Hazlitt on English Literature Part 29

_a combination and a form_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 60.

P. 39. _There is a willow_, etc. See "Hamlet," iv, 7, 167:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook That shows his h.o.a.r leaves in the gla.s.sy stream."

_Now this is an instance_, etc. Hazlitt elsewhere ascribes this observation to Lamb. See p. 83, n.

_He's speaking now_. "Antony and Cleopatra," i, 5, 24.

_It is my birthday_. Ibid., iii, 13, 185.

P. 41. _nigh sphered in heaven_. Collins's "Ode on the Poetical Character."

_to make society_. "Macbeth," iii, 1, 42.

P. 42. _with a little act_. "Oth.e.l.lo," iii, 3, 328.

P. 43. _while rage_. "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 52.

_in their untroubled elements_, etc. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," VI, 763-766:

"That glorious star In its untroubled element will shine As now it shines, when we are laid in earth And safe from all our sorrows."

_Satan's address to the sun_. "Paradise Lost," IV, 31.

_Oh that I were_. "Richard II," iv, 1, 260.

P. 44. _His form_. "Paradise Lost," I, 591-594.

P. 45. _With what measure_. Mark, iv, 24; Luke, vi, 38.

_It glances_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," v, 1, 13.

_puts a girdle_. Ibid., ii, 1, 175.

_I ask_. "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 227.

_No man_. Ibid., iii, 3, 15.

P. 46. _Rouse yourself_. Ibid., iii, 3, 222.

_In Shakspeare, any other word_, etc. In the essay "On Application to Study," in the "Plain Speaker," Hazlitt gives further ill.u.s.trations of this point.

P. 47. _Light thickens_. "Macbeth," iii, 2, 50.

_the business of the state_. "Oth.e.l.lo," iv, 2, 166.

_Of ditties highly penned_. 1 "Henry IV," iii, 1, 209.

_And so_. "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii, 7, 31.

_The universality of his genius_, etc. Cf. "On Gusto," "Round Table": "The infinite quality of dramatic invention in Shakspeare takes from his gusto.

The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on anything as much as he might, except a quibble."

P. 48. _He wrote for the great vulgar_, etc. The same remark had been made by both Pope and Johnson. See Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," pp, 49 and 141.

_the great vulgar and the small_. Cowley's "Translation of Horace's Ode III, i."

_his delights_. "Antony and Cleopatra," v, 2, 88.

P. 49. _His tragedies are better than his comedies._ Hazlitt is here deliberately opposing the view of Dr. Johnson expressed in the latter's preface to Shakespeare: "In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpa.s.ses expectation or desire."

(Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 121.) In the second lecture of the "English Comic Writers," Hazlitt recurs to this opinion of Johnson's with the following comment: "For my own part, I so far consider this preference given to the comic genius of the poet as erroneous and unfounded, that I should say that he is the only tragic poet in the world in the highest sense, as being on a par with, and the same as Nature, in her greatest heights and depths of action and suffering. There is but one who durst walk within that mighty circle, treading the utmost bound of nature and pa.s.sion, showing us the dread abyss of woe in all its ghastly shapes and colours, and laying open all the faculties of the human soul to act, to think, and suffer, in direst extremities; whereas I think, on the other hand, that in comedy, though his talents there too were as wonderful as they were delightful, yet that there were some before him, others on a level with him, and many close behind him.... There is not only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, or Lear, or Oth.e.l.lo, or Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, or Lear, or Oth.e.l.lo, or Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic Corneille, equal to the stern pride of Coriola.n.u.s, or which gives such an idea of the crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, 'like an unsubstantial pageant faded,' as the Antony and Cleopatra. But to match the best serious comedies, such as Moliere's Misanthrope and his Tartuffe, we must go to Shakspeare's tragic characters, the Timon of Athens or honest Iago, where we shall more than succeed. He put his strength into his tragedies and played with comedy. He was greatest in what was greatest; and his _forte_ was not trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even though he might do that as well as any one else, unless he could do it better than anybody else." See also p. 99.

CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS

CYMBELINE

P. 51. _Dr. Johnson is of opinion_. "It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to s.n.a.t.c.h the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 123.)

_It is the peculiar excellence_, etc. Cf. Coleridge's Works, IV, 75-76: "In Shakespeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of all that _continuates_ society, a sense of ancestry and of s.e.x, with a purity una.s.sailable by sophistry, because it rests not in the a.n.a.lytic process, but in that sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are representative of all past experience,--not of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first mother that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, but from the exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being const.i.tuting one living total of head and heart.

He has drawn it indeed in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, fort.i.tude,--shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and by the light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of love alone."

P. 52. _Cibber, in speaking_. See "Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber" (1740), I, iv.

_My lord_. i, 6, 112.

P. 53. _What cheer_. iii, 4, 41. The six quotations following are in the same scene.

P. 54. _My dear lord_. iii, 6, 14.

_And when with wild wood-leaves_. iv, 2, 389.

P. 55. _With fairest flowers_. iv, 2, 218.

_Cytherea, how bravely_. ii, 2, 14.

_Me of my lawful pleasure_. ii, 5, 9.

P. 56. _whose love-suit_. iii, 4, 136.

_the ancient critic_. Aristophanes of Byzantium, who lived in the third century before the Christian era.

_the principle of a.n.a.logy_. This point is enforced by Hazlitt in connection with "Lear," "The Tempest," "Midsummer Night's Dream," and "As You Like It." Coleridge had previously remarked, "A unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of Shakespeare" (Works IV, 61), and Schlegel had written in the same manner concerning "Romeo and Juliet": "The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh." (ed. Bohn, p. 401).

P. 57. _Out of your proof_. iii, 3, 27.

P. 58. _The game's afoot_. "The game is up," iii, 3, 107.