About this Item
Some abrasions to paper at ends of spine. Overall a nice copy of this lecture. ; This copy with an inscription by the author on a piece of paper pasted to the front endpaper: "Mrs Bremner, / with best regards / from W. H. Trimble / Aug 22, 1925." This copy is number 5 of an edition of 60 copies. [4], [34] pages. Card covers with printed title label "Shakespeare Lecture Etc. W. H. Trimble" on front cover. Page dimensions: 255 x 205mm. Pages printed on one side only. The main text of the first lecture is 17 numbered pages, of which pages 16 and 17 are an Index. The lecture is divided into 31 paragraphs. It covers diverse topics including the less favourable views on Shakespeare of Tolstoy, Cobbett and others. It also covers the theme of anti-Semitism and the history of the treatment of Jews in England. "But altho' we regard the Jew as one of ourselves, within our own time and in quite recent years, the persecution of the Jews in Poland and Russia has been nothing short of abominable. Before the Great World War there were considerable parites in the Austrian and German Empires, known as Anti-Semites; whose main business in life appears to have been the stirring up of theological and racial animosity. And in 1894, when the French military system was found to be a mass of incompetence, and riddled with treason certain of the guilty parties made a scape-goat of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, because he was a Jew." - pages 12-13. Pages 4 to 6 of the first lecture contain thoughts on the Shakespeare authorship controversy, and theory that the plays were authored by Francis Bacon or other candidates. "There are in several of the other plays, references to Italy which we are told, could not have been made by Shakespeare unless he had visited that country." - page 4. "The authorship of the Shakespeare plays has been ascribed not only to Francis Bacon; but also to Sir Walter Raleigh; to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; to William Stanley, Earl of Derby; to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury; and to Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, respectively. [. . .] In 'A Houseboat on the Styx,' the ghost of Shakespeare quarrels with the ghost of Bacon in regard to the authorship of 'Hamlet'; the dispute being settled by the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh delivering that he wrote the play himself. As to the arguments favouring de Vere, or Stanley, or Cecil, or Manners, I am merely aware that all four have been put forward as candidates for the Shakespeare honours: but I have not read any details." - pages 5-6. "It is when we examine such passages as I have noticed - comparing them with the thoughts, impressions, and opinions of the present day, that we realise the greatness of Shakespeare as prophet, seer, and poet. He speaks to us from the beginning of the seventeenth century: telling us our own thoughts in our own tongue: and expressing them with such force, beauty, and simplicity, that a very large number of his sentences have become incorporated with our every-day language." - page 15. Trimble was librarian of the Hocken Library in Dunedin. His other publications include the "Catalogue of the Hocken Library" (1912) and two publications on Walt Whitman. Not in Bagnall. Seller Inventory # 26213
Contact seller
Report this item
