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2 volumes. Scarce First Edition. With pleasing provenance, most probably the copy once owned by Tucker Brooke, the important Shakespearean scholar, see his articles in the Yale Review, Volume VI (6) (1916-1917): Shakespeare's England; Volume XIII (13) (1923-1924): The Life of Shakespeare, also The Folio of 1623; Volume XVI (16) (1926-1927): Shakespeare's Queen, and a number of other important books and articles relating to Shakespeare and Marlowe (see below). Well illustrated with 195 plates and two engraved frontispieces from contemporary sources. 8vo, publisher s original dark blue cloth handsomely lettered and decorated in gilt on spines and upper covers, lower covers decorated in blind. xxiv, 546; x, 610 pp. A very bright and attractive set, the text clean and sturdy with just the lightest hint of mellowing to which the true first edition is prone. The cloth is clean and the books very handsome indeed with essentially no wear and just a touch of age. SCARCE AND IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION, and a fascinating guide to the Elizabethan world, including essays on heraldry, costume, the home, booksellers, sports, religion, medicine and law. Sir Walter Raleigh outlined the first prospectus for this book in 1905, but was unable to complete it. Successive editors continued the task until its completion in the tercentenary year of Shakespeare s death. Contributors include Robert Bridges, Sir Walter Raleigh, and many others. "Elizabethan England is reflected everywhere in Shakespeare s works; he held the mirror up to nature, but the nature that passed across it was English nature of the time of Elizabeth. He said many things that are true for all time; but if we understand the world that he moved in and the language that he spoke, we are saved from mistaking the accidents of his time for the essentials of his thought."-Preface "Here is a complete reconstruction of the most copious and adventurous epoch of our literary history" - Nation. ". Almost every department of Elizabethan life is dealt with, and in no instance could a better choice of experts be expected." - New Statesman. "Here, indeed, is the map of the world in which Shakespeare lived. Here is a museum with his clothes and his furniture and his drinking-glasses and his school books and other ghostly relics to excite the imagination to a vision of a lost age and its lordliest child."--The Sphere Now difficult to find in the first printing. About the provenance: Tucker Brooke was an author, literary scholar, and educator, teaching in Yale University's English Department from 1909-1946. Brooke studied at Oxford University (B.A. 1906, B.Litt. 1907) as a Rhodes Scholar. He published works on English literature and drama, including studies of Marlowe and Shakespeare and others. His works include: The Apocryphal Shakespeare (1908), English Drama 1580-1642 (1933) Tudor Drama: A History of English National Drama to the Retirement of Shakespeare (1911) The Works of Christopher Marlowe (1910), The Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI, Shakespeare's Plutarch, (1909) The Life of Marlowe and the Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage (1930) and The Yale Shakespeare, with Wilbur L. Cross. Seller Inventory # 31635
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