II
DIVISION INTO PERIODS
The history of opinion of Shakespeare may be divided into three periods, represented broadly by the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Definite limits cannot be assigned to these three periods. Epochs of literary history must be determined ultimately, not by the work produced in them, or by the lives of the producers, but by the influences which gradually brought them into being. Thus, there must always be at the beginning and end of a period of literary history a kind of dovetailing with it of the periods before and after. Still, the three periods I have indicated are reasonably distinct. The first begins with the earliest mention of Shakespeare in print, and may be taken to end with the death of Dryden. The second period was largely affected by Dryden’s influence, and thus may be said to begin with the eighteenth century. And the last period, which is due to the reaction from the Augustan age of English literature, may be fairly dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The style of the literary products of these three centuries respectively goes to confirm the division. The first period is that of personal knowledge and oral tradition, and tributes to Shakespeare are for the most part in verse. It is the period during which his historical position was in the making. The second period is that of critics and emendators—the period when people begin to realise that there is some great power in Shakespeare’s work which
finds no parallel in their own time, and must therefore be praised blindly, accounted for, or explained away. Tribute is clothed equally in verse and prose; it is, in short, the period of doubt and astonishment. The last period is that of æsthetic criticism, and tribute is mostly in prose. Shakespeare’s position is an accepted fact.
Of the three periods, the second is by far the most interesting to the literary historian. Opinion of Shakespeare during the first period was to a large extent prejudiced by personal knowledge and tradition. The praise is practically equivalent to that of friends; which is to say, it is largely that of blind admiration. In the third period it is open-eyed, intelligent admiration. The matter has been sifted. The question of Shakespeare’s genius is no longer a debatable point. The praise is that of disciples who appreciate the logical basis of their master’s teaching, and who see the necessity of lucid explanation for the purpose of adding recruits to their number. But the second period is the time of trial. Shakespeare’s title to fame is weighed judicially, and is not found wanting.
III
THE FIRST PERIOD
Of the seventeenth century not much need be said, and, indeed, not much that is new can be said. The labours of the New Shakspere Society have added several valuable volumes to the literature relating to Shakespeare’s reputation during that period. Of these the Centurie of Prayse
(of which the second and much enlarged edition was produced under the direction of Miss L. Toulmin Smith in 1879) brought together a very large number of allusions to Shakespeare both in print and manuscript, and these were supplemented by Some 300 Fresh Allusions, a work which was edited by Dr. Furnivall in 1886. These volumes display an amazing amount of diligent research, and few additions can be made to their contents. Seven hitherto unnoticed allusions to Shakespeare were discovered by Dr. Edward J. L. Scott in the Sloane Manuscripts at the British Museum, and communicated by him to the Athenæum on 5th March 1898.[5:1] This evidence of Shakespeare’s reputation during the period under discussion has been ably supplemented by an article entitled Shakespeare in Oral Tradition, which Mr. Sidney Lee contributed to the Nineteenth Century in January 1902. This traces the actual recollection of Shakespeare by his friends and their descendants, from his personal acquaintance among the actors and the townsfolk of Stratford-on-Avon, to the reminiscences transmitted by word of mouth from Betterton to Nicholas Rowe, the poet’s first biographer. Mr. Lee’s paper is of the utmost importance. As he points out, “It was obviously the free circulation of the fame of Shakespeare’s work which stimulated the activity
of interest in his private fortunes, and led to the chronicling of the oral tradition regarding them. It could easily be shown that outside the circle of professional poets, dramatists, actors, and fellow-townsmen, Shakespeare’s name was, from his first coming into public notice, constantly on the lips of scholars, statesmen, and men of fashion who had any glimmer of literary taste.”
The ground, therefore, may be said to be covered in so far as positive evidence of Shakespeare’s fame in the seventeenth century is concerned. But at least three popular fallacies have come into being, and it will be perhaps worth while to state them and definitely refute them. Their existence is due partly to lack of acquaintance with documentary evidence, and partly to misconception.