Note 15 — INTRODUCTORY

M. Abel Lefranc, it may be mentioned, is Professeur au Collège de France, and one of our highest authorities on Rabelais and the period of the Renaissance, not to mention Moliére, and other historical periods. “But, surely, we need not go to a Frenchman for enlightenment on our great English poet!” wrote a British commentator in the Press the other day—a most characteristic utterance, and superbly illustrative of the insular conceit which no entente cordiale seems to have the power to dissipate. But is it not highly probable that a French scholar, applying himself to the study of the Shakespeare Problem with an impartial mind, with no innate or national prejudices to obscure his vision, being himself an enthusiastic worshipper at the shrine of Shakespeare, the poet and dramatist, might be able to throw light upon many things which are “beyond the skyline” of those who have grown up in the school of an old and unquestioned tradition to which they cling as though it were part and parcel of the British constitution, and, as it were, a necessary ingredient of the national glory?