From the introductory. In seeking to consider the genius of Shakspere, the subject should be approached with that reverent admiration which its importance demands. No one man ever fully understood, or can ever fully understand the works of Shakspere in their entirety, nor is Unity of thought and opinion to be expected of one who is so diffuse, so general and so human.* The works of Shakspere are all things to all men, and in this universality is found the power and greatness of his genius. The spirit of criticism, developed by the school of critics, who flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, of whom, Rymer may be selected as the representative, has happily passed away. The classic school, who believed in the "chorus" as "the root and original," and "as certainly almost the most necessary part of tragedy," no longer exist. Those great admirers of the cuckoo school of "rules of art," Dennis and Gildon, were succeeded by Rowe, Pope, Hanmer, Theobald and Johnson, whose preface to an edition of the bard's works in 1765, was looked upon as a remarkable effort of Shaksperean criticism. The influence of Johnson's preface, has been for evil, for he evidently misunderstands our poet, nor has he completely shaken off the trammels of an earlier school, and it Bo abounds with ponderous and long-sounding words of Latin origin, that there is not much to compensate the reader for his trouble. To Johnson, succeeded Stevens, Capell, and Malone, and their efforts have been highly serviceable to the world of Shakspere literature. The labours of Malone, as displayed in his edition of Shakspere, the best at the time of its publication, (1790), have been adopted by most modern commentators, as the basis for a true chronological arrangement of Shakspere's works. A more genial school of critics has arisen since Johnson's time, for not fettered by any observance of unities and other such like classic inanities, they h