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THE PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE
THE PRAISE OF
SHAKESPEARE
AN ENGLISH ANTHOLOGY
COMPILED BY
C. E. HUGHES
WITH A PREFACE BY
SIDNEY LEE
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1904
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;
For now he lives in fame, though not in life.
RICHARD III., III. i. 87.
Who is it that says most? which can say more
Than this rich praise,—that you alone are you?
In whose confine immured is the store
Which should example where your equal grew.
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
That to his subject lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story;
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired everywhere.
SONNET LXXXIV.
PREFACE
I believe this volume serves a useful purpose. It is the fruit of a
suggestion which I made to its compiler, Mr. Hughes, in the following
circumstances.
At the beginning of last year I engaged in controversy in the _Times_
newspaper with certain persons who laboured under the delusion that the
evidence of Shakespeare’s authorship of those plays and poems, which
for three centuries have been published as his, was inconclusive. In
defiance of the fact that the acknowledged work of Bacon, the prose
writer and philosopher, proves him to be incapable of writing verse
of genuine merit, some of my opponents held Bacon and no other to be
responsible for those manifestations of supreme poetic genius which
are associated with Shakespeare’s name. Other sceptics, of less raw
judgment, hesitated to commit themselves to this extravagance,—they
confined themselves to the slightly more plausible contention that the
facts recorded of Shakespeare by contemporaries were scanty, and that
his career was clothed in a mystery, which justified wild attempts at a
solution.
The whole of the sceptical argument ignored alike the results of
recent Shakespearean research and the elementary truths of Elizabethan
literary history. But confirmed sceptics are not easily convinced
of defects of knowledge. With especial emphasis did even the most
enlightened among those who declared their doubt in print, persist in
affirming that Shakespeare was unnoticed by his contemporaries, and
that his achievements failed to win reputation in his lifetime or in
the generations succeeding his death. It was that allegation, to a
greater degree than any other, which seemed to encourage the inference
that the received tradition of the Shakespearean authorship of the
plays needed revision.
The conjecture that Shakespeare lived and died unhonoured rests on no
foundation of fact. The converse alone is true. Shakespeare’s eminence
was fully acknowledged by his contemporaries, and their acknowledgments
have long been familiar to scholars.
Yet the reiterated assertion that Shakespeare’s contemporaries left
on record no recognition of his worth, proved that information on the
subject was narrowly diffused, and that public intelligence suffered
by the strait limits as yet assigned to the distribution of genuine
knowledge of the topic. I suggested to Mr. Hughes that he should
remedy this defect by collecting in a volume that might be generally
accessible all notices of Shakespeare which were penned in early days.
Subsequently, when I considered the scheme in detail, I deemed it wise
for Mr. Hughes to enlarge its scope so that the volume might form a
contribution to the history of opinion respecting Shakespeare of no
single period, but of all periods from the earliest to the present
day. Thereby the force and persistence of that Shakespearean tradition
which ignorance had lately impugned might be rendered plainer, and the
liability to misconception might be to a greater degree diminished.
The fulfilment of the design on the extended scale might also, I
thought, give the work some value as a chart of æsthetic development
through the ages. Students of Shakespeare who in the course of three
centuries have recorded their impressions of him, include men and
women of varying degrees of intellectual capacity, and the orderly
presentation of their views could not fail to illustrate with some
graphic force the working of the law of taste in literature.
A further justification for the compilation of the work on an
exhaustive scale, lies in the fact that it has not been done already.
Charles Knight seems to be the only writer who has hitherto attempted
any sketch of a general history of opinion respecting Shakespeare. His
essay formed part of his _Studies of Shakespeare_, which were first
published in 1849, and it was reissued separately as the first volume
of a new edition of his Cabinet Edition of _Shakespeare_ which was
published in London by William S. Orr & Co., of Paternoster Row, in
1851.[vii:1] Knight surveys his subject somewhat perfunctorily from
Edmund Spenser to Coleridge. He devotes much space to the eighteenth
century, but he pays scant attention to the nineteenth, and he is far
from exhaustive in his treatment of earlier periods. Commendable as is
his pioneer effort, it is now, alike in form and matter, largely out of
date.
A more imposing endeavour was made later to deal with the earlier
section of the topic. Dr. Ingleby, a Shakespearean scholar of repute,
issued in 1874 the work entitled _Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse_,
in which he dealt with the period extending from the year 1591, when
Shakespeare first came into notice as a dramatist, until 1693. A
second edition of Dr. Ingleby’s volume, revised and enlarged by Miss
Toulmin Smith, appeared five years later under the auspices of the
New Shakspere Society. A very substantial supplement to this volume,
called _Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694_, was
edited by Dr. Furnivall for the New Shakspere Society in 1886. Thus the
_Centurie of Prayse_ in its final shape extends to 912 pages in quarto.
The large book is not at everybody’s disposal, but its contents, as far
as they go, are very valuable, and no Shakespeare library is complete
without it. None the less, it covers less than a third part of that
field which a full history of opinion about Shakespeare ought to
occupy; it leaves ample room for a treatise on the whole subject.
The general impression produced by Mr. Hughes’s extended survey seems
creditable to the discernment of the English literary public—of
all generations since Shakespeare began to write. The repute that
Shakespeare acquired in his lifetime, though it was rarely defined
with subtlety, was in spirit all that judicious admirers could desire.
The contemporary estimate was authoritatively summed up in the epitaph
which was inscribed on his monument in Stratford-on-Avon church soon
after his death. In that inscription he was hailed as the equal of
great heroes of classical antiquity—of Nestor in wisdom, of Socrates
in genius, of Virgil in literary art; he was acknowledged in plain
terms to be the greatest of contemporary writers; all living writers
were declared to be worthy only to serve him as pages or menials.
Shakespeare’s epitaph, the significance of which is not always
appreciated, justifies no doubt of the supremacy that he enjoyed in
the English world of letters of his own day. The homage of literary
contemporaries was confirmed without faltering and in finer phrase by
Milton, the next occupant of the throne of English letters.
No subsequent change of literary taste or literary fashion in England
really dimmed Shakespeare’s fame. In the days of the Restoration,
Dryden humbly acknowledged discipleship to him. Some censure he
suffered from thoughtless lips; but the right to the rank of a classic,
which had been granted him as soon as the breath left his body, was
never effectually disputed. The formal critics of the eighteenth
century sought to show that much of his work deviated from formal
standards or from rules of formal art. But these censors gave him the
worship of incessant study. They edited and annotated his writings,
with the result that a succeeding generation of readers acquired a
more accurate comprehension of his work than was possible before.
The triumphal progress of Shakespeare’s reputation was stimulated by
eighteenth century research and criticism to a quicker pace.
The critical faculty of the nation was especially acute and sagacious
at the opening of the nineteenth century, and Shakespeare’s
pre-eminence was then seen in sharper outline and in fuller grandeur
than at any earlier epoch. The sympathetic intuition of three early
nineteenth century critics—Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt—remains
unsurpassed. But there has been no trace of retrogression in the wise
and reasoned enthusiasm of later generations of the reading public.
The history of Shakespeare’s fame is indeed that of a flowing tide; the
ebbing was never long enough sustained to give it genuine importance;
the forward march was never seriously impeded, and is from start
to finish the commanding feature of the chronicle. If Mr. Hughes’s
endeavour succeed in impressing that pregnant fact on the public mind,
a perilous source of popular misconception regarding Shakespeare’s true
place in English literary history will be removed.
SIDNEY LEE.
FOOTNOTES:
[vii:1] This volume bore the title, _Studies of Shakspere: introductory
volume, containing A History of Opinion on the Writings of Shakspere;
with the Chronology of his Plays_. The book in this form seems now to
be difficult of access. No copy of it is in the British Museum Library.
I acquired a copy for a few pence many years ago.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE BY SIDNEY LEE v
SOME NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S REPUTATION 1
PART I
“THESE THREE HUNDRED YEARS”
THE FIRST PERIOD
1596 Francis Meres 35
1598 Richard Barnfield 36
1599 John Weever 37
1610 John Davies 38
1614 Thomas Freeman 39
1622 William Basse 40
1623 Anonymous 41
1623 Ben Jonson 42
1623 Hugh Holland 45
1623 John Heminge and Henrie Condell 46
1623 Leonard Digges 47
1627 Michael Drayton 48
1630 John Milton 49
1632 I. M. S. 50
_a._ 1633 John Hales 53
1637 Sir William D’Avenant 54
_c._ 1637 Anonymous 55
1639 Thomas Bancroft 57
1647 George Daniel 58
1651 Samuel Sheppard 59
_c._ 1661 Thomas Fuller 61
1662-7 Samuel Pepys 62
1664 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 64
1667 John Dryden 66
1668 John Dryden 67
1672 Anonymous 69
1675 Edward Phillips 71
1680 Thomas Otway 72
1681 “A Person of Honour” 74
1693 Sir Charles Sedley 75
THE SECOND PERIOD
1709 Sir Richard Steele 76
1709 Nicholas Rowe 78
1711 Elijah Fenton 80
1712 John Dennis 82
1712 Edward Young 83
1714 Joseph Addison 84
1725 Alexander Pope 85
1727 James Thomson 88
1733 Lewis Theobald 89
1740 Joseph Warton 91
1743 William Collins 92
1744 Sir Thomas Hanmer 93
1747 Samuel Johnson 94
1747 Bishop William Warburton 95
1751 Christopher Smart 96
1754 David Hume 97
1756 Horace Walpole 99
1758 John Armstrong 100
1759 William Mason 101
1759 Thomas Gray 102
1759 David Mallet 103
1759 Edward Young 104
_c._ 1760 Mark Akenside 105
1760 Robert Lloyd 106
1760 Edward Capell 107
1761 Charles Churchill 108
1762 William Whitehead 109
1763 William Thompson 110
1765 Samuel Johnson 111
1768 George Keate 112
1769 David Garrick 113
1769 Anonymous 116
1774 William Richardson 117
1775 William Julius Mickle 119
1777 William Hayley 120
1777 Thomas Warton 121
_a._ 1782 Anna Seward 123
1794 William Lisle Bowles 124
THE THIRD PERIOD
1802 William Wordsworth 127
1804 Felicia Dorothea Hemans 128
1814 Sir Walter Scott 129
1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 130
1817 Francis, Lord Jeffrey 133
1818 William Hazlitt 135
_c._ 1818 John Keats 138
_c._ 1818 John Keats 138
1819 John Wilson 140
1824 Charles Sprague 142
1824 Charles Lamb 144
1827 Julius Charles Hare 145
1831 James Hogg 146
1833 Charles Lamb 148
1833 Hartley Coleridge 149
1838 Thomas de Quincey 150
1839 John Sterling 153
1839 Henry Hallam 155
1840 —— Johnstone 156
1840 Thomas Carlyle 157
1841 William Wordsworth 159
1843 Lord Macaulay 160
1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson 162
1850 Frederick William Robertson 164
1851 Leigh Hunt 166
1852 James Anthony Froude 167
1853 David Masson 168
1853 Matthew Arnold 169
1853 Walter Savage Landor 170
1858 John Henry Newman 171
_c._ 1858 James Russell Lowell 173
1863 Nathaniel Hawthorne 175
1864 Bishop Charles Wordsworth 176
1864 Oliver Wendell Holmes 177
1865 Cardinal Wiseman 179
1865 Archbishop Trench 180
1865 Francis Turner Palgrave 181
1866 Frances Anne Kemble 183
1868 John Ruskin 184
1871 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 185
1872 Bayard Taylor 186
1874 William Minto 189
1875 Edward Dowden 190
1877 George Meredith 191
1877 Frederick James Furnivall 192
1878 Walter Horatio Pater 193
1879 Matthew Arnold 195
? _c._ 1880 Anonymous 197
1880 Algernon Charles Swinburne 199
1882 Algernon Charles Swinburne 201
1883 George Meredith 202
1884 Robert Browning 204
1886 William Wetmore Story 205
1886 Thomas Spencer Baynes 207
1888 Gerald Massey 209
1890 Walt Whitman 210
1891 Richard Watson Gilder 212
_c._ 1894 Mathilde Blind 213
_a._ 1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 214
1899 Sidney Lee 215
PART II
“GOOD SENTENCES”
1639 Anonymous 219
1681 John Crowne 220
1737 Alexander Pope 221
1745 James Thomson 222
1767 Anonymous 223
_a._ 1767 George Colman 224
1776 Richard Graves 225
1778 Horace Walpole 226
1787 Daniel Webb 227
1801 William Lisle Bowles 228
1807 Felicia Dorothea Hemans 229
1811 Francis, Lord Jeffrey 230
1811 George Dyer 231
1812 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232
1813 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232
1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232
1817 Leigh Hunt 233
1818 William Hazlitt 234
1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley 235
1819 John Keats 236
1821 William Hazlitt 237
1821 Robert Southey 238
1821 Lord Byron 239
1822 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 240
1827 Thomas Hood 241
1828 Thomas Carlyle 242
1830 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 243
1830 Anonymous 244
1831 Lord Macaulay 245
1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 246
1836 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 246
1837 Leigh Hunt 247
1838 Thomas de Quincey 248
1839 Thomas de Quincey 248
1839 Thomas Carlyle 249
1844 Leigh Hunt 250
1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson 251
1844 Elizabeth Barrett Browning 252
_a._ 1846 Walter Savage Landor 253
1847 Thomas de Quincey 254
1850 Robert Browning 255
_a._ 1850 William Wordsworth 256
_a._ 1851 David Macbeth Moir 257
1851 Thomas Lovell Beddoes 258
1853 Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton 259
1857 Charles Mackay 260
_c._ 1860 Abraham Lincoln 261
1860 Ralph Waldo Emerson 262
1865 Cardinal Wiseman 263
1867 Thomas Carlyle 264
1867 Matthew Arnold 265
1870 James Russell Lowell 266
1875 Edward Dowden 267
1879 Matthew Arnold 268
1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 269
1884 William Watson 270
1893 Richard Green Moulton 271
1894 Sir John Robert Seeley 272
1896 John Ruskin 273
PART III
“ROUND ABOUT”
1664 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 277
1711 Joseph Addison 278
1743 Henry Fielding 279
1747 Thomas Edwards 281
1749 Mark Akenside 284
1751 Robert Lloyd 288
1765 Oliver Goldsmith 291
1765 George, Lord Lyttelton 292
1768 Laurence Sterne 295
1769 Anonymous 298
1769 Isaac Bickerstaff 299
1778 Anonymous 302
1788 Horace Walpole 305
1790 Paul Whitehead 306
1812 William Combe 308
1826 Charles Lamb 313
1845 Nathaniel Hawthorne 314
1846 Walter Savage Landor 316
1868 William Schwenck Gilbert 318
1872 Oliver Wendell Holmes 323
1897 Theodore Watts-Dunton 325
1902 Judge Willis 326
To My Very Good Friend, Mr William Shakespeare 329
INDEX 331
SOME NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S REPUTATION
I
INTRODUCTORY
This book provides a chronological sequence of the best pieces in verse
and prose which the best writers in successive periods have written
in praise of Shakespeare, and thereby aims at presenting, as it were,
an index to the standard of estimation in which Shakespeare has been
held at any given point of time. Thus, as an anthology, it differs in
various respects from other anthologies. An anthology, as a rule, hopes
to confine itself to pieces of literature intrinsically valuable. The
conscientious compiler of an ordinary anthology includes nothing which,
according to his own canons of taste, can be considered of doubtful
merit. His choice may not always be approved by others—it frequently
is not; but he, at least, is satisfied. Here, however, is a different
case. My object has been to collect what may be called materials for a
history of opinion of Shakespeare, so that as many years as might be
of the three centuries and more, which have elapsed since Shakespeare’s
reputation was born, had to be represented. With these conditions it
has not always been possible to exclude bad pieces, for the obvious
reason that there has been at times a dearth of good writers. In such
cases the best has been given that could be found. The best has at
times been deplorably mediocre, but the scheme was inexorable.
The labour of selection has been guided by one or two principles.
In the first place, complete poems, or extracts in verse and prose,
which relate solely to Shakespeare have been taken in preference to
those which mention him in company with his contemporaries. Secondly,
passages that exhibit unusual characteristics, whether good or bad,
have frequently been chosen. For some of the poor pieces, and I hope
they are not many, something may be said. Though their writers are
practically forgotten to-day, they were considered great during their
own lives; so their productions have at least a historical value. If,
then, this volume includes, as I think it does, the best things that
have been written about Shakespeare, it includes also many things
that in a comparative estimate of the whole must be considered as
second-rate, though they happened to be the best in the period during
which they were produced. The distinctiveness of the book may perhaps
be indicated in this way. An ordinary anthology may be said to gather
into a garland the choicest flowers from various fields of literature;
this anthology claims to be little more than a collection of botanical
specimens.
II
DIVISION INTO PERIODS
The history of opinion of Shakespeare may be divided into three
periods, represented broadly by the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries. Definite limits cannot be assigned to these three
periods. Epochs of literary history must be determined ultimately,
not by the work produced in them, or by the lives of the producers,
but by the influences which gradually brought them into being. Thus,
there must always be at the beginning and end of a period of literary
history a kind of dovetailing with it of the periods before and after.
Still, the three periods I have indicated are reasonably distinct.
The first begins with the earliest mention of Shakespeare in print,
and may be taken to end with the death of Dryden. The second period
was largely affected by Dryden’s influence, and thus may be said to
begin with the eighteenth century. And the last period, which is due
to the reaction from the Augustan age of English literature, may be
fairly dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The style
of the literary products of these three centuries respectively goes to
confirm the division. The first period is that of personal knowledge
and oral tradition, and tributes to Shakespeare are for the most part
in verse. It is the period during which his historical position was in
the making. The second period is that of critics and emendators—the
period when people begin to realise that there is some great power in
Shakespeare’s work which finds no parallel in their own time, and must
therefore be praised blindly, accounted for, or explained away. Tribute
is clothed equally in verse and prose; it is, in short, the period of
doubt and astonishment. The last period is that of æsthetic criticism,
and tribute is mostly in prose. Shakespeare’s position is an accepted
fact.
Of the three periods, the second is by far the most interesting to the
literary historian. Opinion of Shakespeare during the first period
was to a large extent prejudiced by personal knowledge and tradition.
The praise is practically equivalent to that of friends; which is to
say, it is largely that of blind admiration. In the third period it
is open-eyed, intelligent admiration. The matter has been sifted. The
question of Shakespeare’s genius is no longer a debatable point. The
praise is that of disciples who appreciate the logical basis of their
master’s teaching, and who see the necessity of lucid explanation
for the purpose of adding recruits to their number. But the second
period is the time of trial. Shakespeare’s title to fame is weighed
judicially, and is not found wanting.
III
THE FIRST PERIOD
Of the seventeenth century not much need be said, and, indeed, not
much that is new can be said. The labours of the New Shakspere Society
have added several valuable volumes to the literature relating to
Shakespeare’s reputation during that period. Of these the _Centurie of
Prayse_ (of which the second and much enlarged edition was produced
under the direction of Miss L. Toulmin Smith in 1879) brought together
a very large number of allusions to Shakespeare both in print and
manuscript, and these were supplemented by _Some 300 Fresh Allusions_,
a work which was edited by Dr. Furnivall in 1886. These volumes display
an amazing amount of diligent research, and few additions can be made
to their contents. Seven hitherto unnoticed allusions to Shakespeare
were discovered by Dr. Edward J. L. Scott in the Sloane Manuscripts
at the British Museum, and communicated by him to the _Athenæum_
on 5th March 1898.[5:1] This evidence of Shakespeare’s reputation
during the period under discussion has been ably supplemented by an
article entitled _Shakespeare in Oral Tradition_, which Mr. Sidney
Lee contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_ in January 1902. This
traces the actual recollection of Shakespeare by his friends and their
descendants, from his personal acquaintance among the actors and the
townsfolk of Stratford-on-Avon, to the reminiscences transmitted
by word of mouth from Betterton to Nicholas Rowe, the poet’s first
biographer. Mr. Lee’s paper is of the utmost importance. As he
points out, “It was obviously the free circulation of the fame of
Shakespeare’s work which stimulated the activity of interest in his
private fortunes, and led to the chronicling of the oral tradition
regarding them. It could easily be shown that outside the circle
of professional poets, dramatists, actors, and fellow-townsmen,
Shakespeare’s name was, from his first coming into public notice,
constantly on the lips of scholars, statesmen, and men of fashion who
had any glimmer of literary taste.”
The ground, therefore, may be said to be covered in so far as positive
evidence of Shakespeare’s fame in the seventeenth century is concerned.
But at least three popular fallacies have come into being, and it
will be perhaps worth while to state them and definitely refute them.
Their existence is due partly to lack of acquaintance with documentary
evidence, and partly to misconception.
One of these popular fallacies is that Shakespeare practically vanished
from the minds of his countrymen when he retired from the stage; and
that what reputation he had in his lifetime was due to his prominence
as an actor, rather than to his genius as a poet.
The preface of the First Folio (1623) is enough to prove that this was
not the case. The tone of the address “to the great variety of readers”
is not that of publishers trying to awaken interest in a forgotten
personage, by calling attention to works that used to be popular. The
language is that of affectionate friends, the references to Shakespeare
those of intimate associates whose memories have not healed of the
wound inflicted by his death. It was addressed to the public, not with
the diffidence that is born of anxiety lest the subject of eulogy
should meet with an indifferent welcome, but with the confidence that
is inspired by friendship with a great man who is recognised as a
great man.
The second impression of the Folio appeared in 1632, and the spirit of
enthusiasm that breathes through the preliminary matter—the publisher’s
preface and the various sets of verses—has become in no way weakened.
The volume contains, indeed, two of the finest poems of direct personal
eulogy that have ever been written—that signed I. M. S., and attributed
by Coleridge somewhat fancifully to no less a person than John Milton,
and the noble _Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare_,
actually written by Milton in 1630. No sign of decayed reputation
here. Nor elsewhere. King Charles I., it is well known, read
Shakespeare. Copies of his plays and poems are mentioned in Prince
Rupert’s library catalogue. His works were given on the stage, and
formed topics of everyday discussion. One might multiply examples of
his popularity, but it is striking at shadows.
Another popular error has tinged the traditional notion of Milton’s
attitude to Shakespeare. It is supposed that his opinion of Shakespeare
underwent a complete change from that exhibited in the lines mentioned
above. The error that attributes to Milton this surprising revulsion
of feeling is due to a misconception of a certain passage in his
_Eikonoklastes_. Milton wrote thus:
“Andronicus Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, though a most
cruel tyrant, is reported by Nicetas to have been a most
constant reader of Saint Paul’s Epistles; and by continual
study had so incorporated the phrase and style of that
transcendent apostle into all his familiar letters, that the
imitation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this availed
not to deceive the people of that empire, who, notwithstanding
his saint’s vizard, tore him to pieces for his tyranny. From
stories of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound,
the poets also, and some English, have been in this point so
mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the
mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an
abstruse author, wherein the king might be less conversant, but
one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his
solitudes, William Shakespeare, who introduces the person of
Richard the Third, speaking in as high a strain of piety and
mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book [_i.e._
the _Eikon Basilike_], and sometimes to the same sense and
purpose with some words in this place: ‘I intended,’ saith he,
‘not only to oblige to my friends, but my enemies.’ The like
saith Richard, Act II. Scene i.:
“‘I do not know that Englishman alive
With whom my soul is any jot at odds,
More than the infant that is born to-night:
I thank my God for my humility.’
Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole
tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence in departing
from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep
dissembler, not of his affections only, but of religion.”
The blundering interpretation of this passage, which Warton accepted
and transmitted to his successors, including De Quincey, is that
Charles I. was reproved by Milton for having made Shakespeare
his closet companion. “The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles
I.),” says De Quincey in his _Life of Shakespeare_, “had
learned to appreciate Shakespeare, not originally from reading him, but
from witnessing the Court representations of his plays at Whitehall.
Afterwards we know that he made Shakespeare his closet companion,
for he was reproached with doing so by Milton.” A careful perusal
of the passage will show that nothing was farther from Milton’s
intention. Such a deduction is logically impossible. Three things,
however, undoubtedly may be deduced from it; and they not only bear
a significance directly opposed to the erroneous interpretation, but
they are of the highest importance as positive evidence of Milton’s
appreciation of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare’s literary fame. One
may deduce, firstly, that Shakespeare was known, at any rate by name,
to the Puritans, who chiefly composed the public for which Milton was
writing. Secondly (since Charles was not, we may believe, the man to
read in private books that he did not like), that the king’s knowledge
of Shakespeare was intimate and his appreciation sincere. And, thirdly,
that Shakespeare was, in Milton’s opinion, one who depicts human nature
with accuracy. For, consider the force of the parallel. Milton wrote
to show that the deeds of monarchs are not always the substantiation
of their words. The Byzantine tyrant, with his mouth full of piety, is
cited as one instance; Shakespeare’s Richard III. as being, by
familiarity, likely to bring the matter home to Charles, is cited as
another. Which is, in effect, that Shakespeare’s portrayal of a king
of such character is, in Milton’s opinion, proof that such a king may
exist. There is nothing slighting about that. It is high praise.
Milton wrote his _Eikonoklastes_ in 1649, when he was forty-one. In
1645 he had written his _L’Allegro_, with the lines:
“Then to the well-trod stage anon
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare fancy’s child,
Warble his native woodnotes wild.”
The lines attributed to him in the Second Folio had appeared in 1632,
and his fully authenticated _Epitaph_ in 1630. Further, his influence
has been traced in the notice of Shakespeare which appeared in the
_Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675 by Edward Phillips, Milton’s
nephew. Here, surely, is sufficient evidence that throughout his life
Milton’s early enthusiasm for Shakespeare did not diminish.
A third popular fallacy is that which maintains Shakespeare’s
reputation to have been at its lowest ebb after the Restoration. This
belief is well expressed in Victor Hugo’s _Shakespeare_.
“Shakespeare,” says Victor Hugo, “once dead entered into
oblivion. Under the Restoration he ‘completed his eclipse.’
He was so thoroughly dead that Davenant, possibly his son,
recomposed his pieces. There was no longer any _Macbeth_ but
the _Macbeth_ of Davenant. Dryden speaks of Shakespeare on
one occasion in order to say that he is ‘out of date.’ Lord
Shaftesbury calls him ‘a wit out of fashion’ . . .
“These two men having condemned Shakespeare, the oracle had
spoken. England, a country more obedient to conventional
opinion than is generally believed, forgot Shakespeare. Some
purchaser pulled down his house, New Place. A Rev. Dr. Gastrell
cut down and burnt his mulberry-tree.[10:1] At the commencement
of the eighteenth century the eclipse was total. In 1707 one
called Nahum Tate published a _King Lear_, warning his readers
‘that he had borrowed the idea of it from a play which he
had read by chance, the work of some nameless author.’ This
‘nameless author’ was Shakespeare.”
Now the numerous adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays which appeared
after the Restoration have been taken somewhat paradoxically as
indicative of his decline in the public estimation. Such a deduction is
by no means accurate. If we take into consideration the comparatively
low level to which imaginative literature had fallen under the
influence of Charles II.’s Court, the wonder is perhaps that
the theatre-going public should have received Shakespeare in any form.
Such neglect of Shakespeare as is seen at this time is attributable
merely to change of fashion in popular literature, and that was then,
and still is, as mutable as the sea. Popular literature does not live,
and the adaptations of the later Stuart reigns are now known only to
curious students. But Shakespeare lived through it all, known and
appreciated by all who had souls above the vulgar; and in this very
period he passed triumphantly his first examination at the hands of a
skilled critic, John Dryden. Dryden was in every respect typical of the
cultivated class of his period. His early judgment of Shakespeare was
formed in the somewhat flickering light of Restoration taste. His final
estimate was that of a matured thinker. Certainly, adaptations prepared
to suit the fickle taste of the playgoer of the period cannot be said
to reflect the true character of Shakespeare’s reputation. We see the
same thing at the present day. The altruism of theatrical managers
is compelled to make concessions to popular demands. The public are
still rather shy of going to see Shakespeare simply as Shakespeare.
They appear to feel that going to see a play of Shakespeare is like
sacrificing themselves for their own good. So the managers who gild
the pill for them are successful, and those who do not merely fail,
or at best earn a precarious livelihood. One might as well say that
Shakespeare’s reputation is at a very low ebb to-day, as make the
deduction from the fact of the Restoration adaptations. The playgoers
of that period wanted something piquant. One may suppose—to put the
matter in modern terms—that Heine and De Maupassant collaborating might
have produced a popular success. Wycherley and Congreve met the demand
as nearly as possible. But Shakespeare was not the thing.
IV
THE SECOND PERIOD
I have taken 1700, the date of Dryden’s death, as that which most
fittingly marks the close of the first period and the beginning of
the second, for it is very soon after that year that the spirit of
the eighteenth century begins to make itself manifest. In the history
of literature the eighteenth century stands out distinct as a whole.
The literature of the seventeenth century had many characteristics,
which, even in the most cursory survey, require attention, and these
characteristics were mainly due to the connection of literature with
the Court. The pedantic James I. was a patron of learning. His son
Charles I., and grandson Charles II., inherited the taste for polite
letters, and encouraged or influenced indirectly the authors of their
times. But the eighteenth century monarchs were different. They did
not concern themselves much with men of letters, and literature went
its course comparatively unaffected by fashion. But it was affected
by the spirit of the age—the spirit born of gradual recognition of
the Renaissance. As David Lloyd in his _State Worthies_ said of the
early seventeenth century, “it was the very guise at that time to be
learned; the wits of it were so excellent, the helps and assistants of
it were so great; printing was so common; the world (by navigation)
so open; great experiments so disclosed; the leisure of men so much,
the age so peaceable; and His Majesty, after whom all writ, so
knowing.” At that time learning was a novelty, and consequently it was
fashionable—it was “the very guise.” By the eighteenth century great
men had grown accustomed to it; and it was becoming the property of
the lesser worthies, who, unable to resist the temptation to “show
off,” turned out reams of didactic verse, the substance of which would
nowadays hide its light beneath the respectable bushel of the journal
of some scientific society. Dryden was perhaps mainly responsible.
He had pronounced the dictum: “They cannot be good poets who are not
accustomed to argue well.” At any rate, with the eighteenth century the
poetry of argument or logic, as distinct from that of inspiration, came
into being, and by far the greater part of the poetry of the hundred
years that followed Dryden’s death was that of poets who are made
rather than poets who are born. The same feeling informs the prose.
It is true that the age produced Horace Walpole. But Walpole was a
literary trifler, and liked to be thought so, though he was amazingly
industrious. The eighteenth century saw much excellent prose, but it is
almost always the prose of “will” or “must” rather than that of “can.”
It comes rather of fertility of reason than of fertility of fancy. Of
such stock are commentators born.
One finds, accordingly, that the principal producers of pure
literature, whether prose or verse, were also critics, and most of them
turned their attention, sooner or later, to Shakespeare. Prominent
figures in the history of Shakespearean criticism in the eighteenth
century stand Pope and Johnson. Both are classical scholars in an age
of pedants; both are among the foremost advocates of rigid adherence
to prescribed rules in literary production; both place imagination
below intellect in estimation of genius; and both are honoured by
their fellows as arbiters and dictators of literary taste. Each of
them is inclined to say unkind things about Shakespeare, and hardly
dares. Pope is the more generous of the two. “It will be,” he says,
“but fair to allow that most of our author’s faults are less to be
ascribed to his wrong judgment as a poet, than to his right judgment
as a player.” Which is to say, that Shakespeare, poor soul! must needs
trim his boat to suit the current of popular opinion; that the greater
part of his audience in the theatres consisted of low fellows who had
never heard of Aristotle, and must not be troubled with the unities and
such matters, which they could not understand. One has but to continue
this line of argument to conclude that Pope thought Shakespeare so
much a part and product of the age in which he was born, that had
he been born, say, in Pope’s age, he might (which Heaven forbid!)
have been a perfect poet according to Pope’s lights—might, in fact,
have translated Homer, to supply the sixpenny boxes of second-hand
booksellers two centuries later. But Pope certainly thought Shakespeare
very great. His greatness was, perhaps, not of quite the right kind
in Pope’s estimation; but greatness he undoubtedly thought it. As to
Shakespeare’s want of learning, Pope frankly refused to believe in it.
He says very wisely:
“There is certainly a vast difference between _learning_ and
_languages_. How far he was ignorant of the latter I cannot
determine; but ’tis plain he had much reading at least, if they
will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a
man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from
another. . . . I am inclined to think this opinion proceeded
originally from the zeal of the partizans of our author and Ben
Jonson, as they endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of
the other. It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes;
and nothing is so probable as that because Ben Jonson had much
the more learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakespeare
had none at all; and because Shakespeare had much the most wit
and fancy, it was reported on the other that Jonson wanted
both. Because Shakespeare borrowed nothing, it was said that
Ben Jonson borrowed everything. Because Jonson did not write
extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every
piece; and because Shakespeare wrote with ease and rapidity,
they cried, he never once made a blot. Nay, the spirit of
opposition ran so high, that whatever those of the one side
objected to in the other, was taken at the rebound and turned
into praises; as injudiciously as their antagonists before had
made them objections.”
Pope further attributed many of Shakespeare’s errors to the
carelessness or ignorance of the first publishers of his works,
suggesting that the original copies from which they were printed were
no better than the “_prompter’s book_, or _piecemeal parts_ written out
for the use of the actors,” who may be supposed to have made numerous
small excisions and additions.
Thus Pope says in effect that Shakespeare would have been perfect if
the age and conditions in which he lived had allowed him. He sees many
beauties in him, but he also sees many defects; and his edition of
Shakespeare’s works is remarkable chiefly for its omissions of passages
which the editor deems unworthy of his author.
Dr. Johnson is by no means so ready metaphorically to grasp Shakespeare
by the hand. He follows a procession of editors of more or less
ability, and he feels that the time has come for the final settlement
of Shakespeare’s true position. Rowe, the first editor, hardly realised
his responsibilities, and his edition of the plays which appeared
in 1709 has few merits from the critic’s point of view. Pope, who
followed him in 1725, had a reputation for brilliance to sustain,
and his preface is remarkable rather for neatness of expression
than for critical discernment. Theobald came after Pope, in 1733,
with much common sense, which made him the laughing-stock of his
successors. The next editor, Sir Thomas Hanmer, intended his edition
as a tribute to Shakespeare, and what was lacking in criticism was
supplied in good paper and printing. Warburton succeeded with a pompous
self-assertiveness that expressed itself in amusing but ineffective
paradoxes.
Johnson accordingly had a due sense of what was expected of him. His
critical equipment consisted in a knowledge of the classical drama,
and his æsthetic judgment was founded on the rules by which he had
succeeded in his own poetical ventures. Still, he did his best to
assume a strictly unbiassed judicial attitude. He did not, as Macaulay
states, take it for granted that “the kind of poetry which flourished
in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from
his childhood, and which he had himself written with success, was the
best kind of poetry.” He tried deliberately to approach Shakespeare
as he approached the Cock Lane Ghost. He dealt with him as with some
mysterious phenomenon which was attracting public attention, and which
admitted of explanation. The result was, perhaps, the best balanced
common-sense judgment on record. It contained, on the one hand, the
most tremendous indictment of Shakespeare that is ever likely to be
written; and, on the other, a triumphant defence, coupled with much
enthusiastic eulogy. Here are some of the “faults which,” as he puts
it, “are sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit”:
“He sacrifices virtue to convenience.”
“His plots are often so loosely formed that a very slight
consideration may improve them.”
“In many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected.”
“He had no regard to distinction of time or place.”
“In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he
engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and
contests of sarcasm.”
“In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as
his labour is more.”
“In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and
a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident
imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly
delivered in few.”
“His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.”
“It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an
unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express and will not
reject.”
“What he does best he soon ceases to do.”
“A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the
traveller; he follows it at all adventures.”
“He neglects the unities—those laws which have been instituted
and established by the joint authority of poets and critics.”
Johnson proceeds to defend Shakespeare by an excellent demonstration
of the absurdity of the unities, and at the close of it owns himself
“almost frighted at his own temerity.” Then he follows Pope in finding
Shakespeare to be hampered by the age in which he lived. “The English
nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from
barbarity.” Having to appeal to immature intellects, he was compelled
to base his plays on novels and traditions well known to his audience,
“for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies
of the drama had they not held the thread of the story in their
hands.” In reply to Voltaire, who expressed wonder that Shakespeare’s
extravagances should be endured by a nation which had seen the tragedy
of _Cato_, Johnson says that “Addison speaks the language of poets, and
Shakespeare of men.” He proceeds to deal with Shakespeare’s learning,
and Shakespeare emerges from the ordeal credited with rather less than
the average board-school boy of the present day. Johnson decides at
length that “if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment,
much is likewise given by custom and veneration”; and, finally, he
sums up his merits in the following fine sentence:—
“It therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is
the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in
following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him,
may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human
sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may
estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict
the progress of the passions.”[19:1]
It is difficult in the face of these pros and cons to determine
what Johnson’s attitude towards Shakespeare really was. Much of his
apparent hostility may, perhaps, be attributed to his instinctive
argumentativeness. It was his nature to object. If he were in a
loquacious mood, you had but to make a bald statement, and he was
upon you with an aggressively persuasive “Why, sir!” And here it may
be that he felt irresistibly impelled to combat the universal opinion
of Shakespeare’s greatness, and that he was hardly sincere in all he
wrote. However this may be, it is probable that he left on his readers
the impression that the balance of his inclination was against rather
than for Shakespeare. The very fact of the judicial attitude would
tend to produce such an impression. A judicial attitude towards
Shakespeare was not at that period so well understood as to be readily
distinguished from unfriendliness. And in estimating the critical
attitude of the age towards Shakespeare, it is necessary to bear in
mind that Dr. Johnson was a more important person when he lived than he
is now. Nothing is gained by speculating what he might have thought.
The fact remains that what he wrote carried weight.
Johnson’s opinion was not, however, sufficiently weighty to make his
preface, as he intended it to be, the last word in Shakespearean
criticism. Other editors followed him. Edward Capell brought much
serious and laborious scholarship to the task; and his judgments were
frequently sound, though his lack of perspicuity in delivering them
detracts somewhat from their value. His edition appeared in 1768. Five
years later, in 1773, George Steevens revised Johnson’s edition, and,
bringing to the enterprise an unrivalled knowledge of Elizabethan
history and literature, embodied many improvements, which he treated
with a humour that was frequently malicious and occasionally obscene.
To the second edition (1778) of this work was added much valuable
material relating to Shakespeare’s biography and the sources of his
plots, due to the researches of Edmund Malone, who published an
edition of his own in 1790. The well-known “First Variorum” edition
appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1803, prepared by Isaac Reed from a
1793 copy of Steevens’, containing many manuscript notes. The “Second
Variorum” appeared in 1813; and the “Third Variorum,” arranged by James
Boswell, the son of Johnson’s biographer, which appeared in 1821, marks
the close of what may be called the eighteenth century period of
commentators.
It will be seen, then, that Shakespeare was at this time kept
prominently before the eyes of the reading public. He was equally a
topic of interest with men of letters who confined themselves to no
special branch of literature. The attitude of the eighteenth century
essayists toward Shakespeare was essentially one of admiration and
respect for his genius. They found fault with his plays, it is true,
frequently enough, but almost always apologetically. He was not
infrequently held up as a model for modern dramatists to follow. The
_Connoisseur_, for example, printed a paper discussing the sources
of the _Merchant of Venice_; and while elaborating the fact that
the plot was borrowed, insisted on the genius displayed in the use
which Shakespeare made of it. The _Guardian_, again, enlarges on the
naturalness of Shakespeare’s characters—remarkable at a time when
poetry was, above all things, rhetorical and artificial.
Let us glance now at the poetical critics. It will be noticed that
many of the pieces printed in the body of this book appear under
names that are not very familiar, and that the eighteenth century is
responsible for the majority of them. In modern anthologies it is not
usual to include selections from the works of such poets; nor, indeed,
if literary excellence be the compiler’s object, is it expedient.
They are included here not because their effusions appear to me to
reach even a modest standard of merit, but because they were accepted
as good poets by their contemporaries and by the literary dictator,
Dr. Johnson. Johnson, it is true, disclaimed responsibility for the
choice of names represented in his edition of British poets, but the
repudiation cannot be considered of much importance. Johnson’s name
had probably more weight with publishers than that of any other man
of his time, and it is hardly likely that his advice in the matter of
inclusion or rejection, had he thought it worth while to give it, would
have been ignored. So one may feel certain that every name on his list
appeared with his approval. The laudatory criticisms embodied in the
biographies, which he asserted marked the extent of his commission,
prove as much. Take Blackmore, for example, whose _Creation_ was
included, on Johnson’s recommendation, in his edition of the poets.
“This poem,” he says, “if he had written nothing else, would have
transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English
Muse.” Posterity, on the whole, has not given the Muse’s favourite much
of a welcome, and Blackmore is one of a number of such chosen ones. But
even Johnson might have known better. They had their reputations ready
made for them by patrons. It was the age of patrons and extravagant
compliment, and Shakespeare in the hands of these small poets took a
place similar to that of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome.
Poetical flatterers of great men permitted him to fill the position of
comparative in the scale of eulogy, the object of their praises being
the superlative. Just as the writers of light society compliments made
envious Venus second to Clorinda or Chloe or Celia, so Shakespeare
stood aside to find himself excelled by Addison or Pope or Dryden, or
even, on exceptional occasions, by some patron who scarcely did more
than pretend to throw off little trifles in verse. Witness the “Lines
to Mr. Addison,” by William Somervile:
“In heaven he [Shakespeare] sings; on earth your muse supplies
Th’ important loss, and heals our weeping eyes.”
Or take these lines by John Hughes, “To Mr. Addison on his Tragedy of
_Cato_”:
“Great Shakespeare’s ghost, the solemn strain to hear
(Methinks I see the laurel’d shade appear!),
Will hover o’er the scene, and wondering view
His favourite Brutus rival’d thus by you.”
If one could suppose this to have been written in an ironic vein, the
lines would be satisfactorily pointed; but it is impossible, for Hughes
continues:
“Such Roman greatness in each action shines,
Such Roman eloquence adorns your lines,
That sure the Sibyl’s books this year foretold,
And in some mystic leaf was found inroll’d,
Rome, turn thy mournful eyes from Afric’s shore,
Nor in her sands thy Cato’s tomb explore!
When thrice six hundred times the circling sun
His annual race shall through the zodiac run,
An isle remote his monument shall rear,
And every generous Briton pay a tear.”
Or take the following by William Pattison, “To Mr. John Saunders,
occasioned by a sight of some of his paintings at Cambridge.” It would
be difficult to imagine a more incongruous bracketing of names than
that in the sixth line. The italics are my own:
“When Nature, from her unexhausted mine,
Resolves to make some mighty science shine;
Her embryo seeds inform the future birth,
Improve the soul, and animate the earth;
From thence, an Homer, or Apelles rise,
_A Shakespeare, or a Saunders_, strike our eyes,
And, lo! the promis’d wonder charms my view,
The old Apelles rivall’d in the new!”
One might quote pages of such stuff—torrents of heroic couplets—whose
very form, apart from their sentiment, show that Shakespeare was deemed
rather out of date. But the mention of his name counts for something.
It means that all of these poets felt, as Dr. Johnson felt, that though
they were not quite in sympathy with the old Elizabethan playwright, he
was still some one to be reckoned with. Indeed, every now and then the
truth comes out that he was too much for them. William Whitehead, for
one, had a full appreciation of him.
“O for a Shakespeare’s pencil, while I trace
In nature’s breathing paint, the dreary waste
Of Buxton” . . .
he sighs in _An Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol_; and, for all the bathos
of its expression, the admiration is genuine.
William Hamilton wrote _A Soliloquy in Imitation of Hamlet_, a
paraphrase of the famous speech, almost as bald as that from which
Shakespeare copied his. But the effort is doubtless more of a literary
exercise than an attempt at improvement of the original, for Hamilton
shows at various points in his works a fairly intimate knowledge and
real regard for Shakespeare’s genius.
Mallet read his Shakespeare intelligently, as witness his _Edwin and
Emma_, a love ballad, with its text taken from _Twelfth Night_. And
William Shenstone shows the right spirit in this very passable stanza
from _The Schoolmistress_, happily describing a village school:
“Yet nurs’d with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
Ev’n now sagacious foresight points to show
A little bench of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo,
Or bard sublime, if bard may e’er be so,
As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne’er shall die!
Though now he crawl along the ground so low,
Nor weeting how the muse shall soar on high,
Wishes, poor starveling elf! his paper kite to fly.”
That is well meaning and temperate enough, but some of these writers
erred on the side of enthusiasm. The following passage from Robert
Lloyd’s _Shakespeare, an Epistle to Mr. Garrick_, may be quoted as an
example:
“Oh, where’s the bard, who at one view
Could look the whole creation through,
Who travers’d all the human heart,
Without recourse to Grecian art?
He scorn’d the modes of imitation,
Of altering, pilfering, and translation;
Nor painted horror, grief, or rage,
From models of a former age;
The bright original he took,
And tore the leaf from nature’s book.
’Tis Shakespeare, thus, who stands alone.”
It will be noted that this effusion approaches Shakespeare through
Garrick; and such is the case with many others that must remain
unquoted. The reason is that Garrick occupied, by public consent if
not by his own desire, the position of Shakespeare’s patron. He took,
for instance, a leading part in organising the Shakespeare jubilee
at Stratford-on-Avon. Among his enterprises on this occasion was the
issue of a volume of tributes to Shakespeare, containing several
poetical pieces by himself, distinguished rather for their enthusiasm
than for poetical inspiration. Dr. Johnson opened the book with some
light verses, addressed to The Fair in a vein of somewhat elephantine
playfulness; and Garrick collected into it a number of extracts from
various writers, in verse and prose, in praise of Shakespeare,
prefacing the whole with a high-flown effort of his own in heroic
couplets, and publishing it in handsome quarto.
In the garden of his house at Hampton, Garrick had a temple dedicated
to Shakespeare, and adorned with statuary, of which the chief piece, a
fine full-length figure by Roubiliac, is now in the entrance hall of
the British Museum. But to do him justice, his efforts, though they
carried the manner of the playhouse into private life, were conceived
in a spirit of genuine appreciation; and if many of his admirers
regarded him almost as the rescuer of Shakespeare from oblivion, he, at
any rate, was ready to acknowledge his indebtedness to the dramatist on
the presentation of whose characters his well-merited fame rested.
So much for the second period.[26:1] Its literature is like a troubled
sea of conflicting opinion, through which the ship of Shakespeare’s
genius sails, tossed and buffeted by winds fair and foul, from all
points of the compass, and emerges triumphant.
V
THE THIRD PERIOD
In the foregoing brief survey I have endeavoured to indicate in the
broadest manner possible the principal forces that affected the
opinions concerning Shakespeare held during the eighteenth century—the
chief boulders, so to say, round which the current of opinion swirled.
No such analysis seems necessary in dealing with the nineteenth
century. That is, comparatively speaking, smooth water. The poetic
reformation inaugurated by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who published
their _Lyrical Ballads_ in 1798, practically effaced the classic
traditions of the previous hundred years, and prepared a way for the
school of æsthetic criticism which set Shakespeare in the place which
he now holds.
Æsthetic criticism, of a kind, was not entirely unknown. So far
back, for instance, as 1736, an anonymous pamphlet appeared with the
title, _Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_.
The author is an enthusiastic admirer of “the greatest tragic writer
that ever lived (except Sophocles and Euripides),” though most of the
beauties which he points out would be obvious to a reader of average
intelligence, and his expositions lack insight. Such efforts were, in
fact, nothing more than academic recreation, and but for their evidence
of a right tendency are hardly worthy of mention. In effect they were,
of course, immeasurably distant from the work of the æsthetic critics
of the early nineteenth century. Coleridge spoke truly when he thus
described his achievement:
“However inferior in ability I may be to some who have followed
me, I own I am proud that I was the first in time who publicly
demonstrated to the full extent of the position, that the
supposed irregularity and extravagances of Shakespeare were the
mere dreams of a pedantry that arraigned the eagle because it
had not the dimensions of the swan.”[28:1]
One has but to mention Hazlitt as Coleridge’s co-worker to feel that
Shakespeare’s position can never be seriously called in question.
In the mass of literature, much of it excellent, that has sprung from
this beginning, two works only—in English prose—are so pre-eminent as
to demand mention here, Mr. Swinburne’s _Study of Shakespeare_ (1880),
and Professor Dowden’s _Shakespeare, his Mind and Art_ (1874). Of
these, Mr. Swinburne’s book astounds one with a flow of eulogistic
rhetoric that can only be compared with the marvellous piece of
inspired enthusiasm on the same subject by Victor Hugo.
In nineteenth century verse Shakespeare’s name appears comparatively
seldom, excepting in poems written directly in his honour. This is a
logical result of the change from the poetic manner of the eighteenth
century, and the abandonment of the poetry of direct didacticism.
The characteristic poetry of the nineteenth century was as different
from that of the eighteenth century as the pictures of Turner were
from those of the English pre-Raphaelites. That is to say, the
typical poetry of the earlier age was marked by a clean symmetry, a
clearness of imagery, and a sharpness of detail paralleled in some
degree by the pictures of the pre-Raphaelites; whereas the poetry of
the nineteenth century leaned more to imaginative embroidery, and
what one may call, perhaps, the indefiniteness occasioned by artistic
introspection. It was, in fact, very much in the nature of a change
from a public oration to a private soliloquy. Even the mention, in
nineteenth century poetry, of a great man’s name to typify in a measure
the greatness of his country, is unusual. In Wordsworth’s sonnet, “It
is not to be thought of,” for example, the names of Shakespeare and
Milton come as something of a surprise from the poet who did most to
introduce the nineteenth century school of poetry. It is curious to
note that here the poet unconsciously imitates the manner of the verse
from which he deemed it his mission to effect a change; this sonnet
is, indeed, curiously typical of the period of poetic reformation in
which it was composed; for, though it belongs distinctly to the new
school, it possesses in the references to Shakespeare and Milton one
of the prominent characteristics of eighteenth century poetry. Thus,
though the poetry of the third period contains poems of the highest
order in direct praise of Shakespeare, as witness the sonnets of Mr.
Swinburne and Matthew Arnold, it is apparent that the anthologist
will find the greater part of his material in the works of prose
writers. At first glance one is bewildered by the mass of literature
which presents itself, but the scheme of this collection goes a small
way towards simplifying the choice. Pieces dealing with particular
merits of Shakespeare have generally been rejected, so that studies
of characters in the plays find no place. Similarly, studies, such,
for example, as De Quincey’s fine psychological analysis of the
knocking at the gate in _Macbeth_, have been excluded. Still, even
with these limitations, one feels that the task of selection is
beset with dangers. Every reader of Shakespearean literature has his
favourite passages, and though I have endeavoured to judge with a just
catholicity, I present the result of my labours in all meekness.
VI
SCHEME OF THE BOOK
The extracts have been arranged in three divisions. The first, which is
subdivided into three periods, corresponding with those described in
the foregoing notes, contains pieces in direct praise of Shakespeare.
The second part of the work contains brief passages in prose and verse
similar in character to those in the first part, but selected either
for their epigrammatic terseness or for their crystallisation of a fine
thought that is conveniently detachable from its context.
The third part is devoted to pieces which treat Shakespeare or his
works from a romantic standpoint. The devotion of only a small space to
this section was inevitable, and I regret the number of omissions. One
especially must be mentioned. Landor’s witty _Citation and Examination
of William Shakespeare_ on the charge of deer stealing, represents
exactly the kind of piece which I aimed at including. It is, however,
far too long to quote in full, and the interest is so deftly carried
throughout that I have found it quite impossible to select any portion
which could stand intelligibly by itself. I should have liked, also,
to include Browning’s poem, _At the Mermaid_, but here the question of
copyright intervened.
The dates immediately following the authors’ names show (sometimes
approximately) the earliest years with which the pieces quoted can be
definitely associated. Occasionally they mark the year in which the
piece was written, but in the majority of cases the year is that of
publication.
My best thanks are due to the following authors and publishers, who
have kindly given me permission to use copyright pieces:—Mr. A.
C. Swinburne, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr. Gerald Massey, Mr. Theodore
Watts-Dunton, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, Mr. W.
S. Gilbert, Dr. Ludwig Mond (Mathilde Blind), Messrs. Macmillan & Co.
(Francis Turner Palgrave, Matthew Arnold, and John Henry Newman),
Messrs. Ellis & Elvey (Dante Gabriel Rossetti), Messrs. George Allen &
Son (John Ruskin), Messrs. Smith Elder & Co. (Robert Browning).
Finally, it is my pleasant duty to record my deep indebtedness to Mr.
Sidney Lee, at whose suggestion this book was undertaken.
C. E. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[5:1] I can myself add nothing but suggestions of possible borrowings
from Shakespearean diction. In the poem, _The Court Burlesqu’d_,
printed in Samuel Butler’s _Remains_, the lines—
“This, by a rat behind the curtain
Has been o’erheard, some say for certain,”
may be reminiscent of the scene in _Hamlet_ in which Polonius is
killed; and in Quarles’ _Argalus and Parthenia_, the expression “to
gild perfection,” which occurs in the 21st line of the first book,
seems to echo the passage in _King John_, “to gild refined gold, to
paint the lily,” etc.
[10:1] In 1756.
[19:1] Johnson several times expresses himself in a like spirit in his
_Rambler_:
“It may be doubtful whether from all his successors more maxims of
theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be
collected than he alone has given to his country.”—_Works_, v. 131.
“He that has read Shakespeare with attention will, perhaps, find little
new in the crowded world.”—_Ib._ 434.
“Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and
who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read
every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of
all his commentators. When his fancy is on the wing, let it not stoop
at correction or explanation.”—_Ib._ 152.
[26:1] A word may be said here of the eighteenth century anthologists.
Collections of poems were numerous. That by Dodsley, with its
supplement prepared by Pearch, contains nothing by Shakespeare, nor
indeed does Nichols’ collection, which claimed to include no poem
that had been printed in the volumes issued by Dodsley or Pearch. A
collection by Thomas Tomkins, entitled _Poems on Various Subjects:
selected to enforce the Practice of Virtue, and with a View to comprise
in One Volume the Beauties of English Poetry_ (1787), goes no farther
back than Milton; and the well-known anthology, _Select Beauties of
Ancient English Poetry_, with remarks by Henry Headley, contains such
names as Drayton, Warner, Drummond, Raleigh, Surrey, Carew, Wyat,
and Browne, but Shakespeare finds no place. He does not, in fact,
enter regularly collections of this kind until the beginning of the
nineteenth century—the period of “Elegant Extracts.” But he is quoted
frequently enough in Edward Bysshe’s _Art of English Poetry_ (1724);
and John Bowle, in his _Miscellaneous Pieces of Ancient English Poetry_
(1765), selects from _King John_.
[28:1] _Literary Remains_ (1836), vol. ii. p. 63.
PART I
“THESE THREE HUNDRED YEARS”
Any time these three hundred years.
_Merry Wives_, I. i. 13.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
_Sonnet LV._
THE FIRST PERIOD
SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
FRANCIS MERES, 1596
(1565-1647)
As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the
sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued
Shakespeare, witness his “Venus and Adonis,” his “Lucrece,” his sugared
sonnets among his private friends, etc.
As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy
among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most
excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witness his
“Gentlemen of Verona,” his “Errors,” his “Love’s Labour’s Lost,”
his “Love’s Labour’s Wonne,” his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and his
“Merchant of Venice”; for Tragedy, his “Richard the 2,” “Richard the
3,” “Henry the 4,” “King John,” “Titus Andronicus,” and his “Romeo and
Juliet.”
As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus’ tongue,
if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with
Shakespeare’s fine filed phrase, if they would speak English.
_Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury, Being the Second
Part of Wits Commonwealth._ 1598.
RICHARD BARNFIELD, 1598
(1574-1627)
“_A Remembrance of some English Poets._”
And Shakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing Vein
(Pleasing the World), thy Praises doth obtain.
Whose _Venus_, and whose _Lucrece_ (sweet, and chaste)
Thy Name in Fame’s immortal Book have placed.
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever:
Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never.
_Poems in Divers humors._ 1598. Sig. E2, back.
JOHN WEEVER, 1599
(1576-1632)
“_Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare._”
Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them and none other;
Their rosy-tinted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:
Rose-cheeked _Adonis_, with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot _Venus_, charming him to love her,
Chaste _Lucretia_, virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung _Tarquin_, seeking still to prove her:
Romeo, Richard; more whose names I know not,
Their sugared tongues, and power attractive beauty
Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,
For thousands vow to them subjective duty:
They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare het them, [heated
Go, woo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.
_Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion._
John Weever. 1599. Epig. 22.
Some bibliographers have assigned the first edition of Weever’s
_Epigrammes_ to the year 1595, but no copy bearing that date is
known.
JOHN DAVIES, 1610
(1565?-1618)
“_To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shakespeare._”
Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Had’st thou not play’d some kingly parts in sport,
Thou had’st been a companion for a king,
And been a king among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but a reigning wit:
And honesty thou sow’st which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep:
_The Scourge of Folly, consisting of Satyricall
Epigramms and others._ 1611.
THOMAS FREEMAN, 1614
(_fl._ 1614)
“_To Master W. Shakespeare._”
Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury thy brain
Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleep,
So fit, for all thou fashionest thy rein,
At th’ horse-foot fountain thou hast drank full deep,
Vertues or vices theme to thee all one is:
Who loves chaste life, there’s _Lucrece_ for a Teacher:
Who but read lust there’s _Venus and Adonis_,
True model of a most lascivious leacher.
Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander:
Whence needy new-composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Menander.
But to praise thee aright I want thy store:
Then let thine own works thine own worth upraise,
And help t’ adorn thee with deserved Bays.
_Runne, and a Great Caste. The Second Bowle._
(_Being the second part of a Rubbe, and
a Great Cast_, 1614.) Epigram 92, Sig.
K2, back.
WILLIAM BASSE, 1622
(_d._ 1653?)
“_On Mr. William Shakespeare._”
Renowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh
To learned Beaumont, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Chaucer, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doom’s day, for hardly will (a) fift
Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain,
For whom the curtains shall be drawn again.
For if precedency in death do bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
In this uncarved marble of thy own,
Sleep, brave Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;
Thy unmolested rest, unshared cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant, to the grave,
That unto others it may counted be
Honour hereafter to be layed by thee.
_Fennell’s Shakespere Repository_, 1853, p. 10.
Printed from a MS. _temp._ Charles I.
ANONYMOUS, 1623
_Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit,
populus maeret, Olympus habet._
Stay, passenger, who goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument; Shakespeare with whom
Quick nature died; whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost; sith all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.
Inscription on the Monument erected to Shakespeare’s
Memory in the Parish Church at Stratford-on-Avon.
1623.
BEN JONSON, 1623
(1573-1637)
“_To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare: and what he hath left us._”
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book, and fame:
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem’d to raise . . .
But thou art proof against them, and in deed
Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument, without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean with great, but disproportion’d Muses:
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how for thou didst our Lyly out-shine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thundering Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy’d to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie
As they were not of Nature’s family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet’s matter, Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse’s anvil: turn the same
(And himself in it) that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,
For a good Poet’s made, as well as born.
And such wert thou. Look how the father’s face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
In his well turned and true-filed lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish’d at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn’d like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s
_Works_.
. . . “I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further to make thee a room.”
See William Basse, p. 40.
HUGH HOLLAND, 1623
(_d._ 1633)
“_Upon the Lines and Life of the famous Scenick Poet, Master
William Shakespeare._”
Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring
You Britain’s brave; for done are Shakespeare’s days:
His days are done, that made the dainty Plays,
Which make the Globe of heav’n and earth to ring.
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian Spring,
Turn’d all to tears, and Phœbus clouds his rays:
That corpse, that coffin now bestick those bayes,
Which crown’d him Poet first, then Poet’s King.
If Tragedies might any Prologue have,
All those he made, would scarce make one to this:
Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave
(Death’s public tiring-house), the Nuncius is.
For though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.
Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s
_Works_.
JOHN HEMINGE, 1623
(_d._ 1630)
HENRIE CONDELL
(_d._ 1627)
“_To the great Variety of Readers._”
His mind and hand went together: and what he thought he uttered with
that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his
papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his works, and give
them you, to praise him. It is yours that read him. And there we hope,
to your divers capacities, you will find enough, both to draw, and
hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, than it could be lost. Read
him, therefore; and again, and again: and if then you do not like him,
surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so
we leave you to other of his friends, whom, if you need, can be your
guides: if you need them not, you can lead yourselves, and others. And
such readers we wish him.
Address prefixed to the First Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1623.
LEONARD DIGGES, 1623
(1588-1635)
“_To the Memorie of the deceased Author, Maister W. Shakespeare._”
Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give
The world thy Works: thy Works, by which, out-live
Thy Tomb, thy name must: when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This Book,
When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look
Fresh to all ages: when posterity
Shall loath what’s new, thinke all is prodigy
That is not Shakespeare’s; ev’ry line, each verse,
Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.
Nor fire, nor cankering age, as Naso said,
Of his, thy wit-fraught Book, shall once invade.
Nor shall I e’er believe, or think thee dead
(Though missed), until our bankrout Stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain t’ out-do
Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo;
Or till I hear a scene more nobly take,
Then when thy half-sword parlying Romans spake,
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But crown’d with laurel, live eternally.
Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1623.
MICHAEL DRAYTON, 1627
(1563-1631)
“_To my most dearly-loved friend Henery Reynolds, Esquire, of
Poets and Poesie._”
Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain,
As strong conception, and as clear a rage
As any one that trafick’d with the stage.
Elegies at the end of _The Battaile of Agincourt_.
1627, p. 206.
JOHN MILTON, 1630
(1608-1674)
“_An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare._”
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hallow’d relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a life-long monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchr’d, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb should wish to die.
Prefixed to Second Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s
_Works_. 1632.
I. M. S., 1632
“_On worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems._”
A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours’ just extent.
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality.
In that deep dusky dungeon to discern
A royal ghost from churls: by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wond’ring how oft they live.
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain
Senseless and soulless shows. To give a stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato’s year and new scene of the world
Them unto us, or us to them had hurl’d.
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their herse,
Make kings his subjects, by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age
Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain; and eyes in tears
Both weep and smile; fearful at plots so sad,
Then, laughing at our fear; abus’d, and glad
To be abus’d, affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleas’d in that ruth
At which we start; and by elaborate play
Tortur’d and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravaine for our sport—
—While the Plebeian Imp, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love:
To strike up and stroke down, both joy and ire;
To steer th’ affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew. Stol’n from ourselves—
This, and much more which cannot be express’d,
But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare’s freehold, which his cunning brain
Improv’d by favour of the ninefold train.
The buskin’d Muse, the Comic Queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,
The silver voiced Lady; the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body chants.
These jointly woo’d him, envying one another
(Obey’d by all as spouse, but lov’d as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch’d and embroider’d like the painted Spring,
Each leaf match’d with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works whose thread the Sisters spun;
And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice
Birds of a foreign note and various voice.
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled; not the air,
Nor clouds nor thunder, but were living drawn,
Not out of common tiffany or lawn,
But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they grow.
Now, when they could no longer him enjoy
In mortal garments pent, death may destroy,
They say, his body, but his verse shall live;
And more than nature takes, our hands shall give.
In a less volume, but more strongly bound,
Shakespeare shall breath and speak, with laurel crown’d
Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meat,
In a well-lined vesture rich and neat.
So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it;
For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it.
The friendly admirer of his Endowments, I. M. S.
Prefixed to the Second Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1632.
Conjectures as to the authorship of this poem have been
numerous. Coleridge in his _Lectures on Shakespeare_ says:
“This poem is subscribed I. M. S., meaning, as some have
explained, the initials “John Milton, Student”: the internal
evidence seems to us decisive; for there was, I think, no
other man, of that particular day, capable of writing anything
so characteristic of Shakespeare, so justly thought, and so
happily expressed.”
JOHN HALES, BEFORE 1633
(1584-1656)
In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D’Avenant,
Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling,
who was a professed admirer of Shakespeare, had undertaken his defence
against Ben Jonson with some warmth. Mr. Hales, who had sat still for
some time, hearing Ben frequently reproaching him with the want of
learning, and ignorance of the ancients, told him at last, “That if
Mr. Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen
anything from ’em [a fault the other made no conscience of]; and that
if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any of them, he
would undertake to show something upon the same subject at least as
well written by Shakespeare.”
Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare,
prefixed to the edition of his _Works_ by
Nicholas Rowe, 1709, vol. i. p. xiv.
SIR WILLIAM D’AVENANT, 1637
(1606-1668)
“_Ode. In Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare._”
1
Beware (delighted Poets!) when you sing
To welcome Nature in the early Spring;
Your num’rous feet not tread
The Banks of Avon; for each flower
(As it ne’er knew a sun or shower)
Hangs there the pensive head.
2
Each tree whose thick and spreading growth hath made
Rather a night beneath the boughs, than shade
(Unwilling now to grow),
Looks like the plume a captive wears
Whose rifled falls are steept i’ th’ tears
Which from his last rage flow.
3
The piteous river wept itself away
Long since (alas!) to such a swift decay;
That reach the map; and look
If you a river there can spy;
And for a river your mock’d eye
Will find a shallow brook.
_Madagascar, with other Poems._ 1638, p. 37.
Printed 1637.
ANONYMOUS, ABOUT 1637
“_An Elegie on the Death of that famous Writer and Actor, Mr. William
Shakspeare._”
I dare not do thy memory that wrong,
Unto our larger griefs to give a tongue;
I’ll only sigh in earnest, and let fall
My solemn tears at thy great funeral;
For every eye that rains a show’r for thee,
Laments thy loss in a sad elegy.
Nor is it fit each humble Muse should have
Thy worth his subject, now th’ art laid in grave;
No, it’s a flight beyond the pitch of those,
Whose worthless pamphlets are not sense in prose.
Let learned Jonson sing a Dirge for thee,
And fill our Orb with mournful harmony:
But we need no remembrancer; thy fame
Shall still accompany thy honoured name
To all posterity; and make us be
Sensible of what we lost in losing thee:
Being the age’s wonder, whose smooth rhymes
Did more reform than lash the looser times.
Nature herself did her own self admire,
As oft as thou wert pleased to attire
Her in her native lustre, and confess
Thy dressing was her chiefest comliness.
How can we then forget thee, when the age
Her chiefest tutor, and the widowed stage
Her only favourite in thee hath lost,
And Nature’s self what she did brag of most?
Sleep then, rich soul of numbers, whilst poor we
Enjoy the profits of thy legacy;
And thinke it happiness enough we have
So much of thee redeemèd from the grave,
As may suffice to enlighten future times
With the bright lustre of thy matchless rhymes.
Appended to Shakespeare’s _Poems_. 1640. Sig. L.
THOMAS BANCROFT, 1639
(_fl._ 1633-1658)
“_To Shakespeare._”
Thy Muse’s sugared dainties seem to us
Like the fam’d apples of old Tantalus:
For we, admiring, see and hear thy strains;
But none I see or hear, those sweets attains.
“_To the same._”
Thou hast so us’d thy pen (or shook thy spear),
That Poets startle, nor thy wit come near.
_Two Bookes of Epigrammes, and Epitaphs._ 1639.
Nos. 118 and 119.
GEORGE DANIEL, 1647
(1616-1657)
The sweetest Swan of Avon, to ye fair
And cruel Delia, passionately sings;
Other men’s weaknesses and follies are
Honour and wit to him; each accent brings
A sprig to crown him Poet; and contrive
A monument, in his own work, to live.
_Poems. Vindication of Poesie._ Add. MS. 19255, p. 17.
(British Museum.) Privately printed by Dr.
Grosart. 1878, 4 vols. Vol. i. pp. 28, 29.
SAMUEL SHEPPARD, 1651
(_fl. c._ 1606-1652)
“_In Memory of our Famous Shakespeare._”
1
Sacred spirit, whiles thy Lyre
Echoed o’er the Arcadian Plains,
Even Apollo did admire,
Orpheus wondered at thy strains.
2
Plautus sigh’d, Sophocles wept
Tears of anger, for to hear,
After they so long had slept,
So bright a genius should appear.
3
Who wrote his Lines with a sun-beam,
More durable than Time or Fate;
Others boldly do blaspheme,
Like those that seem to preach, but prate.
4
Thou wert truly priest elect,
Chosen darling to the Nine;
Such a trophy to erect
By thy wit and skill divine.
5
That were all their other glories
(Thine excepted) torn away,
By thy admirable stories,
Their garments ever shall be gay.
6
Where thy honoured bones do lie
(As Statius once to Maro’s urn),
Thither every year will I
Slowly tread, and sadly mourn.
_Epigrams Theological, Philosophical, and Romantick._
Six Books, etc., with other Select Poems. 1651.
Book vi. Epig. 17, pp. 150, 152, 154.
THOMAS FULLER, _c._ 1661
(1608-1661)
He was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, _Poeta non fit
sed nascitur_; one is not _made_, but _born_ a poet. Indeed, his
learning was very little, so that, as Cornish diamonds are not polished
by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken
out of the earth, so nature itself was all the _art_ which was used
upon him.
Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I
behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war: Master
Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but
slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man of war,
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack
about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and
invention.
_The History of the Worthies of England:
Warwickshire._ 1662, p. 126.
SAMUEL PEPYS, 1662-1667
(1633-1703)
1661-1662. March 1st. My wife and I by coach, first to see my little
picture that is a-drawing, and thence to the Opera, and there saw
“Romeo and Juliet,” the first time it was ever acted, but it is a play
of itself the worst that ever I heard, and the worst acts that ever I
saw these people do, and I am resolved to go no more to see the first
time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less.
1662. September 29th. To the King’s Theatre, where we saw “Midsummer
Night’s Dream,” which I had never seen before, nor ever shall again,
for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.
1666. December 28th. To the Duke’s House, and there saw “Macbeth” most
excellently acted, and a most excellent play for variety. I had sent my
wife to meet me there, who did come: so I did go to White Hall, and got
my Lord Bellassis to get me into the playhouse; and there, after all
staying above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which
was absurd, saw “Henry the Fifth” well done by the Duke’s people, and
in most excellent habit, all new vests, being put on but this night.
But I sat so high and far off, that I missed most of the words, and sat
with a wind coming into my back and neck, which did much trouble me.
The play continued till twelve at night; and then up, and a most horrid
cold night it was, and frosty, and moonshine.
1666-67. January 7th. To the Duke’s House, and saw “Macbeth,” which,
though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all
respects, but especially in divertisement, though it be a deep tragedy;
which is a strange perfection in a tragedy, it being most proper here,
and suitable.
1667. October 16th. To the Duke of York’s House; and I was vexed to
see Young, who is but a bad actor at best, act Macbeth, in the room
of Betterton, who, poor man! is sick: but, Lord! what a prejudice it
wrought in me against the whole play, and everybody else agreed in
disliking this fellow. Thence home, and there find my wife gone home;
because of this fellow’s acting of the part, she went out of the house
again.
_Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, with a
Life and Notes_, by Richard, Lord Braybrooke.
1888.
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, 1664
(1624?-1674)
I wonder how that person you mention in your letter could either have
the conscience, or confidence to dispraise Shakespeare’s plays, as
to say they were made up only with clowns, fools, watchmen, and the
like; but to answer that person, though Shakespeare’s wit will answer
for himself, I say, that it seems by his judging, or censuring, he
understands not plays, or wit; for to express properly, rightly,
usually, and naturally, a clown’s, or fool’s humour, expressions,
phrases, garbs, manners, actions, words, and course of life, is as
witty, wise, judicious, ingenious, and observing, as to write and
express the expressions, phrases, garbs, manners, actions, words, and
course of life, of kings and princes; and to express naturally, to
the life, a mean country wench, as a great lady; a courtesan, as a
chaste woman; a mad man, as a man in his right reason and senses; a
drunkard, as a sober man; a knave, as an honest man; and so a clown,
as a well-bred man; and a fool, as a wise man; nay, it expresses
and declares a greater wit, to express, and deliver to posterity,
the extravagances of madness, the subtlety of knaves, the ignorance
of clowns, and the simplicity of naturals, or the craft of feigned
fools, than to express regularities, plain honesty, courtly garbs,
or sensible discourses, for ’tis harder to express nonsense than
sense, and ordinary conversations, than that which is unusual; and
’tis harder, and requires more wit to express a jester, than a grave
statesman; yet Shakespeare did not want wit to express to the life all
sorts of persons, of what quality, profession, degree, breeding, or
birth soever; nor did he want wit to express the divers and different
humours, or natures or several passions in mankind; and so well he hath
expressed in his plays all sorts of persons, as one would think he had
been transformed into every one of those persons he hath described....
Who could not swear he had been a noble lover, that could woo so
well? and there is not any person he had described in his book, but
his readers might think they were well acquainted with them; indeed,
Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a spreading fancy, a
subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution;
truly he was a natural orator, as well as a natural poet, and he was
not an orator to speak well only on some subjects, as lawyers, who can
make eloquent orations at the bar, and plead subtly and wittily in
law-cases, or divines, that can preach eloquent sermons, or dispute
subtly and wittily in theology, but take them from that, and put them
to other subjects, and they will be to seek; but Shakespeare’s wit and
eloquence was general, for and upon all subjects, he rather wanted
subjects for his wit and eloquence to work on, for which he was forced
to take some of his plots out of history, where he only took the bare
designs, the wit and language being all his own.
_CCXI Sociable Letters written by the Lady Marchioness
of Newcastle._ 1664. Letter CXXIII.
JOHN DRYDEN, 1667
(1631-1700)
As when a tree’s cut down, the secret root
Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;
So, from old Shakespeare’s honour’d dust, this day
Springs up and buds a new reviving play.
Shakespeare who, taught by none, did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art.
He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects law,
And is that Nature which they paint and draw.
Fletcher reach’d that which on his heights did grow,
Whilst Jonson crept and gather’d all below.
This did his love, and this his mirth digest:
One imitates him most, the other best.
If they have since out-writ all other men,
’Tis with the drops which fell from Shakespeare’s pen.
The storm which vanish’d on the neighb’ring shore,
Was taught by Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ first to roar.
That innocence and beauty which did smile
In Fletcher, grew on this Enchanted Isle.
But Shakespeare’s magick could not copy’d be,
Within that circle none durst walk but he.
I must confess ’twas bold, nor would you now
That liberty to vulgar wits allow,
Which works by magick supernatural things:
But Shakespeare’s pow’r is sacred as a king’s.
Those legends from old priesthood were receiv’d,
And he then writ, as people then believed.
_Prologue to the Tempest or the Enchanted Island,
by Sir William D’Avenant and John Dryden._
1676.
See also Dryden’s _Prologue to Troilus and Cressida_, spoken by
Mr. Betterton representing the Ghost of Shakespeare.
1668
To begin, then, with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all modern, and
perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All
the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not
laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than
see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning,
give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed
not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and
found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I
should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is
many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his
serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great
occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject
for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of
poets,
_Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi._
_Of Dramatic Poesie, an Essay_, 1668, p. 47.
The following is from Dryden’s _Defence of the Epilogue_:—Let
any man who understands English read diligently the works of
Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will
find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some
notorious flaw in sense; and yet these men are reverenced, when
we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times
their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny.
——_Neque ego illis detrahere ausim
Hærentem capiti multa cum laude coronam._
But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was
then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to
its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots;
many of which, especially those which they writ first (for even
that age refined itself in some measure), were made up of some
ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took
up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name “Pericles,
Prince of Tyre,” nor the historical plays of Shakespeare;
besides many of the rest, as the “Winter’s Tale,” “Love’s
Labour’s Lost,” “Measure for Measure,” which were either
grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written that
the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your
concernment.
ANONYMOUS, 1672
In country beauties, as we often see
Something that takes in their simplicity;
Yet while they charm, they know not they are fair,
And take without their spreading of the snare;
Such artless beauty lies in Shakespeare’s wit,
’Twas well in spite of him what ere he writ.
His excellencies came and were not sought,
His words like casual atoms made a thought:
Drew up themselves in rank and file, and writ,
He wond’ring how the Devil it were such wit.
Thus like the drunken tinker, in his play,
He grew a prince, and never knew which way.
He did not know what trope or figure meant,
But to persuade is to be eloquent;
So in this Cæsar which this day you see,
Tully ne’er spoke as he makes Anthony.
Those then that tax his learning are to blame,
He knew the thing, but did not know the name:
Great Jonson did that ignorance adore,
And though he envied much, admir’d him more.
The faultless Jonson equally writ well:
Shakespeare made faults; but then did more excell.
One close at guard like some old fencer lay,
T’other more open, but he show’d more play.
In imitation Jonson’s wit was shown,
Heaven made his men but Shakespeare made his own.
Wise Jonson’s talent in observing lay,
But other’s follies still made up his play.
He drew the like in each elaborate line,
But Shakespeare, like a master, did design.
Jonson with skill dissected human kind,
And show’d their faults that they their faults might find.
But then, as all anatomists must do,
He to the meanest of mankind did go,
And took from gibbets such as he would show.
Both are so great that he must boldly dare,
Who both of ’em does judge and both compare.
If amongst poets, one more bold there be,
The man that dare attempt in either way, is he.
_Covent Garden Drollery, or a Collection of all the
Choice Songs, Poems, Prologues, and Epilogues
(Sung and Spoken at Courts and Theaters),
never in Print before._ Written by the
refined’st Witts of the Age, and collected by
A. B. [? Alex. Brome]. 1672.
EDWARD PHILLIPS, 1675
(1630-1696?)
William Shakespeare, the glory of the English Stage; whose nativity
at Stratford-upon-Avon is the highest honour that town can boast of:
from an actor of tragedies and comedies, he became a maker; and such
a maker, that though some others may perhaps pretend to a more exact
decorum and economy, especially in tragedy, never any expressed a more
lofty and tragic height, never any represented nature more purely
to the life; and where the polishments of art are most wanting, as
probably his learning was not extraordinary, he pleaseth with a certain
wild and native elegance; and in all his writings hath an unvulgar
style, as well in his _Venus and Adonis_, his _Rape of Lucrece_, and
other various poems, as in his dramatics.
_Theatrum Poetarum._ 1675. Preface. _The Modern
Poets_, p. 194.
THOMAS OTWAY, 1680
(1652-1685)
In ages past (when will those times renew?),
When empires flourish’d, so did poets too.
When great Augustus the world’s empire held,
Horace and Ovid’s happy verse excell’d.
Ovid’s soft genius, and his tender arts
Of moving Nature, melted hardest hearts.
It did th’ imperial beauty, Julia, move
To listen to the language of his love.
Her father honour’d him: and on her breast
With ravish’d sense in her embraces prest,
He lay transported, fancy-full and blest.
Horace’s lofty genius boldlier rear’d
His manly head, and through all Nature steer’d;
Her richest pleasures in his verse refin’d,
And wrought ’em to the relish of the mind.
He lash’d with a true poet’s fearless rage,
The villanies and follies of the age;
Therefore Mecænas, that great fav’rite rais’d
Him high, and by him was he highly prais’d.
Our Shakespeare wrote, too, in an age as blest,
The happiest poet of his time, and best;
A gracious Prince’s favour cheer’d his muse,
A constant favour he ne’er fear’d to lose.
Therefore he wrote with fancy unconfin’d,
And thoughts that were immortal as his mind;
And from the crop of his luxuriant pen
E’er since succeeding poets humbly glean.
_Prologue to the History and Fall of Caius Marius.
A Tragedy._ 1712.
“A PERSON OF HONOUR,” 1681
I can’t, without infinite ingratitude to the memory of those excellent
persons, omit the first famous masters in’t, of our nation, venerable
Shakespeare and the great Ben Jonson. I have had a particular kindness
always for most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and for many of his
comedies, and I can’t but say that I can never enough admire his style
(considering the time he writ in, and the great alteration that has
been in the refining of our language since), for he has expressed
himself so very well in’t that ’tis generally approved of still; and
for maintaining of the characters of the persons design’d, I think none
ever exceeded him.
“_An Essay on Dramatic Poetry_” appended to _Amaryllis
to Tityrus, Being the First Heroick Harangue of
the excellent pen of Monsieur Scudery. A Witty and
Pleasant Novel._ Englished by a Person of Honour,
1681, pp. 66-67.
SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, 1693
(1639?-1701)
But against old as well as new to rage,
Is the peculiar frenzy of this age.
Shakespeare must down, and you must praise no more
Soft Desdemona, nor the jealous Moor:
Shakespeare whose fruitful genius, happy wit
Was fram’d and finish’d at a lucky hit;
The pride of Nature, and the shame of schools,
Born to create, and not to learn from rules;
Must please no more, his bastards now deride,
Their father’s nakedness they ought to hide,
But when on spurs their Pegasus they force,
Their jaded Muse is distanc’d in the course.
_The Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat. A Comedy._
By Henry Higden. Prologue by Sir Charles
Sydley. 1693.
THE SECOND PERIOD
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
SIR RICHARD STEELE, 1709
(1672-1729)
The play of “The London Cuckolds” was acted this evening before a
suitable audience, who were extremely well diverted with that heap of
vice and absurdity. The indignation which Eugenio, who is a gentleman
of just taste, has, upon occasion of seeing human nature fall so low
in their delights, made him, I thought, expatiate upon the mention
of this play very agreeably. “Of all men living,” said he, “I pity
players (who must be men of good understanding to be capable of being
such) that they are obliged to repeat and assume proper gestures for
representing things, of which their reason must be ashamed, and which
they must disdain their audience for approving. The amendment of
these low gratifications is only to be made by people of condition,
by encouraging the presentation of the noble characters drawn by
Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impossible to return without
strong impressions of honour and humanity. On these occasions distress
is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our
resentment placed according to the merit of the persons afflicted. Were
dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who
have genius would bend their studies to excel in them.”
_The Tatler_, No. 8, 28 April 1709.
_The London Cuckolds_, by Edward Ravenscroft, first produced
1682.
NICHOLAS ROWE, 1709
(1674-1718)
The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own genius
(equal, if not superior, to some of the best of theirs [the ancients]),
would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much
pleasure, that some of their fine images would naturally have
insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; so
that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument
of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients
were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a dispute: for though
the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not
improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would
have attended that correctness, might have restrained some of that
fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in
Shakespeare: and I believe we were better pleased with those thoughts,
altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination supplied him so
abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful passages
out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner
that it was possible for a master of the English language to deliver
them.
_Some Account of the Life, etc., of Mr. William
Shakespear_, p. iii. prefixed to _Works of
Shakespeare_, ed. N. Rowe. 1709.
Of this passage and the question of Shakespeare’s knowledge
of the ancients, Theobald, who favoured the view that his
acquaintance with classical writings was not inconsiderable,
remarks in his preface, “The result of the controversy must
certainly, either way, terminate to our author’s honour: how
happily he could imitate them, if that point be allowed; or how
gloriously he could think like them, without owing anything to
imitation.”
ELIJAH FENTON, 1711
(1683-1730)
Shakespeare, the genius of our isle, whose mind
(The universal mirror of mankind)
Express’d all images, enrich’d the stage,
But sometimes stoop’d to please a barbarous age.
When his immortal bays began to grow,
Rude was the language, and the humour low:
He, like the God of Day, was always bright,
But rolling in its course, his orb of light
Was sullied, and obscur’d, though soaring high,
With spots contracted from the nether sky.
But whither is th’ adventurous Muse betray’d?
Forgive her rashness, venerable shade!
May Spring with purple flowers perfume thy urn;
And Avon with his greens thy grave adorn:
Be all thy faults, whatever faults there be,
Imputed to the times, and not to thee.
Some scions shot from this immortal root,
Their tops much lower, and less fair the fruit,
Jonson the tribute of my verse might claim,
Had he not strove to blemish Shakespeare’s name.
But, like the radiant twins that gild the sphere,
Fletcher and Beaumont next in pomp appear:
The first a fruitful vine, in blooming pride,
Had been by superfluity destroy’d,
But that his friend, judiciously severe,
Prun’d the luxuriant boughs with artful care;
On various sounding harps the Muses play’d,
And sung, and quaff’d their nectar in the shade.
Few moderns in the lists with these may stand,
For in those days were giants in the land:
Suffice it now by lineal right to claim,
And bow with filial awe to Shakespeare’s fame;
The second honours are a glorious name.
Achilles dead, they found no equal lord
To wear his armour, and to wield his sword.
_An Epistle to Mr. Southerne, from Kent._
January 28, 1710-11.
JOHN DENNIS, 1712
(1657-1734)
Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world e’er saw
for the Tragic Stage. Though he lay under greater disadvantages than
any of his successors, yet had he greater and more genuine beauties
than the best and greatest of them. And what makes the brightest glory
of his character, those beauties were entirely his own, and owing to
the force of his own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his
education, and to the age that he lived in. One may say of him as they
did of Homer, that he had none to imitate, and is himself inimitable.
_An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespear:
with some Letters of Criticism to the
SPECTATOR._ 1712, pp. 1, 2.
EDWARD YOUNG, 1712
(1683-1765)
To claim attention, and the heart invade,
Shakespeare but _wrote_ the play th’ Almighty _made_.
Our neighbour’s stage art too bare-fac’d betrays,
’Tis great Corneille at every scene we praise;
On nature’s surer aid Britannia calls,
None think of Shakespeare till the curtain falls;
Then with a sigh returns our audience home,
From Venice, Egypt, Persia, Greece, or Rome.
. . . . . .
And yet in Shakespeare something still I find,
That makes me less esteem all humankind;
He made one nature and another found,
Both in his page with master-strokes abound;
His witches, fairies, and enchanted isle,
Bid us no longer at our nurses smile;
Of lost historians we almost complain,
Nor think it the creation of his brain.
_Epistle to the Right Honourable George, Lord
Lansdowne._ 1712, ll. 295-302 and 313-20.
JOSEPH ADDISON, 1714
(1672-1719)
Our critics do not seem sensible that there is more beauty in the works
of a great genius who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those
of a little genius who knows and observes them. It is of these men
of genius that Terence speaks in opposition to the little artificial
cavillers of his time:
_Quorum æmulari exoptat negligentiam
Potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam._
A critic may have the same consolation in the ill success of his play,
as Dr. South tells us a physician has at the death of a patient,
that he was killed _secundum artem_. Our inimitable Shakespeare is a
stumbling-block to the whole tribe of these rigid critics. Who would
not rather read one of his plays, where there is not a single rule of
the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic, where there
is not one of them violated? Shakespeare was indeed born with all the
seeds of poetry, and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus’s ring,
which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo and the nine Muses
in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, without
any help from art.
_The Spectator_, No. 592, 10 Feb. 1714.
ALEXANDER POPE, 1725
(1688-1744)
If ever any author deserved the name of an _Original_, it was
Shakespeare. Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the
fountains of Nature; it proceeded through Egyptian strainers and
channels, and came to him not without some tincture of the learning, or
some cast of the models, of those before him. The poetry of Shakespeare
was inspiration indeed; he is not so much an imitator as an instrument
of Nature: and it is not so just to say that he speaks from her, as
that she speaks through him.
His _characters_ are so much Nature herself, that ’tis a sort of injury
to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of other
poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they received them
from one another, and were but multipliers of the same image; each
picture, like a mock rainbow, is but the reflection of a reflection.
But every single character in Shakespeare is as much an individual as
those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike; as
such as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to
be twins, will upon comparison be found remarkably distinct. To this
life and variety of character we must add the wonderful preservation of
it, which is such throughout his Plays, that, had all the speeches been
printed without the very names of the persons, I believe one might have
applied them with certainty to every speaker.
The power over our passions was never possessed in a more eminent
degree, or displayed in so different instances. Yet all along there is
seen no labour, no pains to raise them; no preparation to guide our
guess to the effect, or be perceiv’d to lead toward it; but the heart
swells, and the tears burst out, just at the proper places. We are
surprised the moment we weep; and yet upon reflection find the passion
so just, that we should be surprised if we had not wept, and wept at
that very moment.
How astonishing is it, again, that the passions directly opposite to
these, laughter and spleen, are no less at his command! that he is not
more a master of the _great_ than of the _ridiculous_ in human nature;
of our noblest tendernesses, than of our vainest foibles; of our
strongest emotions, than of our idlest sensations!
Nor does he only excel in the passions: in the coolness of reflection
and reasoning he is full as admirable. His _sentiments_ are not only
in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every subject; but by
a talent very peculiar, something between penetration and felicity,
he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of each argument
turns, or the force of each motive depends. This is perfectly amazing,
from a man of no education or experience in those great and public
scenes of life which are usually the subject of his thoughts: so that
he seems to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through
human nature at one glance, and to be the only author that gives ground
for a very new opinion: That the philosopher, and even the man of the
world, may be _born_, as well as the poet.
It must be owned that with all these great excellencies, he has almost
as great defects; and that as he has certainly written better, so he
has perhaps written worse, than any other. But I think I can in some
measure account for these defects, from several causes and accidents;
without which it is hard to imagine that so large and so enlightened
a mind could ever have been susceptible of them. That all these
contingencies should unite to his disadvantage seems to me almost as
singularly unlucky, as that so many various (nay contrary) talents
should meet in one man, was happy and extraordinary.
. . . . . . .
I will conclude by saying of Shakespeare, that with all his faults,
and with all the irregularity of his _drama_, one may look upon his
works in comparison of those that are more finished and regular, as
upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with a
neat modern building; the latter is more elegant and glaring, but the
former is more strong and more solemn. It must be allowed, that in one
of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has
much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments; though we are
often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does
the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the
parts are childish, ill-placed, and unequal to its grandeur.
Preface to _The Works of Shakespeare_. 1725.
De Quincey in his essay on Pope says of this preface: “For the
edition we have little to plead; but for the editor it is but
just to make three apologies. In the _first_ place he wrote a
brilliant preface, which, although (like other works of the
same class) too much occupied in displaying his own ability,
and too often, for the sake of an effective antithesis, doing
deep injustice to Shakespeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole,
extended his fame, by giving the sanction and countersign of
a great wit to the national admiration. _Secondly_, as Dr.
Johnson admits, Pope’s failure pointed out the right road to
his successors. _Thirdly_, even in this failure it is but fair
to say, that in a graduated scale of merit, as distributed
amongst the long succession of editors through that century,
Pope holds a rank proportionable to his age. For the year 1720,
he is no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer, Capell, Warburton,
or even Johnson, than as they are successively below each
other, and all of them as to accuracy below Steevens, as he
again was below Malone and Reed.”
JAMES THOMSON, 1727
(1700-1748)
Happy Britannia! where the Queen of Arts,
Inspiring vigour, Liberty abroad
Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots,
And scatters plenty with unsparing hand
. . . . . .
Thy sons of glory many! Alfred thine,
In whom the splendour of heroic war,
And more heroic peace, when govern’d well,
Combine; whose hallow’d name _the Virtues Saint_,
And his own Muses love; the best of kings!
. . . . . .
Fair thy renown
In awful sages and in noble bards;
Soon as the light of dawning Science spread
Her orient ray, and waked the Muses’ song.
. . . . . .
For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and Nature’s boast?
_The Seasons: Summer._ 1727, ll. 1442-6,
1479-83, 1531-4, and 1563-6.
LEWIS THEOBALD, 1733
(1688-1744)
In how many points of light must we be obliged to gaze at this great
poet! In how many branches of excellence to consider and admire him!
Whether we view him on the side of art or nature, he ought equally to
engage our attention; whether we respect the force and greatness of his
genius, the extent of his knowledge and reading, the power and address
with which he throws out and applies either nature or learning, there
is ample scope both for our wonder and pleasure. If his diction and the
clothing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed
with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! If his images
and ideas steal into our souls, and strike upon our fancy, how much are
they improved in price when we come to reflect with what propriety and
justness they are applied to character. If we look into his characters,
and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts
out for them, how are we taken up with the mastery of his portraits!
What draughts of Nature! What variety of originals, and how differing
each from the other! How are they dressed from the stores of his own
luxurious imagination; without being the apes of mode, or borrowing
from any foreign wardrobe! each of them are the standard of fashion
for themselves: like gentlemen that are above the direction of their
tailors, and can adorn themselves without the aid of imitation.
Preface to _The Works of Shakespeare, collated with
the Oldest Copies and corrected; with Notes,
Explanatory and Critical_. By Mr. Theobald.
1733, vol. i. pp. ii-iii.
JOSEPH WARTON, 1740
(1722-1800)
What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakespeare’s warblings wild?
Whom on the winding Avon’s willow’d banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a close cavern (still the shepherds show
The sacred place, whence with religious awe
They hear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whisp’rings of sweet music through the air):
Here, as with honey gather’d from the rock
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft sooth’d his wond’ring ears with deep delight.
On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds.
_The Enthusiast: or the Lover of Nature_, ll. 168-79.
WILLIAM COLLINS, 1743
(1721-1759)
Too nicely Jonson knew the critic’s part;
Nature in him was almost lost in art.
Of softer mould the gentle Fletcher came,
The next in order, as the next in name:
With pleas’d attention ’midst his scenes we find
Each glowing thought that warms the female mind;
Each melting sigh and every tender tear,
The lover’s wishes, and the virgin’s fear.
His every strain the smiles and graces own,
But stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone:
Drawn by his pen, our ruder passions stand
Th’ unrival’d picture of his early hand.
_Verses humbly address’d to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his
Edition of Shakespeare’s Works._ 1743, p. 7.
Hanmer’s edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1744. See p. 93.
SIR THOMAS HANMER, 1744
(1677-1746)
If that rich vein of sense which runs through the works of this author
can be retrieved in every part and brought to appear in its true
light, and if it may be hoped without presumption that this is here
effected; they who love and admire him will receive a new pleasure,
and all probably will be more ready to join in doing him justice, who
does great honour to his country as a rare and perhaps singular genius:
one who hath attained an high degree of perfection in those two great
branches of poetry, tragedy and comedy, different as they are in their
natures from each other; and who may be said without partiality to have
equalled, if not excelled, in both kinds, the best writers of any age
or century who have thought it glory enough to distinguish themselves
in either.
Preface to _The Works of Shakespear. Carefully Revised
and Corrected by the former Editions, and Adorned
with Sculptures designed and executed by the best
hands._ Oxford, 1744, vol. i. pp. v-vi.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1747
(1709-1784)
When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes
First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil’d after him in vain:
His powerful strokes presiding truth impress’d,
And unresisted passion storm’d the breast.
Prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick at the opening of
the Theatre in Drury Lane, 1747.
“Drinking tea one day at Garrick’s with Mr. Langton, he [Dr.
Johnson] was questioned if he was not somewhat of a heretic as
to Shakespeare; said Garrick, ‘I doubt he is a little of an
infidel.’—‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘I will stand by the lines I
have written on Shakespeare in my Prologue at the opening of
your Theatre.’ Mr. Langton suggested, that in the line
“‘And panting Time toil’d after him in vain,’
Johnson might have had in his eye the passage in the _Tempest_,
where Prospero says of Miranda:
“‘. . . She will outstrip all praise,
And make it halt behind her.’
Johnson said nothing. Garrick then ventured to observe, ‘I do
not think that the happiest line in the praise of Shakespeare.’
Johnson exclaimed (smiling), ‘Prosaical rogues! next time I
write, I’ll make both time and space pant.’”—Notes by Langton
in Boswell’s _Life of Dr. Johnson_.
BISHOP WILLIAM WARBURTON, 1747.
(1698-1779)
Of all the literary exercitations of speculative men, whether designed
for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much
importance, or what are more our immediate concern, than those which
let us into the knowledge of our nature. Others may exercise the reason
or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart, and
form the human mind to wisdom. Now, in this science, our Shakespeare is
confessed to occupy the foremost place; whether we consider the amazing
sagacity with which he investigates every hidden spring and wheel of
human action; or his happy manner of communicating this knowledge,
in the just and living paintings which he has given us of all our
passions, appetites, and pursuits. These afford a lesson which can
never be too often repeated, or too constantly inculcated.
Preface to _The Works of Shakespear. The genuine Text
(collated with all the former Editions and then
corrected and emended) is here settled. Being
restored from the Blunders of the first Editors,
and the Interpolations of the two last. With a
Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory._
By Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton. 1747, vol. i. p.
xxiv.
CHRISTOPHER SMART, 1751
(1722-1771)
Methinks I see with fancy’s magic eye,
The shade of Shakespeare, in yon azure sky.
On yon high cloud behold the bard advance,
Piercing all nature with a single glance:
In various attitudes around him stand
The passions, waiting for his dread command.
First kneeling Love before his feet appears,
And, musically sighing, melts in tears.
Near him fell Jealousy with fury burns,
And into storms the amorous breathings turns;
Then Hope, with heavenward look, and Joy draw near,
While palsied Terror trembles in the rear.
Prologue to _Othello_, as it was acted at the
Theatre Royal in Drury Lane on Thursday
the 7th of March 1751 by Persons of
Distinction for their Diversion. Ll.
21-32.
DAVID HUME, 1754.
(1711-1774)
If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN, born in a rude age, and
educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction, either from the
world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy. If represented
as a POET, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a
refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy.
In his compositions, we regret, that many irregularities, and even
absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionate
scenes intermixed with them; and at the same time, we perhaps admire
the more those beauties, on account of their being surrounded with
such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a
single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a
reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous
and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but
it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His
total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a
defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can
more easily excuse, than that want of taste which often prevails in his
productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations
of genius. A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, and one
enriched equally with a tragic and comic vein; but he ought to be cited
as a proof, how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for
attaining an excellence in the finer arts. And there may even remain a
suspicion, that we over-rate, if possible, the greatness of his genius;
in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic, on account
of their being disproportioned and misshapen. He died in 1616, aged
fifty-three years.
Jonson possessed all the learning which was wanting to Shakespeare,
and wanted all the genius of which the other was possessed. Both of
them were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and
correctness. A servile copyist of the ancients, Jonson translated into
bad English the beautiful passages of the Greek and Roman authors,
without accommodating to the manners of his age and country. His merit
has been totally eclipsed by that of Shakespeare, whose rude genius
prevailed over the rude art of his contemporary. The English theatre
has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakespeare’s spirit and
character; and thence it has proceeded, that the nation has undergone
from all its neighbours the reproach of barbarism, from which its
valuable productions in some parts of learning would otherwise have
exempted it.
_Appendix to the Reign of James I. History of
England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar
to the Revolution in 1688._ 1754.
HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 1756
(1717-1797)
John and I are just going to Garrick’s with a grove of cypresses in our
hands, like the Kentish men at the Conquest. He has built a temple to
his master Shakespeare, and I am going to adorn the outside, since his
modesty would not let me decorate it within, as I proposed, with these
mottoes:
_Quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est._
That I spirit have and nature,
That sense breathes in ev’ry feature,
That I please, if please I do,—
Shakespeare,—all I owe to you.
Letter to George Montagu, 14 Oct. 1756.
_Letters_, ed. Peter Cunningham,
1857, vol. iii. p. 36.
JOHN ARMSTRONG, 1758
(1709-1779)
Shakespeare, who I will venture to say had the most musical ear of
all the English poets, is abundantly irregular in his versification:
but his wildest licences seldom hurt the ear; on the contrary, they
give his verse a spirit and variety, which prevent its ever cloying.
Our modern tragedy-writers, instead of using the advantages of their
own languages, seem in general to imitate the monotony of the French
versification: and the only licence they ever venture upon, is that
poor tame one the supernumerary syllable at the end of a line; which
they are apt to manage in such a manner as to give their verse a most
ungraceful halt. But it is not want of ear alone which makes our common
manufacturers of tragedy so insipidly solemn and so void of harmony: it
is want of feeling.
“Of the Versification of English Tragedy.”
_Works_, 1770, ii. 164-5.
Shakespeare, indeed, without one perfect plan, has perhaps excelled all
other dramatic poets as to detached scenes. But he was a wonder!—His
deep knowledge of human nature, his prodigious variety of fancy and
invention, and of characters drawn with the strongest, truest, and most
exquisite strokes, oblige you to forget his most violent irregularities.
Of the Dramatic Unities, _ib._, p. 242.
WILLIAM MASON, 1759
(1724-1797)
How oft I cried, “Oh come, thou tragic queen!
March from thy Greece with firm majestic tread!
Such as when Athens saw thee fill her scene,
When Sophocles thy choral graces led:
Saw thy proud pall its purple length devolve;
Saw thee uplift the glittering dagger high;
Ponder with fixed brow thy deep resolve,
Prepar’d to strike, to triumph, and to die.
Bring then to Britain’s plain that choral throng;
Display thy buskin’d pomp, thy golden lyre;
Give her historic forms the soul of song,
And mingle Attic art with Shakespeare’s fire.”
“Ah, what, fond boy, dost thou presume to claim?”
The Muse replied, “mistaken suppliant, know,
To light in Shakespeare’s breast the dazzling flame
Exhausted all Parnassus could bestow.
True, art remains; and if from his bright page
Thy mimic power one vivid beam can seize,
Proceed; and in that best of tasks engage,
Which tends at once to profit, and to please.”
_Caractacus_, 1759.
THOMAS GRAY, 1759
(1716-1771)
Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap [_i.e._ Albion’s] was Nature’s darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smil’d.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy;
Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
_The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode_, 1759,
iii. 1.
DAVID MALLET, 1759
(1705?-1765)
Pride of his own, and wonder of this age,
Who first created, and yet rules, the Stage,
Bold to design, all powerful to express,
Shakespear each passion drew in every dress:
Great above rule, and imitating none;
Rich without borrowing, nature was his own.
Yet is his sense debas’d by gross alloy:
As gold in mines lies mix’d with dirt and clay.
Now, eagle-wing’d, his heavenward flight he takes;
The big stage thunders, and the soul awakes:
Now, low on earth, a kindred reptile creeps;
Sad Hamlet quibbles, and the hearer sleeps.
_Of Verbal Criticism_, ll. 47-58.
_Works_, 1759, vol. i. p. 21.
EDWARD YOUNG, 1759
(1683-1765)
Who knows whether Shakespeare might not have thought less, if he had
read more? Who knows if he might not have laboured under the load of
Jonson’s learning, as Enceladus under Ætna? His mighty genius, indeed,
though the most mountainous oppression, would have breathed out some
of his inextinguishable fire; yet possibly he might not have risen up
into that giant, that much more than common man, at which we now gaze
with amazement and delight. Perhaps he was as learned as his dramatic
province required; for whatever other learning he wanted, he was master
of two books unknown to many of the profoundly read, though books which
the last conflagration alone can destroy: the book of Nature, and that
of Man.
_Conjectures on Original Composition._ 1759.
MARK AKENSIDE, _c._ 1760
(1721-1770)
“_An Inscription._”
O youths and virgins: O declining eld:
O pale misfortune’s slaves: O ye who dwell
Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait
In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings:
O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch
That weep’st for jealous love, or the sore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death’s rapacious hand
Which left thee void of hope: O ye who roam
In exile; ye who through th’ embattl’d field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public cause;
Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fashion of your own estate,
The secrets of your bosom? Here then round
His monument with reverence while ye stand,
Say to each other: “This was Shakespeare’s form;
Who walk’d in every path of human life,
Felt every passion; and to all mankind
Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
Which his own genius only could acquire.”
_Poetical Works._ 1805, ii. pp. 136-7.
ROBERT LLOYD, 1760
(1733-1764)
When Shakespeare leads the mind a dance,
From France to England, hence to France,
Talk not to me of time and place;
I own I’m happy in the chase.
Whether the drama’s here or there,
’Tis nature, Shakespeare, everywhere.
The poet’s fancy can create,
Contract, enlarge, annihilate,
Bring past and present close together,
In spite of distance, seas, or weather;
And shut up in a single action
What cost whole years in its transaction.
So, ladies at a play or rout,
Can flirt the universe about,
Whose geographical account
Is drawn and pictured on the mount:
Yet when they please, contract the plan,
And shut the world up in a fan.
_Shakespeare: An Epistle to Mr. Garrick._
1760, ll. 37-54.
See also Lloyd’s _Ode to Genius_, 1760, ll. 1-14.
EDWARD CAPELL, 1760
(1713-1781)
It is said of the ostrich, that she drops her egg at random, to be
disposed of as chance pleases; either brought up to maturity by
the sun’s kindly warmth, or else crushed by beasts and the feet of
passers-by: such, at least, is the account which naturalists have
given us of this extraordinary bird; and admitting it for a truth, she
is in this a fit emblem of almost every great genius: they conceive
and produce with ease those noble issues of human understanding; but
incubation, the dull work of putting them correctly upon paper and
afterwards publishing, is a task they cannot away with. If the original
state of all such authors’ writings, even from Homer downward, could
be inquired into and known, they would yield proof in abundance of the
justness of what is here asserted: but the author now before us shall
suffice for them all; being at once the greatest instance of genius
in producing noble things, and of negligence in providing for them
afterwards.
Preface to _Mr. William Shakespeare, his Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies set out by himself in
quarto or by the Players his Fellows in folio,
and now faithfully republished from those
Editions in ten volumes octavo; with an
Introduction, etc._ 1760, vol. i. pp. 1-2.
Of this preface Dr. Johnson remarked: “If the man would have
come to me, I would have endeavoured to endow his purpose with
words, for as it is, he doth gabble monstrously.”—Boswell’s
_Life of Dr. Johnson_, iii. 251, 2nd ed.
CHARLES CHURCHILL, 1761
(1731-1764)
In the first seat, in robe of various dyes,
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakespeare.—In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam’d in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn’d, and own’d the master’s skill:
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look’d through Nature at a single view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call’d into being scenes unknown before,
And, passing Nature’s bounds, was something more.
_The Rosciad_, 1761, l. 259.
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1762
(1715-1785)
But chief avoid the boisterous roaring sparks,
The sons of fire!—you’ll know them by their marks.
Fond to be heard, they always court a crowd,
And, though ’tis borrow’d nonsense, talk it loud.
One epithet supplies their constant chime,
Damn’d bad, damn’d good, damn’d low, or damn’d sublime.
But most in quick short repartee they shine,
Of local humour; or from plays purloin
Each quaint stale scrap which every subject hits,
Till fools almost imagine, they are wits.
Hear them on Shakespeare! there they foam, they rage!
Yet taste not half the beauties of his page,
Nor see that art, as well as nature strove,
To place him foremost in th’ Aonian grove.
For there, there only, where the sisters join,
His genius triumphs, and the work’s divine.
Or would ye sift more near these sons of fire,
’Tis Garrick, and not Shakespeare, they admire,
Without his breath, inspiring every thought,
They ne’er perhaps had known what Shakespeare wrote;
Without his eager, his becoming zeal,
To teach them, though they scarce know why, to feel,
A crude unmeaning mass had Jonson been,
And a dead letter Shakespeare’s noblest scene.
_A Charge to the Poets._ 1762, ll. 167-190.
WILLIAM THOMPSON, 1763
(1712?-1766?)
“_In Shakespeare’s Walk._”
By yon hills, with morning spread,
Lifting up the tufted head,
By those golden waves of corn,
Which the laughing fields adorn,
By the fragrant breath of flowers,
Stealing from the woodbine bowers,
By this thought-inspiring shade,
By the gleamings of the glade,
By the babblings of the brook,
Winding slow in many a crook,
By the rustling of the trees,
By the humming of the bees,
By the woodlark, by the thrush,
Wildly warbling from the bush,
By the fairy’s shadowy tread
O’er the cowslip’s dewy head,
Father, monarch of the stage,
Glory of Eliza’s age,
Shakespeare! deign to lend thy face,
This romantic nook to grace,
Where untaught nature sports alone,
Since thou and nature are but one.
_Garden Inscriptions. Poetical Calendar, 1763._
First reprinted in Anderson’s _Poets of
Great Britain_, 1794, vol. x. p. 993.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1765
(1709-1784)
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed
and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers;
the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their
branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds
and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless
diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely
finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare
opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty,
though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled
with a mass of meaner minerals.
Preface to Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1765.
In _The Rambler_, No. 156 (14 Sept. 1751), Johnson wrote:
“Instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of
Shakespeare, we ought perhaps to pay new honours to that
transcendent and unbounded genius that could preside over the
passions in sport; who, to actuate the affections, needed
not the slow gradation of common means, but could fill the
heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our
disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even
of Shakespeare’s poetry might have been greater, had he not
counteracted himself; and we might have been more interested
in the distresses of his heroes, had we not been so frequently
diverted by the jokes of his buffoons.”
GEORGE KEATE, 1768
(1729-1797)
Yes! jealous wits may still for empire strive,
Still keep the flames of critick rage alive:
Our Shakespeare yet shall all his rights maintain,
And crown the triumphs of Eliza’s reign,
Above control, above each classick rule,
His tutress Nature, and the World his school.
On daring pinions borne, to him was given
Th’ aerial range of Fancy’s brightest Heaven,
To bid rapt thought o’er noblest heights aspire,
And wake each passion with a Muse of Fire.
Revere his genius—to the dead be just,
And spare the laurels, that o’ershade the dust.
Low sleeps the bard, _in cold obstruction laid_,
Nor asks the chaplet from a rival’s head.
O’er the dear vault, Ambition’s utmost bound,
Unheard shall Fame her airy trumpet sound!
Unheard alike, nor grief nor transport raise,
Thy blast of censure, or thy note of praise!
As Raphael’s own creation grac’d his hearse,
And sham’d the pomp of ostentatious verse,
Shall Shakespeare’s honours by himself be paid,
And Nature perish ere his pictures fade.
_Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire._ 1768.
_Poetical Works_, 1781, pp. 136-7.
_Raphael’s Own Creation_:—The TRANSFIGURATION, that
well-known picture of RAPHAEL, was carried before
his body to the grave, doing more real honour to his memory
than either his epitaph in the Pantheon, the famous distich
of CARDINAL BEMBO, or all the other adulatory verses
written on the same occasion.—KEATE.
DAVID GARRICK, 1769
(1717-1779)
“_Warwickshire._”
Ye _Warwickshire_ lads, and ye lasses,
See what at our Jubilee passes;
Come revel away, rejoice and be glad;
For the lad of all lads, was a _Warwickshire_ lad,
_Warwickshire_ lad,
All be glad;
For the lad of all lads, was a _Warwickshire_ lad.
Be proud of the charms of your county,
Where Nature has lavish’d her bounty;
Where much she has giv’n, and some to be spar’d;
For the bard of all bards, was a _Warwickshire_ bard,
_Warwickshire_ bard,
Never pair’d;
For the bard of all bards, was a _Warwickshire_ bard.
Each shire has its different pleasures,
Each shire has its different treasures;
But to rare _Warwickshire_, all must submit;
For the wit of all wits, was a _Warwickshire_ wit,
_Warwickshire_ wit,
How he writ!
For the wit of all wits, was a _Warwickshire_ wit.
Old Ben, Thomas Otway, John Dryden,
And half a score more we take pride in;
Of famous Will Congreve, we boast too the skill;
But the Will of all Wills, was _Warwickshire_ Will,
_Warwickshire_ Will,
Matchless still;
For the Will of all Wills, was a _Warwickshire_ Will.
Our Shakespeare compar’d is to no man—
Nor Frenchman, nor Grecian, nor Roman;
Their swans are all geese, to the Avon’s sweet swan;
And the man of all men, was a _Warwickshire_ man,
_Warwickshire_ man,
Avon’s swan;
And the man of all men, was a _Warwickshire_ man.
As ven’son is very inviting,
To steal it our bard took delight in.
To make his friends merry he never was lag;
And the wag of all wags, was a _Warwickshire_ wag,
_Warwickshire_ wag,
Ever brag;
For the wag of all wags, was a _Warwickshire_ wag.
There never was seen such a creature,
Of all she was worth, he robbed Nature;
He took all her smiles, and he took all her grief;
And the thief of all thieves, was a _Warwickshire_ thief.
_Warwickshire_ thief,
He’s the chief;
For the thief of all thieves, was a _Warwickshire_ chief.
“Warwickshire: a Song.” _Shakespeare’s Garland.
Being a Collection of New Songs, Ballads,
Roundelays, Catches, Glees, Comic
Serenades, etc., performed at the Jubilee
at Stratford-upon-Avon._ 1769, p. 2.
ANONYMOUS, 1769
“_To the Immortal Memory of Shakespeare._”
Immortal be his name,
His memory, his fame!
Nature and her works we see,
Matchless Shakespeare, full in thee!
Join’d by everlasting ties,
Shakespeare but with Nature dies.
Immortal be his Name,
His memory, his fame!
_Shakespeare’s Garland. Being a Collection of New
Songs, Ballads, etc., performed at the
Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon._ 1769, p. 15.
WILLIAM RICHARDSON, 1774
(1743-1814)
No writer has hitherto appeared who possesses in a more eminent degree
than Shakespeare, the power of imitating the passions. All of them seem
familiar to him; the boisterous no less than the gentle; the benign no
less than the malignant. There are several writers, as there are many
players, who are successful in imitating some particular passions,
but who appear stiff, awkward, and unnatural, in the expression of
others. Some are capable of exhibiting very striking representations
of resolute and intrepid natures, but cannot so easily bend themselves
to those that are softer and more complacent. Others, again, seem full
of amiable affection and tenderness, but cannot exalt themselves to
the boldness of the hero, or magnanimity of the patriot. The genius
of Shakespeare is unlimited. Possessing extreme sensibility, and
uncommonly susceptible, he is the Proteus of the drama; he changes
himself into every character, and enters easily into every condition of
human nature.
* * * * *
Many dramatic writers of different ages are capable, occasionally, of
breaking out, with great fervour of genius, in the natural language
of strong emotion. No writer of antiquity is more distinguished for
abilities of this kind than Euripides. His whole heart and soul seem
torn and agitated by the force of the passion he imitates. He ceases
to be Euripides; he is Medea; he is Orestes. Shakespeare, however, is
most eminently distinguished, not only by these occasional sallies, but
by imitating the passion in all its aspects, by pursuing it through
all its windings and labyrinths, by moderating or accelerating its
impetuosity according to the influence of other principles and of
external events, and finally by combining it in a judicious manner with
other passions and propensities, or by setting it aptly in opposition.
He thus unites the two essential powers of dramatic invention, that of
forming characters; and that of imitating in their natural expressions,
the passions and affections of which they are composed.
_A Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of
Shakespeare’s remarkable Characters._ 1774.
Introduction, pp. 39-42.
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, 1775
(1735-1788)
When Heaven decreed to soothe the feuds that tore
The wolf-eyed barons, whose unletter’d rage
Spurn’d the fair muse, Heaven bade on Avon’s shore
A Shakespeare rise, and soothe the barbarous age:
A Shakespeare rose; the barbarous heats assuage.
At distance due how many bards attend!
Enlarged and liberal from the narrow cage
Of blinded zeal, new manners wide extend,
And o’er the generous breast the dews of heaven descend.
Introduction to _The Lusiad, or the Discovery of
India. An Epic Poem._ Translated, 1775.
WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1777
(1745-1820)
When mighty Shakespeare to thy judging eye
Presents that magic glass whose ample round
Reflects each figure in Creation’s bound,
And pours, in floods of supernatural light,
Fancy’s bright beings on the charmed sight,
This chief enchanter of the willing breast
Will teach thee all the magic he possessed.
Placed in his circle, mark in colours true
Each brilliant being that he calls to view:
Wrapt in the gloomy storm, or robed in light,
His weird sister or his fairy sprite.
Boldly o’erleaping, in the great design,
The bounds of nature, with a guide divine.
_A Poetic Epistle to an Eminent Painter_ [George
Romney]. 2nd edition, 1779. Part II. ll.
472-84.
THOMAS WARTON, 1777
(1728-1790)
Avon, thy rural view, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o’erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring’d,
Thy surface with reflected verdure ting’d;
Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild.
But while I muse, that here the bard divine,
Whose sacred dust yon high arch’d aisles enclose,
Where the tall windows rise in stately rows
Above the embowering shade,
Here first, at Fancy’s fairy-circled shrine,
Of daisies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe,
Fram’d of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magic wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And awful shapes of warriors and of kings
People the busy mead,
Like spectres swarming to the wizard’s hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover’d with the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand
A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider’d o’er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre dropping blood.
“Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon.”
_Miscellaneous Odes._ 1777.
ANNA SEWARD, BEFORE 1782
(1747-1809)
“_On Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon._”