Author: Frederick Erastus Pierce

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9781330562789

Excerpt from The Collaboration of Webster and Dekker: A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The man who examines problems of collaboration faces a double danger. In the first place, there is always the possibility that all his labors may fail to convince any one but himself. In the second place, there is the risk that so much close and mechanical application may crush out the finer qualities of his own literary nature. I cannot claim to have avoided wholly either of these pitfalls; nevertheless, after all the chaff has been sifted away from this little treatise, I hope that there may still be found a small residuum of wheat, as some definite addition to the world of knowledge; and I also hope that my readers will peruse this book in the same spirit in which it was written - not as a piece of hackwork, but as a sympathetic, although necessarily accurate, study of two great poets. The collaborated plays of Beaumont and Fletcher stand as the monument of one of the most beautiful of human friendships. The collaborated plays of Webster and Dekker form a more humble memorial of what was probably a shoulder-to-shoulder alliance in their pitiful warfare against lifelong poverty. No apology is needed for attempting to throw light on such a partnership. I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor Albert S. Cook and to the other members of the English Faculty at Yale for the assistance and inspiration which they have given me in my work. 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.