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Brief Criticisms: Shakespeare

Shakespeare was not only what Ben Jonson denominates him, the " soul of the age, The applause, delight, and wonder of the stage;" but is to this hour the constant companion of the contemplative, as well as the gay associate of the playful and the happy. "Thus while I wond'ring pause o'er Shakespeare's page, I mark in visions of delight the sage; High o'er the wrecks of man, who stands sublime, A column in the melancholy waste, (Its glory humbled and its glories past,) Majestic 'mid the solitude of time." 万 Criticisms nu the Works of shakespeare.

On this head it would be unpardonable to omit noticing what Schlegel has said of our poet, in his German "Lectures on the Drama," which, translated into English, is as follows:-Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare's. It not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the wise and the idiot, speak and act with equal truth-not only does he transport himself to distant ages and to foreign nations, and pourtray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans-of the French in their wars with the English-of the English themselves during a great part of their history of the Southern Europeans (in the serious parts of many of his comedies,) the cultivated society of that time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the north; his human characters have not only such depth and precision that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in conception; no, this Prometheus not merely forms men, but opens the gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost; exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, existing only in ima gination, possess such truth and consistency, that even when they are deformed monsters, like Caliban, he extorts the assenting conviction that, if there should be such beings, they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries with him the most fruitful and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand he carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard, in such intimate nearness. Again: if Shakespeare deserves our admiration for his charac ters, he is equally deserving of it for the exhibition of passiontaking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone of indifference, or familiar mirth, to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions. His passions do not at first stand displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of love. He paints, in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first origin. "He gives," as Lessing says, "a living picture of Criticisms un the Works of Shakespeare. all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains; of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and aversions. Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has pourtrayed the mental diseases-melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible, and in every respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations from them in the same manner as from real cases.

And yet Johnson has objected to Shakespeare, that his pathos is not always natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of true dialogue; where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life. But energetical passions electrify the whole of the mental powers, and consequently they will, in highly-favoured natures, express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner. Besides, to use the observation of Mrs. Montagu-"Heaven-born genius acts from something superior to rules, and antecedent to rules, and has a right of appo to Nature herself." In accordance with this sentiment, it is remarked by the German critic, that the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed. Shakespeare, who was always sure of his object, to move in a sufficiently powerful manner when he wished to do so, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer play, purposely moderated the impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas of his wit which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice in the same place.