Arts and Letters

Forty-one years ago Horace Howard Furness published his variorum edition of Romeo and Juliet. Within the compass of a single volume he brought together the materials and results of Shakespearean scholarship which the reader had hitherto been forced to seek in many books and many places. No such work had been done in England for half a century; no such work had ever been done in the United States.

What first impressed the critics was the comprehensiveness and thoroughness of the collection. It included whatever was worth including; it reproduced with accuracy whatever it quoted. But as time went on and as similar editions of other plays followed, the essential importance of Furness's own contributions came more and more into the foreground. His selection and quotation were marked by the spirit of the scholar. His own comment, brief as it often was, had, beside the merit of scholarship, the added charm of literary form. On both shores of the Atlantic it was recognized that we had here a man who understood Shakespeare and could help to the world's understanding of him, a man of letters in his own right. And the world's chief regret about this edition now is that the span of human life was too short for even Furness’s amazing industry to cover quite half of the field which he had chosen.

It has been the misfortune of Shakespearean critics in general that they have allowed themselves to be surrounded and befogged by the cloud of controversy; and too often this cloud has thickened as years went on until little was left of the original illumination except angry flashes of lightning. With Furness it was otherwise. Although he was bred to the law, or perhaps because he was bred to the law, he learned that the ideas which he had to convey would be most fully accepted if he kept clear of unnecessary argument or quarrel. As a consequence, each decade saw him more admired and loved by his fellow-workers, more serene in temper, and more charming in courtesy. The wine of his nature was of that full-flavored kind which is mellowed rather than soured with age. For it was not by his writings alone that he elucidated the spirit of Shakespeare. He did it yet more fully in his life and in his person. I knew no greater pleasure than that of listening to Furness as he read with whole-hearted enthusiasm and occasional quaint comment some familiar play whose text took new life through his voice. For he had lived with the great dramatist until Shakespeare's spirit had become his; and if, as we hope, he is gone where he may hold personal converse with the immortals of three hundred years ago, the Raleighs and the Bacons and the Jonsons will welcome him as one of their number. For to that society did he already belong while yet he was here with us.