The Critics Versus Shakspere / A Brief for the Defendant

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENDANT
FRANCIS A. SMITH
The Knickerbocker Press New York 1907
Copyright, 1907 BY FRANCIS A. SMITH

Many years ago, I was retained in the great case of The Critics against Shakspere, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during three centuries. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and as often reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who have again and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothing to reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the ground of newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony from all lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury of mankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action.
Ben Jonson said that Shakspere wanted art ; the highest appellate court decided that Lear was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles ever produced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of French criticism, decided that Shakspere was votre bizarre sauvage; the world has reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the Henriade is neglected for Hamlet.
During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary to the memory of the immortal Cowley,—
By Shakspere's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines, Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.

One knows not which to admire most, the beauty of the poetry or the justice of the encomium.
James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, said in 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in 1652, that he was the plebeian driller.