William Shakespeare: A Critical Study by Georg Brandes

This book was not written with the Intention of describing Shakespeare’s triumphant progress through the world, nor of telling the tale of his world-wide dominion. Its purpose was to declare and prove that Shakespeare is not thirty-six plays and a few poems Jumbled together and read pele-mele, but a man wno felt and thought, rejoiced and suffered, brooded, dreamed, and created. – Far too long has It been the custom to say, vv e know nothing about Shakespeare or, ‘ An octavo page would contain all our knowledge of him.’ Even Swinburne has written of the intangibility of his personality In his works.