(in the 1640 edition of the ‘Poems’) asserted that every revival of Shakespeare’s plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, Shakespeare’s plays were the ‘closet companions’ of Charles I’s ‘solitudes.’ [329a]
1660-1702. Dryden’s view.
After the Restoration public taste in England veered towards the French and classical dramatic models. [329b] Shakespeare’s work was subjected to some unfavourable criticism as the product of nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is commonly admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of Shakespeare’s indifference to the classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial echo. In his ‘Short View of Tragedy’ (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on ‘Othello,’ and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was ‘a bloody farce without salt or savour.’ In Pepys’s eyes ‘The Tempest’ had ‘no great wit,’ and ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was ‘the most insipid and ridiculous play;’ yet this
exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare’s plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing ‘Hamlet’ four times, and ‘Macbeth,’ which he admitted to be ‘a most excellent play for variety,’ nine times. Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly complained of Shakespeare’s inequalities—‘he is the very Janus of poets.’ [330a] But in almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was held in as much veneration among Englishmen as Æschylus among the Athenians, and that ‘he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . When he describes anything, you more than see it—you feel it too.’ [330b] In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus:
TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
Shakespear, thy Gift, I place before my sight;
With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write;
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face;
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race.
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write,
And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight.
Writers of Charles II’s reign of such opposite temperaments as Margaret Cavendish, duchess of
Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare’s supremacy. As a girl the sober duchess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare. In her ‘Sociable Letters,’ which were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been ‘transformed into every one of those persons he hath described,’ and suffered all their emotions. When she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that she was witnessing an episode in real life. ‘Indeed,’ she concludes, ‘Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution.’ The profligate Sedley, in a prologue to the ‘Wary Widdow,’ a comedy by one Higden, produced in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus:
Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit
Was fram’d and finisht at a lucky hit
The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools,
Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules.
Restoration adaptations.
Many adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays were contrived to meet current sentiment of a less admirable type. But they failed efficiently to supersede the originals. Dryden and D’Avenant converted ‘The Tempest’ into an opera (1670). D’Avenant single-handed adapted ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ (1668) and ‘Macbeth’ (1674). Dryden dealt similarly with ‘Troilus’ (1679); Thomas Duffett with ‘The Tempest’ (1675); Shadwell with ‘Timon’ (1678); Nahum Tate with ‘Richard II’ (1681), ‘Lear’ (1681), and ‘Coriolanus’ (1682); John