The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-02-05
XII. SCHOOLS OF SHAKESPEARE
CRITICISM.

IL
Shakespeare'S life was from every
point Of view successful. He came up
/ to London a penniles,s youth, literally
to seek his fortune, and retired quar-
! ter Of a century later with an income
1 which his latest biOgTapher estimates
! as equivalent to some $4,000 in our
| day. He was a talented actor and the
most drawing dramatist of a thea
! ire going age. He Waa distinguished
by the special favor of Elizabeth, and
I James 1 IS said to have written him
an autograph letter. Shortly after his
withdrawal from London six of his
| plays were performed during the splen-
/ did marriage festivities of the Princess
/ Elizabeth and the ElectOr Palatine
/ EliZabethan literature, too, SwaTms
| with references TO Shakeepeare's plays
( and poems. From a rather doubtful
/ allusiOn By Spenser in the early nine
/ ties down to the eDitaph by Milton in
/ 1892, we have an unbrOken chain Of
/ references, and with the one exception
! Of Greene's outburst of railing jealousy
\ the tone &C these is one of praise
/ Yet it was reputation rather than
| fame that Shakespeare gained in his
/ lifetime While his contemporaries
valued, they cannot be said to have
/ appreciated ssim. He was considered
/ only as one of the great poets of an
/ age that recognized its own greatness
! That he lowered far above his fellows
/ no one of them was clear-sighted
/ enough to perceive. BY some of the
/ greatest thinkers Of his age-Bacon,
/ for instance. and John Sheld0n-he Is
not so much as named. Meres, indeed,
| assigns to Shakespeare the first place
/ among the English both in tragedy
/ and comedy, but almost in the next
! breath he ranks him with such dusty
/ and forgotten worthless as DR.. Legge
/ of Cambridge and DR.. Edes of oxford.
Even his fellow players in their preface
/ 20 the First Folio spoke of its master
/ pieces as 'trifies' presented TO their
noble patrons. This. in fact, was the
/ general verdict of contemporary cTitl-
] cism in regard to all dramatic ppOduc-
I tions. A play in those days was meant
1 for the stage, not for the closet. T-eTe
! was a general laugh when Ben Jonson
! in the very year Of Shakespeare death
| published his plays under the title Of
/ works" But JOnSOn, who knew SO
well the value Of his own productions,
was the only man of his age to estimate
/ Shakespeare at anything like his pro
per worth. In the careleSsness of con-
! fidential conversation he might indeed
/ laugh at the shipwreck on the coast
/ of Bohemia, but when he came to ex
/ press his fixed and final judgment he
! struck another tone. In the famous
| lines Drefxed to the First Folio there
/ is no deDrecatory reference TO these
| trifles," no ranking Of Shakespeare
| even with ChaUcer Of SpenseT. He
praises the art that shaped the living
! line as well as the nature that gave
/ the matter. Not only, he asserts, does
/ Shakespeare comedy cast into the
shade the wit Of Aristophanes and Ter
ence. but his sterner notes summon
/ from the graves the great tragedians
! of the classic past to hear a late-bOTn
/ rival challenge a eomprison OF
all sent forth by ''insOlenE
/ Greece or naughty Rome and with
/ an even finer burst he turns to his
county and bids her know her son
Alright:
Triumph, my Britain. thou hast one to
To whom ali scenes of Europe homage
He was not Of an age. but for all time.
Shakespeare in the Age of the Resto-
ration.
! The civil wars and the closing Of the
/ theatres opened a deep abyss between
/ the age of Shakespeare and that Of
| the Restoration. The theatre reOpened
1 by the returned Stuarts was no longer
/ a national institution 1t depended for
| its very existence upon the favor of
| the court: and the taste of the court
was French. demanded rhetorical and
! declamatory tragedy, and a comedy Of
manners. where wit served as the apOl-
og.st Of shameless debaUcheTy. Shakes
| peare, il is true. was by no means for
gotten. His plays were frequently per-
formed upon the Restoration age But
/ they were too often performed in
I strangely altered versions. Howard,
/ for instance, added a happy ending TO
gamated Measure for Measure" and
/ Much Ado About Nothing Even
/ Dryden took part in the mutilatiOn of
/ Shakespeare, rewriting "TrOilus and
( Cressida," and turning The Temp
/ est" into a sort Of opera, where the
/ verses of ShakeSpeare's lOveliest drama
stray Ike lost sheep amid wilder
ness of Restoration rant and ribaldry.
Yet Shakespeare's fame owes more 70
Dryden than to any other English crit
! ic for it was DRYDEN who in the end
( indicated the great poet of mis- ma
( ton against the censures which a for
/ eign school Ct criticism cast upon him.
It is not, indeed. easy to state exactly
Dryden's estimate Of Shakespeare. for,
4 though one of our greatest critics
Dryden was no more consistent in his
critical judgements than in his poll
tics or his religion. But his incOnSiSt-
ency is explained in part by the strug-
/ gle IN his own mind between an in
stinctive reverence for Shakes9ear
genius and a critical disapprObatiOn Of
! certain 'ShakesDearean peculiarities of
style and diction, in part also by a
steady development Of his powers of
literary judgment. In his first critical
9 C1say he unsparingly condemns Shakes
/ peare's love of punS and too frequent
"DCmbgst' while acknowledging that
of all modern and, perhaps. all an
cient poets, he had the largest and most
comprehensive soul" He prefers the
wit" or as we would saw, the gen
ius," Of Shakespeare to the correct
mes. of Ben JonsOn, at that time gem
orally regarded as the greatest, be-
cause the most regular" Of English
dramatists. He is troubled by Shakes
/ peare's 'solecisms OF speech and no.
tOriOUs flaws of sense, and Is eSDecl-
ally disturbed by his inequalities Of
style. Little by little. however. Dry
denis own labOrs in dramatic compO-
sltiOn taught him something Of the ex-
eeeding riches of Shakespeare. He be
came his av0wed disciple, and in the
[ preface TO his first blank verse drama
frankly confessed, In my style 1 inn
itate the divine Shakespeare
and ] hope ] may affirm that by imi-
tating him / have surpassed myself
He dWells with particular admiration
upon Shakespeare power of charac-
ter drawing, due To the universal
mind which cOmpTehended all the
characters and passions" He Upholds
Shakespeare Is the national poet and
insists that our English reverence for
him is more Just than that Of the
Greeks for AeschylUS
Compared with Coleridge or Schlegel,
Dryden's praise OF Shakespeare may
seem heeitating and half hearted. But
we nnS- not leave cut Of account the
critical temper of the age in which he
lived. The attitude of what may be