Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1895. Excerpt: ... DATE OF COMPOSITION Since it is impossible to know, with unquestionable certainty, the year in which this play was written, it is pleasing to reflect that no single line of it depends on this knowledge for its wisdom or its wit. Nevertheless, great stress is laid on the importance of the investigation, and much learning and time has been expended in its pursuit. It is not easy, I think, to take interest in knowledge thus barren, for, granting that our calcu lations could be made with such nicety as that we could discover even the month and the day,--what would it avail us? Would it add a charm to Portia's 'quality of mercy,' if we knew that it was written in 1594,--in August,--on the fifth day,--on Wednesday, --in the afternoon--at twenty minutes past three o'clock? Would it not be quite as profitable to speculate on the quality of the paper on which it was written? Is it any tribute to Shakespeare's genius that we should busy ourselves over what is not even the setting of the gem, but no more than the jeweller's case in which it is sent home? It is not by such facts as these that we may hope to find out the man, Shakespeare. If he is not to be found in the plays themselves, he is not to be found in the dates when he wrote them. And he is not in the Plays themselves,--if he were, the plays would fall to the level of Ben Jonson's or of Francis Beaumont's. It is because Shakespeare is not there that his plays are heaven-high above the plays of all other dramatists. Shylock is Shylock; he is not Shakespeare behind a mask, dressed up as Shylock. Could we at any instant catch a glimpse of Shakespeare himself peeping through the divinity that hedges his creations, that instant there will be revealed a flaw in that creation. Are there any such flaws? From the highest to the lowest his char...