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 Shakspeare 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; -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 features 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 no more than Richard, and Macbeth, and Julius Cæsar. 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 and 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 Théatre Français, 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 |