LEIGH HUNT, 1851 (1784-1859) "Associations with Shakespeare." How naturally the idea of Shakespeare can be made to associate itself with anything which is worth mention! Take Christmas for instance: "Shakespeare and Christmas"; the two ideas fall as happily together as "wine and walnuts," or heart and soul. So you may put together "Shakespeare and May," or "Shakespeare and June," and twenty passages start into your memory about spring and violets. Or you may say "Shakespeare and Love," and you are in the midst of a bevy of bright damsels, as sweet as rosebuds; or "Shakespeare and Death," and all graves, and thoughts of graves, are before you; or "Shakespeare and Life," and you have the whole world of youth, and spirit, and Hotspur, and life itself; or you may say even, "Shakespeare and Hate," and he will say all that can be said for hate, as well as against it, till you shall take Shylock himself into your Christian arms, and tears shall make you of one faith. Table Talk. 1851, p. 154. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 1852 WE wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty of some of Shakespeare's characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselves can imitate, and at first thought we attribute it to the genius of the poet, who has outstripped nature in his creations. But we are misunderstanding the power and the meaning of poetry in attributing creativeness to it in any such sense. Shakespeare created, but only as the spirit of nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand unnamed English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we are satisfied that Shakespeare's great poetry is no more than the rhythmic echo of the life which it depicts. Short Studies on Great Subjects. First Series. "England's Forgotten Worthies." 1878, i. 445-6, reprinted from Westminster Review. 1852. DAVID MASSON, 1853 (b. 1822) SHAKESPEARE is as astonishing for the exuberance of his genius in abstract notions, and for the depth of his analytic and philosophic insight, as for the scope and minuteness of his poetic imagination. It is as if into a mind poetical in form there had been poured all the matter that existed in the mind of his contemporary Bacon. In Shakespeare's plays we have thought, history, exposition, philosophy, all within the round of the poet. The only difference between him and Bacon sometimes is that Bacon writes an essay and calls it his own, while Shakespeare writes a similar essay and puts it into the mouth of a Ulysses or a Polonius. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays. 1874. Essay v. p. 242, reprinted from North British MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1853 (1822-1888) "Shakespeare." OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free. Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, All pains the immortal spirit must endure, Poems. 1853 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, 1853 (1775-1864) Shakespeare and Milton." THE tongue of England, that which myriads One crying out, All nations spoke thro' me. The other: True; and thro' this trumpet burst God's word; the fall of Angels, and the doom Glory! be glory! not to me, to God. The Lost Fruit off an old Tree. No. LVII. |