AUTHOR OF "SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET"
"MISTRESS DAVENANT, THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS", ETC.

NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
1920

All rights reserved

TO MY SONS
ARTHUR MURRAY ACHESON
AND
ALEXANDER G. ACHESON
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME

"The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

Hamlet, Act III. Scene ii.