WHEN Shakespeare’s Sources I appeared in 1957 I had hoped to complete the second volume by 1960. For various reasons this proved to be impossible and I have had many enquiries, and a few reproaches, during the past fifteen years. Meanwhile Professor Geoffrey Bullough had completed in eight volumes his Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare and this splendid work has necessitated a change of plan in mine. As my first volume has been out of print, and as I have changed my mind on a number of points, I have revised this volume and added a discussion of the Histories. The other part of the original plan – a detailed discussion of Shakespeare’s reading – will, I hope, be published in a series of separate essays.
It will be noticed that the revision of the previous work has been substantial and that the publication of Shakespeare as Collaborator, Shakespeare’s Tragic Sequence, and Shakespeare the Professional, together with a forthcoming book on the Comedies, has enabled me to save a good deal of space in the present volume.
In my original preface I acknowledged the generous help of many scholars. Six of them, John Dover Wilson, Kenneth Allott, Ernest Schanzer, James Maxwell, Frederick May and Arnold Davenport are now dead. Many of them have been appointed to chairs, including G. K. Hunter, Harold Brooks, Ernst Honigmann, Inga-Stina Ewbank and R. A. Foakes. I have incurred renewed indebtedness to them all. I also mentioned two theses written under my supervision: I must now add those of Dr S. Carr, Mr P. Akhtar, Pauline Dalton, and Dorothy Earnshaw. My greatest debt, however, is to Geoffrey Bullough.
I was awarded a Visiting fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1957; and in 1975 the Leverhulme Trust awarded me an Emeritus Fellowship which has enabled me to expedite the work with the expert assistance of Mrs Jane Sherman. To both these bodies and to her I wish to express my gratitude.
University of Liverpool | KENNETH MUIR |