ABSTRACT
Ponce de Leon sought for the fountain of youth in Florida to keep the physical being young. But Shakespeare found and partook of that common fountain of youth, called the Ideal, that keeps a youthful nation not only young, but, in its irreverence of age and traditions, shamelessly hopeful that it may, along with him, remain for ever young. Shakespeare not only shared in the general spirit of the widened outlook on life, as reflected in his plays, but took also some personal interest in the new world where ideals romantically reigned unfettered by traditions, customs, and a hindering civilization. English Literature has several thousand more students than any other subject, and a course in English Literature includes inevitably something of Shakespeare, from one to several plays. Shakespeare’s cosmopolitanism and universality of appeal are seen in America as in no other country, because of our heterogeneous population in process of amalgamation.
