The late James Smith was a polymath scholar and critic, known to a large circle of readers for one or two critical articles of great weight and acuteness. As a busy professor in the University of Fribourg, he published very little more, but was working all his life on two uncompleted books, one on Shakespeare, one on the tradition of English literature. At his death, a good deal was in draft. Originally published in 1974, this volume, edited by Professor E. M. Wilson, presents a coherent body of essays on Shakespeare's comedies, and adds at the end five of the essays for which Smith was already well known. This is more than a literary memorial to a highly self-critical scholar who published little. It is a body of studies which was welcomed and prized by those familiar with Smith's name. New readers meanwhile will find in this principal critical work the expression of a vigorous and sensitive critical mind.
