Introduction.
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. W. von Schlegel in his famous 'Lectures on Dra-matic Art' ^) maintains that 'Shakespeare owed almostnothing to his predecessors, while on the other handhe exercised the greatest influence on his successors.'In support of this extravagant assertion, Schlegel mighthave appealed to the authority of Dryden who, in theprologue to his version of Shakespeare's Troilus andCressida' (1679), makes Shakespeare's ghost pronouncethe following lines — Untaught, unpracticed, in a barbarous age,I found not, but created first the stage. But even in Schlegel's time this view was nolonger maintained by men who had gone into thesubject and whose judgment might be thought topossess some weight in this question. Ch. Lamb, thefamous author of the 'Essays of Elia' had, as early as1808, published his 'Specimens of English DramaticPoets'^) in order to show that in this departmentmuch had been slighted , 'while beyond all proportionone or two favorite names had been cried up.' A littielater, William Hazlitt, in his 'Lectures on the Literatureof the Age of Elizabeth' delivered in 1820, justlyasserted that Shakespeare was by no means isolatedin his time: that there was scarcely any other time ^) Vol. 3. p. 243 in the second edition, 1817.*) Reprinted in H. Bohn's Antiquarian Library, Lon-don 1854«
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