuvre de son devancier, sut imposer un système naturiste au monde par la seule force de son génie.

Les lecteurs de ces passionnants ouvrages publiés périodiquement sous le titre de listes bibliographiques n'ont pu manquer d’être frappés par le nombre des livres qui viennent d’étre consacrés ces dernières années à Racine. Ce poète classique jouirait-il d'un regain de faveur auprès de nos contemporains qu'on nous dépeint tous les jours si matérialistes? Il convient certes d’être prudent en ces matières et de ne point parler trop vite de la popularité d'un poète qui n'a jamais été et ne sera jamais que le régal des délicats; et c'est avec quelque défiance que l'on aborde cette récente littérature racinienne. Que peut-on apporter de nouveau sur un sujet où à chaque pas, nous rencontrons l'inévitable et merveilleux Sainte-Beuve? Le Bidois, dans la première année de ce siècle, dans un livre non sans valeur, mais déjà oublié, plus tard André Suarès, en antiracinien épris de littérature russe et scandivave, Jules Lemaitre et Anatole France qui ont tant aimé leur cher Racine, n'ont pas réussi à renouveler le sujet. Masson-Forestier, qui avait prétendu le faire, n'a pu écrire qu'un livre curieux, mais plein d'hypothèses gratuites, reposant sur de prétendus faits depuis controuvés. N'attendons donc pas de nos contemporains des révélations raciniennes. Recherchons plus humblement ce que notre génération trouve et aime dans Racine. Si ce n'est là un problème proprement racinien, c'est du moins un point curieux de psychologie contemporaine.

From the popularity of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques, one might infer that 1734 marks approximately the beginning of the English vogue in France. Although interest in English literature was greatly enhanced by Voltaire, a study of French periodicals published during the seventy years preceding 1734 shows that the influence of English science and philosophy was at its height prior to the appearance of Voltaire's Lettres. This study will endeavor to trace the early development of Anglomania, particularly in the fields of science and philosophy, as revealed in the Choix des anciens Mercures et des autres journaux. This collection, published at Paris from 1757 to 1764, drew its material from various periodicals of the seventeenth and the first sixty years of the eighteenth century.

Christine à Fontainebleau (Odéon, October 13, 1829), by Frédéric Soulié, has been called “le premier effort de l‘école romantique.” The statement must of course be taken as referring only to the movement in the theatre, and even then needs qualification; but it contains a certain amount of truth. Christine was a “drame historique en cinq actes et en vers,” written in accordance with the principles of the Romantic school. At the time of its production, Cromwell had not been played; Amy Robsart, besides being merely a dramatic adaptation of a novel of Scott, was in prose; so was Henri III et sa cour; Vigny's translation of Othello, Hernani, and Dumas’ Christine were yet to come. The failure of Soulié's Christine was complete, and the excitement of its stormy first night was effaced by the subsequent and more spectacular première of Hernani. As a consequence this early romantic tragedy is practically forgotten, though it is mentioned, with varying degrees of accuracy, by several of Soulié's contemporaries, notably Dumas père and Jules Janin, and is occasionally referred to by modern scholars.

So many false and misleading statements concerning the historic literary feud between Balzac and Sainte-Beuve have found acceptance that it seems important to reopen the question in an attempt to arrive at the real facts.

There are three well-known documents in the quarrel: first, Sainte-Beuve's criticism of Balzac in the Revue des Deux Mondes of November 15, 1834; second, Balzac's review of the first volume of Port-Royal, appearing in his Revue parisienne of August 25, 1840, and, lastly, Sainte-Beuve's tempered eulogy of Balzac in the Constitutionnel, September 2, 1850, shortly after the novelist's death. But these represent only a few aspects of a drama which, it must be admitted, at times bordered on the burlesque, and which is complicated by a number of apparently extraneous factors.

In the Revue Politique et Littéraire, M. G. Pailhès uncovers an early model for Fromentin's Dominique in the Edouard of Mme de Duras, published in 1825. His evidence for a relationship between these two novels seems rather conclusive, despite the futile efforts of M. Pierre Blanchon to refute it. His results, however, are not wholly conclusive because in his search for original sources he stops midway. The original source, common to both Edouard and Dominique, is to be found, I believe, in Mme de Krüdener's Valérie, published in 1803. Though Fromentin, undoubtedly, remembered Edouard in writing Dominique, he must have thought of Valérie even more, for his novel is in all respects more like the latter than like the former.