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It is to be feared that he would do Jedburgh justice on some of us, and the out-of-work critics would join the crowd at Poverty Corner. The Pseudo-Historical A play running at the Savoy in March 1905, concerning Madame du Barri, called forth the usual complaints about inaccuracy in detail and undesirability of subject.
The changes that take place in the state have their resulting analogies in every village, but no new England is created; new forms displace but do not destroy the old, and old rights remain, although changed in title and forced into symmetry with a new legal and pseudo-historical theory.
The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old mediæval stuff of the Carolingian poems, coloured, scented with Arthurian chivalry and wonder. The knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended with the pseudo-historical military organization of the Carolingian cycle.
But exciting as are these acknowledged fictions, specimens are so familiar to most readers from the pages of the collection referred to that much more interest will be felt in an attempt to reproduce one of a higher type, pseudo-historical, and alleged to be true. Such narratives exhibit much of native character, and shades of thought unencountered save in daily intercourse with the people.
The latter term, though loosely applied to the short tale of passion for the purpose of stimulating public curiosity, meant strictly only that type of pseudo-historical romance which interpreted actual history in the light of court intrigue. In France a flood of histories, annals, anecdotes, and memoirs, secret, gallant, and above all true, had been pouring from the press since 1665.
There can be no doubt that Geoffrey collected a number of these old stories and wove them into his narrative. Thus, the story of King Lear and his daughters has the ring of a genuine popular tradition about it, though the dates and pseudo-historical setting were probably supplied by Geoffrey. Again, there were certainly prophecies attributed to Merlin current in Geoffrey's time.
Later thinkers, generally of the resentfully national, academic and pseudo-historical type, who repudiated the amenities of life which they continued to enjoy, and cherished the pleasing fiction of the exemplary mores of the ancient times, could see little in him but a source of unmixed evil; and indeed the Oriental Greek of the commoner type, let loose upon the society of the poorer quarters, or worming his way into the confidence of some rich but uneducated master, must often have been the vehicle of lessons that would better have been unlearnt.
It is not possible at the present moment to say whether the Queste was composed in the British Isles, or on the continent, but we may safely lay it down as a basic principle that the original Grail heroes are of insular origin, and that the Grail legend, in its romantic, and literary, form is closely connected with British pseudo-historical tradition.
Shepson, whose pronunciation became increasingly Semitic in moments of excitement. Stanwell stared. Called upon a few months previously to contribute to an exhibition of skits on well-known artists, he had used the photograph of a favourite music-hall "star" as the basis of a picture in the pseudo-historical style affected by the popular portrait-painters of the day.
The latter point is not our theme, and may be dismissed with the remark that there was nothing in the life of the creature as presented upon the stage to serve as an excuse for requiring us to spend an evening with such a worthless baggage. At an early stage of his career the critic welcomes this class of pseudo-historical drama but his welcome takes an unamiable form.
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