Excerpt from How to Pronounce the Names in Shakespeare: The Pronunciation of the Names in the Dramatis Personae of Each of Shakespeare's Plays, Also the Pronunciation and Explanation of Place Names and the Names of All Persons, Mythological Characters, Etc;, Found in the Text There is in our literature no more striking figure of speech, I think, than the one in which our own Lowell likens this horde of Shakespearean commentators to guides who seek to Show travellers the beauties of a great picture in a hall of fame, but who, by the smoke of their torches held aloft to make the picture clear, have so begrimed and obscured it as to have sadly defeated their own ends. The scholar who makes Shakespeare the basis of learned disquisitions, has Often done harm in this, that he has promoted a suggestion that this writer Of universal hu manity is so much in need Of scholarly comment, that the ordinary man needs for the enjoyment and understanding of Shakespeare a mentor and a guide. As a result the interpretive writer Often does more to lessen the number of Shakespeare readers than to increase them. 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.