The subject of my paper may not be new to anyone here, and, like the longing for immortality and the fabled Fountain of Youth, may be somewhat utopian in its nature, yet we must not forget that keeping eternally at it has often been followed by good results.
We certainly can not admire Shakespeare for the originality of his subject-matter, for everything he wrote was either old history or romance before he was born, but the manner in which he put it, and the way he said things and made his hearers and readers feel it, there is where Shakespeare is great. So if I can impress you with what I have to say in such a manner that you can all feel it, and so it will do good, my ambition will be satisfied.
We are all aware that in the good old days we guessed at many things,