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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
It is sometimes said that what matters in history is not so much the fact as what people think is the fact. This is perhaps especially true of those commanding personalities whose names are household words. Popular ideas of them are usually only roughly correct. The names become symbols to denote qualities dear to a succeeding age but often foreign to the persons they designate. To every generation Christ has become something different, this or that side of his character being emphasized to fill the ever changing need of living men. How many philosophies and passions have been read into Shakespeare's plays! So to every generation Luther has meant something different; in each succeeding century he has been both loved and hated, but for different reasons. No country save his own has given him such attention as England. It is the aim of the present paper to give a very broad idea of the general trend of British opinion throughout four hundred years.
1 Wallace, C. W., Evolution of the English Drama to Shakespeare, 1912, pp. 66–68Google Scholar. The conjecture of Brandl (Quellen des weltlichen Dramas vor Shakespeare, 1898, p. lvi) that the source of this play was Hasenburg's Ludus ludentem Luderum ludens, is very doubtful.
2 More's Workes, 1557, p. 418 h.
3 Ibid. 273 c.
4 More's Workes, 1557, 161 c.
5 Ibid. 274 h.
6 Ibid. 423 h.
7 Mori Opera, 1689, p. 38.
8 Opera, 1689, p. 145.
9 Strype's Memorials, 1822, vol. iii, part i, p. 531.
10 Werke, Weimar, vol. x, part ii, p. 290.
11 F. M. Padelford, The Political and Ecclesiastical Allegory of the First Book of the Faerie Queene. 1911.
12 Morrison visited Wittenberg in 1591. He says he saw the house of “Dr. Faustus the famous conjurer” there. The same connection of Faust and Wittenberg is made in Marlowe's play.
13 Historical Manuscripts Report, vi, 173.
14 Why Men Fight, 1917, p. 26.
