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This Author's Edition of "Homage to Shakespeare" is limited to 150 copies, of which this volume is No. 13.

Frank &. Chase

With regards of
Johns Postgate

5941 Alder St. Pittsburgh, Pa,

March 6, 1916.

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FOREWORD

In its prefactory comment on the articles comprising this volume, The Pittsburgh Post said:

All the centers of the Drama League of America are aflame with enthusiasm over plans for the approaching commemoration of the tercentenary of William Shakespeare's death. College students are renewing their acquaintance with the works of the mighty master, and high school pupils are preparing essays on his popular characters. This revival of interest in the immortal plays is not confined to any particular section; it ranges over the whole country, and promises to blossom into a permanent love of the masterpieces of Elizabethan literature.

Pittsburgh is not behind in this great movement. Several local associations are perfecting plans for a celebration which shall outshine all previous efforts in this line. And as an aid and encouragement to this worthy endeavor, The Post has assigned John Postgate, a member of its editorial staff, to write a series of special articles on Shakespearean topics, which will be published several times a week for the next three months.

Mr. Postgate is well equipped for this important task. Persons familiar with his work regard him as one of the foremost scholars of Shakespeare in the newspaper profession. He has lectured on some of the topics he will discuss in The Post, and won a fine reputation as a platform orator.

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Mr. Postgate is also the author of several Shakespearean travesties which have been warmly commended by eminent critics. The Boston Herald'' devoted six columns to a review of "Falstaff in Rebellion," the chief of these burlesques. O. L. Hall, dramatic editor of the Chicago "Evening Journal," wrote: "It shows the author's exact knowledge of Him of Avon, his fondness for hilarious fun and his merry enjoyment of the complex life which we now live, not always without making ourselves ridiculous. It has been a long time since an equal deposit of high-minded, rollicking fun has been tapped in reading. It is Shakespeare rewritten by

the hand of Laurence Sterne."'

Opie Read declared in "The Scoop," the weekly magazine of the Chicago Press Club: "In the form of the drama, John Postgate has brought back the Eastcheap tribe. You are not told that the

cup is there; it is given to you and you drink. You see Old Falstaff; you hear not only his words, but you hear his mighty bellow. With numerous characters of the time, the day is reproduced. it were not such truth, you would call it art.

If

Through it run

"The play is entitled 'Falstaff in Rebellion.' the nerves, the sinews of Shakespeare. Nor is it intended merely to be read. It will play. It is not a Tennyson 'Becket'; it leaps like a thing you can't hold back. It throbs, not like the labor, but the joy of a master.''

The Pittsburgh "Sun" said: "The adroitness with which the author scatters through his three acts quotations from practically all the works of the dramatist, and the clever manner in which those quotations are inserted, prove that Mr. Postgate is both a thorough Shakespearean scholar and a humorist of ability."

These quotations indicate what readers of The Post may expect from Mr. Postgate's articles.

For the purpose of this volume the divisions required by the rules of serial publication have been brought together under chapter headings. With this exception the articles are reproduced in the main as they appeared in The Post.

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