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NOTE.

Mindful of the good old apologue regarding “the squeak of the real pig,” I think it here worth while to certify the reader of little faith, that the more incredibly impudent absurdities above cited are not so much or so often the freaks of parody or the fancies of burlesque as select excerpts and transcripts of printed and published utterances from the “pink soft litter” of a living brood—from the reports of an actual Society, issued in an abridged and doubtless an emasculated form through the columns of a weekly newspaper. One final and unapproachable instance, one transcendant and pyramidal example of classical taste and of critical scholarship, I did not venture to impair by transference from those columns and transplantation into these pages among humbler specimens of minor monstrosity. Let it stand here once more on record as “a good jest for ever”—or rather as the best and therefore as the worst, as the worst and therefore as the best, of all possible bad jests ever to be cracked between this and the crack of doom. Sophocles, said a learned member, was the proper parallel to Shakespeare among the ancient tragedians: Æschylus—hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth!—Æschylus was only a Marlowe.

The hand which here transcribes this most transcendant utterance has written before now many lines in verse and in prose to the honour and glory of Christopher Marlowe: it has never—be the humble avowal thus blushingly recorded—it has never set down as the writer’s opinion that he was only an Æschylus. In other words, it has never registered as my deliberate and judicial verdict the finding that he was only the equal of the greatest among all tragic and all prophetic poets; of the man who combined all the light of the Greeks with all the fire of the Hebrews; who varied at his will the revelation of the single gift of Isaiah with the display of the mightiest among the manifold gifts of Shakespeare.

SHAKESPEARE by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher, who founded the Romantic Movement in England with his friend William Wordsworth. He is best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his critical work. His essays on Shakespeare were highly influential and well-researched, opening new areas to explore in literary criticism.

Coleridge, 1795.

CONTENTS

Shakespeare, With introductory matter on Poetry, the Drama, and the Stage.

Definition Of Poetry.

Greek Drama.

Progress Of The Drama.

The Drama Generally, And Public Taste.

Shakespeare, A Poet Generally.

Shakespeare's Judgment equal to his Genius.

Recapitulation, And Summary Of the Characteristics of Shakespeare's Dramas.

Outline Of An Introductory Lecture Upon Shakespeare.

Order Of Shakespeare's Plays.

Notes On The “Tempest.”

“Love's Labour's Lost.”

“Midsummer Night's Dream.”

“Comedy Of Errors.”

“As You Like It.”

“Twelfth Night.”

“All's Well That Ends Well.”

“Merry Wives Of Windsor.”

“Measure For Measure.”

“Cymbeline.”

“Titus Andronicus.”

“Troilus And Cressida.”

“Coriolanus.”

“Julius Cæsar.”

“Antony And Cleopatra.”

“Timon Of Athens.”

“Romeo And Juliet.”

Shakespeare's English Historical Plays.

“King John.”

“Richard II.”

“Henry IV.—Part I.”

“Henry IV.—Part II.”

“Henry V.”

“Henry VI.—Part I.”

“Richard III.”

“Lear.”

“Hamlet.”

“Macbeth.”

“Winter's Tale.”

“Othello.”

SHAKESPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE.

Definition Of Poetry.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though