This selection is from the "Lectures on the English Poets." At the
beginning of his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton, Hazlitt maintains that
the arts reach their perfection in the early periods and are not
continually progressive like the sciences--an idea which he frequently
comes back to in his writings, notably in the "Round Table" paper, "Why
the Arts are not Progressive."
P. 34. _the fault_, etc. Cf. "Julius Caesar," i, 2, 140.
_Shakspeare as they would be_. Hazlitt may have had in mind Dr. Johnson's
comment in his preface to Shakespeare's works: "the event which he
represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effect would
probably be such as he had assigned; he has not only shewn human nature as
it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it
cannot be exposed." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on
Shakespeare," p. 117.)
P. 35. _its generic quality_. Coleridge applied the epithet
"myriad-minded" to Shakespeare. See also Schlegel's "Lectures on the
Drama." ed. Bohn, p. 363: "Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a
talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps the
diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only
do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the
idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have
not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being
classed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no,
this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical
world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the
witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies
and sylphs; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination,
nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, that even with such
misshapen abortions as Caliban, he extorts the assenting conviction, that
were there such beings they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he
carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the
other hand, he carries nature into the region of fancy, which lies beyond
the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at the close intimacy
he brings us into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the
unheard-of."
_a mind reflecting ages past_. "These words occur in the first lines of a
laudatory poem on Shakespeare printed in the second folio (1632). The poem
is signed 'J. M. S.' and was attributed by Coleridge to 'John Milton,
Student.' See his 'Lectures on Shakespeare' (ed. T. Ashe), pp. 129-130."
Waller-Glover, IV, 411.
P. 36. _All corners_, etc. "Cymbeline." iii. 4, 39.
_nodded to him_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," iii, I, 177.
_his so potent art_. "Tempest," v, i, 50.
_When he conceived of a character_, etc. Cf. Maurice Morgann, "On the
Character of Falstaff": "But it was not enough for Shakespeare to have
formed his characters with the most perfect truth and coherence; it was
further necessary that he should possess a wonderful facility of
compressing, as it were, his own spirit into these images, and of giving
alternate animation to the forms. This was not to be done _from without_;
he must have _felt_ every varied situation, and have spoken thro' the
organ he had formed. Such an intuitive comprehension of things and such a
facility must unite to produce a Shakespeare." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth
Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 247, n.)
_subject to the same skyey influences_. Cf. "Measure for Measure," iii, I,
9: "servile to all the skyey influences."
_his frequent haunts_. Cf. "Comus," 314: "my daily walks and ancient
neighborhood."
P. 37. _coheres semblably together_. Cf. 2 "Henry IV," v, i, 72: "to see
the semblable coherence."
_It has been ingeniously remarked_, by Coleridge, "Seven Lectures on
Shakespeare and Milton," p. 116: "The power of poetry is, by a single word
perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the
imagination to produce the picture.... Here, by introducing a single happy
epithet, 'crying,' a complete picture is presented to the mind, and in the
production of such pictures the power of genius consists."
_me and thy crying self_. "Tempest," i, 2, 132.
_What! man_. "Macbeth," iv, 3, 208.
_Rosencrans_. The early editions consistently misspell this name
Rosencraus.
_Man delights not me_. "Hamlet," ii, 2, 321.
_a combination and a form_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 60.
P. 39. _There is a willow_, etc. See "Hamlet," iv, 7, 167:
"There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream."
_Now this is an instance_, etc. Hazlitt elsewhere ascribes this
observation to Lamb. See p. 83, n.
_He's speaking now_. "Antony and Cleopatra," i, 5, 24.
_It is my birthday_. Ibid., iii, 13, 185.
P. 41. _nigh sphered in heaven_. Collins's "Ode on the Poetical
Character."
_to make society_. "Macbeth," iii, 1, 42.
P. 42. _with a little act_. "Othello," iii, 3, 328.
P. 43. _while rage_. "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 52.
_in their untroubled elements_, etc. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," VI,
763-766:
"That glorious star
In its untroubled element will shine
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth
And safe from all our sorrows."
_Satan's address to the sun_. "Paradise Lost," IV, 31.
_Oh that I were_. "Richard II," iv, 1, 260.
P. 44. _His form_. "Paradise Lost," I, 591-594.
P. 45. _With what measure_. Mark, iv, 24; Luke, vi, 38.
_It glances_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," v, 1, 13.
_puts a girdle_. Ibid., ii, 1, 175.
_I ask_. "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 227.
_No man_. Ibid., iii, 3, 15.
P. 46. _Rouse yourself_. Ibid., iii, 3, 222.
_In Shakspeare, any other word_, etc. In the essay "On Application to
Study," in the "Plain Speaker," Hazlitt gives further illustrations of
this point.
P. 47. _Light thickens_. "Macbeth," iii, 2, 50.
_the business of the state_. "Othello," iv, 2, 166.
_Of ditties highly penned_. 1 "Henry IV," iii, 1, 209.
_And so_. "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii, 7, 31.
_The universality of his genius_, etc. Cf. "On Gusto," "Round Table": "The
infinite quality of dramatic invention in Shakspeare takes from his gusto.
The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never
insists on anything as much as he might, except a quibble."
P. 48. _He wrote for the great vulgar_, etc. The same remark had been
made by both Pope and Johnson. See Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century
Essays on Shakespeare," pp, 49 and 141.
_the great vulgar and the small_. Cowley's "Translation of Horace's Ode
III, i."
_his delights_. "Antony and Cleopatra," v, 2, 88.
P. 49. _His tragedies are better than his comedies._ Hazlitt is here
deliberately opposing the view of Dr. Johnson expressed in the latter's
preface to Shakespeare: "In tragedy he often writes with great appearance
of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in
his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no labour can
improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be
comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of
thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always
something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire."
(Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 121.) In
the second lecture of the "English Comic Writers," Hazlitt recurs to this
opinion of Johnson's with the following comment: "For my own part, I so
far consider this preference given to the comic genius of the poet as
erroneous and unfounded, that I should say that he is the only tragic poet
in the world in the highest sense, as being on a par with, and the same as
Nature, in her greatest heights and depths of action and suffering. There
is but one who durst walk within that mighty circle, treading the utmost
bound of nature and passion, showing us the dread abyss of woe in all its
ghastly shapes and colours, and laying open all the faculties of the human
soul to act, to think, and suffer, in direst extremities; whereas I think,
on the other hand, that in comedy, though his talents there too were as
wonderful as they were delightful, yet that there were some before him,
others on a level with him, and many close behind him.... There is not
only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or
Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or
Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic Corneille, equal to
the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which gives such an idea of the
crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, 'like an unsubstantial pageant
faded,' as the Antony and Cleopatra. But to match the best serious
comedies, such as Moliere's Misanthrope and his Tartuffe, we must go to
Shakspeare's tragic characters, the Timon of Athens or honest Iago, where
we shall more than succeed. He put his strength into his tragedies and
played with comedy. He was greatest in what was greatest; and his _forte_
was not trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even though he
might do that as well as any one else, unless he could do it better than
anybody else." See also p. 99.