Author: Walter W. Greg

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-22

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 9781332615209

Excerpt from Henslowe's Diary, Vol. 2: Commentary Of the difficulties that lie in the way of an editor of Henslowe's Diary - at least if he regards his work as historical rather than romantic - not the least is to avoid writing a general history of the Elizabethan stage. There is no such thing as a clearly defined historical field; facts are linked to other facts in all directions, and investigation merely leads to further and yet further questions. Every custom and every institution at once raises the problem of its own origin; every corporation and every social fact is influenced by other corporations or reacts on other social facts. Thus to treat intelligibly any of the several dramatic companies at the end of the seventeenth century, or any series of events in the dramatic history of the time, necessarily demands a knowledge of the constitution of other companies and of the sequence of other events such as at present can hardly be said to exist. My only course under the circumstances seemed to be to discuss as fully as possible those companies and events actually mentioned in the Diary itself, and to touch on other matters only so far as appeared necessary for the immediate purposes of such discussion. A critic might urge that the fact that I have avoided writing a general history is more obvious than the desirability of so doing. To this I could only reply that since I had - perhaps rashly - undertaken to produce an edition of Henslowe's Diary, it was necessary to complete it within a reasonable period. Whether the time which has elapsed, since the appearance of the first volume of this edition in the autumn of 1904, can be considered to be within the limits of reason is not perhaps for me to judge; but if the sanguine forecasts in which I have from time to time indulged have been doomed to repeated disappointment, that seems after all to be but the common experience of writers with whom I am acquainted. Still I feel that some word of explanation at least, if not apology, is needed. I had not long been at work upon the elucidation of Henslowe's affairs when I began to feel the great inconvenience of the fact that the only reprints of the documents preserved at Dulwich, many of which are of the first importance for the history of the Elizabethan stage, were scattered through a number of different publications. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.