Introduction

Abstract

It is the aim of this book to open up some of the gates that may appear to be unassailable or unscalable to the student whose familiarity with the literature of the British Isles is at present rudimentary. Ease of access is what is required and this is what will, it is hoped, be facilitated by the pages that follow. Some students have grown accustomed to thinking of William Shakespeare as an ogre or of Alexander Pope as a dry old bachelor, both of them writing in an English as archaic as it is incomprehensible. If this book can conquer prejudices like these and reveal that the works of such authors are as alive and informative today as ever they were, it will have achieved its goal.