THE CRITICS ON SHAKESPEARE

Early Eighteenth-Century Commentary on Shakespeare

Nahum Tate, Preface to King Lear, 1681

Commenting on Shakespeare’s Lear:

“I found the whole…a heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolished, yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon perceived I had seized a treasure.  ‘Twas my good fortune to light on one expedient to rectify what was wanting in the regularity and probability of the tale, which was to run through the whole a love betwixt Edgar and Cordelia, that never changed word with each other in the original.”

Thomas Rymer, from A Short View of Tragedy, 1693

“Many, peradventure, of the Tragical Scenes in Shakespeare cry’d up for the Action, might do yet better without words.  Words are a sort of heavy baggage, that were better out of the way at the push of Action; especially in his bombast Circumstance, where the Words and Action are seldom akin…”

“Othello is made a Venetian General.  We see nothing done by him nor related concerning him that comports with the condition of a General—or, indeed, of a Man…His Love and his Jealousie are no part of a Souldiers Character, unless for a Comedy.”

Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage, 1698

“For Modesty…is the Character of Women.  To represent them without this Quality is to make Monsters of them…Has Shakespeare secur’d this point for his young virgin Ophelia that Play had been better contriv’d.  Since he was resolv’d to drown the Lady like a Kitten he should have set her swimming a little sooner.  To keep her alive only to sully her Reputation, and discover the Rankness of her Breath, was very cruel.”

Charles Gildon, from A Collection of Miscellaneous Letters, 1719

“There are two Crimes which are never to be admitted in Tragedy, Cowardice in the Man, and want of Chastity in the Woman; in the last of which many of our Play-writers are abandonly guilty. Nor must there be any Iagos, Villains; they shock us too much, and seem really out of the character of Humankind.  But the success of Iago in Shakespeare has made our other Writers run mad after such-like characters….”

Francis Atterbury (in a letter to Alexander Pope), 2 August 1721

“I have found time to read some parts of Shakespeare which I was least acquainted with.  I protest to you, in a hundred places I cannot construe him, I don’t understand him.  The hardest part of Chaucer is more intelligible to me than some of those Scenes, not merely thro the faults of the Edition, but the Obscurity of the Writer: for Obscure he is, & a little (not a little) enclin’d now and then to Bombast, whatever Apology you may have contrived on that head for him.” 

Alexander Pope, Preface to his edition of Shakespeare, 1725

“It is not my design to enter into a Criticism upon this Author; tho' to do it effectually and not superficially would be the best occasion that any just Writer could take, to form the judgment and taste of our nation. For of all English Poets Shakespear must be confessed to be the fairest and fullest subject for Criticism, and to afford the most numerous as well as most conspicuous instances, both of Beauties and Faults of all sorts…

It must be allowed that Stage-Poetry of all other is more particularly levell'd to please the Populace, and its success more immediately depending upon the Common Suffrage. One cannot therefore wonder, if Shakespear, having at his first appearance no other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistance, directed his endeavours solely to hit the taste and humour that then prevailed…

To judge therefore of Shakespear by Aristotle's rules, is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country, who acted under those of another. He writ to the People; and writ at first without patronage from the better sort, and therefore without aims of pleasing them: without assistance or advice from the Learned, as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among them: without that knowledge of the best models, the Ancients, to inspire him with an emulation of them; in a word, without any views of Reputation, and of what Poets are pleas'd to call Immortality: Some or all of which have encourag'd the vanity, or animated the ambition, of other writers…

I will conclude by saying of Shakespear, that with all his faults, and with all the irregularity of his Drama, one may look upon his works, in comparison of those that are more finish'd and regular, as upon an ancient majestick piece of Gothtck Architecture, compar'd with a neat Modern building:  The latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more solemn. It must be allow'd that in one of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments; tho' we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does the Whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, tho' many of the Parts are childish, ill-plac'd, and unequal to its grandeur.”