The formidable critique, not the tragedy, made a great sensation; many were on the side of the stout Aristotelian, though some might deem that little mercy had tempered his justice. Dryden prepared an answer, for we have its heads; but he seems to have been awed by the critic’s learning, for he never proceeded, and at a later day Rymer was a critic quite after Pope’s own heart on our ancient drama.[18] Some years after, the critique was honoured by a second edition, and in the following year this combat à l’outrance was again waged, with no diminished intrepidity, in “A Short View of Tragedy, with some reflections on Shakespeare, and other PRACTITIONERS for the Stage,” 1693. This, notwithstanding the offensive theme, is replete with curious literature, and some original researches in Provençal poetry.
“Rymer is the worst critic that ever lived.” Such is the warm decision of an eloquent modern critic.[19] But in taste, as well as in more serious affairs, every age is governed by opinions. A mechanical critic then seemed mathematically irrefutable. Judging an English drama by the practice of the ancients, his triumph was easy. This scholastic doctrine, however, proved too subtle for the English people, and even the learned themselves in time looked up to nature. The philosophy of criticism, that is, of the human mind, was then imperfectly comprehended. A critic will be no longer safe who has nothing by heart but canons of criticism. The curious “Tracts” of Rymer are a memorable evidence how a learned critic deprived of native susceptibility, may distort the noblest productions, by coarse jocularity and that malice of criticism—ridicule! He calls Othello “the tragedy of the pocket-handkerchief.” That beautiful incident Shakespeare had found in Cynthio’s novel, and probably intuitively felt how casualties, small as this one, in human affairs may become associated with our highest passions. Rymer only exposed the poverty of his imagination when, with a morsel of Quintilian, he would demonstrate this incident to be “too small a matter to move us in tragedy, much like Fortunatus’ purse and the invisible cloak, long ago worn threadbare, and stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete romance.” With Othello’s tragic tale before him, the critic worms himself into “the burlesque or comic parts,” and these he insidiously lauds, to insinuate that Othello is but “a bloody farce.” The blending of the comic and the serious in the same character, as in that of Iago, as often we find it in the many-coloured scenes of human life, was an artful mixture too potent and poisonous in the cup of mechanical criticism. There is a strange malignant drollery, a bitter pleasantry in the villanous Iago, as in the scene where he alarms Brabantio for the fate of his daughter, which to “the heroic” dramatist, who could only move on stilts, was mistaken for “farce,” and not comprehended in his narrow views of human nature.
Rymer, however, was a ripe scholar, and the founder in our literature of what has been considered as the French or the classical school of criticism; and he has won the unlucky distinction of being designated as “Shakespeare’s critic!” In Dryden’s prologue to “Love Triumphant,” there is an allusion which Sir Walter Scott could not assign to any individual, though he acutely suspected it had a reference to some person: Sir Walter at that moment forgot Rymer and his “heroic tragedy.” The lines are now very significant.
| To Shakespeare’s Critic, he bequeaths the curse, To find his faults, and yet Himself make worse.[20] |
The uncertain criticisms of Dryden on Shakespeare were often dictated by the impulse of the moment, and stand in strange opposition to each other. At one happy time, indeed, he exclaimed, “I admire Jonson, but I love Shakespeare;” but he had not dived into the spirit of the poet, else we should not have had the strong censure of a “lethargy of thought for whole scenes together;” we should not have heard of “the bombast speeches of Macbeth;” nor that “the historical plays, The Winter’s Tale, and Measure for Measure, are so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.”
Dryden, however great as a poet, was deficient in passion, whose natural touches he acknowledged he had found in Otway. In his earliest pieces, while enamoured of the false taste of his heroic tragedies, it is certain he had formed little relish for nature and Shakespeare, which, at a later period of life, he seems to have been more open to.
In 1681, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, was so little acquainted with Shakespeare, that Lear being brought to his notice, he found it a treasure, a heap of jewels unstrung and unpolished; and having had “the good fortune to light upon an expedient to rectify it,” he brought it on the stage.
Shakespeare was now out of fashion, and a man of fashion aimed a last and mortal blow. The noble author of the “Characteristics” anathematised “the Gothic model of poetry.” He told the nation that “the British muses were in their infant state, without anything of shapeliness or person, lisping in their cradles, with stammering tongues which nothing but their youth and rawness can excuse.” Our dramatic Shakespeare and our epic Milton are among these venerable bards, “rude as they were according to their time and age.” The classical pedant had, however, the sagacity to perceive that they have provided us with “the richest ore.” Nature and Shakespeare lifted not their veil to the cold artificial soliloquist whose faint delicacy bred its own sickliness, and who, in the march and glitter of his external pomp, only betrayed the internal failure of his vigour.
The fourth and last folio edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1685. The poet again was locked up in a huge folio for the following twenty-five years, when, in 1709, he was freed by Rowe, who now gave him to the world at large in a more current form, which would meet the eye of the many.[21]
The appearance of Rowe’s edition at least placed the volumes in the hands of Steele and Addison, and possibly it formed their first studies of this poet. Whoever will take the pains to examine their popular papers may discover the fruits of their first thoughts. Steele at first seems to have derived his knowledge of Shakespeare from the plays as they were represented; he quotes Macbeth by memory very faultily in the famous exclamation of Macduff, and seems quite unconscious of the character of Lady Macbeth, and indeed notices that all the female characters of Shakespeare make “so small a figure.”[22] As we proceed, we discover him more deeply read and more familiar with the poet’s language. It was not to be hoped from Addison’s colder fancy and classical severity, that the Elizabethan poet could transport this critic by his inexhaustible imagery and a diction which paints the passions as well as reveals them. The prosaic genius of Addison, which had produced a frigid Cato, could hardly fathom the depth of the mightier soul. He pronounced Shakespeare “very faulty in hard metaphors and forced expressions,” and he joins Shakespeare and Nat Lee as instances of the false sublime.[23] Pope’s idea was similar, in his conversation, not in his preface; and later so was Thomas Warton’s.[24]