The question of continental interest in Shakespeare during the period immediately preceding the publication of Voltaire's 'Lettres philosophiques' was discussed, for Germany, by R. Genée in his valuable 'Shakespeare in Deutschland' in 1870; for France by J. J. Jusserand in 1898. The author's object in this article is to add some facts to the evidence already collected, and to indicate the relations in which several of the items stand to their English sources and to each other.

This article was first published in MLR, 1 (1905-6), 312-21.