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) Transcriber’s Notes: A complete list of corrections as well as other notes follows the text. THE PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE THE PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE AN ENGLISH ANTHOLOGY COMPILED BY C. E. HUGHES WITH A PREFACE BY SIDNEY LEE METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON 1904 Death makes no conquest of this conqueror; For now he lives in fame, though not in life. Richard III., III. i. 87. Who is it that says most? which can say more Than this rich praise,—that you alone are you? In whose confine immured is the store Which should example where your equal grew. Lean penury within that pen doth dwell, That to his subject lends not some small glory; But he that writes of you, if he can tell That you are you, so dignifies his story; Let him but copy what in you is writ, Not making worse what nature made so clear, And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, Making his style admired everywhere. Sonnet LXXXIV. PREFACE I believe this volume serves a useful purpose. It is the fruit of a suggestion which I made to its compiler, Mr. Hughes, in the following circumstances. At the beginning of last year I engaged in controversy in the Times newspaper with certain persons who laboured under the delusion that the evidence of Shakespeare’s authorship of those plays and poems, which for three centuries have been published as his, was inconclusive. In defiance of the fact that the acknowledged work of Bacon, the prose writer and philosopher, proves him to be incapable of writing verse of genuine merit, some of my opponents held Bacon and no other to be responsible for those manifestations of supreme poetic genius which are associated with Shakespeare’s name. Other sceptics, of less raw judgment, hesitated to commit themselves to this extravagance,—they confined themselves to the slightly more plausible contention that the facts recorded of Shakespeare by contemporaries were scanty, and that his career was clothed in a mystery, which justified wild attempts at a solution. [v] The whole of the sceptical argument ignored alike the results of recent Shakespearean research and the elementary truths of Elizabethan literary history. But confirmed sceptics are not easily convinced of defects of knowledge. With especial emphasis did even the most enlightened among those who declared their doubt in print, persist in affirming that Shakespeare was unnoticed by his contemporaries, and that his achievements failed to win reputation in his lifetime or in the generations succeeding his death. It was that allegation, to a greater degree than any other, which seemed to encourage the inference that the received tradition of the Shakespearean authorship of the plays needed revision. The conjecture that Shakespeare lived and died unhonoured rests on no foundation of fact. The converse alone is true. Shakespeare’s eminence was fully acknowledged by his contemporaries, and their acknowledgments have long been familiar to scholars. Yet the reiterated assertion that Shakespeare’s contemporaries left on record no recognition of his worth, proved that information on the subject was narrowly diffused, and that public intelligence suffered by the strait limits as yet assigned to the distribution of genuine knowledge of the topic. I suggested to Mr. Hughes that he should remedy this defect by collecting in a volume that might be generally accessible all notices of Shakespeare which were penned in early days. Subsequently, when I considered the scheme in detail, I deemed it wise for Mr. Hughes to enlarge its scope so that the volume might form a contribution to the history of opinion respecting Shakespeare of no single period, but of all periods from the earliest to the present day. Thereby the force and persistence of that Shakespearean tradition which ignorance had lately impugned might be rendered plainer, and the liability to misconception might be to a greater degree diminished. The fulfilment of the design on the extended scale might also, I thought, give the work some value as a chart of æsthetic development through the ages. Students of Shakespeare who in the course of three centuries have recorded their impressions of him, include men and women of varying degrees of intellectual capacity, and the orderly presentation of their views could not fail to illustrate with some graphic force the working of the law of taste in literature. A further justification for the compilation of the work on an exhaustive scale, lies in the fact that it has not been done already. Charles Knight seems to be the only writer who has hitherto attempted any sketch of a general history of opinion respecting Shakespeare. His essay formed part of his Studies of Shakespeare, which were first published in 1849, and it was reissued separately as the first volume of a new edition of his Cabinet Edition of Shakespeare which was published in London by William S. Orr & Co., of Paternoster Row, in 1851.[vii:1] Knight surveys his subject somewhat perfunctorily from Edmund Spenser to Coleridge. He devotes much space to the eighteenth century, but he pays scant attention to the nineteenth, and he is far from exhaustive in his treatment of earlier periods. Commendable as is his pioneer effort, it is now, alike in form and matter, largely out of date. A more imposing endeavour was made later to deal with the earlier section of the topic. Dr. Ingleby, a Shakespearean scholar of repute, issued in 1874 the work entitled Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse, in which he dealt with the period extending from the year 1591, when Shakespeare first came into notice as a dramatist, until 1693. A second edition of Dr. Ingleby’s volume, revised and enlarged by Miss Toulmin Smith, appeared five years later under the auspices of the New Shakspere Society. A very substantial supplement to this volume, called Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694, was edited by Dr. Furnivall for the New Shakspere Society in 1886. Thus the Centurie of Prayse in its final shape extends to 912 pages in quarto. The large book is not at everybody’s disposal, but its contents, as far as they go, are very valuable, and no Shakespeare library is complete without it. None the less, it covers less than a third part of that field which a full history of opinion about Shakespeare ought to occupy; it leaves ample room for a treatise on the whole subject. The general impression produced by Mr. Hughes’s extended survey seems creditable to the discernment of the English literary public—of all generations since Shakespeare began to write. The repute that Shakespeare acquired in his lifetime, though it was rarely defined with subtlety, was in spirit all that judicious admirers could desire. The contemporary estimate was authoritatively summed up in the epitaph which was inscribed on his monument in Stratford- on-Avon church soon after his death. In that inscription he was hailed as the equal of great heroes of classical antiquity —of Nestor in wisdom, of Socrates in genius, of Virgil in literary art; he was acknowledged in plain terms to be the greatest of contemporary writers; all living writers were declared to be worthy only to serve him as pages or menials. Shakespeare’s epitaph, the significance of which is not always appreciated, justifies no doubt of the supremacy that he enjoyed in the English world of letters of his own day. The homage of literary contemporaries was confirmed without faltering and in finer phrase by Milton, the next occupant of the throne of English letters. No subsequent change of literary taste or literary fashion in England really dimmed Shakespeare’s fame. In the days of the Restoration, Dryden humbly acknowledged discipleship to him. Some censure he suffered from thoughtless lips; but the right to the rank of a classic, which had been granted him as soon as the breath left his body, was never effectually disputed. The formal critics of the eighteenth century sought to show that much of his work deviated from formal standards or from rules of formal art. But these censors gave him the worship of incessant study. They edited and annotated his writings, with the result that a succeeding generation of readers acquired a more accurate comprehension of his work than was possible before. The triumphal progress of Shakespeare’s reputation was stimulated by eighteenth century research and criticism to a quicker pace. The critical faculty of the nation was especially acute and sagacious at the opening of the nineteenth century, and Shakespeare’s pre-eminence was then seen in sharper outline and in fuller grandeur than at any earlier epoch. The sympathetic intuition of three early nineteenth century critics—Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt—remains unsurpassed. But there has been no trace of retrogression in the wise and reasoned enthusiasm of later generations of the reading public. [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] [x] 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. CONTENTS PAGE Preface by Sidney Lee v Some Notes on Shakespeare’s Reputation 1 PART I “THESE THREE HUNDRED YEARS” THE FIRST PERIOD 1596 Francis Meres 35 1598 Richard Barnfield 36 1599 John Weever 37 1610 John Davies 38 1614 Thomas Freeman 39 1622 William Basse 40 1623 Anonymous 41 1623 Ben Jonson 42 1623 Hugh Holland 45 1623 John Heminge and Henrie Condell 46 1623 Leonard Digges 47 1627 Michael Drayton 48 1630 John Milton 49 1632 I. M. S. 50 a. 1633 John Hales 53 1637 Sir William D’Avenant 54 c. 1637 Anonymous 55 1639 Thomas Bancroft 57 1647 George Daniel 58 1651 Samuel Sheppard 59 c. 1661 Thomas Fuller 61 1662-7 Samuel Pepys 62 1664 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 64 1667 John Dryden 66 1668 John Dryden 67 1672 Anonymous 69 1675 Edward Phillips 71 1680 Thomas Otway 72 1681 “A Person of Honour” 74 [xi] [xii] 1693 Sir Charles Sedley 75 THE SECOND PERIOD 1709 Sir Richard Steele 76 1709 Nicholas Rowe 78 1711 Elijah Fenton 80 1712 John Dennis 82 1712 Edward Young 83 1714 Joseph Addison 84 1725 Alexander Pope 85 1727 James Thomson 88 1733 Lewis Theobald 89 1740 Joseph Warton 91 1743 William Collins 92 1744 Sir Thomas Hanmer 93 1747 Samuel Johnson 94 1747 Bishop William Warburton 95 1751 Christopher Smart 96 1754 David Hume 97 1756 Horace Walpole 99 1758 John Armstrong 100 1759 William Mason 101 1759 Thomas Gray 102 1759 David Mallet 103 1759 Edward Young 104 c. 1760 Mark Akenside 105 1760 Robert Lloyd 106 1760 Edward Capell 107 1761 Charles Churchill 108 1762 William Whitehead 109 1763 William Thompson 110 1765 Samuel Johnson 111 1768 George Keate 112 1769 David Garrick 113 1769 Anonymous 116 1774 William Richardson 117 1775 William Julius Mickle 119 1777 William Hayley 120 1777 Thomas Warton 121 a. 1782 Anna Seward 123 1794 William Lisle Bowles 124 THE THIRD PERIOD 1802 William Wordsworth 127 [xiii] 1804 Felicia Dorothea Hemans 128 1814 Sir Walter Scott 129 1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 130 1817 Francis, Lord Jeffrey 133 1818 William Hazlitt 135 c. 1818 John Keats 138 c. 1818 John Keats 138 1819 John Wilson 140 1824 Charles Sprague 142 1824 Charles Lamb 144 1827 Julius Charles Hare 145 1831 James Hogg 146 1833 Charles Lamb 148 1833 Hartley Coleridge 149 1838 Thomas de Quincey 150 1839 John Sterling 153 1839 Henry Hallam 155 1840 —— Johnstone 156 1840 Thomas Carlyle 157 1841 William Wordsworth 159 1843 Lord Macaulay 160 1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson 162 1850 Frederick William Robertson 164 1851 Leigh Hunt 166 1852 James Anthony Froude 167 1853 David Masson 168 1853 Matthew Arnold 169 1853 Walter Savage Landor 170 1858 John Henry Newman 171 c. 1858 James Russell Lowell 173 1863 Nathaniel Hawthorne 175 1864 Bishop Charles Wordsworth 176 1864 Oliver Wendell Holmes 177 1865 Cardinal Wiseman 179 1865 Archbishop Trench 180 1865 Francis Turner Palgrave 181 1866 Frances Anne Kemble 183 1868 John Ruskin 184 1871 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 185 1872 Bayard Taylor 186 1874 William Minto 189 1875 Edward Dowden 190 1877 George Meredith 191 [xiv] 1877 Frederick James Furnivall 192 1878 Walter Horatio Pater 193 1879 Matthew Arnold 195 ? c. 1880 Anonymous 197 1880 Algernon Charles Swinburne 199 1882 Algernon Charles Swinburne 201 1883 George Meredith 202 1884 Robert Browning 204 1886 William Wetmore Story 205 1886 Thomas Spencer Baynes 207 1888 Gerald Massey 209 1890 Walt Whitman 210 1891 Richard Watson Gilder 212 c. 1894 Mathilde Blind 213 a. 1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 214 1899 Sidney Lee 215 PART II “GOOD SENTENCES” 1639 Anonymous 219 1681 John Crowne 220 1737 Alexander Pope 221 1745 James Thomson 222 1767 Anonymous 223 a. 1767 George Colman 224 1776 Richard Graves 225 1778 Horace Walpole 226 1787 Daniel Webb 227 1801 William Lisle Bowles 228 1807 Felicia Dorothea Hemans 229 1811 Francis, Lord Jeffrey 230 1811 George Dyer 231 1812 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232 1813 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232 1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 232 1817 Leigh Hunt 233 1818 William Hazlitt 234 1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley 235 1819 John Keats 236 1821 William Hazlitt 237 1821 Robert Southey 238 1821 Lord Byron 239 1822 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 240 [xv] 1827 Thomas Hood 241 1828 Thomas Carlyle 242 1830 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 243 1830 Anonymous 244 1831 Lord Macaulay 245 1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 246 1836 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 246 1837 Leigh Hunt 247 1838 Thomas de Quincey 248 1839 Thomas de Quincey 248 1839 Thomas Carlyle 249 1844 Leigh Hunt 250 1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson 251 1844 Elizabeth Barrett Browning 252 a. 1846 Walter Savage Landor 253 1847 Thomas de Quincey 254 1850 Robert Browning 255 a. 1850 William Wordsworth 256 a. 1851 David Macbeth Moir 257 1851 Thomas Lovell Beddoes 258 1853 Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton 259 1857 Charles Mackay 260 c. 1860 Abraham Lincoln 261 1860 Ralph Waldo Emerson 262 1865 Cardinal Wiseman 263 1867 Thomas Carlyle 264 1867 Matthew Arnold 265 1870 James Russell Lowell 266 1875 Edward Dowden 267 1879 Matthew Arnold 268 1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 269 1884 William Watson 270 1893 Richard Green Moulton 271 1894 Sir John Robert Seeley 272 1896 John Ruskin 273 PART III “ROUND ABOUT” 1664 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 277 1711 Joseph Addison 278 1743 Henry Fielding 279 1747 Thomas Edwards 281 1749 Mark Akenside 284 [xvi] 1751 Robert Lloyd 288 1765 Oliver Goldsmith 291 1765 George, Lord Lyttelton 292 1768 Laurence Sterne 295 1769 Anonymous 298 1769 Isaac Bickerstaff 299 1778 Anonymous 302 1788 Horace Walpole 305 1790 Paul Whitehead 306 1812 William Combe 308 1826 Charles Lamb 313 1845 Nathaniel Hawthorne 314 1846 Walter Savage Landor 316 1868 William Schwenck Gilbert 318 1872 Oliver Wendell Holmes 323 1897 Theodore Watts-Dunton 325 1902 Judge Willis 326 To My Very Good Friend, Mr William Shakespeare 329 INDEX 331 SOME NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S REPUTATION I INTRODUCTORY This book provides a chronological sequence of the best pieces in verse and prose which the best writers in successive periods have written in praise of Shakespeare, and thereby aims at presenting, as it were, an index to the standard of estimation in which Shakespeare has been held at any given point of time. Thus, as an anthology, it differs in various respects from other anthologies. An anthology, as a rule, hopes to confine itself to pieces of literature intrinsically valuable. The conscientious compiler of an ordinary anthology includes nothing which, according to his own canons of taste, can be considered of doubtful merit. His choice may not always be approved by others—it frequently is not; but he, at least, is satisfied. Here, however, is a different case. My object has been to collect what may be called materials for a history of opinion of Shakespeare, so that as many years as might be of the three centuries and more, which have elapsed since Shakespeare’s reputation was born, had to be represented. With these conditions it has not always been possible to exclude bad pieces, for the obvious reason that there has been at times a dearth of good writers. In such cases the best has been given that could be found. The best has at times been deplorably mediocre, but the scheme was inexorable. The labour of selection has been guided by one or two principles. In the first place, complete poems, or extracts in verse and prose, which relate solely to Shakespeare have been taken in preference to those which mention him in company with his contemporaries. Secondly, passages that exhibit unusual characteristics, whether good or bad, have frequently been chosen. For some of the poor pieces, and I hope they are not many, something may be said. Though their writers are practically forgotten to-day, they were considered great during their own lives; so their productions have at least a historical value. If, then, this volume includes, as I think it does, the best things that have been written about Shakespeare, it includes also many things that in a comparative estimate of the whole must be considered as second-rate, though they happened to be the best in the period during which they were produced. The distinctiveness of the book may perhaps be indicated in this way. An ordinary anthology may be said to gather into a garland the choicest flowers from various fields of literature; this anthology claims to be little more than a collection of botanical specimens. II [1] [2] [3] DIVISION INTO PERIODS The history of opinion of Shakespeare may be divided into three periods, represented broadly by the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Definite limits cannot be assigned to these three periods. Epochs of literary history must be determined ultimately, not by the work produced in them, or by the lives of the producers, but by the influences which gradually brought them into being. Thus, there must always be at the beginning and end of a period of literary history a kind of dovetailing with it of the periods before and after. Still, the three periods I have indicated are reasonably distinct. The first begins with the earliest mention of Shakespeare in print, and may be taken to end with the death of Dryden. The second period was largely affected by Dryden’s influence, and thus may be said to begin with the eighteenth century. And the last period, which is due to the reaction from the Augustan age of English literature, may be fairly dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The style of the literary products of these three centuries respectively goes to confirm the division. The first period is that of personal knowledge and oral tradition, and tributes to Shakespeare are for the most part in verse. It is the period during which his historical position was in the making. The second period is that of critics and emendators—the period when people begin to realise that there is some great power in Shakespeare’s work which finds no parallel in their own time, and must therefore be praised blindly, accounted for, or explained away. Tribute is clothed equally in verse and prose; it is, in short, the period of doubt and astonishment. The last period is that of æsthetic criticism, and tribute is mostly in prose. Shakespeare’s position is an accepted fact. Of the three periods, the second is by far the most interesting to the literary historian. Opinion of Shakespeare during the first period was to a large extent prejudiced by personal knowledge and tradition. The praise is practically equivalent to that of friends; which is to say, it is largely that of blind admiration. In the third period it is open-eyed, intelligent admiration. The matter has been sifted. The question of Shakespeare’s genius is no longer a debatable point. The praise is that of disciples who appreciate the logical basis of their master’s teaching, and who see the necessity of lucid explanation for the purpose of adding recruits to their number. But the second period is the time of trial. Shakespeare’s title to fame is weighed judicially, and is not found wanting. III THE FIRST PERIOD Of the seventeenth century not much need be said, and, indeed, not much that is new can be said. The labours of the New Shakspere Society have added several valuable volumes to the literature relating to Shakespeare’s reputation during that period. Of these the Centurie of Prayse (of which the second and much enlarged edition was produced under the direction of Miss L. Toulmin Smith in 1879) brought together a very large number of allusions to Shakespeare both in print and manuscript, and these were supplemented by Some 300 Fresh Allusions, a work which was edited by Dr. Furnivall in 1886. These volumes display an amazing amount of diligent research, and few additions can be made to their contents. Seven hitherto unnoticed allusions to Shakespeare were discovered by Dr. Edward J. L. Scott in the Sloane Manuscripts at the British Museum, and communicated by him to the Athenæum on 5th March 1898.[5:1] This evidence of Shakespeare’s reputation during the period under discussion has been ably supplemented by an article entitled Shakespeare in Oral Tradition, which Mr. Sidney Lee contributed to the Nineteenth Century in January 1902. This traces the actual recollection of Shakespeare by his friends and their descendants, from his personal acquaintance among the actors and the townsfolk of Stratford-on-Avon, to the reminiscences transmitted by word of mouth from Betterton to Nicholas Rowe, the poet’s first biographer. Mr. Lee’s paper is of the utmost importance. As he points out, “It was obviously the free circulation of the fame of Shakespeare’s work which stimulated the activity of interest in his private fortunes, and led to the chronicling of the oral tradition regarding them. It could easily be shown that outside the circle of professional poets, dramatists, actors, and fellow-townsmen, Shakespeare’s name was, from his first coming into public notice, constantly on the lips of scholars, statesmen, and men of fashion who had any glimmer of literary taste.” The ground, therefore, may be said to be covered in so far as positive evidence of Shakespeare’s fame in the seventeenth century is concerned. But at least three popular fallacies have come into being, and it will be perhaps worth while to state them and definitely refute them. Their existence is due partly to lack of acquaintance with documentary evidence, and partly to misconception. One of these popular fallacies is that Shakespeare practically vanished from the minds of his countrymen when he retired from the stage; and that what reputation he had in his lifetime was due to his prominence as an actor, rather than to his genius as a poet. The preface of the First Folio (1623) is enough to prove that this was not the case. The tone of the address “to the great variety of readers” is not that of publishers trying to awaken interest in a forgotten personage, by calling attention to works that used to be popular. The language is that of affectionate friends, the references to Shakespeare those of intimate associates whose memories have not healed of the wound inflicted by his death. It was addressed to the public, not with the diffidence that is born of anxiety lest the subject of eulogy should meet with an indifferent welcome, but with the confidence that is inspired by friendship with a great man who is recognised as a great man. The second impression of the Folio appeared in 1632, and the spirit of enthusiasm that breathes through the [4] [5] [6] [7] preliminary matter—the publisher’s preface and the various sets of verses—has become in no way weakened. The volume contains, indeed, two of the finest poems of direct personal eulogy that have ever been written—that signed I. M. S., and attributed by Coleridge somewhat fancifully to no less a person than John Milton, and the noble Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare, actually written by Milton in 1630. No sign of decayed reputation here. Nor elsewhere. King Charles I., it is well known, read Shakespeare. Copies of his plays and poems are mentioned in Prince Rupert’s library catalogue. His works were given on the stage, and formed topics of everyday discussion. One might multiply examples of his popularity, but it is striking at shadows. Another popular error has tinged the traditional notion of Milton’s attitude to Shakespeare. It is supposed that his opinion of Shakespeare underwent a complete change from that exhibited in the lines mentioned above. The error that attributes to Milton this surprising revulsion of feeling is due to a misconception of a certain passage in his Eikonoklastes. Milton wrote thus: “Andronicus Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, though a most cruel tyrant, is reported by Nicetas to have been a most constant reader of Saint Paul’s Epistles; and by continual study had so incorporated the phrase and style of that transcendent apostle into all his familiar letters, that the imitation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this availed not to deceive the people of that empire, who, notwithstanding his saint’s vizard, tore him to pieces for his tyranny. From stories of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound, the poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the king might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare, who introduces the person of Richard the Third, speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book [i.e. the Eikon Basilike], and sometimes to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place: ‘I intended,’ saith he, ‘not only to oblige to my friends, but my enemies.’ The like saith Richard, Act II. Scene i.: “‘I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, More than the infant that is born to-night: I thank my God for my humility.’ Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but of religion.” The blundering interpretation of this passage, which Warton accepted and transmitted to his successors, including De Quincey, is that Charles I. was reproved by Milton for having made Shakespeare his closet companion. “The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I.),” says De Quincey in his Life of Shakespeare, “had learned to appreciate Shakespeare, not originally from reading him, but from witnessing the Court representations of his plays at Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made Shakespeare his closet companion, for he was reproached with doing so by Milton.” A careful perusal of the passage will show that nothing was farther from Milton’s intention. Such a deduction is logically impossible. Three things, however, undoubtedly may be deduced from it; and they not only bear a significance directly opposed to the erroneous interpretation, but they are of the highest importance as positive evidence of Milton’s appreciation of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare’s literary fame. One may deduce, firstly, that Shakespeare was known, at any rate by name, to the Puritans, who chiefly composed the public for which Milton was writing. Secondly (since Charles was not, we may believe, the man to read in private books that he did not like), that the king’s knowledge of Shakespeare was intimate and his appreciation sincere. And, thirdly, that Shakespeare was, in Milton’s opinion, one who depicts human nature with accuracy. For, consider the force of the parallel. Milton wrote to show that the deeds of monarchs are not always the substantiation of their words. The Byzantine tyrant, with his mouth full of piety, is cited as one instance; Shakespeare’s Richard III. as being, by familiarity, likely to bring the matter home to Charles, is cited as another. Which is, in effect, that Shakespeare’s portrayal of a king of such character is, in Milton’s opinion, proof that such a king may exist. There is nothing slighting about that. It is high praise. Milton wrote his Eikonoklastes in 1649, when he was forty-one. In 1645 he had written his L’Allegro, with the lines: “Then to the well-trod stage anon If Jonson’s learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare fancy’s child, Warble his native woodnotes wild.” The lines attributed to him in the Second Folio had appeared in 1632, and his fully authenticated Epitaph in 1630. Further, his influence has been traced in the notice of Shakespeare which appeared in the Theatrum Poetarum, published in 1675 by Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew. Here, surely, is sufficient evidence that throughout his life Milton’s early enthusiasm for Shakespeare did not diminish. [8] [9] [10] A third popular fallacy is that which maintains Shakespeare’s reputation to have been at its lowest ebb after the Restoration. This belief is well expressed in Victor Hugo’s Shakespeare. “Shakespeare,” says Victor Hugo, “once dead entered into oblivion. Under the Restoration he ‘completed his eclipse.’ He was so thoroughly dead that Davenant, possibly his son, recomposed his pieces. There was no longer any Macbeth but the Macbeth of Davenant. Dryden speaks of Shakespeare on one occasion in order to say that he is ‘out of date.’ Lord Shaftesbury calls him ‘a wit out of fashion’ . . . “These two men having condemned Shakespeare, the oracle had spoken. England, a country more obedient to conventional opinion than is generally believed, forgot Shakespeare. Some purchaser pulled down his house, New Place. A Rev. Dr. Gastrell cut down and burnt his mulberry-tree.[10:1] At the commencement of the eighteenth century the eclipse was total. In 1707 one called Nahum Tate published a King Lear, warning his readers ‘that he had borrowed the idea of it from a play which he had read by chance, the work of some nameless author.’ This ‘nameless author’ was Shakespeare.” Now the numerous adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays which appeared after the Restoration have been taken somewhat paradoxically as indicative of his decline in the public estimation. Such a deduction is by no means accurate. If we take into consideration the comparatively low level to which imaginative literature had fallen under the influence of Charles II.’s Court, the wonder is perhaps that the theatre-going public should have received Shakespeare in any form. Such neglect of Shakespeare as is seen at this time is attributable merely to change of fashion in popular literature, and that was then, and still is, as mutable as the sea. Popular literature does not live, and the adaptations of the later Stuart reigns are now known only to curious students. But Shakespeare lived through it all, known and appreciated by all who had souls above the vulgar; and in this very period he passed triumphantly his first examination at the hands of a skilled critic, John Dryden. Dryden was in every respect typical of the cultivated class of his period. His early judgment of Shakespeare was formed in the somewhat flickering light of Restoration taste. His final estimate was that of a matured thinker. Certainly, adaptations prepared to suit the fickle taste of the playgoer of the period cannot be said to reflect the true character of Shakespeare’s reputation. We see the same thing at the present day. The altruism of theatrical managers is compelled to make concessions to popular demands. The public are still rather shy of going to see Shakespeare simply as Shakespeare. They appear to feel that going to see a play of Shakespeare is like sacrificing themselves for their own good. So the managers who gild the pill for them are successful, and those who do not merely fail, or at best earn a precarious livelihood. One might as well say that Shakespeare’s reputation is at a very low ebb to- day, as make the deduction from the fact of the Restoration adaptations. The playgoers of that period wanted something piquant. One may suppose—to put the matter in modern terms—that Heine and De Maupassant collaborating might have produced a popular success. Wycherley and Congreve met the demand as nearly as possible. But Shakespeare was not the thing. IV THE SECOND PERIOD I have taken 1700, the date of Dryden’s death, as that which most fittingly marks the close of the first period and the beginning of the second, for it is very soon after that year that the spirit of the eighteenth century begins to make itself manifest. In the history of literature the eighteenth century stands out distinct as a whole. The literature of the seventeenth century had many characteristics, which, even in the most cursory survey, require attention, and these characteristics were mainly due to the connection of literature with the Court. The pedantic James I. was a patron of learning. His son Charles I., and grandson Charles II., inherited the taste for polite letters, and encouraged or influenced indirectly the authors of their times. But the eighteenth century monarchs were different. They did not concern themselves much with men of letters, and literature went its course comparatively unaffected by fashion. But it was affected by the spirit of the age—the spirit born of gradual recognition of the Renaissance. As David Lloyd in his State Worthies said of the early seventeenth century, “it was the very guise at that time to be learned; the wits of it were so excellent, the helps and assistants of it were so great; printing was so common; the world (by navigation) so open; great experiments so disclosed; the leisure of men so much, the age so peaceable; and His Majesty, after whom all writ, so knowing.” At that time learning was a novelty, and consequently it was fashionable—it was “the very guise.” By the eighteenth century great men had grown accustomed to it; and it was becoming the property of the lesser worthies, who, unable to resist the temptation to “show off,” turned out reams of didactic verse, the substance of which would nowadays hide its light beneath the respectable bushel of the journal of some scientific society. Dryden was perhaps mainly responsible. He had pronounced the dictum: “They cannot be good poets who are not accustomed to argue well.” At any rate, with the eighteenth century the poetry of argument or logic, as distinct from that of inspiration, came into being, and by far the greater part of the poetry of the hundred years that followed Dryden’s death was that of poets who are made rather than poets who are born. The same feeling informs the prose. It is true that the age produced Horace Walpole. But Walpole was a literary trifler, and liked to be thought so, though he was amazingly industrious. The eighteenth century saw much excellent prose, but it is almost always the prose of “will” or “must” rather than that of “can.” It comes rather of fertility of reason than of fertility of fancy. Of such stock are commentators born. [11] [12] [13] One finds, accordingly, that the principal producers of pure literature, whether prose or verse, were also critics, and most of them turned their attention, sooner or later, to Shakespeare. Prominent figures in the history of Shakespearean criticism in the eighteenth century stand Pope and Johnson. Both are classical scholars in an age of pedants; both are among the foremost advocates of rigid adherence to prescribed rules in literary production; both place imagination below intellect in estimation of genius; and both are honoured by their fellows as arbiters and dictators of literary taste. Each of them is inclined to say unkind things about Shakespeare, and hardly dares. Pope is the more generous of the two. “It will be,” he says, “but fair to allow that most of our author’s faults are less to be ascribed to his wrong judgment as a poet, than to his right judgment as a player.” Which is to say, that Shakespeare, poor soul! must needs trim his boat to suit the current of popular opinion; that the greater part of his audience in the theatres consisted of low fellows who had never heard of Aristotle, and must not be troubled with the unities and such matters, which they could not understand. One has but to continue this line of argument to conclude that Pope thought Shakespeare so much a part and product of the age in which he was born, that had he been born, say, in Pope’s age, he might (which Heaven forbid!) have been a perfect poet according to Pope’s lights—might, in fact, have translated Homer, to supply the sixpenny boxes of second-hand booksellers two centuries later. But Pope certainly thought Shakespeare very great. His greatness was, perhaps, not of quite the right kind in Pope’s estimation; but greatness he undoubtedly thought it. As to Shakespeare’s want of learning, Pope frankly refused to believe in it. He says very wisely: “There is certainly a vast difference between learning and languages. How far he was ignorant of the latter I cannot determine; but ’tis plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another. . . . I am inclined to think this opinion proceeded originally from the zeal of the partizans of our author and Ben Jonson, as they endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakespeare had none at all; and because Shakespeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was reported on the other that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakespeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything. Because Jonson did not write extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every piece; and because Shakespeare wrote with ease and rapidity, they cried, he never once made a blot. Nay, the spirit of opposition ran so high, that whatever those of the one side objected to in the other, was taken at the rebound and turned into praises; as injudiciously as their antagonists before had made them objections.” Pope further attributed many of Shakespeare’s errors to the carelessness or ignorance of the first publishers of his works, suggesting that the original copies from which they were printed were no better than the “prompter’s book, or piecemeal parts written out for the use of the actors,” who may be supposed to have made numerous small excisions and additions. Thus Pope says in effect that Shakespeare would have been perfect if the age and conditions in which he lived had allowed him. He sees many beauties in him, but he also sees many defects; and his edition of Shakespeare’s works is remarkable chiefly for its omissions of passages which the editor deems unworthy of his author. Dr. Johnson is by no means so ready metaphorically to grasp Shakespeare by the hand. He follows a procession of editors of more or less ability, and he feels that the time has come for the final settlement of Shakespeare’s true position. Rowe, the first editor, hardly realised his responsibilities, and his edition of the plays which appeared in 1709 has few merits from the critic’s point of view. Pope, who followed him in 1725, had a reputation for brilliance to sustain, and his preface is remarkable rather for neatness of expression than for critical discernment. Theobald came after Pope, in 1733, with much common sense, which made him the laughing-stock of his successors. The next editor, Sir Thomas Hanmer, intended his edition as a tribute to Shakespeare, and what was lacking in criticism was supplied in good paper and printing. Warburton succeeded with a pompous self-assertiveness that expressed itself in amusing but ineffective paradoxes. Johnson accordingly had a due sense of what was expected of him. His critical equipment consisted in a knowledge of the classical drama, and his æsthetic judgment was founded on the rules by which he had succeeded in his own poetical ventures. Still, he did his best to assume a strictly unbiassed judicial attitude. He did not, as Macaulay states, take it for granted that “the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which he had himself written with success, was the best kind of poetry.” He tried deliberately to approach Shakespeare as he approached the Cock Lane Ghost. He dealt with him as with some mysterious phenomenon which was attracting public attention, and which admitted of explanation. The result was, perhaps, the best balanced common-sense judgment on record. It contained, on the one hand, the most tremendous indictment of Shakespeare that is ever likely to be written; and, on the other, a triumphant defence, coupled with much enthusiastic eulogy. Here are some of the “faults which,” as he puts it, “are sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit”: “He sacrifices virtue to convenience.” “His plots are often so loosely formed that a very slight consideration may improve them.” [14] [15] [16] [17] “In many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected.” “He had no regard to distinction of time or place.” “In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm.” “In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more.” “In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.” “His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.” “It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express and will not reject.” “What he does best he soon ceases to do.” “A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures.” “He neglects the unities—those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and critics.” Johnson proceeds to defend Shakespeare by an excellent demonstration of the absurdity of the unities, and at the close of it owns himself “almost frighted at his own temerity.” Then he follows Pope in finding Shakespeare to be hampered by the age in which he lived. “The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity.” Having to appeal to immature intellects, he was compelled to base his plays on novels and traditions well known to his audience, “for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama had they not held the thread of the story in their hands.” In reply to Voltaire, who expressed wonder that Shakespeare’s extravagances should be endured by a nation which had seen the tragedy of Cato, Johnson says that “Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of men.” He proceeds to deal with Shakespeare’s learning, and Shakespeare emerges from the ordeal credited with rather less than the average board-school boy of the present day. Johnson decides at length that “if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom and veneration”; and, finally, he sums up his merits in the following fine sentence:— “It therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.”[19:1] It is difficult in the face of these pros and cons to determine what Johnson’s attitude towards Shakespeare really was. Much of his apparent hostility may, perhaps, be attributed to his instinctive argumentativeness. It was his nature to object. If he were in a loquacious mood, you had but to make a bald statement, and he was upon you with an aggressively persuasive “Why, sir!” And here it may be that he felt irresistibly impelled to combat the universal opinion of Shakespeare’s greatness, and that he was hardly sincere in all he wrote. However this may be, it is probable that he left on his readers the impression that the balance of his inclination was against rather than for Shakespeare. The very fact of the judicial attitude would tend to produce such an impression. A judicial attitude towards Shakespeare was not at that period so well understood as to be readily distinguished from unfriendliness. And in estimating the critical attitude of the age towards Shakespeare, it is necessary to bear in mind that Dr. Johnson was a more important person when he lived than he is now. Nothing is gained by speculating what he might have thought. The fact remains that what he wrote carried weight. Johnson’s opinion was not, however, sufficiently weighty to make his preface, as he intended it to be, the last word in Shakespearean criticism. Other editors followed him. Edward Capell brought much serious and laborious scholarship to the task; and his judgments were frequently sound, though his lack of perspicuity in delivering them detracts somewhat from their value. His edition appeared in 1768. Five years later, in 1773, George Steevens revised Johnson’s edition, and, bringing to the enterprise an unrivalled knowledge of Elizabethan history and literature, embodied many improvements, which he treated with a humour that was frequently malicious and occasionally obscene. To the second edition (1778) of this work was added much valuable material relating to Shakespeare’s biography and the sources of his plots, due to the researches of Edmund Malone, who published an edition of his own in 1790. The well-known “First Variorum” edition appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1803, prepared by Isaac Reed from a 1793 copy of Steevens’, containing many manuscript notes. The “Second Variorum” appeared in 1813; and the “Third Variorum,” arranged by James Boswell, the son of Johnson’s biographer, which appeared in 1821, marks the close of what may be called the eighteenth century period of commentators. It will be seen, then, that Shakespeare was at this time kept prominently before the eyes of the reading public. He was equally a topic of interest with men of letters who confined themselves to no special branch of literature. The [18] [19] [20] [21] attitude of the eighteenth century essayists toward Shakespeare was essentially one of admiration and respect for his genius. They found fault with his plays, it is true, frequently enough, but almost always apologetically. He was not infrequently held up as a model for modern dramatists to follow. The Connoisseur, for example, printed a paper discussing the sources of the Merchant of Venice; and while elaborating the fact that the plot was borrowed, insisted on the genius displayed in the use which Shakespeare made of it. The Guardian, again, enlarges on the naturalness of Shakespeare’s characters—remarkable at a time when poetry was, above all things, rhetorical and artificial. Let us glance now at the poetical critics. It will be noticed that many of the pieces printed in the body of this book appear under names that are not very familiar, and that the eighteenth century is responsible for the majority of them. In modern anthologies it is not usual to include selections from the works of such poets; nor, indeed, if literary excellence be the compiler’s object, is it expedient. They are included here not because their effusions appear to me to reach even a modest standard of merit, but because they were accepted as good poets by their contemporaries and by the literary dictator, Dr. Johnson. Johnson, it is true, disclaimed responsibility for the choice of names represented in his edition of British poets, but the repudiation cannot be considered of much importance. Johnson’s name had probably more weight with publishers than that of any other man of his time, and it is hardly likely that his advice in the matter of inclusion or rejection, had he thought it worth while to give it, would have been ignored. So one may feel certain that every name on his list appeared with his approval. The laudatory criticisms embodied in the biographies, which he asserted marked the ex...