The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Praise of Shakespeare, by Various

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license


Title: The Praise of Shakespeare
       An English Anthology

Author: Various

Compiler: C. E. Hughes

Release Date: September 7, 2018 [EBook #57863]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE ***




Produced by Charlene Taylor, Lisa Reigel, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

COMPILED BY
C. E. HUGHES

WITH A PREFACE BY
SIDNEY LEE

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1904

Richard III., III. i. 87.

Sonnet LXXXIV.

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 [vi]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 [vii]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 [viii]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 [ix]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 [x]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.

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 [2]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.

[3]

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 [4]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 [5](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 [6]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 [7]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:

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 [9]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:

[10] 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.

Now the numerous adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays [11]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 [12]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 [13]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.

[14] 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 [15]Shakespeare’s want of learning, Pope frankly refused to believe in it. He says very wisely:

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 [16]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, [17]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”:

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”; [19]and, finally, he sums up his merits in the following fine sentence:—

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 [20]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 [21]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 [22]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 [23]little trifles in verse. Witness the “Lines to Mr. Addison,” by William Somervile:

Or take these lines by John Hughes, “To Mr. Addison on his Tragedy of Cato”:

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:

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:

[24] 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.

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:

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:

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, [26]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.

[27]

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 [28]æsthetic critics of the early nineteenth century. Coleridge spoke truly when he thus described his achievement:

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. [29]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 [30]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 [31]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.

[32]

Merry Wives, I. i. 13.

Sonnet LV.

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.

[36]

RICHARD BARNFIELD, 1598
(1574-1627)

“A Remembrance of some English Poets.”

Poems in Divers humors. 1598. Sig. E2, back.

[37]

JOHN WEEVER, 1599
(1576-1632)

“Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare.”

Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion. John Weever. 1599. Epig. 22.

[38]

JOHN DAVIES, 1610
(1565?-1618)

“To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shakespeare.”

The Scourge of Folly, consisting of Satyricall Epigramms and others. 1611.

[39]

THOMAS FREEMAN, 1614
(fl. 1614)

“To Master W. Shakespeare.”

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.

[40]

WILLIAM BASSE, 1622
(d. 1653?)

“On Mr. William Shakespeare.”

Fennell’s Shakespere Repository, 1853, p. 10. Printed from a MS. temp. Charles I.

[41]

ANONYMOUS, 1623

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.

Inscription on the Monument erected to Shakespeare’s Memory in the Parish Church at Stratford-on-Avon. 1623.

[42]

BEN JONSON, 1623
(1573-1637)

“To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us.”

Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Works.

[45]

HUGH HOLLAND, 1623
(d. 1633)

“Upon the Lines and Life of the famous Scenick Poet, Master William Shakespeare.”

Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Works.

[46]

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.

[47]

LEONARD DIGGES, 1623
(1588-1635)

“To the Memorie of the deceased Author, Maister W. Shakespeare.”

Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Works. 1623.

[48]

MICHAEL DRAYTON, 1627
(1563-1631)

“To my most dearly-loved friend Henery Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie.”

Elegies at the end of The Battaile of Agincourt. 1627, p. 206.

[49]

JOHN MILTON, 1630
(1608-1674)

“An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare.”

Prefixed to Second Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Works. 1632.

[50]

I. M. S., 1632

“On worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems.”

The friendly admirer of his Endowments,
I. M. S.
Prefixed to the Second Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s Works. 1632.

[53]

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.

[54]

SIR WILLIAM D’AVENANT, 1637
(1606-1668)

“Ode. In Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare.”

Madagascar, with other Poems. 1638, p. 37. Printed 1637.

[55]

ANONYMOUS, ABOUT 1637

“An Elegie on the Death of that famous Writer and Actor, Mr. William Shakspeare.”

Appended to Shakespeare’s Poems. 1640. Sig. L.

[57]

THOMAS BANCROFT, 1639
(fl. 1633-1658)

“To Shakespeare.”

“To the same.”

Two Bookes of Epigrammes, and Epitaphs. 1639. Nos. 118 and 119.

[58]

GEORGE DANIEL, 1647
(1616-1657)

Poems. Vindication of Poesie. Add. MS. 19255, p. 17. (British Museum.) Privately printed by Dr. Grosart. 1878, 4 vols. Vol. i. pp. 28, 29.

[59]

SAMUEL SHEPPARD, 1651
(fl. c. 1606-1652)

“In Memory of our Famous Shakespeare.”

Epigrams Theological, Philosophical, and Romantick. Six Books, etc., with other Select Poems. 1651. Book vi. Epig. 17, pp. 150, 152, 154.

[61]

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.

[62]

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.

[63]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.

[64]

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 [65]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.

[66]

JOHN DRYDEN, 1667
(1631-1700)

Prologue to the Tempest or the Enchanted Island, by Sir William D’Avenant and John Dryden. 1676.

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,

Of Dramatic Poesie, an Essay, 1668, p. 47.

[69]

ANONYMOUS, 1672

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.

[71]

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.

[72]

THOMAS OTWAY, 1680
(1652-1685)

Prologue to the History and Fall of Caius Marius. A Tragedy. 1712.

[74]

“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.

[75]

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, 1693
(1639?-1701)

The Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat. A Comedy. By Henry Higden. Prologue by Sir Charles Sydley. 1693.

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 [77]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.

[78]

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.

[80]

ELIJAH FENTON, 1711
(1683-1730)

An Epistle to Mr. Southerne, from Kent. January 28, 1710-11.

[82]

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.

[83]

EDWARD YOUNG, 1712
(1683-1765)

Epistle to the Right Honourable George, Lord Lansdowne. 1712, ll. 295-302 and 313-20.

[84]

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:

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.

[85]

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 [86]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 [87]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.

[88]

JAMES THOMSON, 1727
(1700-1748)

The Seasons: Summer. 1727, ll. 1442-6, 1479-83, 1531-4, and 1563-6.

[89]

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: [90]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.

[91]

JOSEPH WARTON, 1740
(1722-1800)

The Enthusiast: or the Lover of Nature, ll. 168-79.

[92]

WILLIAM COLLINS, 1743
(1721-1759)

Verses humbly address’d to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his Edition of Shakespeare’s Works. 1743, p. 7.

[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.

[94]

SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1747
(1709-1784)

Prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick at the opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane, 1747.

[95]

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.

[96]

CHRISTOPHER SMART, 1751
(1722-1771)

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.

[97]

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 [98]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.

[99]

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:

Letter to George Montagu, 14 Oct. 1756. Letters, ed. Peter Cunningham, 1857, vol. iii. p. 36.

[100]

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.

[101]

WILLIAM MASON, 1759
(1724-1797)

Caractacus, 1759.

[102]

THOMAS GRAY, 1759
(1716-1771)

The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode, 1759, iii. 1.

[103]

DAVID MALLET, 1759
(1705?-1765)

Of Verbal Criticism, ll. 47-58. Works, 1759, vol. i. p. 21.

[104]

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.

[105]

MARK AKENSIDE, c. 1760
(1721-1770)

“An Inscription.”

Poetical Works. 1805, ii. pp. 136-7.

[106]

ROBERT LLOYD, 1760
(1733-1764)

Shakespeare: An Epistle to Mr. Garrick. 1760, ll. 37-54.

[107]

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.

[108]

CHARLES CHURCHILL, 1761
(1731-1764)

The Rosciad, 1761, l. 259.

[109]

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1762
(1715-1785)

A Charge to the Poets. 1762, ll. 167-190.

[110]

WILLIAM THOMPSON, 1763
(1712?-1766?)

“In Shakespeare’s Walk.”

Garden Inscriptions. Poetical Calendar, 1763. First reprinted in Anderson’s Poets of Great Britain, 1794, vol. x. p. 993.

[111]

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.

[112]

GEORGE KEATE, 1768
(1729-1797)

Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire. 1768. Poetical Works, 1781, pp. 136-7.

[113]

DAVID GARRICK, 1769
(1717-1779)

“Warwickshire.”

“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.

[116]

ANONYMOUS, 1769

“To the Immortal Memory of Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare’s Garland. Being a Collection of New Songs, Ballads, etc., performed at the Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon. 1769, p. 15.

[117]

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, [118]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.

[119]

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, 1775
(1735-1788)

Introduction to The Lusiad, or the Discovery of India. An Epic Poem. Translated, 1775.

[120]

WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1777
(1745-1820)

A Poetic Epistle to an Eminent Painter [George Romney]. 2nd edition, 1779. Part II. ll. 472-84.

[121]

THOMAS WARTON, 1777
(1728-1790)

“Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon.” Miscellaneous Odes. 1777.

[123]

ANNA SEWARD, BEFORE 1782
(1747-1809)

“On Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon.”

Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands. 1782, ii. p. 315.

[124]

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES, 1794
(1762-1850)

“On Shakespeare.”

Sonnets, with other Poems. 3rd edition. 1794, pp. 67-70.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1802
(1770-1850)

“Sonnets dedicated to Liberty.” Poems. 1807.

[128]

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, 1804
(1793-1835)

“Shakespeare.”

Poems. By Felicia Dorothea Browne, 1808, p. 48.

[129]

SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1814
(1771-1832)

The English stage might be considered as equally without rule and without model when Shakespeare arose. The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty; but that genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with Shakespeare. With an education more extensive, and a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable that he also, in admiration of the ancient drama, might have mistaken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for the full exertion of a genius as comprehensive and versatile, as intense and powerful, Shakespeare had no access to any models of which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd of obscure writers had trodden before him; but he moved in it with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order, and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restriction to classical rule. Nothing went before Shakespeare which in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national drama; and certainly no one will succeed him, capable of establishing by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which Shakespeare used.

Article on “Drama,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 4th ed. 1814. 6th ed. vol. viii. p. 157.

[130]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1817
(1772-1834)

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare’s Poems, the creative power, and the intellectual energy, wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length in the Drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or, like two rapid streams, that at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The “Venus and Adonis” did not, perhaps, allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare’s management of the tale, neither pathos, nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection; and, lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination, over the whole [131]world of language. What then shall we say? even this: that—

Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power, which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, to one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, in the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England! my country!

Biographia Literaria. 1817, chap. xv.

[133]

FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY, 1817
(1773-1850)

More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed—he [Shakespeare] is more wild, airy and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world:—and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason—nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection—but everything so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets—but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the [134]rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator.

The Edinburgh Review, August 1817. Art. IX. “Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, by William Hazlitt.”
Vol. xxviii. p. 474.

[135]

WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1818
(1778-1830)

The striking peculiarity of Shakespeare’s mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds—so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had “a mind reflecting ages past,” and present:—All the people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius alone shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: “All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,” are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives—as well those that they knew, as those [136]which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies nodded to him, and did him curtesies: and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of “his so potent art.” The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women: and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He had only to think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects, “subject to the same skyey influences,” the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality.

“On Shakespeare and Milton,” Lectures on The English Poets. 1818, pp. 91-3.

[138]

JOHN KEATS, c. 1818
(1795-1821)

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate universality—wherefore he had the utmost achievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily Man’s utmost. His plans of tasks to come were not of this world—if what he purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea “answer the aim,” how tremendous must have been his Conception of Ultimates!

Note on Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. Marginalia from the Shakespeare Folio of 1808. (Works, ed. H. Buxton Forman. 1901, iii. p. 254.)

c. 1818

“Sonnet on sitting down to read King Lear once again.”

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, edited by Richard Monckton Milnes. Vol. i. p. 96.

[140]

JOHN WILSON, 1819
(1785-1854)

Shakespeare is of no age. He speaks a language which thrills in our blood in spite of the separation of two hundred years. His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all are of this day, as they were of his own—and his genius may be contemporary with the mind of every generation for a thousand years to come. He, above all poets, looked upon man, and lived for mankind. His genius, universal in intellect, could find, in no more bounded circumference, its proper sphere. It could not bear exclusion from any part of human existence. Whatever in nature and life was given to man, was given in contemplation and poetry to him also, and over the undimmed mirror of his mind passed all the shadows of our mortal world. Look through his plays and tell what form of existence, what quality of spirit, he is most skilful to delineate. Which of all the manifold beings he has drawn, lives before our thoughts, our eyes, in most unpictured reality? Is it Othello, Shylock, Falstaff, Lear, the wife of Macbeth, Imogen, Hamlet, Ariel? In none of the other great dramatists do we see anything like a perfected art. In their works, everything, it is true, exists in some shape or other, which can be required in a drama taking for its interest the absolute interest of human life and nature; but, after all, may not the very best of their works be looked on as sublime masses of chaotic confusion, through which the elements of our moral being appear? It was Shakespeare, the most unlearned of all [141]our writers, who first exhibited on the stage perfect models, perfect images of all human characters, and all human events. We cannot conceive any skill that could from his great characters remove any defect, or add to their perfect composition. Except in him, we look in vain for the entire fulness, the self-consistency, and self-completeness of perfect art.

“A few words on Shakespeare, May 1819.” Essays Critical and Imaginative. 1866, vol. iii. pp. 420-21.

[142]

CHARLES SPRAGUE, 1824
(1791-1875)

Prize Ode recited at the representation of the Shakespeare Jubilee, Boston, February 13, 1824.

[144]

CHARLES LAMB, 1824
(1775-1834)

“Epilogue to an amateur Performance of Richard II.,” ll. 10-24. Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Ed. E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. v. p. 128.

[145]

JULIUS CHARLES HARE, 1827
(1795-1855)

Shakespeare “glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.” All Nature ministers to him, as gladly as a mother to her child. Whether he wishes her to tune her myriad-voiced organ to Romeo’s love, or to Miranda’s innocence, or to Perdita’s simplicity, or to Rosalind’s playfulness, or to the sports of the Fairies, or to Timon’s misanthropy, or to Macbeth’s desolating ambition, or to Lear’s heart-broken frenzy—he has only to ask, and she puts on every feeling and every passion with which he desires to invest her.

No poet comes near Shakespeare in the number of bosom lines,—of lines that we may cherish in our bosoms, and that seem almost as if they had grown there,—of lines that, like bosom friends, are ever at hand to comfort, counsel, and gladden us, under all the vicissitudes of life,—of lines that, according to Bacon’s expression, “come home to our business and bosoms,” and open the door for us to look in, and see what is nestling and brooding there.

Guesses at Truth. 1827.

[146]

JAMES HOGG, 1831
(1770-1835)

“To the Genius of Shakespeare.”

Songs. By the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected. 1831, p. 304.

[148]

CHARLES LAMB, 1833
(1775-1834)

I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie’s Shakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli’s Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney’s Shakespeare, wooden-headed West’s Shakespeare (though he did the best in “Lear”), deaf-headed Reynolds’s Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody’s Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen’s portrait! To confine the illimitable!

Letter to Samuel Rogers, December 21, 1833. Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Ed. E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. vii.

[149]

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1833
(1796-1849)

“To Shakespeare.”

Poems. Sonnet XXVIII. 1833, p. 28.

[150]

THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1838
(1785-1859)

In the great world of woman, as the interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, Shakespeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, this is one great field of his power. The supernatural world, the world of apparitions, that is another. . . . In all Christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but Shakespeare has found the power for effectually working this mysterious mode of being?

.......

A third fund of Shakespeare’s peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. From his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts, the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of Shakespeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than [151]simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakespeare’s shield.

Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, barely indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any adequate illustrations) one mode of Shakespeare’s dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never modified in its several terminal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shakespeare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulæ by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement,—these are as rife in Shakespeare’s dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need not say. A volume might be written, illustrating the vast varieties of Shakespeare’s art and [152]power in this one field of improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages of France and Italy. And we may truly say, that were Shakespeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality.

Encyclopædia Britannica. 7th edition, 1838. Article on Shakespeare.

[153]

JOHN STERLING, 1839
(1806-1844)

“Shakespeare.”

Poems. 1839, p. 151.

[155]

HENRY HALLAM, 1839
(1777-1859)

Of William Shakespeare, whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know anything. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was manifested: he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man Shakespeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than names. If we are not yet come to question his unity, as we do that of “the blind old man of Scios’ rocky isle,” an improvement in critical acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about Shakespeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us than to furnish the slightest illustration of his character.

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. 1839, ii. 382-3.

[156]

—— JOHNSTONE, 1840

Some men can only acquire knowledge by a careful process of painstaking investigation, while the minds of others descend at once, and with a swoop, as it were, upon the truth of which they are in search. Others, again, can not only do this, but having grasped the truth, they soar upward with it to the highest pinnacles of imaginative loftiness, or beyond these even, to the empyrean of thought, where the minds of ordinarily gifted men may not follow them. Of this last class was Shakespeare, the most wonderful of mere men that we know to have ever lived.

The Table Talker, or Brief Essays on Society and Literature. 1840, vol. i. p. 183.

[157]

THOMAS CARLYLE, 1840
(1795-1881)

“The Hero as Poet.”

It is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said; poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently? The word that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakespeare’s morality, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No twisted, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a perfectly level mirror;—that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this. Among [158]modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakespeare: “His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.”

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Ed. H. D. Traill. 1898, pp. 104-5.

[159]

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1841
(1770-1850)

“Shakespeare and Goethe.”

He (Goethe) does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class I would place Homer and Shakespeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling without bringing their own individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you never find themselves. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes you can trace the gentle affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton writes you find the exalted sustained being that he was. Now, in what Goethe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the universal, you find the man himself, the artificial man where he should not be found; so that I consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer.

Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Christopher Wordsworth. 1851, vol. ii. pp. 437-8.

[160]

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY, 1843
(1800-1859)

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet’s ruling passion? Or Othello’s? Or Harry the Fifth’s? Or Wolsey’s? Or Lear’s? Or Shylock’s? Or Benedick’s? Or Macbeth’s? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take a single example, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other, so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in [161]real life. A superficial critic may say, that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gabardine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other. Admirable as he is in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this, that while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature.

Essay on “Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay,” Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1843. Art. IX. vol. lxxvi. pp. 560-1.

[162]

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1844
(1803-1882)

Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare; and even he can tell nothing except to the Shakespeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents extricated, analysed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and now read one of those skiey sentences—aerolites,—which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they match, if the former account in any manner for the latter: or, which gives the most historical insight into the man.

Hence, though our external history is so meagre, yet, with Shakespeare for biographer, instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information which is material, that which describes character and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Whoever read the volume of the [163]Sonnets, without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king, that forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let Antonio the merchant, answer for his great heart. So far from Shakespeare’s being the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man’s work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught State, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behaviour?

“Shakespeare; or, the Poet.” Representative Men. 1844, p. 154.

[164]

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 1850
(1816-1853)

What I admire in Shakspeare, however, is that his loves are all human—no earthliness hiding itself from itself in sentimental transcendentalism—no loves of the angels, which are the least angelic things, I believe, that float in the clouds, though they do look down upon mortal feelings with contempt, just as the dark volumes of smoke which issue from the long chimney of a manufactory might brood very sublimely over the town which they blacken, and fancy themselves far more ethereal than those vapours which steam up from the earth by day and night. Yet these are pure water, and those are destined to condense in black soot. So are the transcendentalisms of affection. Shakspeare is healthy, true to Humanity in this: and for that reason I pardon him even his earthly coarseness. You always know that you are on an earth which has to be refined, instead of floating in the empyrean with wings of wax. Therein he is immeasurably greater than Shelley. Shelleyism is very sublime, sublimer a good deal than God, for God’s world is all wrong and Shelley is all right—much purer than Christ, for Shelley can criticise Christ’s heart and life—nevertheless, Shelleyism is only atmospheric profligacy, to coin a Montgomeryism. I believe this to be one of Shakespeare’s most wondrous qualities—the humanity of his nature and heart. There is a spirit of sunny [165]endeavour about him, and an acquiescence in things as they are—not incompatible with a cheerful resolve to make them better.

Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, M.A. Edited by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 1886, vol. i. p. 289, Letter LX.

[166]

LEIGH HUNT, 1851
(1784-1859)

“Associations with Shakespeare.”

How naturally the idea of Shakespeare can be made to associate itself with anything which is worth mention! Take Christmas for instance: “Shakespeare and Christmas”; the two ideas fall as happily together as “wine and walnuts,” or heart and soul. So you may put together “Shakespeare and May,” or “Shakespeare and June,” and twenty passages start into your memory about spring and violets. Or you may say “Shakespeare and Love,” and you are in the midst of a bevy of bright damsels, as sweet as rosebuds; or “Shakespeare and Death,” and all graves, and thoughts of graves, are before you; or “Shakespeare and Life,” and you have the whole world of youth, and spirit, and Hotspur, and life itself; or you may say even, “Shakespeare and Hate,” and he will say all that can be said for hate, as well as against it, till you shall take Shylock himself into your Christian arms, and tears shall make you of one faith.

Table Talk. 1851, p. 154.

[167]

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 1852
(1818-1894)

We wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty of some of Shakespeare’s characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselves can imitate, and at first thought we attribute it to the genius of the poet, who has outstripped nature in his creations. But we are misunderstanding the power and the meaning of poetry in attributing creativeness to it in any such sense. Shakespeare created, but only as the spirit of nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand unnamed English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we are satisfied that Shakespeare’s great poetry is no more than the rhythmic echo of the life which it depicts.

Short Studies on Great Subjects. First Series. “England’s Forgotten Worthies.” 1878, i. 445-6, reprinted from Westminster Review. 1852.

[168]

DAVID MASSON, 1853
(b. 1822)

Shakespeare is as astonishing for the exuberance of his genius in abstract notions, and for the depth of his analytic and philosophic insight, as for the scope and minuteness of his poetic imagination. It is as if into a mind poetical in form there had been poured all the matter that existed in the mind of his contemporary Bacon. In Shakespeare’s plays we have thought, history, exposition, philosophy, all within the round of the poet. The only difference between him and Bacon sometimes is that Bacon writes an essay and calls it his own, while Shakespeare writes a similar essay and puts it into the mouth of a Ulysses or a Polonius.

Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays. 1874. Essay V. p. 242, reprinted from North British Review. 1853.

[169]

MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1853
(1822-1888)

“Shakespeare.”

Poems. 1853.

[170]

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, 1853
(1775-1864)

“Shakespeare and Milton.”

The Lost Fruit off an old Tree. No. LVII.

[171]

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1858
(1801-1890)

A great author, gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life, though these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of Expression. He is master of the twofold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendour of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, “nil molitur inepte.” If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not only “distincte” and “splendide,” but also “apte.” His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life:

[172] He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyse his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous; when his imagination wells up, it overflows its ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces.

Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; such pre-eminently is Virgil among the Latins; such in their degree are all those writers who in every nation go by the name of Classics.

“The Idea of a University defined and illustrated.” Literature, ix. 1873, pp. 291-3.

[173]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, c. 1858
(1819-1891)

Only Shakespeare was endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose point of rest was midway between the imagination and the understanding,—that perfectly unruffled brain which reflected all objects with almost inhuman impartiality,—that outlook whose range was ecliptical, dominating all zones of human thought and action,—that power of verisimilar conception which could take away Richard III. from History, and Ulysses from Homer,—and that creative faculty whose equal touch is alike vivifying in Shallow and in Lear. He alone never seeks in abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as “great dramatists,”—as if Shakespeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets some of them were; but though imagination and the power of poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon gifts, and even in combination not without secular examples, yet it is the rarest of earthly phenomena to find them joined with [174]those faculties of perception, arrangement, and plastic instinct in the loving union which alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call “a humour” till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare’s standpoint as poet and artist.

Library of Old Authors. 1858-64.

[175]

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1863
(1804-1864)

Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already.

Our Old Home. 1863, i. 171.

[176]

BISHOP CHARLES WORDSWORTH, 1864
(1806-1892)

Take the entire range of English literature; put together our best authors, who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used, as we have found in Shakespeare alone. This is a phenomenon which admits of being looked at from several points of view; but I shall be content to regard it solely in connection with the undoubted fact, that of all our authors, Shakespeare is also, by general confession, the greatest and the best. According to the testimony of Charles Lamb, a most competent judge in regard to all the literary elements of the question, our poet, “in his divine mind and manners, surpassed not only the great men his contemporaries, but all mankind.” And, looking at this superiority from my own point of view, I cannot but remark that, while most of the great laymen of that great Elizabethan age—Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Burleigh, Ben Jonson—have paid homage to Christianity, if not always in their practice, yet in the conviction of their understanding, none of them has done this so fully or so effectively as Shakespeare.

“On Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible.” 1864, pp. 291-2.

[177]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1864
(1809-1894)

“Shakespeare Tercentennial Celebration, 23 April 1864.” Songs of Many Seasons. 1875.

[179]

CARDINAL WISEMAN, 1865
(1802-1865)

We may compare the mind of Shakespeare to a diamond, pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every smallest change of direction or of angle, caught a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory.

William Shakespeare. 1865, p. 50.

[180]

ARCHBISHOP RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, 1865
(1807-1886)

Poems collected and arranged anew. 1865, p. 83.

[181]

FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE, 1865
(1824-1897)

Only three or four generations of fairly long-lived men lie between us and Shakespeare; literature in his own time had reached a high development; his grandeur and sweetness were freely recognised; within seventy years of his death his biography was attempted; yet we know little more of Shakespeare himself than we do of Homer. Like several of the greatest men,—Lucretius, Virgil, Tacitus, Dante,—a mystery never to be dispelled hangs over his life. He has entered into the cloud. With a natural and an honourable diligence, other men have given their lives to the investigation of his, and many external circumstances, mostly of a minor order, have been thus collected: yet of “the man Shakespeare,” in Mr. Hallam’s words, we know nothing. Something which seems more than human in immensity of range and calmness of insight moves before us in the Plays; but, from the nature of dramatic writing, the author’s personality is inevitably veiled; no letter, no saying of his, or description by an intimate friend, has been preserved: and even when we turn to the Sonnets, though each is an autobiographical confession, we find ourselves equally foiled. These revelations of the poet’s innermost nature appear to teach us less of the man than the tone of mind which we trace, or seem to trace, in Measure for Measure, Hamlet, and the Tempest: the strange imagery of passion which passes over the magic mirror has no tangible existence before or behind it:—the great artist, like Nature [182]herself, is still latent in his works; diffused through his own creation.

......

Yet there is, after all, nothing more remarkable or fascinating in English poetry than these personal revelations of the mind of our greatest poet. We read them again and again, and find each time some new proof of his almost superhuman insight into human nature; of his unrivalled mastery over all the tones of love.

Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Edited by Francis Turner Palgrave. 1865, pp. 238-9 and 243.

[183]

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE, 1866
(1809-1893)

“To Shakespeare.”

Poems. 1866, p. 61.

[184]

JOHN RUSKIN, 1868
(1819-1900)

It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read, either of Homer, or Shakespeare: everything round us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman gentlemen by Greek literature. All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the scope of Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.

The Mystery of Life and its Arts. Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art, delivered at Royal College of Science, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, 1867 and 1868. 1869, p. 109.

[185]

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, 1871
(1828-1882)

“On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree.”

Academy, 15 Feb. 1871.[185:1] Collected Works. Ed. W. M. Rossetti. 1886, vol. i. p. 285.

[186]

BAYARD TAYLOR, 1872
(1825-1878)

“Shakespeare’s Statue,
Central Park, New York, 23 May 1872.”

Poetical Works. Stanzas II.-III. 1880, p. 224.

[189]

WILLIAM MINTO, 1874
(1845-1893)

It is a favourite way with some eulogists of Shakespeare to deny him all individuality whatsoever. He was not one man, they say, but an epitome of all men. His mind, says Hazlitt, “had no one peculiar bias or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were or that they could become.” Against such a degradation of Shakespeare’s character, or of any man’s character, it is our duty to protest. On trying to make Shakespeare more than human, the reckless panegyrist makes him considerably less than human: instead of the man whose prudence made him rich, whose affectionate nature made him loved almost to idolatry, and whose genius has been the wonder of the world, we are presented with plasticity in the abstract, an object not more interesting than a quarry of potter’s clay.

“William Shakespeare, his Life and Character.” Characteristics of English Poets. 1874, p. 350.

[190]

EDWARD DOWDEN, 1875
(b. 1843)

There are certain problems which Shakespeare at once pronounces insoluble. He does not, like Milton, propose to give any account of the origin of evil. He does not, like Dante, pursue the soul of man through circles of unending torture, or spheres made radiant by the eternal presence of God. Satan, in Shakespeare’s poems, does not come voyaging on gigantic vans across Chaos to find the earth. No great deliverer of mankind descends from the heavens. Here, upon the earth, evil is—such was Shakespeare’s declaration in the most emphatic accent. Iago actually exists. There is also in the earth a sacred passion of deliverance, a pure redeeming ardour. Cordelia exists. This Shakespeare can tell for certain. But how Iago can be, and why Cordelia lies strangled across the breast of Lear—are these questions which you go on to ask? Something has been already said of the severity of Shakespeare. It is a portion of his severity to decline all answers to such questions as these. Is ignorance painful? Well, then, it is painful. Little solutions of your large difficulties can readily be obtained from priest or philosopher. Shakespeare prefers to let you remain in the solemn presence of a mystery. He does not invite you into his little church or his little library brilliantly illuminated by philosophical or theological rushlights. You remain in the darkness. But you remain in the vital air. And the great night is overhead.

Shakspere: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art. 1875, p. 226.

[191]

GEORGE MEREDITH, 1877
(b. 1828)

Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination. They are, as it were—I put it to suit my present comparison—creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen—marvellous Welshmen!—Benedict [sic] and Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects of a special study in the poetically comic.

On the Idea of Comedy and of the Uses of the Comic Spirit. A lecture delivered at the London Institution, 1 Feb. 1877. Published 1897.

[192]

FREDERICK JAMES FURNIVALL, 1877
(b. 1825)

Altogether “a manly man” (as Chaucer says) this Shakespeare, strong, tender, humourful, sensitive, impressionable, the truest friend, the foe of none but narrow minds and base. And as we track his work from the lightness and fun of its rise, through the fairy fancy, the youthful passion, the rich imaginings, the ardent patriotism, the brilliant sunshine, of his first and second times, through the tender affection of his Sonnets, the whirlwind of passions in his Tragedies, and then to the lovely sunset of his latest plays, what can we do but bless his name, and be thankful that he came to be a delight, a lift and strength, to us and our children’s children to all time—a bond that shall last for ever between all English-speaking, English-reading men, the members of that great Teutonic brotherhood which shall yet long lead the world in the fight for freedom and for truth!

Introduction to The Leopold Shakspere.1877, p. cxvi.

[193]

WALTER HORATIO PATER, 1878
(1839-1894)

As happens with every true dramatist, Shakespeare is for the most part hidden behind the persons of his creation. Yet there are certain of his characters in which we feel that there is something of self-portraiture. And it is not so much in his grander, more subtle and ingenious creations that we feel this—in “Hamlet” and “King Lear”—as in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures, who, while far from playing principal parts, are yet distinguished by a peculiar happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them; figures which possess, above all, that winning attractiveness which there is no man but would willingly exercise, and which resemble those works of art which, though not meant to be very great or imposing, are yet wrought of the choicest material. Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet,” belongs to this group of Shakespeare’s characters—versatile, mercurial people, such as make good actors, and in whom the

the finer but still merely animal elements of great wit, predominate. A careful delineation of minor yet expressive traits seems to mark them out as the characters of his predilection; and it is hard not to identify him with these more than with others. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” is perhaps the most striking member of this group. In this character, which is never quite in touch, never quite [194]on a perfect level of understanding, with the other persons of the play, we see, perhaps, a reflex of Shakespeare himself, when he has just become able to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Appreciations with an Essay on Style. 1889, pp. 174-5.

[195]

MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1879
(1822-1888)

Let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the Correspondant, a French review which not a dozen English people, I suppose, look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare’s prose. “With Shakespeare,” he says, “prose comes in whenever the subject, being more familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English iambic.” And he goes on: “Shakespeare is the king of poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king of the realm of thought; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare has succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most harmonious verse which has ever sounded upon the human ear since the verse of the Greeks.” M. Henry Cochin, the writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for it; it would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence, more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman writes thus of Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of Milton, in whom there was so much to repel Goethe rather than to attract him, that “nothing has ever been done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as Samson Agonistes,” and that “Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must treat with all reverence,” then we understand what constitutes a European recognition of poets and poetry as contradistinguished from a merely national recognition, and that in favour both of Milton and [196]of Shakespeare the judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone.

Essays in Criticism. Second Series: Wordsworth. 1888, pp. 129-31. Reprinted from Preface to The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. 1879.

[197]

ANONYMOUS ?c. 1880

So much has been written, so much spoken about Shakespeare, that it would seem a needless, almost a presumptuous superfluity to say more, and yet from another point of view, the man is as strange to us to-day as though we had never heard his name. Johnson and Pope, Warburton, Steevens, Malone and Theobald, Chalmers, Dyce, and a host of foreign exegetes, have edited and annotated, emendated and obelised; but the figure of Shakespeare is clothed in mist, and whilst we laugh and wonder at the vanity and versatility of a Cicero, and stroll lovingly with a Horace about his Sabine farm, dead both of them two millennia, we still grope about in the dark for the meaning, the character, and the inner life of our wondrous poet. Like the ghost in Hamlet, he arose, and, having uttered his pregnant message, disappeared, unregarded at the time but by a few, and still unrealised by the many.

.......

There is a grandeur about the poets of the world, and a reward for those that study them aright. Amid the hurricane of battle and the crash of empires, the calm pulse of life and the glories of the drama remain the same. Men are inclined to gaze upon the outward symbols of existence as though they were primary causes, when they are only the emblems of a deeper power. We have had our Constitution-builders, but where are they? Our Tamerlanes and our Attilas, but whither are they departed? The intellect that revolves a kingdom pales before a heart [198]that speaks to the soul of man. All nations turn their faces toward a Hamlet, a Lear, or a Catherine of Aragon. The influence of these through the genius of the poet will spread and yield abundant fruit, when the havoc of a Cannæ or an Austerlitz is but dimly discernible in the skeleton of history.

The study of our finer literature is therefore the study of the soul; and the progress made will be upward and inward, and the result a purifying of the ideals and a chastening of the chords of man. Shakespeare gives us all this, he is ennobling as well as instructive; without paying homage in a measure to his memory by the maintenance of a certain form of excellence, no poet since his time has succeeded in being appreciated as great. For they all bear his mark, and although much below him, all dramatic writers since his day are modelled upon his plan.

Manuscript Note inserted before fly-leaf of copy of the 1602 quarto of Merry Wives of Windsor, now in Rowfant Library. Printed in A Catalogue of the Printed Books, etc., collected since 1886 by the late Frederick Locker Lampson. 1900, pp. 28-30.

[199]

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1880
(b. 1837)

In his first stage Shakespeare had dropped his plummet no deeper into the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had sounded before him; and in the channel of simple emotion no poet could cast surer line with steadier hand than he. Further down in the dark and fiery depths of human pain and mortal passion no soul could search than his who first rendered into speech the aspirations and the agonies of a ruined and revolted spirit. And until Shakespeare found in himself the strength of eyesight to read, and the cunning of handiwork to render those wider diversities of emotion and those further complexities of character which lay outside the range of Marlowe, he certainly cannot be said to have outrun the winged feet, outstripped the fiery flight of his forerunner. In the heaven of our tragic song, the first-born star on the forehead of its herald god was not outshone till the full midsummer meridian of that greater godhead before whom he was sent to prepare a pathway for the sun. Through all the forenoon of our triumphant day, till the utter consummation and ultimate ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and transfigured in the master-singer of the world, the quality of his tragedy was as that of Marlowe’s, broad, single, and intense; large of hand, voluble of tongue, direct of purpose. With the dawn of its latter epoch a new power comes upon it, to find clothing and expression in new forms of speech and after a new style. [200]The language has put off its foreign decorations of lyric and elegiac ornament; it has found already its infinite gain in the loss of those sweet superfluous graces which encumbered the march and enchained the utterance of its childhood. The figures which it invests are now no more types of a single passion, the incarnations of a single thought. They now demand a scrutiny which tests the power of a mind and tries the value of a judgment; they appeal to something more than the instant apprehension which sufficed to respond to the immediate claim of those that went before them. Romeo and Juliet were simply lovers, and their names bring back to us no further thought than of their love and the lovely sorrow of its end; Antony and Cleopatra shall be before all things lovers, but the thought of their love and its triumphant tragedy shall recall other things beyond number—all the forces and all the fortunes of mankind, all the chance and all the consequence that waited on their imperial passion, all the infinite variety of qualities and powers wrought together and welded into the frame and composition of that love which shook from end to end all nations and kingdoms of the earth.

A Study of Shakespeare. 1880, pp. 77-9.

[201]

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1882
(b. 1837)

“William Shakespeare.”

Tristram of Lyonesse and other Poems. 1882, p. 280.

[202]

GEORGE MEREDITH, 1883
(b. 1828)

“The Spirit of Shakespeare.”

Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. 1883, pp. 161-2.

[204]

ROBERT BROWNING, 1884
(1812-1889)

“The Names.”

Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning. Cambridge edition, U.S.A. 1895.

[205]

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY, 1886
(b. 1819)

“The Mighty Makers.”

Poems. 1886, vol. ii. pp. 273-4.

[207]

THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES, 1886
(1823-1887)

Shakespeare’s work alone can be said to possess the organic strength and infinite variety, the throbbing fulness, vital complexity, and breathing truth of Nature herself. In points of artistic resource and technical ability—such as copious and expressive diction, freshness and pregnancy of verbal combination, richly modulated verse, and structural skill in the handling of incident and action—Shakespeare’s supremacy is indeed sufficiently assured. But, after all, it is of course in the spirit and substance of his work, his power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of touching the deepest springs of impulse and passion, out of which are the issues of life, and of evolving those issues dramatically with a flawless strength, subtlety, and truth, which raises him so immensely above and beyond not only the best of the playwrights who went before him, but the whole line of illustrious dramatists that came after him. It is Shakespeare’s unique distinction that he has an absolute command over all the complexities of thought and feeling that prompt to action and bring out the dividing lines of character. He sweeps with the hand of a master the whole gamut of human experience, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mamilius, and the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur, up to the spectre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical passion of Othello, the agonised sense [208]and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustained elemental grandeur, the Titanic force, the utterly tragical pathos of Lear.

Encyclopædia Britannica. 9th edition. Art. “Shakespeare.” Vol. xxi. 1886, p. 763.

[209]

GERALD MASSEY, 1888
(b. 1828)

The Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. 1888.

[210]

WALT WHITMAN, 1890
(1819-1892)

The inward and outward characteristics of Shakespeare are his vast and rich variety of persons and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all—not only limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess, superfœtation—mannerism, like a fine aristocratic perfume, holding a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)—with boundless sumptuousness and adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste—but a good deal of bombast and fustian—(certainly some terrific mouthing in Shakespeare!).

Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakespeare—a style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond—think of carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and appropriate statue groups, and the finest cultivated roses and lilies and japonicas in plenty—and you have the tally of Shakespeare. The low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen—all in themselves nothing—serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies (exquisite [211]as they certainly are), bringing in admirably portrayed common characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the divertisement only of the élite of the castle, and from its point of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and Democracy.

But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from the riches Shakespeare has left us—to criticise his infinitely royal, multiform quality—to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his sun-like beams.

From Poet-Lore, July 1890. Complete Prose Works. Boston, Mass., 1898, p. 394.

[212]

RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 1891
(b. 1844)

“The Twenty-Third of April.”

“Five Books of Song.” IV. The Two Worlds. 1894, p. 154.

[213]

MATHILDE BLIND, c. 1894
(1841-1896)

“Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare Sonnets, VII.” Poetical Works. Ed. Arthur Symons. 1900, p. 443.

[214]

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, BEFORE 1892
(1809-1892)

There are three repartees in Shakespeare which always bring tears to my eyes from their simplicity.

One is in King Lear, when Lear says to Cordelia, “So young and so untender,” and Cordelia lovingly answers, “So young, my lord, and true.” And in The Winter’s Tale, when Florizel takes Perdita’s hand to lead her to the dance, and says, “So turtles pair that never mean to part,” and the little Perdita answers, giving her hand to Florizel, ”I’ll swear for ’em.” And in Cymbeline, when Imogen in tender rebuke says to her husband:

and Posthumus does not ask forgiveness, but answers, kissing her:

Life and Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Ed. Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 1898, vol. iv. pp. 39 et seq.

[215]

SIDNEY LEE, 1899
(b. 1859)

Shakespeare’s mind, as Hazlitt suggested, contained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling would develop in any conceivable change of fortune. Men and women—good or bad, old or young, wise or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor—yielded their secrets to him, and his genius enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that present themselves on the highway of life. Each of his characters gives voice to thought or passion with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse in the intelligent playgoer and reader the illusion that they are overhearing men and women speak unpremeditatingly among themselves, rather than that they are reading written speeches or hearing written speeches recited. The more closely the words are studied, the completer the illusion grows. Creatures of the imagination—fairies, ghosts, witches—are delineated with a like potency, and the reader or spectator feels instinctively that these supernatural entities could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shakespeare represents them. The creative power of poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air.

So mighty a faculty sets at nought the common limitations of nationality, and in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated, Shakespeare’s power is [216]recognised. All the world over, language is applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words: “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in apprehension how like a god!”

Life of William Shakespeare. 1899, chap. xxi.

Merchant of Venice, I. ii. 11.

Merry Wives, IV. v. 2.

Henry V. V. prol. 23.

Taming of the Shrew, V. ii. 54.

Anonymous. Epig. 25. Witts Recreations. 1640, printed 1639.

John Crowne (d. 1703?). Prologue to Henry the Sixth, the First Part. Adapted from Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI. 1681. Sig. A2.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Imitations of Horace. Bk. II. ch. i. ll. 69-72. 1737.

James Thomson (1700-1748). Prologue to Tancred and Sigismundâ. 1745. Sig. A4.

Epitaph on a Tombstone of Shakespeare. Gentleman’s Magazine. June 1767, vol. xxvii. p. 324.

[224] Shakespeare came out of Nature’s hand like Pallas out of Jove’s head, at full growth and mature.

George Colman (1733-1794), before 1767.

Richard Graves (1715-1804). “On erecting a Monument to Shakespeare under the direction of Mr. Pope and Lord Burlington.” Euphrosyne, 1776.

[226] Our modern tragedies, hundreds of them do not contain a good line; nor are they a jot the better, because Shakespeare, who was superior to all mankind, wrote some whole plays that are as bad as any of our present writers’.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Letter to Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 8, 1778. Letters. Ed. Peter Cunningham, 1858, vol. vii. p. 135.

[227] Write like Shakespeare, and laugh at the critics.

Daniel Webb (1719?-1798). Literary Amusements, 1787, p. 22.

W. L. Bowles (1762-1850). “Monody on the Death of Dr. Warton,” 1801. Poems, 1803, vol. ii. pp. 141-2.

F. D. Hemans (1793-1835). “England and Spain,” 1807.

[230] Our love of Shakespeare, therefore, is not a monomania or solitary and unaccountable infatuation; but is merely the natural love which all men bear to those forms of excellence that are accommodated to their peculiar character, temperament, and situation; and which will always return, and assert its power over their affections, long after authority has lost its reverence, fashions been antiquated, and artificial tastes passed away.

Francis Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850). Edinburgh Review, Aug. 1811, vol. xviii. p. 285.

[231] Shakespeare had the inward clothing of a fine mind; the outward covering of solid reading, of critical observation, and the richest eloquence; and compared with these, what are the trappings of the schools?

George Dyer (1755-1841). “The Relation of Poetry to the Arts and Sciences,” in The Reflector, 1811. Reprinted in Poetics, 1812, ii. p. 19.

[232] Shakespeare has been accused of profaneness. I for my part have acquired from perusal of him, a habit of looking into my own heart, and am confident that Shakespeare is an author of all others the most calculated to make his readers better as well as wiser.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). “Outline of an introductory Lecture on Shakespeare,” 1812.

Let no man blame his son for learning history from Shakespeare.

Id. Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. Ed. J. P. Collier, p. 19.

The greatest genius that, perhaps, human nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded[232:1] Shakespeare.

Id. Biographia Literaria, 1817, chap. xv.

The great, ever-living, dead man.

Ibid.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Thoughts of the Avon on 28 Sept. 1817.

[234] His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like authors.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830). “On Shakespeare and Milton,” Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, p. 98.

In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakespeare, any other word but the true one, is sure to be wrong.[234:1]

Ibid., p. 108.

Shakespeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Ibid., p. 111.

P. B. Shelley (1792-1822). “Lines written among the Euganean Hills,” October 1818.

[236] Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.

John Keats (1795-1821). Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 18 Feb. 1819.

[237] If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830). Table Talk, 1821, vol. i. p. 177.

Robert Southey (1774-1843). A Vision of Judgment, 1821, ix. ll. 17, 18.

[239] I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers.

Lord Byron (1788-1824). Letter to Murray, 14 July 1821. Moore’s Life of Byron.

[240] Schiller has the material sublime: to produce an effect, he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But Shakespeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). Table Talk, 29 Dec. 1822.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845). The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, cv. 1827, p. 53.

[242] Who knows or can figure what the Man Shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth, perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling-place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, “Goethe.” Reprinted from Foreign Review, No. 3, 1828.

Students of poetry admire Shakespeare in their tenth year; but go on admiring him more and more, understanding him more and more, till their threescore-and-tenth.

Ibid.

[243] No one can understand Shakespeare’s superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakespeare’s own.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). Table Talk, 12 May 1830.

“Poetical Portraits” by A Modern Pythagorean in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. xxvii. 1830, p. 632.

[245] It is not too much to say, that the great plays of Shakespeare would lose less by being deprived of all the passages which are commonly called the fine passages, than those passages lose by being read separately from the play. This is, perhaps, the highest praise which can be given to a dramatist.

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). Edinburgh Review, June 1831, vol. liii. pp. 567-8.

[246] I believe Shakespeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. And I said, he is of no age—nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and reading, which were considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his figures.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). Table Talk, 15 March 1834.

I would be willing to live only as long as Shakespeare were the mirror to Nature.

Id., Letters, etc., 1836, i. 196.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). “Blue-stocking Revels; or, the Feast of the Violets.” Canto III. Monthly Repository, 1837.

[248] In the gravest sense it may be affirmed of Shakespeare, that he is among the modern luxuries of life.

T. De Quincey (1785-1859). “Shakespeare,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 7th ed., 1842. Written 1838.

Produce us from any drama of Shakespeare one of those leading passages that all men have by heart, and show us any eminent defect in the very sinews of the thought. It is impossible; defects there may be, but they will always be found irrelevant to the main central thought, or to its expression.

Id. “Pope,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 7th ed., 1842. Written 1839.

[249] Shakespeare, a wool-comber, poacher, or whatever else at Stratford in Warwickshire, who happened to write books! The finest human figure, as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely diffused Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt or Sarmat, I find no human soul so beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;—our supreme modern European man.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). “Geschichte der Teutschen Sippschaft,” translated by Carlyle in Chartism, 1839. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

[250] It is to be doubted whether even Shakespeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfœtation of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in his plays;—if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). “What is Poetry?” Imagination and Fancy, 1844. Ed. A. S. Cook, 1893, p. 65.

[251] Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are Shakespearised. His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see.

R. W. Emerson (1803-1882). “Representative Men.” Shakespeare; or the Poet, 1844.

E. B. Browning (1809-1861). A Vision of Poets, 1844.

[253] A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton: the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since.

W. S. Landor (1775-1846). “Imaginary Conversations.” Works, 1846, ii. p. 74.

Id. “On Shakespeare.” “Poems and Epigrams.” Works, 1846.

[254] A long list can be cited of passages in Shakespeare, which have been solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all blockheads) as ridiculous: and if a man does find a passage in a tragedy that displeases him, it is sure to seem ludicrous: witness the indecent exposures of themselves made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people.

T. De Quincey (1785-1859). “Schlosser’s Literary History.” Tait’s Magazine, Sept., Oct., 1847.

R. Browning (1812-1889). Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, xvi., 1850.

[256] When I began to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life, I was impressed with a conviction, that there were four English poets whom I must have continually before me as examples—Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal if I could; and I need not think of the rest.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Memoirs. By Christopher Wordsworth, 1851, vol. ii. p. 470.

I cannot account for Shakespeare’s low estimate of his own writings, except from the sublimity, the superhumanity of his genius. They were infinitely below his conception of what they might have been, and ought to have been.

Ibid.

D. M. Moir (1798-1851), before 1851. “Stanzas on an Infant.” Poetical Works, 1852, vol. ii. p. 50.

Ibid., p. 341, “Hymn to the Moon.”

T. L. Beddoes (1803-1849). “Lines written in Switzerland.” Poems, 1851, vol. i. p. 215.

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1805-1873). “The Souls of Books,” i. l. 21. Works, 1853, vol. iii. p. 282.

Charles Mackay (1814-1899). “Mist.” Under Green Leaves, 1857.

[261] I care not how Shakespeare is acted: with him the thought suffices.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), c. 1860.

[262] I am always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcendent superiority of Shakespeare over all other writers.

R. W. Emerson (1803-1882). “Culture.” Conduct of Life, 1860.

[263] We may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist would have done, as “enskied” among “the invulnerable clouds,” where no shaft, even of envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may safely predict that he never can be plucked.

Cardinal Wiseman (1802-1856). William Shakespeare, 1865, p. 28.

[264] To say truth, what I most of all admire are the traces he shows of a talent that could have turned the History of England into a kind of Iliad, almost perhaps into a kind of Bible.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). “Shooting Niagara: and After?” Macmillan’s Magazine, August, 1867.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). “Heine’s Grave.” New Poems, 1867, p. 198.

[266] If Shakespeare did not know the ancients, I think they were at least as unlucky in not knowing him.

J. R. Lowell (1819-1891). Among my Books, 1870, p. 190.

[267] Shakespeare recognised both our human imperfections and our human greatness. . . . A woman is dearer to Shakespeare than an angel; a man is better than a god.

Edward Dowden (b. 1843). Shakespeare: His Mind and Art, 1875, p. 346.

[268] Shakespeare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false, and which are entirely unworthy of him. But one can imagine his smiling if one could meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling and replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter?

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). “Preface to Poems of Wordsworth,” 1879. Essays in Criticism, 2nd ser., p. 135.

D. G. Rossetti (1828-1882). “On certain Elizabethan Revivals.” Recollections of D. G. Rossetti. By T. Hall Caine, 1882, p. 256.

Conception, fundamental brain work, that is what makes the difference in all art. Work your metal as much as you like, but first take care that it is gold, and worth working. A Shakespearean sonnet is better than the most perfect in form, because Shakespeare wrote it.

Ibid., p. 249.

William Watson (b. 1858). Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature, 1884, vii.

[271] Shakespeare illustrates every phase and variety of humour: a complete analysis of Shakespeare’s humour would make a system of psychology.

G. Moulton (b. 1849). Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 1893, p. 285.

[272] From Shakespeare, no doubt, the world may learn, and has learnt, much; yet he professed so little to be a teacher, that he has often been represented as almost without personal opinions, as a mere undisturbed mirror, in which all Nature reflects herself. Something like a century passed before it was perceived that his works deserved to be in a serious sense studied.

J. R. Seeley (1834-1895). Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years, 1894, p. 98.

[273] Shakespeare and Chaucer throw off, at noble work, the lower part of their natures as they would a rough dress.

John Ruskin (1819-1900). Fors Clavigera. Letter XXXIV., 1896, ii. 235.

[274]

Titus Andronicus, IV. ii. 19.

Pericles, IV. iv. 19.

Merry Wives, II. ii. 223.

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, 1664
(1624?-1674)

Remember, when we were very young maids, one day we were discoursing about lovers, and we did enjoin each other to confess who professed to love us, and whom we loved, and I confessed I was in love with three dead men, which were dead long before my time, the one was Cæsar, for his valour, the second Ovid, for his wit, and the third our countryman Shakespeare, for his comical and tragical humour; but soon after we both married two worthy men, and I will leave you to your own husband, for you best know what he is. As for my husband, I know him to have the valour of Cæsar, the fancy and wit of Ovid, and the tragical, especially comical art of Shakespeare, in truth, he is as far beyond Shakespeare for comical humour, as Shakespeare is beyond an ordinary poet in that way.

Letter CLXII. CCXI Sociable Letters written by the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle, 1664. Letters CXXIII. and CLXII.

[278]

JOSEPH ADDISON, 1711
(1672-1719)

Some years ago I was at the tragedy of “Macbeth,” and unfortunately placed myself under a woman of quality, that is since dead; who, as I found by the noise she made, was newly returned from France. A little before the rising of the curtain, she broke out into a loud soliloquy, “When will the dear witches enter?” and immediately upon their first appearance, asked a lady that sat three boxes from her, on her right hand, if those witches were not charming creatures. A little later, as Betterton was in one of the finest speeches of the play, she shook her fan at another lady, who sat as far on her left hand, and told her in a whisper that might be heard all over the pit, “We must not expect to see Balloon to-night.” Not long after, calling out to a young baronet by his name, who sat three seats before me, she asked him whether Macbeth’s wife was still alive; and before he could give an answer, fell a-talking of the ghost of Banquo. She had by this time formed a little audience to herself, and fixed the attention of all about her. But as I had a mind to hear the play, I got out of the sphere of her impertinence, and planted myself in one of the remotest corners of the pit.

The Spectator, No. 45, 21 April 1711.

[279]

HENRY FIELDING, 1743
(1707-1754)

I then observed Shakespeare standing between Betterton and Booth, and deciding a difference between these two great actors concerning the placing an accent in one of his lines: this was disputed on both sides with a warmth which surprised me in Elysium, till I discovered by intuition that every soul retained its principal characteristic, being, indeed, its very essence. The line was that celebrated one in Othello—

according to Betterton. Mr. Booth contended to have it thus:—

I could not help offering my conjecture on this occasion, and suggested it might perhaps be—

Another hinted a reading very sophisticated in my opinion—

Making light to be the vocative case. Another would have altered the last word, and read—

But Betterton said, if the text was to be disturbed, he saw no reason why a word might not be changed as well as a letter, and instead of “put out thy light,” you may read [280]“put out thy eyes.” At last it was agreed on all sides to refer the matter to the decision of Shakespeare himself, who delivered his sentiments as follows: “Faith, gentlemen, it is so long since I wrote the line, I have forgot my meaning. This I know, could I have dreamt so much nonsense would have been talked and writ about it, I would have blotted it out of my works; for I am sure, if any of these be my meaning, it doth me very little honour.”

He was then interrogated concerning some other ambiguous passages in his works; but he declined any satisfactory answer; saying, if Mr. Theobald had not writ about it sufficiently, there were three or four more new editions of his plays coming out, which he hoped would satisfy every one: concluding, “I marvel nothing so much as that men will gird themselves at discovering obscure beauties in an author. Certes the greatest and most pregnant beauties are ever the plainest and most evidently striking; and when two meanings of a passage can in the least balance our judgments which to prefer, I hold it matter of unquestionable certainty that neither of them is worth a farthing.”

From his works our conversation turned on his monument; upon which Shakespeare, shaking his sides, and addressing himself to Milton, cried out, “On my word, brother Milton, they have brought a noble set of poets together; they would have been hanged erst have convened such a company at their tables when alive.” “True, brother,” answered Milton, “unless we had been as incapable of eating then as we are now.”

“A Journey from this World to the Next,” Chapter viii. Miscellanies, 1743.

[281]

THOMAS EDWARDS, 1747
(1699-1757)

Canon I. A Professed Critic has a right to declare that his Author wrote whatever He thinks he ought to have written, with as much positiveness as if he had been at his elbow.

Canon II. He has a right to alter any passage which He does not understand.

Canon III. These alterations He may make in spite of the exactness of measure.

Canon IV. Where He does not like an expression, and yet cannot mend it, He may abuse his Author for it.

Canon V. Or He may condemn it as a foolish interpolation.

Canon VI. As every Author is to be corrected into all possible perfection, the Professed Critic is the sole judge; He may alter any word or phrase, which does not want amendment, or which will do, provided He can think of anything which He imagines will do better.

Canon VII. He may find out obsolete words, or coin new ones, and put them in the place of such as He does not like, or does not understand.

Canon VIII. He may prove a reading or support an explanation by any sort of reasons, no matter whether good or bad.

Canon IX. He may interpret his Author so as to make him mean directly contrary to what he says.

Canon X. He should not allow any poetical licences, which He does not understand.

[282] Canon XI. He may make foolish amendments or explanations, and refute them, only to enhance the value of his critical skill.

Canon XII. He may find out a bawdy or immoral meaning in his Author where there does not appear to be any hint that way.

Canon XIII. He need not attend to the low accuracy of orthography, or pointing; but may ridicule such trivial criticisms in others.

Canon XIV. Yet, when He pleases to condescend to such work, He may value himself upon it; and not only restore lost puns, but point out such quaintnesses where, perhaps, the Author never thought of them.

Canon XV. He may explain a difficult passage by words absolutely unintelligible.

Canon XVI. He may contradict himself for the sake of showing his critical skill on both sides of the question.

Canon XVII. It will be necessary for the Professed Critic to have by him a good number of pedantic and abusive expressions, to throw about upon proper occasions.

Canon XVIII. He may explain his Author, or any former Editor of him, by supplying such words, or pieces of words, or marks, as He thinks fit for that purpose.

Canon XIX. He may use the very same reasons for confirming his own observations, which he has disallowed in his adversary.

Canon XX. As the design of writing notes is not so much to explain the Author’s meaning as to display the Critic’s knowledge, it may be proper, to show his universal learning, that He minutely point out from whence every metaphor and allusion is taken.

[283] Canon XXI. It will be proper, in order to show his wit, especially if the Critic be a married man, to take every opportunity of sneering at the fair sex.

Canon XXII. He may mis-quote himself, or anybody else, in order to make an occasion of writing notes, when he cannot otherwise find one.

Canon XXIII. The Professed Critic, in order to furnish his quota to the bookseller, may write notes of nothing; that is to say, notes which either explain things which do not want explanation, or such as do not explain matters at all, but merely fill up so much paper.

Canon XXIV. He may dispense with truth, in order to give the world a higher idea of his parts, or the value of his work.

The Canons of Criticism, first published as a Supplement to Mr. Warburton’s Edition of Shakespear. Collected from Notes in that Celebrated Work, and proper to be bound up with it. By the Other Gentleman of Lincoln’s Inn.

[284]

MARK AKENSIDE, 1749
(1721-1770)

“The Remonstrance of Shakespeare: supposed to have been spoken at the Theatre Royal, while the French comedians were acting by subscription. 1749.”

Odes on Several Subjects. Book II., ode i. Poetical Works. Aldine edition, 1835, p. 199.

[288]

ROBERT LLOYD, 1751
(1733-1764)

The Progress of Envy, 1751, Stanzas 2-4 and 7-10.

[291]

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1765
(1728-1774)

The character of old Falstaff, even with all his faults, gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wisdom: I here behold an agreeable old fellow, forgetting age, and showing me the way to be young at sixty-five. Sure I am well able to be as merry, though not so comical, as he. Is it not in my power to have, though not so much wit, at least as much vivacity?—Age, care, wisdom, reflection, begone!—I give you to the winds. Let’s have t’other bottle: here’s to the memory of Shakespeare, Falstaff, and all the merry men of Eastcheap.

Such were the reflections that naturally arose while I sat at the Boar’s-head tavern, still kept at Eastcheap. Here, by a pleasant fire, in the very room where old Sir John Falstaff cracked his jokes, in the very chair which was sometimes honoured by Prince Henry, and sometimes polluted by his immoral merry companions, I sat and ruminated on the follies of youth; wished to be young again; but was resolved to make the best of life while it lasted, and now and then compared past and present times together.

“A Reverie at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap.” Collected Essays, 1765.

[292]

GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON, 1765
(1709-1773)

“Boileau—Pope.”

BOILEAU

. . . The office of an editor was below you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires. Would anybody think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture?

POPE

The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the honour of Shakespeare: and if you knew all his beauties as well as I, you would not wonder at this zeal. No other author had ever so copious, so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind. He painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings.

BOILEAU

You say he painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. I cannot deny that he did so; but I wish he had not jumbled those characters together, in the composition of his pictures, as he has frequently done.

[293] POPE

The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite inexcusable. But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote.

BOILEAU

A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the taste of his contemporaries.

POPE

Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of Shakespeare broke forth! What were the English, and what (let me ask you) were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he flourished? The advances he made towards the highest perfection both of tragedy and comedy are amazing! In the principal points, in the power of exciting terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has excelled him, and very few have equalled.

BOILEAU

Do you think he was equal in comedy to Moliere?

POPE

In comic force I do: but in the fine and delicate strokes of satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to that admirable writer. There is nothing in him to compare with the Misanthrope, the Ecole des Femmes, or Tartuffe.

[294] BOILEAU

This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to acknowledge. A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are fanatics.

POPE

He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste.

BOILEAU

I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays; absurdities which no critic of my nation can pardon.

POPE

We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his beauties.

Dialogues of the Dead, xiv., 4th edition, 1765. XIV. Boileau—Pope, pp. 125-128.

[295]

LAURENCE STERNE, 1768
(1713-1768)

“The Passport—Versailles.”

I could not conceive why the Count de B * * * had gone so abruptly out of the room, any more than I could conceive why he had put the Shakespeare into his pocket—Mysteries which must explain themselves, are not worth the loss of time which a conjecture about them takes up: it was better to read Shakespeare; so, taking up Much Ado about Nothing, I transported myself instantly from the chair I sat in to Messina in Sicily, and got so busy with Don Pedro and Benedick and Beatrice, that I thought not of Versailles, the Count, or the Passport.

Sweet pliability of man’s spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their wearied moments!—long, long since had you numbered out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground: when my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights; and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed—When evils press sore upon me, and there is no retreat from them in this world, then I take a new course—I leave it—and as I have a clearer idea of the Elysian fields than I have of [296]heaven, I force myself, like Æneas, into them—I see him meet the pensive shade of his forsaken Dido—and wish to recognise it—I see the injured spirit wave her head, and turn off silent from the author of her miseries and dishonours—I lose the feelings for myself in hers—and in those affections which were wont to make me mourn for her when I was at school.

Surely this is not walking in a vain shadow—nor does man disquiet himself in vain by it—he oftener does so in trusting the issue of his commotions to reason only—I can safely say for myself, I was never able to conquer any one single bad sensation in my heart so decisively, as by beating up as fast as I could some kindly and gentle sensation, to fight it upon its own ground.

When I had got to the end of the third act, the Count de B * * * entered with my passport in his hand. M. Le Duc de C * * *, said the Count, is as good a prophet, I dare say, as he is a statesman—Un homme qui rit, said the Duke, ne sera jamais dangereux. Had it been for any one but the King’s jester, added the Count, I could not have got it these two hours—Pardonnez moi, M. Le Compte, said I—I am not the King’s jester—But you are Yorick?—Yes—Et vous plaisantez?—I answered, Indeed I did jest—but was not paid for it—it was entirely at my own expense.

We have no jester at court, M. Le Compte, said I—the last we had was in the licentious reign of Charles II.—since which time our manners have been so gradually refining, that our court at present is so full of patriots, who wish for nothing but the honours and wealth of their country—and our ladies are all so chaste, so spotless, so [297]good, so devout—there is nothing for a jester to make a jest of—

Voila un persiflage! cried the Count.

Yorick’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, etc., 1768, vol. ii.

[298]

ANONYMOUS, 1769

“The Dramatic Race. A Catch. By a Lover of the Turf.”

Shakespeare’s Garland. Being a Collection of New Songs, Ballads, Roundelays, Catches, Glees, Comic Serenatas, etc., performed at the Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1769, p. 16.

[299]

ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, 1769
(d. 1812?)

“Queen Mab. A Cantata.”

Shakespeare’s Garland. Being a Collection of New Songs, Ballads, Roundelays, Catches, Glees, Comic Serenatas, etc., performed at the Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1769, p. 21.

[302]

ANONYMOUS, 1778

“Shakespeare’s Bedside, or his Doctors enumerated.”

Gentleman’s Magazine, 1787, vol. lvii. ii. 912. Muses’ Mirror, 1778, i. 90.

[305]

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 1788
(1717-1797)

My histrionic acquaintance spreads. I supped at Lady Dorothy Hotham’s with Mrs. Siddons, have visited and been visited by her, and have seen and liked her much, yes, very much, in the passionate scenes in “Percy”; but I do not admire her in cool declamation, and find her voice very hollow and defective. I asked her in which part she would most wish me to see her? She named Portia in the “Merchant of Venice”; but I begged to be excused. With all my enthusiasm for Shakespeare, it is one of his plays that I like the least. The story of the caskets is silly, and, except the character of Shylock, I see nothing beyond the attainment of a mortal; Euripides, or Racine, or Voltaire might have written all the rest.

Letter to the Countess of Ossory, 15 Jan. 1788. Letters, ed. Peter Cunningham, 1859, vol. ix. p. 124.

[306]

PAUL WHITEHEAD, 1790
(1710-1774)

“Verses dropped in Mr. Garrick’s Temple of Shakespeare.” Poems and Miscellaneous Compositions, 1790.

[308]

WILLIAM COMBE, 1812
(1741-1823)

“Dr. Syntax in the Pit of Covent Garden Theatre.”

The Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of the Picturesque. 1812, Canto XXIV. ll. 173 sq.

[313]

CHARLES LAMB, 1826.
(1775-1834)

Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in Shakespeare. I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakespeare: I said that I had no doubt he was—to a Scotchman. We exchangd no more words that day.

Letter to J. B. Dibdin, June 30, 1826. Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Ed. E. V. Lucas. 1903-4. Vol. vii.

[314]

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1845
(1804-1864)

The human race had now reached a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements in the literary line. Accordingly, a thorough and searching investigation had swept the booksellers’ shops, hawkers’ stands, public and private libraries, and even the little bookshelf by the country fireside, and had brought the world’s entire mass of printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already mountain-bulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios, containing the labours of lexicographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes, like rotten wood. The small, richly-gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles, and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the same nation burnt red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of parti-coloured fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton’s works, in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other [315]material of the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendour, that men shaded their eyes as against the sun’s meridian glory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him, did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance beneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever.

“Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame,” remarked I, “he might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose.”

“That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do, or at least to attempt,” answered a critic. “The chief benefit to be expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is, that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the sun or stars.”

Mosses from an Old Manse: “Earth’s Holocaust,” ii. 146-7.

[316]

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, 1846
(1775-1864)

“Shakespeare and Bacon.”

Southey.—In so wide and untrodden a creation as that of Shakespeare’s, can we wonder or complain that sometimes we are bewildered and entangled in the exuberance of fertility? Dry-brained men upon the continent, the trifling wits of the theatre, accurate however and expert calculators, tell us that his beauties are balanced by his faults. The poetical opposition, puffing for popularity, cry cheerily against them, his faults are balanced by his beauties; when, in reality, all the faults that ever were committed in poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one single thought or image, such as almost every scene exhibits in every drama of this unrivalled genius. Do you hear me with patience?

Porson.—With more; although at Cambridge we rather discourse on Bacon, for we know him better. He was immeasurably a less wise man than Shakespeare, and not a wiser writer: for he knew his fellow-man only as he saw him in the street and in the Court, which indeed is but a dirtier street and a narrower; Shakespeare, who also knew him there, knew him everywhere else, both as he was and as he might be.

Southey.—There is as great a difference between Shakespeare and Bacon as between an American forest and a London timber-yard. In the timber-yard the materials are [317]sawed and squared and set across; in the forest we have the natural form of the tree, all its growth, all its branches, all its leaves, all the mosses that grow about it, all the birds and insects that inhabit it; now deep shadows absorbing the whole wilderness; now bright bursting glades, with exuberant grass and flower and fruitage; now untroubled skies; now terrific thunderstorms; everywhere multiformity, everywhere immensity.

“Southey and Porson.” Imaginary Conversations. Works, 1846, i. pp. 12-13.

[318]

WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT, 1868
An Unfortunate Likeness
(b. 1836)

Reprinted from Fun, 14 Nov. 1868.

[323]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1872
(1809-1894)

I wonder if anything like this ever happened:—

The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 1872, pp. 10-11.

[325]

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON, 1897

“Shakespeare’s Friend speaks.”

“Christmas at the Mermaid.” The Coming of Love, and Other Poems, 1898 [1897].

[326]

JUDGE WILLIS, 1902
(b. 1835)

“Examination of Edward Blount, one of the printers and publishers of the Shakespeare folio of 1623.”

Did you never hear that Shakespeare the actor, whom you knew, had nothing to do with the pieces published under his name?

I never did.

Did you never hear that the name “Shakespeare,” that is, with the “e” after the “k,” was assumed to cover and conceal the writings of a very great, distinguished man?

I never did.

Would you be surprised to hear that Lord Bacon—

The reporter says that as soon as this word escaped from Counsel’s lips, the whole Court was convulsed with laughter, in which the jury joined.

To save appearances, the learned Judge retired into his private room, as he said, in order to fetch his copy of “Venus and Adonis.” His laughter was heard in the hall.

“We noticed,” says the reporter, “that Mr. Jonson never smiled. He seemed deeply moved, and exclaimed, ‘What next? And next?’”

On the return of the Judge, the laughter had not quite subsided, and the usher cried “Order, Order.”

The Judge, on again taking his seat, said to the Counsel for the defence, “I am sorry, sir, your question should have been so received, but you must remember the spectators [327]are human, and that the jury and myself are not free from infirmity. We are, however, quite impartial.”

The Counsel resumed.

Now that this indecent laughter is over, tell me, sir, do you not know that Lord Bacon was the author of the plays contained in the folio volume?

I do not know it, and never until now have I heard a doubt cast upon the authorship of Shakespeare.

Did you never have any communication from Lord Bacon in respect of the publishing the folio volume?

Never. I never received a paper of any kind from him, nor did I communicate any portion of the manuscript to him.

Did not Mr. Benjamin Jonson bring you the manuscripts, or some of them, from which you printed?

“My lord, my lord!” said Jonson.

“Pray be quiet, Mr. Jonson, you will have your turn directly,” said the Judge.

He did not, nor did he touch any sheet of them. As I have told you, I never communicated with him until I spoke to him about writing some lines for the portrait.

Did not Mr. Jonson write the Dedication or Preface?

He wrote neither. Heminge and Condell wrote the Dedication, and the Address to the Readers they composed in consultation with myself.

Did you not receive money from some one in order to induce you to print the folio?

I did not. I looked to the sale, and the sale only, to recoup myself and my co-adventurers.

Re-examined.—I myself never touched the manuscripts, nor added a line to them. After they were in my [328]possession, Heminge and Condell never, to my knowledge, altered the manuscripts, nor did any one else.

I could, if necessary, have written a Dedication and the Address to the Readers. I wrote a work entitled “A Hospital for Incurable Fools.” I hope some day such hospital will be founded.

The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy; A Report of The Trial of an Issue in Westminster Hall, 20 June 1627. Read in the Inner Temple Hall, Thursday, May the 29th, 1902, by William Willis, Treasurer of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, pp. 15-16.

[329]

TO MY VERY GOOD FRIEND, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

[330]

• Addison, Joseph. Cato, 18, 23.
  • Compared with Shakespeare, 18.
  • His contemporary fame, 22.
  • Lines to. By William Somervile, and by John Hughes, 23.
  • The Spectator (No. 45), 278;
  • (No. 592), 84.
  • Voltaire’s opinion of, 18.
• Akenside, Mark. An Inscription, 105.
  • The Remonstrance of Shakespeare, 284.
• Among My Books. By James Russell Lowell, 174, 266.
• Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. By Walter Pater, 193.
• Argalus and Parthenia. By Francis Quarles. Possible allusion to Shakespeare in, 5 n.
• Armstrong, John. Of the Versification of English Tragedy, 100.
  • Of the Dramatic Unities, 100.
• Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism, 195.
  • Heine’s Grave, 265.
  • His Sonnet on Shakespeare, 29, 169.
  • His edition of Wordsworth’s Poems, 195.
• Art of English Poetry. By Edward Bysshe, 26 n.
• At the Mermaid. By Robert Browning, 31.
• Autumn Vision, An. By A. C. Swinburne, 201.
• B., A. Covent Garden Drollery, 69.
• Bab Ballads. By W. S. Gilbert, 318.
• Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, 145.
  • Compared with Shakespeare, 168, 316.
  • His supposed authorship of Shakespeare’s Works, v, 326.
• Bancroft, Thomas. To Shakespeare, from Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 57.
• Barnfield, Richard. A Remembrance of some English Poets, from Poems in Divers Humors, 36.
• Basse, William. On Mr. William Shakespeare, 40.
• Battaile of Agincourt, The. By Michael Drayton, 48.
• Baynes, Thomas Spencer. Article on “Shakespeare” in Encyclopædia Britannica, 207.
• Beaumont, Francis, 40, 42, 80.
• Beddoes, T. L. Lines written in Switzerland, 258.
• Betterton, Thomas, seen by Samuel Pepys as Macbeth, 63.
• Bickerstaff, Isaac. Queen Mab, 299.
• Biographia Literaria. By S. T. Coleridge, 130, 232.
• Blackmore, Sir Richard. His Creation, Johnson’s criticism of, 21.
• Blind, Mathilde. Shakespeare, from Shakespeare Sonnets, 213.
• Blount, Edward, 326-8.
• Blue-stocking Revels. By Leigh Hunt, 247.
• Boileau and Pope, 292.
• Boston, Shakespeare Jubilee at, 1824. Prize Ode by Charles Sprague, 142.
• Boswell, James, the elder. Life of Dr. Johnson, 94, 107.
• Boswell, James, the younger. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 20.
• Bowle, John. Miscellaneous Pieces of Ancient English Poetry, 26 n.
• Bowles, William Lisle. Monody on the Death of Dr. Warton, 228.
  • On Shakespeare, from Sonnets, with other Poems, 124.
• Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, 148.
• [332]Braybrooke, Lord. Samuel Pepys’ Diary and Correspondence, 62.
• Brooke, Stopford A. Life and Letters of Frederick William Robertson, 164.
• Browne, Felicia Dorothea, afterwards Mrs. Hemans. England and Spain, 229.
  • Shakespeare, 128.
• Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. A Vision of Poets, 252.
• Browning, Robert. At the Mermaid, 31.
  • Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 255.
  • The Names, 204.
• Burlington, Lord, 225.
• Butler, Samuel. The Court Burlesqu’d. Possible allusion to Shakespeare in, 5.
• Byron, Lord. Letter to Murray, 239.
• Bysshe, Edward. Art of English Poetry, 26 n.
• Caius Marius, a Tragedy. Otway’s Prologue to, 72.
• Canons of Criticism. By Thomas Edwards, 281, 303, 304 n.
• Capell, Edward. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 20, 107, 303, 304 n.
  • Johnson’s criticism of, 304 n.
• Caractacus. By William Mason, 101.
• Carlyle, Thomas. Chartism, 249.
  • Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 242, 249.
  • Essay on Corn Law Rhymes in Edinburgh Review, 158.
  • Goethe, 242.
  • The Hero as Poet, from On Heroes and Hero Worship, 157.
  • Shooting Niagara: and After? 264.
• Catalogue of Printed Books collected by Frederick Locker-Lampson, 198.
• Characteristics of English Poets. By William Minto, 189.
• Charge to the Poets, A. By William Whitehead, 109.
• Charles I. His influence on literature, 12.
  • His knowledge of Shakespeare, 7.
• Charles II. His influence on literature, 12.
• Chartism. By Thomas Carlyle, 249.
• Chaucer, Geoffrey, 40, 42.
• Christmas at the Mermaid. By Theodore Watts-Dunton, 325.
• Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. By Robert Browning, 255.
• Churchill, Charles. The Rosciad, 108.
• Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare. By W. S. Landor, 30.
• Coleridge, Hartley. To Shakespeare, 148.
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ix.
  • His achievement as an æsthetic critic, 28.
  • Biographia Literaria, 130, 232.
  • His general dislike of “Selections,” 131.
  • His influence on the poetry of the nineteenth century, 27.
  • Letters, 246.
  • Literary Remains, 28, 131.
  • His notes on The Tempest, 132 n.
  • Outline of an Introductory Lecture on Shakespeare, 232.
  • Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, 232.
  • Table Talk, 240, 243, 246.
• Collier, John Payne, 162.
• Collins, William. Verses addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, 92.
• Colman, George, 224.
  • Prose on several Occasions, 224.
  • His translation of Terence, 224.
• Combe, William. The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, 308.
• Coming of Love, The. By Theodore Watts-Dunton, 325.
• Condell, Henrie, and John Heminge. To the Great Variety of Readers, from the Shakespeare First Folio, 46.
• Conduct of Life. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 251.
• Congreve, William, 12, 114.
• Conjectures on Original Composition. By Edward Young, 104, 224.
• Connoisseur, The. Its attitude towards Shakespeare, 21.
• Cook, A. S. Leigh Hunt’s Imagination and Fancy, 250.
• Court Burlesqu’d, The. By Samuel Butler. Possible allusion to Shakespeare in, 5 n.
• Covent Garden Drollery. Collected by A. B., 69.
• [333]Covent Garden Theatre, Dr. Syntax in the pit of, 308.
• Creation, The. By Sir Richard Blackmore, 21.
• Crowne, John. Prologue to Henry the Sixth, 220.
• Cunningham, Peter. Letters of Horace Walpole, 99, 226, 305.
• Cymbeline, 148.
• Daniel, George. Vindication of Poesie, 58.
• D’Avenant, Sir William, 53.
  • His adaptations of Shakespeare’s Plays, 10.
  • Ode. In Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare, from Madagascar, 54.
  • His version of The Tempest, 67.
• Davies, John. “To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare,” from The Scourge of Folly, 38.
• Dennis, John. An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare, 82.
• De Quincey, Thomas. His article on “Pope” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 248.
  • His article on “Shakespeare” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 150, 248.
  • His criticism of Pope’s Preface, 87 n.
  • His misinterpretation of the allusion to Shakespeare in Milton’s Eikonoklastes, 8.
  • On the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, 30, 152 n.
  • Schlosser’s Literary History, 254.
• Dialogues of the Dead. By Lord Lyttelton, 292.
• Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, 62.
• Dibdin, J. B. Letter to, from Charles Lamb, 313.
• Digges, Leonard. To the Memory of the deceased Author, Maister W. Shakespeare: from the Shakespeare First Folio, 47.
• Dodsley, J. His Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 26 n., 123.
• Dowden, Edward. Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, 28, 190, 267.
• Dramatic Poesie, An Essay. By John Dryden, 67.
• Dramatic Poetry, An Essay on. By a Person of Honour, 74.
• Dramatic Race, The, 298.
• Dramatic Unities, Of the. By John Armstrong, 100.
• Drayton, Michael. To my most dearly-beloved friend Henery Reynolds, from The Battaile of Agincourt, 48.
• Dryden, John, 3, 10, 114.
  • His contemporary fame, 22.
  • Defence of the Epilogue, 68.
  • The first skilled critic of Shakespeare, 11.
  • His influence on eighteenth century literature, 13.
  • Of Dramatic Poesie, 66.
  • Prologue to The Tempest, 66.
  • Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, 67.
• Dyce, Alexander, 162.
• Dyer, George. Poetics, 231.
• Earth’s Holocaust. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 314.
• Edinburgh Review. Article by Carlyle in, 158.
  • Articles by Jeffrey in, 133, 230.
  • Articles by Macaulay in, 160, 245.
• Edwards, Thomas, 303, 304 n.
  • Canons of Criticism, 281.
• Edwin and Emma. By David Mallet, 24.
• Eikonoklastes. By John Milton. Allusion to Shakespeare in, 7.
• Elegie on the Death of the famous Writer and Actor, Mr. William Shakespeare, from Shakespeare’s Poems, 55.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Conduct of Life, 262.
  • Representative Men, 162, 251.
  • Shakespeare, or the Poet, 162.
• Encyclopædia Britannica, 150, 208, 248.
• England and Spain. By Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 229.
• Enthusiast, The. By Joseph Warton, 91.
• Epigrammes and Epitaphs. By Thomas Bancroft, 57.
• Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion. By John Weever, 37.
• Epigrams. By Samuel Sheppard, 59.
• [334]Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature. By William Watson, 270.
• Epitaph on a Tombstone of Shakespeare, 223.
• Essays, Critical and Imaginative. By John Wilson, 140.
• Essays in Criticism. By Matthew Arnold, 195.
• Euphrosyne. By Richard Graves, 225.
• Falstaff, 308.
• Farmer, Richard, 304 and n.
  • Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, 224.
• Fennell’s Shakespeare Repository, 40.
• Fenton, Elijah. An Epistle to Mr. Southerne, 80.
• Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire. By George Keate, 112.
• Fielding, Henry. A Journey from this World to the Next, 279.
• First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 6, 42, 45, 46, 47.
• Five Books of Song. By Richard Watson Gilder, 212.
• Fletcher, John, compared with Shakespeare, 66, 80, 92.
  • His “solecism of speech,” 68.
• Forman, H. Buxton. Works of John Keats, 138.
• Fors Clavigera. By John Ruskin, 273.
• Freeman, Thomas. To Master W. Shakespeare, from Runne, and a Great Caste, 39.
• Froude, James Anthony. Short Studies on Great Subjects, 167.
• Fuller, Thomas. The History of the Worthies of England, 61.
• Furnivall, Dr. Frederick James. The Leopold Shakspere, 192.
  • Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694, viii, 5.
• Fuseli, John Henry, 148.
• Garden Inscriptions. By William Thomson, 110.
• Garrick, David, 144.
  • His criticism of Johnson’s praise of Shakespeare, 94.
  • Epistle to. By Robert Lloyd, 106.
  • Shakespeare’s debt to, 106.
  • His connection with the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, 25.
  • His Shakespeare temple at Hampton, 26, 306-7.
  • Verses addressed to, 25.
  • Warwickshire: A Song, from Shakespeare’s Garland, 113.
• Gastrell, Rev. Dr. F., and Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, 10, 185.
• Genius and Writings on Shakespeare, An Essay on the. By John Dennis, 82.
• Genius of Shakespeare, To the. By James Hogg, 146.
• Gentleman’s Magazine, 223, 301.
• Gilbert, William Schwenck. An Unfortunate Likeness, from More Bab Ballads, 318.
• Gilder, Richard Watson. The Twenty-third of April, from Five Books of Song, 212.
• Goethe, Carlyle’s Essay on, 242.
  • Compared with Shakespeare, 158, 159.
• Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years. By J. R. Seeley, 272.
• Goldsmith, Oliver. A Reverie at the Boar’s Head Inn, 291.
• Graves, Richard. On Erecting a Monument to Shakespeare, from Euphrosyne, 225.
• Gray, Thomas. The Progress of Poesy, 102.
• Guardian, The. Its attitude towards Shakespeare, 20.
• Guesses at Truth. By Julius Charles Hare, 145.
• Hales, John. Quoted in Rowe’s edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 53.
• Hallam, Henry. Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, 155.
• Hamilton, William. A Soliloquy in Imitation of Hamlet, 24.
• Hamlet, 323.
  • Early æsthetic criticism of, 27.
• Hanmer, Sir Thomas. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 16, 93.
  • Verses addressed to. By William Collins, 92.
• Hare, Julius Charles. Guesses at Truth, 145.
• Hawkins, Sir John, 303, 304 n.
• [335]Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Earth’s Holocaust, from Mosses from an Old Manse, 314.
  • Our Old Home, 175.
  • On visiting Shakespeare’s house, 175.
• Hayley, William. A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter [George Romney], 120.
• Hazlitt, William, ix, 28.
  • Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, Jeffrey’s review of, 134.
  • On Dryden and Pope, 136.
  • Lectures on the English Poets, 135-7, 189, 234.
  • Round Table, The, 137.
  • On Shakespeare and Milton, 135, 234.
  • Table Talk, 237.
• Headley, Henry. Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, 26 n.
• Heine’s Grave. By Matthew Arnold, 265.
• Hemans, Felicia Dorothea. England and Spain, 229.
  • Shakespeare, 128.
• Heminge, John, and Henrie Condell. To the great Variety of Readers, from the Shakespeare First Folio, 46.
• Henry V. Performance of, witnessed by Samuel Pepys, 62.
• Henry VI., part I. John Crowne’s adaptation of, 220.
• Heroes and Hero Worship, On. By Thomas Carlyle, 157.
• Higden, Henry. The Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat, 75.
• History of England. By David Hume, 97.
• Hogg, James. To the Genius of Shakespeare, from Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd, 146.
• Holland, Hugh. Upon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenick Poet, Master William Shakespeare, from the Shakespeare First Folio, 45.
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 323.
  • Shakespeare Tercentennial Celebration, from Songs of Many Seasons, 177.
• Hood, Thomas. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, 241.
• Hospitall of Incurable Fooles, 328 and n.
• Hughes, John. Verses to Mr. Addison, 23.
• Hugo, Victor. Shakespeare, 10, 28.
  • On Shakespeare’s posthumous fame, 10.
• Hume, David. History of England, 97.
• Hunt, Leigh. Associations with Shakespeare from Table Talk, 166.
  • Blue-Stocking Revels, 247.
  • Thoughts on the Avon, 233.
  • What is Poetry? from Imagination and Fancy, 250.
• Hymn to the Moon. By D. M. Moir, 257.
• Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol. By William Whitehead, 24.
• Idea of a University, The. By John Henry Newman, 171.
• Idea of Comedy, On the. By George Meredith, 191.
• Imaginary Conversations. By Walter Savage Landor, 253, 316.
• Imagination and Fancy. By Leigh Hunt, 247.
• Imitations of Horace. By Alexander Pope, 221.
• Immortal Memory of Shakespeare, To the, 116.
• I. M. S. On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems, from the Shakespeare Second Folio, 50.
  • Coleridge’s conjecture as to the identity of, 7, 52 n.
• Ingleby, Dr. Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse, vii, 4.
• Inscription, An. By Mark Akenside, 105.
• In Shakespeare’s Walk. By William Thompson, 110.
• Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. By Henry Hallam, 155.
• James I. His influence on literature, 12, 13.
• Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 230.
  • His article on Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays in the Edinburgh Review, 133.
• Jennens, Charles, 303, 304 n.
• Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his attitude towards Shakespeare, 16.
  • His criticism of Capell’s Preface, 107.
  • [336]His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 17-18, 111.
  • His edition of British Poets, 21-22.
  • The effect of his judgment on contemporary thought, 19-20.
  • His indictment and defence of Shakespeare, 17-18.
  • His connection with the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, 25.
  • His Life. By James Boswell, 94, 107.
  • His position as a literary censor, 14.
  • His Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 1747, 94.
  • The Rambler, 111.
• Jonson, Ben, 74.
  • Compared with Shakespeare, 15, 53, 66, 69, 80, 92, 98, 104.
  • To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, from the Shakespeare First Folio, 42.
• Johnstone, ——. The Table Talker, 156.
• Journey from this World to the Next, A. By Henry Fielding, 279.
• Keate, George, Ferney: an Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire, 112.
• Keats, John. Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 236.
  • Notes on Troilus and Cressida, 138.
  • Sonnet on sitting down to read “King Lear” once again, 138.
• Kemble, Frances Anne. To Shakespeare, 183.
• Kid, Thomas, 43.
• King Lear, 145, 148, 214.
  • Nahum Tate’s “borrowings” from, 10.
  • Sonnet on sitting down to read it once again. By John Keats, 138.
• Knight, Charles. His history of opinion respecting Shakespeare, vii.
  • Studies of Shakespeare, vii.
• Lamb, Charles, ix.
  • Epilogue to an amateur performance of “Richard II.,” 144.
  • Letter to J. B. Dibdin, 313.
  • Letter to Samuel Rogers on portraits of Shakespeare, 148.
  • Works. Edited by E. V. Lucas, 144, 148, 313.
• Landor, Walter Savage.
  • Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, 30.
  • Imaginary Conversations, 253, 316.
  • On Shakespeare, 253.
  • Comparison between Shakespeare and Bacon, 316.
  • Shakespeare and Milton, from The lost Fruit off an old Tree, 170.
• Lansdowne, Lord, Epistle to. By Edward Young, 83.
• Learning of Shakespeare, Essay on the. By Richard Farmer, 224.
• Lectures on the English Poets. By William Hazlitt, 135-7.
• Lee, Sidney, and the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy, v.
  • Life of William Shakespeare, 215.
  • Shakespeare in Oral Tradition, 5.
• Leopold Shakspere, The. Edited by F. J. Furnivall, 192.
• Library of Old Authors. By James Russell Lowell, 173.
• Lily, William, 43.
• Lincoln, Abraham, 261.
• Lines written among the Euganean Hills. By P. B. Shelley, 235.
• Lines written in Switzerland. By T. L. Beddoes, 258.
• Literary Amusements. By Daniel Webb, 227.
• Lloyd, David. State Worthies, 13.
• Lloyd, Robert. The Progress of Envy, 288.
  • Shakespeare, an Epistle to Mr. Garrick, 25, 106.
• Locker-Lampson, Frederick. His copy of the 1602 Quarto of The Merry Wives of Windsor, 198.
• London Cuckolds, The. By Edward Ravenscroft. A performance of, criticised by Steele, 76.
• Lost Fruit off an old Tree, The. By Walter Savage Landor, 170.
• Love’s Labour’s Lost, 194.
  • Dryden’s criticism of, 68.
• Lowell, James Russell. Among My Books, 174, 266.
  • Library of Old Authors, 173.
  • On Shakespeare’s “artistic discretion” and the “impersonality” of his writings, 174.
• Lucas, E. V. Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, 144, 148, 313.
• [337]Lusiad, The. By William Julius Mickle, 119.
• Lyrical Ballads. By Wordsworth and Coleridge, 27.
• Lyttelton, George, Lord. Dialogues of the Dead, 292.
• Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord. The Souls of Books, 259.
• Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord, 295.
  • Essay on The Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay in the Edinburgh Review, 160.
• Macbeth, 145.
  • D’Avenant’s adaptation of, 10.
  • De Quincey on the knocking at the gate in, 30.
  • Performance of, described by Addison, 278.
  • Performances of, witnessed by Samuel Pepys, 62, 63.
• Mackay, Charles. Mist, from Under Green Leaves, 260.
• Madagascar. By Sir William D’Avenant, 54.
• Malone, Edmund. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 20.
• Mallet, David. Edwin and Emma, 24.
  • Of Verbal Criticism, 103.
• Mann, Sir Horace. Letter to, from Horace Walpole, 226.
• Marlowe, Christopher, 43.
• Mason, William. Caractacus, 101.
• Massey, Gerald. The Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 209.
• Masson, David. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays, 168.
• Merchant of Venice, The. The Connoisseur’s criticism of, 20.
• Meredith, George. On the Idea of Comedy, 191.
  • The Spirit of Shakespeare, from Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, 202.
• Meres, Francis. Palladis Tamia, 35.
• Merry Wives of Windsor. Manuscript note in 1602 Quarto of, 189.
• Mickle, William Julius. The Lusiad, 119.
• Midsummer Night’s Dream. Performance of, witnessed by Samuel Pepys, 62.
• Mighty Makers, The. By William Wetmore Story, 205.
• Milnes, Richard Monckton. Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, 138.
• Milton, John, 127.
  • Compared with Shakespeare, 131, 170.
  • Credited with authorship of verses signed I. M. S., 52.
  • Eikonoklastes, 7, 9.
  • An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare, from the Shakespeare Second Folio, 49.
  • L’Allegro, 9.
  • Mistaken conception of his attitude towards Shakespeare, 7-10.
  • His tributes to Shakespeare, 9-10.
• Minto, William. Characteristics of English Poets, 189.
• Miscellaneous Pieces of Ancient English Poetry. Collected by John Bowle, 26 n.
• Moir, D. M. Hymn to the Moon, 257.
  • Stanzas on an Infant, 257.
• Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon. By Thomas Warton, 121.
• Montagu, George. Letter to, from Horace Walpole, 99.
• Moore, Thomas. Life of Byron, 239.
• Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 314.
• Moulton, G. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 271.
• Much Ado About Nothing, 295.
• Mystery of Life and its Arts, The. By John Ruskin, 184.
• Names, The. By Robert Browning, 204.
• Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of. CCXI Sociable Letters, 64, 277.
• Newman, John Henry. The Idea of a University, 171.
• New Shakspere Society, 4.
• Northcote, James, 148.
• Opie, John, 148.
• Ossory, Countess of. Letter to, from Horace Walpole, 305.
• Othello, Disputed line in, 279.
  • Christopher Smart’s Prologue to, 96.
• Otway, Thomas, 114.
  • Prologue to The History and Fall of Caius Marius, 72.
• [338]Our Old Home. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 175.
• Palgrave, Francis Turner. Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, 181.
• Palladis Tamia. By Francis Meres, 35.
• Pater, Walter Horatio. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, 193.
• Pattison, William. His verses To Mr. John Saunders, 23.
• Pearch, G. His Supplement to Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 26 n.
• Pepys, Samuel. Diary and Correspondence, edited by Lord Braybrooke, 62.
• Percy, Bishop, 304 and n.
• Pericles. Dryden’s criticism of, 68.
• Phillips, Edward. Theatrum Poetarum, 10, 71.
• Philosophical Analysis of some of Shakespeare’s Remarkable Characters. By William Richardson, 117.
• Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, The. By Thomas Hood, 241.
• Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. By George Meredith, 202.
• Poems by Several Hands. Collected by J. Dodsley, 26 n.
  • Pearch’s Supplement to, 26 n.
• Poems Collected and Arranged anew. By Archbishop Trench, 180.
• Poems in Divers Humors. By Richard Barnfield, 36.
• Poems on Various Subjects. Collected by Thomas Tomkins, 26 n.
• Poet at the Breakfast Table, The. By Oliver Wendell Holmes, 323.
• Poetical Portraits. By “A Modern Pythagorean,” 244.
• Poetics. By George Dyer, 231.
• Pope, Alexander, 225.
  • And Boileau, 292.
  • His contemporary fame, 22.
  • His criticism and defence of Shakespeare, 14-16.
  • De Quincey’s criticism of, 87 n.
  • His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 15, 16, 85, 292.
  • Imitations of Horace, 221.
  • On Shakespeare’s learning, 15.
• Porson, Richard, and Robert Southey. Imaginary conversation. By W. S. Landor, 316.
• Porter, Endymion, 53.
• Progress of Envy, The. By Robert Lloyd, 288.
• Progress of Poesy, The. By Thomas Gray, 102.
• Prose on Several Occasions. By George Colman, 224.
• Quarles, Francis. Argalus and Parthenia, 5 n.
• Queen Mab. By Isaac Bickerstaff, 299.
• Quin, James, 308.
• Rambler, The. By Dr. Johnson, 111.
• Rape of Lucrece. Edward Phillips’ criticism of, 71.
• Raphael. His picture, The Transfiguration, 112.
• Ravenscroft, Edward. The London Cuckolds, A performance of, criticised by Steele, 76.
• Reflector, The, 231.
• Remonstrance of Shakespeare, The. By Mark Akenside, 284.
• Representative Men. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 162, 251.
• Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, 10-12.
• Reverie at the Boar’s Head Inn, A. By Oliver Goldsmith, 291.
• Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 148.
• Richardson, William. A Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare’s remarkable characters, 117.
• Robertson, Frederick William. Life and Letters, edited by Stopford A. Brooke, 164.
• Rogers, Samuel. Letter to, from Charles Lamb, 148.
• Romeo and Juliet, 145, 148.
  • Performance of, witnessed by Samuel Pepys, 62.
• Romney, George, 148.
  • Poetical Epistle to. By William Hayley, 120.
• Rosciad, The. By Charles Churchill, 108.
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. On the Site of a Mulberry Tree planted by W. Shakespeare, 185.
• [339]Rossetti, W. M. Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 185.
• Roubiliac. His statue of Shakespeare, 26, 307.
• Round Table, The. By William Hazlitt, 137.
• Rowe, Nicholas. Some Account of the life of William Shakespeare, 78.
  • On Shakespeare’s knowledge of the ancients, 78.
  • Shakespeare’s first editor, 16.
  • His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 53, 78.
• Rowfant Library Catalogue, 198.
• Runne, and a Great Caste. By Thomas Freeman, 39.
• Rupert, Prince. His knowledge of Shakespeare, 7.
• Ruskin, John. Fors Clavigera, 273.
  • The Mystery of Life and its Arts, 184.
• Saunders, John. William Pattison’s verses to, 23.
• Schlosser’s Literary History. De Quincey’s article on, 254.
• Schoolmistress, The. By William Shenstone, 24.
• Scott, Dr. Edward J. L. His discovery of allusions to Shakespeare in the Sloane Manuscripts, 5.
• Scott, Sir Walter. His article on “Drama” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 129.
• Scourge of Folly, The. By John Davies, 38.
• Seasons, The. By James Thomson, 88.
• Second Folio edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 7, 10, 49, 50.
• Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The. By Gerald Massey, 209.
• Sedley, Sir Charles. Prologue to The Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat, by Henry Higden, 75.
• Seeley, J. R. Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years, 217.
• Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry. Collected by Henry Headley, 26 n.
• Seward, Anna. On Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon, 123.
• Shaftesbury, Lord. His estimate of Shakespeare, 10.
• Shakespeare, William. His “artistic discretion,” 174.
  • His knowledge and use of the Bible, 176.
  • Compared with Addison, 18, 91.
  • Compared with Bacon, 168, 316.
  • Compared with Fletcher, 92.
  • Compared with Goethe, 158, 159.
  • Compared with Homer, 82.
  • Compared with Ben Jonson, 15, 53, 61, 69, 80, 92, 98, 104, 114.
  • Compared with Milton, 131, 170.
  • His creation of the fairy world, 83.
  • Debased by interpolations, 15, 103.
  • The effect of his genius on the taste of the nation, 129.
  • His epitaph in Stratford-on-Avon Church, viii, 41.
  • First Folio edition of his Works, 6, 42, 45, 46, 47.
  • History of opinion of, its division into periods, 3.
  • The “impersonality” of his writings, 155, 174.
  • Influence of eighteenth century research on his reputation, ix.
  • Jubilee celebration at Boston, 1824, 142.
  • His learning, 79, 224.
  • Life. By Sidney Lee, 216.
  • Life. By Nicholas Rowe, 78.
  • His monument in Westminster Abbey, 225.
  • As a “philosophical aristocrat,” 132 n.
  • Presentation of his plays on the stage, 10-12.
  • His Poems, 55.
  • Popular fallacies relating to his reputation, 6-12.
  • Was he influenced by posthumous fame? 137.
  • His use of prose, 195.
  • His reputation in the seventeenth century, 4-12;
    • in the eighteenth century, 12-26;
    • in the nineteenth century, 27-30.
  • Second Folio edition of his Works, 7, 10, 49, 50.
  • The “Shakespearean Show,” 1884, 204 n.
  • His “solecism of speech,” 68.
  • His statue in Central Park, New York, 186.
  • [340]The Stratford-on-Avon Jubilee, 25.
  • Tercentennial celebration, 177.
  • His time compared with that of Augustus, 72.
  • His neglect of the unities, 17, 18.
• Shakespeare, an Epistle to Mr. Garrick. By Robert Lloyd, 25.
• Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. By G. Moulton, 271.
• Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy, The. By Judge Willis, 326.
• Shakespeare in oral Tradition. By Sidney Lee, 5.
• Shakespeare’s Bedside, 301.
• Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse. By Dr. Ingleby, vii, 4.
  • Edited by L. Toulmin Smith, viii, 5.
• Shakespeare’s Garland, 113, 116, 298, 299, 301.
• Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible. By Bishop Charles Wordsworth, 176.
• Shakespeare Sonnets. By Mathilde Blind, 213.
• Shakspere: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art. By Edward Dowden, 28, 190, 267.
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Lines written among the Euganean Hills, 235.
• Shenstone, William. The Schoolmistress, 24.
• Sheppard, Samuel. In Memory of our Famous Shakespeare, from Epigrams, 59.
• Shooting Niagara: and After? By Thomas Carlyle, 264.
• Short Studies on Great Subjects. By James Anthony Froude, 167.
• Sloane Manuscripts, Allusions to Shakespeare in, 5.
• Smart, Christopher. Prologue to Othello, 96.
• Smith, L. Toulmin. Her edition of Ingleby’s Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse, viii, 5.
• Sociable Letters. By the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle, 64, 277.
• Soliloquy in Imitation of Hamlet. By William Hamilton, 24.
• Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 27.
• Somervile, William. Lines to Mr. Addison, 23.
• Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694. Edited by Dr. Furnivall, viii, 5.
• Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Edited by Francis Turner Palgrave, 181.
• Songs of many Seasons. By Oliver Wendell Holmes, 177.
• Sonnets.
  • By Matthew Arnold, 29, 169.
  • By Mathilde Blind, 213.
  • By Robert Browning, 204.
  • By Hartley Coleridge, 148.
  • By Richard Watson Gilder, 212.
  • By Thomas Freeman, 39.
  • By Hugh Holland, 45.
  • By John Keats, 138.
  • By George Meredith, 202.
  • By Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 185.
  • By Algernon Charles Swinburne, 29, 201.
  • By Archbishop Trench, 180.
  • By John Weever, 37.
  • By William Wordsworth, 127.
• Sonnets, with other Poems. By William Lisle Bowles, 124.
• Sonnets dedicated to Liberty. By William Wordsworth, 127.
• Souls of Books, The. By Lord Lytton, 259.
• Southerne, Mr., An Epistle to. By Elijah Fenton, 80.
• Southey, Robert, and Richard Porson. Imaginary conversation. By W. S. Landor, 316.
  • A Vision of Judgment, 238.
• Spectator, The, No. 45. By Joseph Addison, 278.
  • No. 592. By Joseph Addison, 84.
• Spenser, Edmund, 40, 42.
• Sprague, Charles. Prize Ode recited at the representation of the Shakespeare Jubilee at Boston, 1824, 142.
• Spirit of Shakespeare, The. By George Meredith, 202.
• Stanzas on an Infant. By D. M. Moir, 257.
• State Worthies. By David Lloyd, 13.
• Steele, Sir Richard. The Tatler, No. 8, 76.
• Steevens, George. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 20.
• Sterling, John. Shakespeare, 153.
• Sterne, Laurence. Yorick’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, 295.
• [341]Story, William Wetmore. The Mighty Makers, 205.
• Stratford-on-Avon. Lines on Shakespeare’s Monument at. By Anna Seward, 123.
  • Monody written near. By Thomas Warton, 121.
  • Shakespeare’s epitaph in the church at, viii, 41.
• Study of Shakespeare, A. By A. C. Swinburne, 28, 199, 201.
• Suckling, Sir John, 53.
• Swinburne, Algernon Charles. An Autumn Vision, 201 n.
  • A Study of Shakespeare, 28, 199, 201.
  • William Shakespeare, from Tristram of Lyonesse and other Poems, 29, 201.
• Symons, Arthur. Poetical Works of Mathilde Blind, 213.
• Table Talk. By S. T. Coleridge, 240, 243, 246.
• Table Talk. By William Hazlitt, 237.
• Table Talk. By Leigh Hunt, 166.
• Table Talker, The. By —— Johnstone, 156.
• Tancred and Sigismunda. James Thomson’s Prologue to, 222.
• Tate, Nahum. His “borrowings” from King Lear, 10.
• Tatler, The, No. 8. By Richard Steele, 76.
• Taylor, Bayard. Shakespeare’s Statue, Central Park, New York, 186.
• Tempest, The, 145.
  • Coleridge’s Note on, 132 n.
  • Dryden’s Prologue to, 66.
• Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, on King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline, 214.
  • Life and Works. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, 214.
• Tennyson, Hallam, Lord. Life and Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 214.
• Terence, George Colman’s translation of, 224.
• Theatrum Poetarum. By Edward Phillips, 10, 71.
• Theobald, Lewis. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 16, 89.
• Thomson, James. Prologue to Tancred and Sigismunda, 222.
  • The Seasons, 88.
• Thomson, William. In Shakespeare’s Walk, from Garden Inscriptions, 110.
• Thoughts on the Avon. By Leigh Hunt, 233.
• Tomkins, Thomas. Poems on Various Subjects, 26 n.
• Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, The. By William Combe, 308.
• Trench, Archbishop Richard Chevenix. Poems Collected and Arranged anew, 180.
• Tristram of Lyonesse and other Poems. By A. C. Swinburne, 201.
• Troilus and Cressida, Dryden’s Prologue to, 67.
• Twenty-third of April, The. By Richard Watson Gilder, 212.
• Two Worlds, The. By Richard Watson Gilder, 212.
• Under Green Leaves. By Charles Mackay, 260.
• Unfortunate Likeness, An. By W. S. Gilbert, 318.
• “Variorum” editions of Shakespeare’s Works, 20.
• Venus and Adonis. Edward Phillips’ criticism of, 71.
• Verbal Criticism, Of. By David Mallet, 103.
• Versification of English Tragedy, Of the. By John Armstrong, 100.
• Vindication of Poesie. By George Daniel, 58.
• Vision of Judgment, A. By Robert Southey, 238.
• Vision of Poets, A. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 252.
• Voltaire. His comparison of Shakespeare with Addison, 18.
  • An Epistle to. By George Keate, 112.
• Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford, 13.
  • Letters, 99, 226, 305.
• Warburton, Bishop William. His edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 95, 283.
  • On Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Ancients, 79.
• Warner, Richard, 303, 304 n.
• [342]Warton, Joseph, 303, 304 n.
  • The Enthusiast, 91.
  • Monody on the Death of. By W. L. Bowles, 228.
• Warton, Thomas. His misinterpretation of the Shakespeare allusion in Milton’s Eikonoklastes, 8.
  • Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon, 121.
• Wary Widdow, or Sir Noisy Parrat, The. By Henry Higden, 75.
  • Sir Charles Sedley’s Prologue to, 75.
• Watson, William. Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature, 270.
• Watts-Dunton, Theodore. Christmas at the Mermaid, from The Coming of Love, 325.
• Webb, Daniel. Literary Amusements, 227.
• Weever, John. Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare, from Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 37.
• West, Benjamin, 148.
• Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare’s Monument in, 225.
• Whitehead, Paul. Verses dropped in Mr. Garrick’s Temple of Shakespeare, 30.
• Whitehead, William. His Appreciation of Shakespeare, 24.
  • A Charge to the Poets, 109.
  • An Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol, 24.
• Whitman, Walt. On Shakespeare’s unacceptability to America and Democracy, 210.
  • Poetry to-day in America, 211.
• Willis, Judge William. The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy, 326.
• Wilson, John. A Few Words on Shakespeare, from Essays, Critical and Imaginative, 140.
• Winter’s Tale, The, 145, 214.
  • Dryden’s criticism of, 68.
• Wiseman, Cardinal. William Shakespeare, 179, 263.
• Witt’s Recreations, 219.
• Wordsworth, Bishop Charles. On Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible, 176.
• Wordsworth, Christopher. Memoirs of William Wordsworth, 159, 256.
• Wordsworth, William. His influence on the poetry of the nineteenth century, 27.
  • Memoirs. By Christopher Wordsworth, 159, 256.
  • Poems. Edited by Matthew Arnold, 196.
  • On Shakespeare and Goethe, 159.
  • His Sonnet, “It is not to be thought of,” 29, 127.
• Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays. By David Masson, 168.
• Worthies of England. By Thomas Fuller, 61.
• Wycherley, William, 12.
• Young, Edward. Conjectures on Original Composition, 104, 224.
  • Epistle to Lord Lansdowne, 83.
• Yorick’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. By Laurence Sterne, 295.