Written by British American critic Richard Moulton (1849 1924), this influential study of Shakespeare's dramatic technique introduces Moulton's 'prescience' of scientific criticism, an approach to literature that would later develop into modern literary theory. Moulton, who served as professor of English literature at Chicago, stated that his object was to 'claim for criticism a position amongst the inductive sciences, and to sketch in outline a plan for the dramatic side of such a critical science', arguing that Shakespeare's genius lay in his mastery of his dramatic art as much as in his...