From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (Buffalo, NY: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 547-63. [This section was prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
GENERAL
And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock her selfe, and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deeded, and in dolour drent.
--SPENSER, EDMUND, 1591, The Teares of the Muses, Spenser's Works, ed. Collier, vol. iv, p. 335.
As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honeytongued Shakespeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis; his Lucrece; his sugared Sonnets, among his private friends; &c. 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 (Comedy of) Errors; his Love's Labour's Lost; his Love's Labour's Won (? All's Well that Ends Well) his Midsummer Night's Dream; and his Merchant of Venice. For tragedy: his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's 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. -- MERES, FRANCIS, 1598, Palladis Tamia.
Honie-tong'd Shekespeare when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features cloth'd in tissue,
Some heaven born goddesse said to be their mother:
Rose-cheekt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her.
Romea, Richard, more whose names I know not
Their sugred tongues and power attractive beuty
Say they are Saints, althogh that Sts. they shew not
For thousands vowes to them subjective dutie:
They burn in love, thy children Shakespear het the[m]
Go, wo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.
-- WEEVER, JOHN, 1599, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion.
Our English Terence. -- DAVIES, JOHN OF HEREFORD, 1611, The Scourge of Folly, Works, ed. Grosart, p. 26
Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;
I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses:
For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou didstst our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund'ring AEschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
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He was not of all age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme!
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
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Sweet Swan of Avon!
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Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight fro[m] hence, hath mourned like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.
-- JONSON, BEN, 1623, Shakespeare's Works, Preface.
And though you be a Magistrate of wit and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigns Playes dailie know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales, and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation. It had bone a thing we confesse, worthie to have bone wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writtings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and Paine to have collected cat publish'd them, and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived the[m]. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe 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 bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade your selves, and others. And such Readers we wish him. -- HEMINGE JOHN, AND CONDELL, HENRIE, 1623, First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Works, Ad- dress to the Reader.
Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and ring
You Britainnes brave; for done are Shakespeares dayes:
His dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,
Which make the Globe of heav'n and earth to ring.
Dry'de is that veine, dry'd is the Thespian Spring,
Turned all to teares, and Phoebus clouds his rayes:
That corp's, that coffin now besticke those bayes
Which crown'd him Poet first, then Poets King.
-- HOLLAND, HUGH, 1623 Prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Workes.
Shakespere thou hadst as smooth a Comicke vaine,
Fitting the socke, and in thy natural braine,
As strong conception, and as Cleere a rage,
As any one that trafiqu'd with the stage.
-- DRAYTON, MICHAEL, 1627, Of Poets and Poesie.
I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer bath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov'd the man and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any. Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, Caesar thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned. -- JONSON, BEN, 1630-37, Timber, or Discoveries.
What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an Age, in piled stones
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a starre-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What needst thou such dul1 witnesse of thy Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy selfe a lasting Monument:
For whil'st to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each part,
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke
Those Delphicke Lines with deepe Impression tooke
Then thou our fancy of her selfe bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving,
And so Sepulcher'd in such pompe dost lie
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.
-- MILTON, JOHN, 1630, An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare.
In a Conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eaton, and Ben Johnson, Sir John Suckling, who was a profess'd admirer of Shakespear, had undertaken his Defence against Ben Johnson 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 Antients, told him at last, "That if Mr. Shakespeare had not read the Antients, he had likewise not stollen any thing from 'em; [a fault the other made no Conscience of] and that if he would produce any one Topick finely treated by any of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same Subject at least as well written by Shakespear." -- HALES, JOHN, OF ETON, c 1633, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear, prefixed to the edition of his Works by Nicholas Rowe, 1709, vol. I, p xiv.
Thy Muses sugred dainties seeme to us
Like the fam'd Apples of old Tantalus:
For we (admiring) see and heare thy strains,
But none I see or heare, those sweets attaines.
-- BANCROFT, THOMAS, 1639, Two Bookes of Epigrammes, and Epitaphs, No. 118.
One asked another what Shakespeares workes were worth, all being bound together? hee answered, not a farthing: not worth a farthing, said he, why so? He answered, that his playes were worth a great deale of money, but he never heard that his workes were worth anything at all. -- CHAMBERLIN, ROBERT, 1640, Jocabella, or a Cabinet of Conceits.
In speaking of this we entred Loves Library, which was very spacious, and compleatly filled with great variety of Bookes of all faculties, and in all kindes of Volumes.... There was also Shakespeere, who (as Cupid informed me) creepes into the womens closets about bed time, and if it were not for some of the old out-of-date Grandames (who are set over the rest as their tutoresses) the young sparkish Girles would read in Shakespeere day and night, so that they would open the Booke or Tome, and the men with a Fescue in their hands should point to the Verse. -- JOHNSON, JOHN, 1641, The Academy of Love, pp. 96-99.
The Sweetest Swan of Avon, to ye faire
And Cruel Delia, passionatelie Sings:
Other mens wenkenesses and follies are
Honour and witt in him; each Accent brings
A Sprig to Crowne him Poet; and Contrive
A Monument, in his owne worke, to live.
-- DANIEL, GEORGE, 1647, Vindication of Poesie, ed. Grosart.
Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes
I' th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceanness call
And which made Bawdry pass for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his scurility.
-- CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM, 1647, Upon the Dramatick Poems of Mr. John Fletcher.
I wonder how that person you mention in your letter, could either have the conscience, or confidence to dispraise Shakespear's playes, as to say they were made up onely with clowns, fools, watchmen, and the like, but to answer that person though Shakespear's wit will answer for himself, I say, that it seems by his judging, or censuring, he understands not playes, or wit.... 'Tis harder, and requires more wit to express a jester, than a grave statesman; yet Shakespear 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 express'd in his playes all sorts of persons, as one would think he had been transformed into every one of those persons he hath described, and as sometimes one would think he was really himself the clown or jester he feigns so one would think, he was also the king, and privy-councillor; also as one would think he were really the coward he feigns, so one would think he were the most valiant and experienced souldier. -- CAVENDISH, MARGARET, 1664, CCXI Sociable Letters written by the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle Letter CXXIII.
But Shakespear's magic could not copyed be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he.
-- DRYDEN, JOHN, 1669, The Tempest, Prologue.
His comoedies will remaine witt as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum. Now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty yeares hence they will not be understood. Though, as Ben: Johnson says of him, that he had but little Latine and lesse Greek, he understood Latine pretty well, for he had been in his younger yeares a schoolmaster in the countrey. -- from Mr.... Beeston. -- AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. II, p. 227.
Shakespeare, who many times has written better than any poet, in any language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, belong the dullest writers of ours, or any precedent age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other. Let us therefore admire the beauties and the height of Shakespeare, without falling after him into a carelessness and, as I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together. -- DRYDEN, JOHN, 1672, An Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, vol. IV, pp. 236, 242.
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 oeconomie, 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 bath an unvulgar style, as well in his "Venus and Adonis," his "Rape of Lucrece, " and other various poems, as in his dramatics. -- PHILLIPS, EDWARD, 1675 Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, ed. Brydges, p. 240.
Shakespear was the first that opened this vein upon our stage, which has run so freely and so pleasantly ever since that I have often wondered to find it appear so little upon any others, being a subject so proper for them since humour is but a picture of particular life, as comedy is of general. -- TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 1680-90, Of Poetry, Works, vol. III, p. 412.
Our Shakespear wrote too in an age as blest,
The happiest poet of his time, and best,
A gracious Prince's favour chear'd his Muse,
A constant Favour he ne'er feared to lose.
Therefore he wrote with Fancy unconfin'd,
And Thoughts that were Immortal as his Mind.
And from the Crop of his luxuriant Pen
E'er since succeeding Poets humbly glean.
-- OTWAY, THOMAS, 1680, History and Fall of Caius Marius, Prologue.
I confess I cou'd never yet get a true account of his Learning, and am apt to think it more than Common Report allows him. I am sure he never touches on a Roman Story, but the Persons, the Passages, the Manners, the Circumstances, the Ceremonies, all are Roman. And what Relishes yet of a more exact Knowledge, you do not only see a Roman in his Heroe, but the particular Genius of the Man, without the least mistake of his Character, given him by their best Historians. You find his Anthony in all the Defects and Excellencies of his Mind, a Souldier, a Reveller, Amorous, sometimes Rash, sometimes Considerate, with all the various Emotions of his Mind. His Brutus agen has all the Constancy, Gravity, Morality, Generosity, Imaginable, without the least Mixture of private Interest or Irregular Passion. He is true to him, even in the imitation of his Oratory, the famous Speech which he makes him deliver, being exactly agreeable to his manner of expressing himself; of which we have this account, Facultas ejus erat Militaris & Bellicis accommodata Tumultubus. But however it far'd with our Author for Book-Learning, 'tis evident that no man was better studied in Men and Things, the most useful Knowledge for a Dramatic Writer. He was a most diligent Spie upon Nature, trac'd her through her darkest Recesses, pictur'd her in her just Proportion and Colours; in which Variety 'tis impossible that all should be equally pleasant, 'tis sufficient that all be proper. -- TATE, NAHUM, 1680, The Loyal General, a Tragedy, Address to Edward Tayler.
Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy Wit
Was framed and flnisht at a lucky hit!
The Pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools,
Born to Create, and Lot to Learn from Rules.
-- SEDLEY, SIR CHARLES, 1693, The Wary Widow, by Henry Higden, Prologue.
Besides some laudable Attempts which have been made with tolerable Success, of late years, towards a just manner of Writing, both in the heroick and familiar Style, we have older Proofs of a right Disposition in our People towards the moral and instructive Way. Our old dramatick Poet, Shakespear, may witness for, our good Ear and manly Relish. Notwithstanding his natural Rudeness, his unpolish'd Style, his antiquated Phrase and Wit, his want of Method and Coherence, and his Deficiency in almost all the Graces and Ornaments of this kind of Writings; yet by the Justness of his Moral, the Aptness of many of his Descriptions, and the plain and natural Turn of several of his Characters, he pleases his Audience, and often gains their Ear, without a single Bribe from Luxury or Vice. -- SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY, EARL OF, 1710, Advice to an Author, Characteristics, Works, vol. I, p. 275.
And yet in Shakespeare something still I find,
That makes me less esteem all human kind;
He made one nature, and another found,
Both in his page with master strokes abound:
His witches, fairies, and enchanted isle,
Bid us no longer at our nurses smile;
Of lost historians we almost complain,
Nor think it the creation of his brain,
Who lives, when his Othello's in a trance?
With his great Talbot too he conquer'd France.
-- YOUNG, EDWARD, 1712, An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.
Among the English [who have introduced fairies, witches, &c.] Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak, superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such beings in the world, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them. -- ADDISON, JOSEPH, 1712, Spectator, No. 419, July 1.
If ever any author deserved the name of an original, it was Shakespear. 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 Shakespear 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 Shakespear is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike; and 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 on I might have applied them with certainty to every speaker. The power over our passions was never possess'd in a more eminent decree. or displayed in so different instances. Yet all along there is seen no labour, no pains to raise them, no preparation to guide or guess to the effect, or be perceiv'd to lead towards it, but the heart swells, and the tears burst out, just at the proper places. We are surprised at the moment we weep, and yet upon reflection find the passion so just, that we should have been surprised if we had not wept, and wept at that very moment. -- POPE, ALEXANDER, 1725, ed. Shakspear's Plays, Preface, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. x, p. 534.
For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and Nature's boast?
-- THOMSON, JAMES, 1727, The Seasons, Summer, v. 1563-6.
Some ladies have strewn a truly public spirit in rescuing the admirable, yet almost forgotten Shakspeare, from being totally sunk in oblivion: -- they have contributed to raise a monument to his memory, and frequently honoured his work with their presence on the stage:-- an action which deserves the highest encomiums, and will be attended with an adequate reward; since, in preserving the fame of the dead bard, they add a brightness to their own, which will shine to late posterity. -- HAYWOOD, ELIZA, 1745, The Female Spectator, vol. I, p. 259.
There have been some ages in which providence seemed pleased in a most remarkable manner to display it self, in giving to the world the finest genius's to illuminate a people formerly barbarous. After a long night of Gothic ignorance, after many ages of priestcraft and superstition, learning and genius visited our Island in the days of the renowned Queen Elizabeth. It was then that liberty began to dawn, and the people having shook off the restraints of priestly austerity, presumed to think for themselves. At an AEra so remarkable as this, so famous in his story, it seems no wonder that the nation should be blessed with those immortal ornaments of wit and learning, who all conspired at once to make it famous. This astonishing genius, seemed to be commissioned from above, to deliver us not only from the ignorance under which we laboured as to poetry, but to carry poetry almost to its perfection. -- CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. I, p. 123.
Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face; the dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiled,
"This pencil take" (she said) "whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year;
Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;
Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."
-- GRAY, THOMAS, 1755, The Progress of Poesy.
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew
And looked through Nature at a single view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call'd into being scenes unknown before
And passing Nature's bounds, was something more.
-- CHURCHILL, CHARLES, 1761, The Rosciad, v. 264-70.
If Shakspere 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 they spectator rather than the reader, we can, more easily excuse, than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, and one enriched equally with a tragic and comic vein, but he ought to be cited as a proof, how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for attaining an excellence in the finer arts. And there may even remain a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic, on account of theirs being disproportioned and misshapen.-- HUME, DAVID, 1754-62, History of England, Reign of James I., Appendix.
This therefore is the praise of Shakspeare, that his drama is the mirror of life, that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in humans language by scenes from which a hermits may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. . . . The forces of his comic scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable at all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits are only superficial dyes, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre, but the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. Time, which is perpetually washing away the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes, without injuring the adamant of Shakspeare. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, ed. Shakspeare's Works, Preface.
Shakespeare . . . that first genius of the world . . . I hold a perfect comedy to be the perfection of human composition, and I firmly believe that fifty Iliads and AEneids could be written sooner than such a character as Falstaff's.... Shakspeare, who was superior to all mankind, wrote some whole plays that are as bad as any of our present writers.... Annibal Caracci himself could not paint like our Raphael poet! . . . Milton and . . . Shakspeare, the only two mortals I am acquainted with who ventured beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and preserved their intellects.... Was Raphael himself as great a genius in his art as the author of "Macbeth?" -- WALPOLE, HORACE, 1776-90, Letters, vol. VI, pp. 394, 395, VII 135, 373, VIII, 160, IX, 254.
The first object which presents itself to us on the English theatre, is the great Shakspeare. Great he may be justly called, as the extent and force of his natural genius, both for tragedy and comedy, are altogether unrivalled. But, at the same time, it is genius shooting wild; deficient in just taste, and altogether unassisted by knowledge or art. Long has he been idolized by the British nation; much has been said, and much has been written concerning him; criticism has been drawn to the very dregs, in commentaries upon his words and witticisms; and yet it remains, to this day, in doubt, whether his beauties, or his faults, be greatest. Admirable scenes, end passages without number, there are in his plays; passages beyond what are to be found in any other dramatic writer, but there is hardly any one of his plays which can be called altogether a good one, or which passions are to be expressed. In the can be read with uninterrupted pleasure from beginning to end. Besides extreme irregularities in conduct, and grotesque mixtures of serious and comic in one piece, we are often interrupted by unnatural thoughts, harsh expressions, a certain obscure bombast, and a play upon words which he is fond of pursuing; and these interruptions to our pleasure too frequently occur, on occasions when we would least wish to meet with them. All these faults, however, Shakspeare redeems, by two of the greatest excellencies which any tragic poet can possess, his lively and diversified paintings of character, his strong and natural expressions of passion. These are his two chief virtues on these his merit rests. -- BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures upon Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. Mills.
Shakespear whose writings are the offspring of an intuition that mocks description, that shames the schools, and that ascertains sublimity, whose knowledge of human nature was profound, penetrating and infallible; whose morality and philosophy confirm all that was good and wise in the ancients; whose words are in our mouths, and their irresistible influence in our hearts; whose eulogium may be felt but cannot be expressed, and whose own pen alone was equal to the composition of his epitaph: this Shakespear in the mouths of his fellow creatures is more known for a few inconsiderable blemishes, sprung from redundant fancy and indispensable conformity, than for innumerable beauties, delightful as truth, and commanding as inspiration. -- DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 15.
I proceed now to the mention of Shakespear, a writer whom no ingenuous English reader can recollect without the profoundest esteem and the most unbounded admiration. His gigantic mind enabled him in a great degree to overcome the fetters in which the English language was at that period bound. In him we but rarely trace the languid and tedious formality which at that time characterized English composition. His soul was too impetuous and his sympathy with human passions too entire, not to instruct him in the shortest road to the heart. But Shakespear for the most part is great only, when great passions are to be expressed. In the calmer and less turbid scenes of life his genius seems in a great degree to forsake him. His wit is generally far fetched, trivial and cold. His tranquil style is perplexed, pedantical, and greatly disfigured with conceits. -- GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, Of English Style, The Enquirer, p. 388.
There are beauties of the first order to be found in Shakspeare, relating to every country and every period of time. His faults are those which belonged to the times in which he lived. . . . If he excelled in exciting pity; what energy appeared in his terror! It was from the crime itself that he drew dismay and fear. It may be said of crimes painted by Shakspeare, as the Bible says of Death, that he is the KING OF TERRORS. . . . One of the greatest faults which Shakspeare can be accused of, is his want of simplicity in the intervals of his sublime passages. When he is not exalted, he is affected; he wanted the art of sustaining himself, that is to say, of being as natural in his scenes of transition, as he was in the grand movements of the soul. -- STAEL, MADAME DE, 1800, The Influence of Literature upon Society, ch. xiii.
The admirers of the tragic and comic genius of the English poet seem to me to be much deceived when they applaud the naturalness of his style. Shakspeare is natural in his sentiments and ideas, never in his expressions, except in those fine scenes where his genius rises to its highest flight; yet in those very scenes his language is often affected; he has all the faults of the Italian writers of his time he is eminently wanting in simplicity. His descriptions are inflated, distorted they betray the badly-educated man, who, not knowing the gender, nor the accent, nor the exact meaning of cords, introduces poetic expressions at hap-hazard into the most trivial situations. -- CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANCOIS RENE, VICOMTE DE, 1801, Skakspere ou Shakspeare.
The claims of this great poet on the admiration of mankind are innumerable, but rhythmical modulation is not one of them; nor do I think it either wise or just to hold him forth as supereminent in every quality which constitutes genius. Beaumont is as sublime, Fletcher as pathetic, and Jonson as nervous. Nor let it be accounted poor or niggard praise to allow him only an equality with these extraordinary men in their peculiar excellencies, while he is admitted to possess many others, to which they made no approaches. Indeed if I were asked for the discriminating quality of Shakespeare's mind, that by which he is raised above all competition, above all prospect of rivalry, I should say it was WIT. -- GIFFORD, WILLIAM, 1805-13, Plays of Massinger, Introduction.
In regard to the pathos, Shakespear is greatly inferior to many dramatic poets. In the terrific and sublime he is unequalled, but he does not possess the power of Otway, and many inferior poets, in exciting pity. He is pre-eminent in "unlocking the gates of horror and thrilling fears," but not so "in opening the sacred source of sympathetic tears." -- PYE, HENRY JAMES, 1807, Comments on the Commentators on Shakespear, I. xii.
Let princes o'er their subject kingdoms rule,
'Tis Shakespeare's province to command the soul!
To add one leaf, oh, Shakespeare! to thy bays,
How vain the effort, arid how mean my lays!
Immortal Shakespeare ! o'er thy hallowed page,
Age becomes taught, and youth is e'en made sage.
-- BONAPARTE, PRINCE LUCIEN, 1810, Written in the Visitors' Book at Stratford.
Let any one compare the prodigious variety, and wide-ranging freedom of Shakespeare, with the narrow round of flames, tempests, treasons, victims, and tyrants, that scantily adorn the sententious pomp of the French drama, and he will not fail to recognise the vast superiority of the former, in the excitement of the imagination, and all the diversities of poetical delight. -- JEFFREY, FRANCIS, 1811-44, Ford's Works, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, vol. II, p. 297.
. . . the magic of that name
Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame.
-- BYRON, LORD, 1812, Address Spoken at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre.
The English stage might be considered equally without rule and without models when Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare. 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, Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare used . -- SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1814-23, Essay on the Drama, Prose Works.
If intelligence and penetrating depth of observation, as far as they are necessary to the characterizing of life, were the first of poetic qualities, hardly any other poet could enter into competition with him. Others have sought to transport us, for a moment, to an ideal condition of humanity: he presents us with a picture of man in the depths of his fall and moral disorganization, with all his doings and sufferings, his thoughts and desires, with a painful minuteness. In this respect he may almost be called a satirist, and well might the complicated enigma of existence, and of man's degradation, as set forth by him, produce a deeper and more lasting impression than is made by a host of splenetic caricaturists, who are called satiric poets. But throughout his works there is a radiant reminiscence of man's pristine dignity and elevation; from which immorality and meanness are an abnormal apostasy: and on every occasion this reminiscence, united to the poet's own nobility of soul and tender feeling, beams forth in patriotic enthusiasm, sublime philanthrophy, and glowing love.... In the works of Shakspere a whole world is unfolded. Whosoever has comprehended this, and been penetrated with the spirit of his poetry will hardly allow the seeming want of form, or, rather, the form peculiar to his mighty genius, nor even the criticism of those who have misconceived the poet's meaning, to disturb his admiration, as he progresses he will, rather, approve the form as both sufficient and excellent in itself, and in harmonious conformity with the spirit and essence of his art. Shakspere's poetry is, upon the whole, near akin to the German spirit: hence he is appreciated in Germany more than any other foreign poet, and regarded with almost native affection. -- SCHLEGEL, FREDERICK, 1815-59, Lectures on the History of Literature, pp. 274, 276.
It is the peculiar excellence of Shakespear's heroines, that they seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespear: no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise: no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 3.
. . . divinest Shakeespere's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged 'mid mortality.
-- SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, 1818, Lines written among the Euganean Hills.
Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakspere! Myriad-minded, indeed, he was! -- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed. Ashe, p. 251.
Regardless of immortalizing his name, he who had penetrated the most hidden stores of Nature, he who had studied man in all his various capacities and failings; he to whom the retrospect of all that had been seemed familiar, and who, as it were, looked into the very soul of time, and read futurity, yet would not see his own greatness beyond mortality, but suffered the hand of ignorance to plant sickly weeds among his ever-blooming flowers and which the unabated exertions of genius, for more than a century, have not been able totally to destroy. -- JACKSON, ZACHARIAH, 1819, Shakspear's Genius Justified, Preface, p. v.
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 men, and lived for mankind. His genius, universal in intellect and sympathy, 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 shades 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 any thing 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 our writers, who first exhibited on the stage perfect models, perfect images of all human characters, and of 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. All the rest of our drama may be regarded rather as a testimony of the state of genius -- of the state of mind of the country, full of great poetical disposition, and great tragic capacity and power -- than as a collection of the works of an art. Of Shakespeare and Homer alone it may be averred, that we miss in them nothing of the greatness of nature. In all other poets we do; we feel the measure of their power, and the restraint under which it is held; but in Shakespeare and in Homer, all is free and unbounded as in nature, and as we travel along with them, in a car drawn by celestial steeds, our view seems ever interminable as before, and still equally far off the glorious horizon. -- WILSON, JOHN 1819, A Few Words on Shakespeare, Works, vol. VII, p. 420.
Ever since I have been able to think and feel, I have recognized Shakspere as the first among all poets; the richest and deepest, the most instructive and delightful, the most mysterious and the clearest, and to whom I devoted myself with ever new reverence and love.... In Shakspere, poetry, virtue, truth, life, and history is altogether one: he is therefore not only a great poet in the usual sense of the word, but also for every thinking being an instructive author, the best expounder of the scriptural text, "the earth, is everywhere the Lord's." -- HORN, FRANZ, 1822, Shakspeer's Schauspiele Erlautert, Prefaces.
O mighty poet! Thy works are not, as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature -- like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing, useless or inert, but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident! -- DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 1823-60, On The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, Works, ed. Masson, vol. x, p. 393.
"A dramatic talent of any importance," said Goethe, "could not forbear to notice Shakspeare's works, nay, could not forbear to study them. Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakspeare has already exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage only to put pen to paper, if one were conscious in an earnest appreciating spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellences were already in existence! It fared better with me fifty years ago in my own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went in my own natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of epoch after epoch. And at every step of life and development, my standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such step I was able to attain. But had I been born an Englishman, and had all those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power, at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had to bethink myself, and look about for a long time, to find some new outlet." -- ECKERMANN, JOHN PETER, 1824, Conversations of Goethe, tr. Oxford, v. I, p. 114.
While he abandons himself to the impulse of his imagination, his compositions are not only the sweetest and the most sublime, but also the most faultless that the world has ever seen. But as soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to the level of Cowley or rather he does ill what Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elaborately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing wanting to make them perfect was, that he should never have troubled himself with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and laborious flight." His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar, it is only necessary that he should not struggle to fall. He resembled the American cacique, who, possessing in unmeasured abundance the metals which in polished societies are esteemed the most precious, was utterly unconscious of their value, and gave up treasures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other countries, to secure some gaudy and far-fetched but worthless bauble, a plated button, or a necklace of coloured glass. -- MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1826, Dryden, Edinburgh Review, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.
An immortal man, --
Nature's chief darling, an illustrious mate,
Destined to foil old Death's oblivious plan,
And shine untarnished by the fogs of Fate,
Time's famous rival tin the final date!
-- HOOD, THOMAS, 1828, The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, S. cv.
I rejoice that the name of no one woman is popularly identified with that of Shakspeare. He belongs to us all!- the creator of Desdemona, and Juliet and Ophelia, and Imogen, and Viola, and Constance, and Cornelia, and Rosalind, and Portia, was not the poet of one woman but the POET OF WOMANKIND.-- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL 1829, The Loves of the Poets, vol. I, p. 218.
O thou divine human creature -- greater name than even divine poet or divine philosopher -- and yet thou west all three -- a very spring and vernal abundance of all fair and noble things is to be found in thy productions! They are truly a second nature. We walk in them, with whatever society we please; either with men, or fair women, or circling spirits, or with none but the whispering airs and leaves. Thou makest worlds of green trees and, gentle natures for us, in thy forests of Arden, and thy courtly retirements of Navarre. Thou bringest us amongst the holiday lasses on the green sward; layest us to sleep among fairies in the bowers of midsummer, wakest us with the song of the lark and the silver-sweet voices of lovers: bringest more music to our ears, both from earth and from the planets, anon settest us upon enchanted islands, where it welcomes us again, from the touching of invisible instruments, and after all, restores" us to our still desired haven, the arms of hurt inanity. Whether grieving us or making us glad, thou makest us kinder and happier. The tears which thou fetchest down, are like the rains of April, softening the times that come after them. Thy smiles are those of the month of love, the more blessed and universal for the tears. -- HUNT, LEIGH, 1833, The Indicator, ch. xxxvi.
Great poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny
Or the firm fatal purpose of the heart
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.
-- COLERIDGE, HARTLEY, 1833, To Shakespeare.
The piece which he* [i.e., Mason] composed upon what he called "the old English model," lay by him some thirty years, and was not published till towards the close of his life. He was the only person in those days who ventured to follow our old dramatists, for the revival of Shakespeare's plays upon the stage produced no visible effect upon contemporary play-wrights. But when Garrick had made the name of Shakespeare popular, a race of Shakespearean commentators arose, who introduced a sort of taste for the books of Shakespeare's age; and as they worked in the rubbish, buried treasures, of which they were not in search, were brought to light, for those who could understand their value. Thus, though in their cumbrous annotations, the last labourer always added more rubbish to the heaps which his predecessors had accumulated, they did good service by directing attention to our earlier literature. The very homage which they paid to Shakespeare tended to impress the multitude with an opinion of the paramount importance of his works, and a belief in excellencies of which they could have no perception. They who had any books for show considered Shakespeare, from this time, as a necessary part of the furniture of their shelves. Even the Jubilee, and its after representation at the theatres contributed to confirm this useful persuasion. Thousands who had not seen one of his plays, nor read a line of them. heard of Shakespeare, and understood that his name was one of those of which it became Englishmen to be proud. -- SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, vol. I, p. 338.
But the high spirit that sleepeth here below,
More than all beautiful and stately things,
Glory to God, the mighty Maker, brings;
To whom alone 'twas given the bounds to know
Of human action, and the secret springs
Whence the deep streams of joy and sorrow flow
-- ALFORD, HENRY, 1837, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Shakspere was, and is, beyond all comparison, the greatest Poet that the world has ever seen. He is greatest in general power, and greatest in style, which is a symbol or evidence of power. . . . He was not a mere poet in the vulgar sense of the term. . . . On the contrary, he was a man eminently acute, logical, philosophical. His reasoning faculty was on a par with his imagination, and pervaded all his works as completely. . . . We hold him to have been not one, but legion; and we think that in all the cases where critics have attempted to distinguish him by any one particular excellence of intellect, they have failed. . . . His great merit, as it appears to us, is that he had no peculiar, no prominent merit: his mind was so well constituted, so justly and admirably balanced, that it had nothing in excess. -- PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER, 1838, ed. Works of Ben Jonson, Preface.
Even as Jesus Christ impressed this son of Hamonia, so am I impressed by William Shakespeare. I grow desperate when I reflect that after all he is an Englishman, belonging to that most odious nation which God in his anger created.--HEINE, HEINRICH, 1838-95, Notes on Shakespeare Heroines, tr. Benecke, p. 9.
Shakspeare's learning, whatever it was, gave him hints as to sources from which classical information was to be drawn. The age abounded in classical translations; it also teemed with public pageants, and Allegory itself might be said to have walked the streets. He may have laughed at the absurdity of many of those pageants, but still they would refresh his fancy. Whether he read assiduously or carelessly, it should be remembered that reading was to him not of the vulgar benefit that it is to ordinary minds. Was there a spark of sense or sensibility in any author, on whose works he glanced, that spark assimilated to his soul, and it belonged to it as rightfully as the light of heaven to the eye of the eagle. -- CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1838, ed. Shakspeare's Plays, Moxon ed., Life.
This poet, so often sneered at as a frantic and barbarous writer is, above all, remarkable for a judgment so high, so firm, so uncompromising, that one is almost tempted to impeach his coldness, and to find in this impassible observer something that may be almost called cruel towards the human race. In the historical pieces of Shakspere, the picturesque, rapid, and vehement genius which has produced them seems to bow before the superior law of a judgment almost ironical in its clearsightedness. Sensibility to impressions, the ardent force of imagination, the eloquence of passion -- these brilliant gifts of nature, which would seem destined to draw a poet beyond all limits, are subordinated in this extraordinary intelligence to a calm and almost deriding sagacity, which pardons nothing and forgets nothing. Thus, the dramas of which we speak are painful as real history. AEschylus exhibits to us Fate hovering over the world; Calderon opens to us heaven and hell as the last words of the enigma of life; Voltaire renders his drama an instrument for asserting his own peculiar doctrines; -- but Shakspere seeks his Fate in the hearts of men, and when he makes us see them so capricious, so bewildered, so irresolute, he teaches us to contemplate, without surprise, the untoward events and sudden changes of fortune. In the purely poetical dramas to which this great Poet has given so much verisimilitude, we console ourselves in believing that the evils which he paints are imaginary, and that their truth is but general. But the dramatic chronicles which Shakspere has sketched are altogether real. -- CHASLES, PHILARÈTE, 1838, Dictionnaire de la Conversation et de la Lecture, vol. XLX.
The protagonist on the great arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human intellect. . . . After this review of Sbakspeare's life, it becomes our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of his intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, -- a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favourable suffrages, as by acclamation; not so much by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere seek for his works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave them as they do their daily bread; not so much by eulogy openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us; not so much by his own compatriots, who, with regard to almost every other author, compose the total amount of his effective audience, as by the unanimous "All hail!" of intellectual Christendom; finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same modes of feeling and of thinking with himself, but by the solemn award of generation succeeding to generation, of one age correcting the obliquities or peculiarities of another; by the verdict of two hundred and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty-seven years if we date from the earliest, a verdict which has been continually revived and reopened, probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and great ignorance could suggest when co-operating with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities; a verdict, in short, sustained and countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient or modern, Pagan or Christian. -- DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 1838-63, Shakspeare, Works, ed. Masson, vol. IV, pp. 17, 69.
Amid the sights and tales of common things,
Leaf, dower, and bird, and wars, and deaths of kings
Of shore and sea, and nature's daily round,
Of life that tills, and tombs that load the ground,
His visions mingle, swell, command, pace by,
And haunt with living presence, heart and eye.
And tones from him by other bosoms caught
Awaken flush and stir of mounting thought;
And the long sigh, and deep, impassioned thrill
Rouse custom's trance, and spur the faltering will.
Above the goodly land, more his than ours,
He sits supreme, enthroned in skyey towers,
And sees the heroic brood of his creation
Teach larger life to his ennobled nation.
-- STERLING, JOHN, 1839, Shakespeare.
Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone! This King Shakespeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever ? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another: "Yes this Shakespeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him. " -- CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1840, The Hero as Poet, Heroes and Hero-Worship.
It is hard to speak of Shakespeare; these measures of the statures of common poets fall from our hands when we seek to measure him: it is harder to praise him. Like the tall plane-tree which Xerxes found standing in the midst of an open country, and honoured inappropriately with his "barbaric pomp," with bracelets and chains and rings suspended on its branches, so has it been with Shakespeare. A thousand critics have commended him with praises as unsuitable as a gold ring to a plane-tree. A thousand hearts have gone out to him, carrying necklaces. -- BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1842-63, The Book of the Poets, p. 151.
If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they are perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all time, and this it is, not because Shakespere sought to give universal truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant enough, -- a rogue in the fifteenth century being, at heart, what a rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth, and an honest or knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore, always universal; not because it is not portrait, but because it is complete portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages: and the work of the mean idealists is not universal, not because it is portrait, but because it is half portrait, of the outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does for all time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any other perfectly great man that I know of. -- RUSKIN, JOHN, 1843-60, Modern Painters, pt. iv, ch. vii.
It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead, -- equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more as they are not intended for consolation. -- THOREAU, HENRY DAVID, 1843, Familiar Letters, ed. Sanborn, p. 50.
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world: O eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!
-- BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1844, A Vision of Poets.
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-hononr'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. -- Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
-- ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 1848, Shakespeare.
Our poet's mask was impenetrable. You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now, for he is the father of German literature: it was with the introduction of Shakespeare into German, by Lessing, and the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel, that the rapid burst of German literature was most intimately connected. It was not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. Now, literature, philosophy and thought, are Shakspearized. His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. . . . Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare, and even he can tell nothing except to the Shakspeare in us, that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. . . . He was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. Had he been less, we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good a dramatist he was, -- and he is the best in the world. . . . He wrote the airs for all our modern music: he wrote the text of modern life, the text of manners: he drew the man of England and Europe, the father of the man in America; he drew the man, and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on the eye. And the importance of this wisdom of life sinks the form as of Drama or Epic, out of notice. 'Tis like making a question concerning the paper on which a king's message is written. No recipe can be given for the making of a Shakspeare; but the possibility of the translation of things into song is demonstrated. -- EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 1850-76, Shakspeare, or, the Poet; Representative Men, Works, Riverside ed., vol. IV, pp. 194, 198, 200, 201, 204.
I have read and studied our great dramatist for nearly half a century; and if I could read and study him for half a century more, I should yet be far from arriving at an accurate knowledge of his works, or an adequate appreciation of his worth. He is an author whom no man can read enough, nor study enough. -- COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE, 1853, Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays, Introduction.
. . . like Shakespeare . . .
To reach the popular heart through open ways;
To speak for all men; to be wise and true,
Bright as the noon-time, clear as morning dew,
And wholesome in the spirit and the form.
-- MACKAY, CHARLES, 1855, Mist.
. . . wide as Shakespeare's soul, . . .
-- DOBELL, SYDNEY, 1855, Sonnets of the War.
I doubt whether Shakspeare ever had any thought at all of making his personages speak characteristically. In most instances, I conceive, -- probably in all, -- he drew characters correctly because he could not avoid it; and would never have attained, in that department, such excellence as he has, if he had made any studied efforts for it. And the same, probably, may be said of Homer, and of those other writers who have excelled the most in delineating characters. Shakspeare's peculiar genius consisted chiefly, I conceive, in his forming the same distinct and consistent idea of an imaginary person that an ordinary man forms of a real and well-known individual. We usually conjecture pretty accurately, concerning a very intimate acquaintance, how he would speak or act on any supposed occasion; if any one should report to us his having done or said something quite out of character, we should at once be struck with the inconsistency, and we often represent to ourselves, and describe to others, without any conscious effort, not only the substance of what he would have been likely to say, but even his characteristic phrases and looks. Shakspeare could no more have endured an expression from the lips of Macbeth inconsistent with the character originally conceived, than an ordinary man could contribute to his most respectable acquaintance the behaviour of a ruffian, or to a human being the voice of a bird, or to a European the feature and hue of a negro. Merely from the vividness of the original conception, characteristic conduct and language spontaneously suggested themselves to the great dramatist's pen. He called his personages into being, and left them, as it were, to speak and act for themselves. Slender, and Shallow, and Aguecheek, as Shakspeare has painted them, though equally fools, resemble one another not more than Richard, and Macbeth, and Julius Caesar. -- WHATELY, RICHARD, 1856, Bacon's Essays.
We have the country justice of the time (Shallow), the small country gentlemen (Ford and Page); the young country gull (Aguecheek); the fool (Touchstone); the town gallant (Mercutio), the court gallant (Benedict); the waiting-woman (Maria); the steward (Malvolio), the serving-man (Peter); the page (Robin); the housekeeper (Mrs. Quickly); the statesman (Polonius); the fop (Osrick); the tinker (Sly); the pedlar (Autolycus); the weaver (Bottom), the merchant (Antonio): the village pedant (Holofernes); the malcontent (Jacques), the usurer (Shylock), the tavern wit (Falstaff); the disbanded soldier (Parolles); the town doctor (Caius); the hedge priest (Sir Oliver), the landlord (of the Garter); the drawer (Francis); besides 'prentices, cooks, musicians, nurses, thieves, carriers,--all of the age in which he lived. He quotes the ballads of his day: "Jephtha and his Daughter ;" "The King and the Beggar;" "The Humour of Forty Fancies ," "Fire, fire, Jack boy, ho boy." His domestic scenery is that of his own house: the rushes are strewed, the jacks and jills cleaned, the carpets laid, and the serving-men in new fustian and white stockings -- their blue coats brushed, and their hair sleek combed: he has ivory coffers with Turkey cushions bossed with pearl, arras of purple, and valance of Venice. -- THORNBURY, GEORGE, WALTER, 1856, Shakspere's England, vol. II. p. 36.
. . . th' accepted King
Of all earthly minstrelling
Crowned with homely Avon lilies,
As his regal way mid will is.
-- ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN, 1856, Alla Mano Della Mia Donna.
The influence of Shakespeare on the French stage touches at a multitude of points; it appears, not in a simple sketch of the authors who have imitated or translated Shakespeare, not in a dry list of names, but by an accurate analysis of it; that is to say, by a philosophic history of whatsoever has helped to diffuse it, or of whatsoever has been inspired by it, a vast subject, doubtless, since the example of Shakespeare has prompted, whether directly or indirectly, almost all the theories and almost all the works of the modern drama. The analysis, therefore, of the influence of Shakespeare comprises the history both of the form and of the theory of the Drama, and, up to a certain point, the history of dramatic criticism in France during nearly two centuries; two centuries fruitful, indeed, in attempts and results, and the subject opens and spreads the farther we advance. . . . The theatre of Shakespeare is the most perfect that the world has yet seen. It will continue to be a study for dramatic authors of all ages, and all will find in it the very nutriment for an artistic education -- an education which will be developed unconsciously, so to speak, by the study of all the emotions that can stir the heart, of all the loftiest thoughts that can elevate the soul. The influence of Shakespeare upon the French stage has been profoundly salutary. -- LACROIX, ALBERT, 1856, Historie de l'Influence de Shakespeare sur le Theatre Francais, p. 338.
Only Shakespeare wrote comedy and tragedy with truly ideal elevation and breadth. Only Shakespeare had that true sense of humor which, like the universal solvent sought by the alchemists, so fuses together all the elements of a character, (as in Falstaff,) that any question of good or evil, of dignified or ridiculous, is silenced by the apprehension of its thorough humanity. Rabelais shows gleams of it in Panurge; but, in our opinion, no man ever possessed it in an equal degree with Shakespeare, except Cervantes; no man has since shown anything like an approach to it, (for Moliere's quality was comic power rather than humor,) except Sterne, Fielding, and perhaps Richter. 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 veri-similar 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, not to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. -- LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1858, 64-90, Library of Old Authors, Prose Works, Riverside ed., p. 278.
Shakespeare, indeed, in his transcendently beautiful embodiments of feminine excellence, the most exquisite creations in literature, passed into a region of sentiment and thought, of ideals and of ideas altogether higher and more supernatural than that region in which he shaped his delicate Ariels and his fairy Titanias. The question has been raised whether sex extends to soul. However this may be decided, here is a soul, with its records in literature, who is at once the manliest of men, and the most womanly of women; who can not only recognize the feminine element in existing individuals, but discern the idea, the pattern, the radiant genius, of womanhood itself, as it hovers unseen by other eyes, over the living representatives of the sex. Literature boasts many eminent female poets and novelists, but not one has ever approached Shakespeare in the purity, the sweetness, the refinement, the elevation, of his perceptions of feminine character, -- much less approached him in the power of embodying these perceptions in persons. These characters are so thoroughly domesticated on the earth, that we are tempted to forget the heaven of invention from which he brought them. The most beautiful of spirits, they are the most tender of daughters, lovers, and wives. They are "airy shapes," but they "syllable men's names." Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia, Viola, Perdita, Miranda, Desdemona, Hermione, Portia, Isabella, Imogen, Cordelia, -- if their names do not call up their natures, the most elaborate analysis of criticism will be of no avail.-- WHIPPLE, EDWIN P., 1859-68, The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 80.
Faith thus dislodged from ancient schools and creeds,
Question to question, doubt to doubt succeeds --
Clouds gathering flame for thunders soon to be,
And glass'd on Shakespeare as upon a sea.
Each guess of others into worlds unknown
Shakespeare revolves, but guards conceal'd his own --
As in the Infinite hangs poised his thought,
Surveying all things, and asserting nought.
-- LYTTON, EDWARD, LORD, 1860, St. Stephens.
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