deal about Shakespeare that shows an appreciation unusual for those times, but he confesses that he admired Ben Jonson more, and thought Beaumont and Fletcher superior for the construction of plots, for natural dialogue, for pathos, and for gaiety.[1] Even this might pass, but before he died Dry den declared Congreve to be the equal of Shakespeare.[2] A century later we find Dr. Johnson praising Shakespeare by comparing him with Rowe, and remarking that he had not perhaps produced "one play which if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer would be heard to the conclusion."[3] Rowe's best piece is an adaptation of Massinger,[4] and if it were true that the audiences which thronged the London theatres to see Shakespeare's plays cared more for Garrick's acting than for the poet, it is certainly proof, as we should esteem it, that the standard of criticism may decline at times. The simple fact seems to be that Shakespeare, though always popular after a fashion, was above the level of his own times; that he survived on the stage because he was less dependent on tricks of style and modes of society than his contemporaries; that Voltaire by his various notices and Garrick by his acting are responsible for a good deal of the dramatist's popularity in the eighteenth century; and that Coleridge and Hazlitt are the first English critics who did him real justice. It is fortunate for the world that Athenian taste was more discriminative of its great poets.
In spite, however, of Lord Beaconsfield's aphorism
- ↑ Essay on Dramatic Poetry.
- ↑ "Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakespeare gave as much, she could not give him more."
—Epistle to my dear friend Mr. Congreve. - ↑ Preface to Shakespeare.
- ↑ The Fair Penitent is taken wholesale from the Fatal Dowry—See Cunningham's Life of Massinger, p. 18.
