A Book by John Corbin '92.

In the list of spring books soon to be brought out by Elkin Mathews, the well known London publisher, appears "The Elizabethan Hamlet: a study of the sources of Shakespeare's environment, to show that the mad scenes had a comic aspect now ignored," by John Corbin, Harvard '92.

While in college Mr. Corbin was secretary and then president of the Advocate, and it may be remembered that while in the Graduate School in 1893 he won a Sohier prize essay on the same subject as that of his book now soon to be published. Last October Mr. Corbin went to Baliol College, Oxford, and since then has been studying there certain archaic features of the Elizabethan drama in preparation for the publication of his book, which will have a prefatory note by F. York Powell, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. As its title shows, the book is a study of Hamlet, and of Shakespeare's environment, with the object of showing that the mad scenes now played had a comic aspect now ignored. Mr. Corbin's general point of view is that Shakespeare only wrote the drama for Elizabethan audiences. They, in their time, saw jest in what would seem to us only the severest tragedy. What he wishes to get at is the comedy in Hamlet according to the Elizabethan point of view. Charles Scribner's Sons will publish the book in this country.

Bliss Carman, Harvard '85, and Richard Hovey will also publish a book this spring through Elkin Mathews, entitled "Songs from Vagahondia."