Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/459

 Reviews and Notes 455 REVIEWS AND NOTES EUROPEAN THEORIES OF THE DRAMA: AN ANTHOL- OGY OF DRAMATIC THEORY AND CRITICISM FROM ARISTOTLE TO THE PRESENT DAY. By Barrett H. Clark. Cincinnati: Stewart and Kidd Co., 1918. The editor of this collection has had the courage to under- take what must often have occurred to students of the history of criticism as an attractive and much needed task, yet one whose magnitude and complexity might well deter the cautious. And he has been, it may be said at once, surprisingly successful. No editor could possibly know all portions of the field equally well, or could hope to satisfy those whose special interests have led them to value by their own standards particular groups of writings on dramatic theory; but Mr. Clark has evidently secured expert bibliographical advice to supplement his own usually sound judgment and his immediate familiarity with certain divisions of the material, with the result that, while no one will find in the book everything he would wish for, no one will refuse to call it not merely useful but positively indis- pensable. It runs, as the title promises, from Aristotle to William Archer, and includes sometimes superficially, some- times with considerable thoroughness the criticism of Greece, Rome, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England. Besides the critical extracts which form the bulk of the material, the editor supplies brief summaries of the history of dramatic criticism in each of the periods and countries represented, and bibliographies not only of criticism but of the drama and the general history of literature for the same periods. The selections include, first of all, the obvious necessities the pertinent chapters from Aristotle's Poetics, Sidney's Apol- ogy, Corneille's Discours, Lessing's Dramaturgic, Coleridge's Lectures, and the like; then representatives of the more doubtful field of minor criticism, including work of historic rather than intrinsic importance, such as the early Renaissance critics, Rymer, Diderot, and Goldoni. Mr. Clark is scrupulous in indicating the sources of his texts, omissions, etc., and it would appear that for the most part the choice of both text and the portions to be reproduced has been soundly made. In several instances, such as the selections from Donatus, Daniello, Minturno, Ogier, Chapelain, Corneille, Diderot, and Dumas, translations have been made expressly for this volume, and for the first time. It is unfortunate, on the other hand, that for certain other authors the editor depended on more or less obsolete translations, such as the Bonn versions of Aristotle, Lessing, and Schlegel (in general, he appears to have felt some- what helpless in the field of German as compared with French