Much Ado About Nothing

The anonymous 'Old Soldier' who compiled this anthology of passages from Shakespeare, published in 1877, states in the preface that he was inspired to make his selection by a passage in The Gentle Life: Essays in Aid of the Formation of Character, by the now largely forgotten Victorian essayist James Hain Friswell: 'If a man wanted to make a sugar-sweet book ... let him go through the plays of the great national Poet, and make an extract of those passages wherein he has exalted woman.' In thirty-three sections (four plays are omitted), extensive quotations present examples of 'exalted woman' and give an insight into the taste of the educated middle class in the mid-Victorian period.