Part 23 (2/2)
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, To whoe owe
He was not of an age, but for all time
In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 'the great heir of fame:'
What needs e in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyrareat heir of fame, What need'st thou such itness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonish ht who veiled himself under the initials I M S
{327b} contributed to the Second Folio of 1632 a splendid eulogy The opening lines declare 'Shakespeare's freehold' to have been
A es past, whose clear And equal surface can s appear Distant a thousand years, and represent Them in their lively colours' just extent
It was his faculty
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie Great heaps of ruinous mortality
Milton and I M S were folloithin ten years by critics of tastes so varied as the draallant lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philosophic and 'ever- versifier of the stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a public dispute held within his rooms at Eton, the proposition that 'there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it es (in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that every revival of Shakespeare's plays dreds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike At a little later date, Shakespeare's plays were the 'closet companions' of Charles I's 'solitudes' {329a}
1660-1702 Dryden's view
After the Restoration public taste in England veered towards the French and classical dramatic models {329b} Shakespeare's as subjected to some unfavourable criticism as the product of nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is commonly admitted The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial echo In his 'Short View of Tragedy'
(1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on 'Othello,' and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was 'a bloody farce without salt or savour' In Pepys's eyes 'The Teht's Dream' was 'thecritic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing 'Hamlet' four times, and 'Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 'a most excellent play for variety,' nine times Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly complained of Shakespeare's inequalities--'he is the very Janus of poets' {330a} But in almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was held in asthe Athenians, and that 'he was the est and , you more than see it--you feel it too' {330b} In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus:
TO SIR GodFREY KNELLER
_Shakespear_, thy Gift, I place beforeere I write; With Reverence look on his Majestick Face; Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write, And I, like _Teucer_, under _Ajax_ fight
Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite tearet Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare's supreirl the sober duchess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare In her 'Sociable Letters,' which were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been 'transformed into every one of those persons he hath described,' and suffered all their eedies she felt persuaded that she itnessing an episode in real life 'Indeed,' she concludes, 'Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a ue to the 'Wary Widdow,' a coden, produced in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus:
Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools, Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules
Restoration adaptations