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Article WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. ← Page 5 of 17 →
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
William Shakspere.
anxiety eA'inced by some of his commentators to represent him as a combination of recklessness in conduct and Avonderful mental powers . This has ever been their favourite theory . The man is to excite both the admiration and the horror of his readers . We very much Avonder that , in the magnificent line of Hamlet" Use every man after his desert and who shall
, ' scape Avhipping ! " these acute critics did not detect some sly allusion to the numerous castigations administered to him by this knight , almost incredibly jealous in the preservation of his A'enison . Yet these terrible and Avell-merited punishments were all to aid and further the eventual triumph of the bard . Shelley says : —
" Great souls are cradled into poetry by wrong , And learn in suffering what they teach in song . " In adapting this theory to the training of our great dramatic bard , his critics point out the suffering Avhich served his future fame so wonderfully , and prove that he Avas made a poet by the lash . They represent him as being goaded against his will , and in spite of " the unluckinesse" to Avhich he Avas so much given , into the composition of some of the finest poems Avhich
ever yet delighted and instructed mankind , and assisted the progression of the human race . It Avere difficult to imagine criticism more utterly absurd ; and we should scarcel y condescend to notice such nonsense , were it not that the extent to Avhich it has been circulated and even credited amongst educated men , renders some reference to it imperative . In a work b y
Mr . Charles Armitage Brown , * Avhich , although rather fanciful in some parts , is a creditable performance , the author , after alluding to the facts fully proved by Malone , that Sir T . Lucy neA'er possessed deer , and that the statutes of the time SIIOAV the penalty for deer-stealing to have been of too mild a character to cause flight on the part of one guilty of such an
offence , supposing the father or the son to be alluded to in the passage from the " Merry Wives of Windsor , " says : — " The allusion , not positive , to the family coat of arms seems to show that one or the other was meant ; and Justice Shallow thus accuses EalstafT : ' Enight , you have beaten my men , killed my deer , and broke lod' The old kniht of Charlecotoit is knownAvas riid
open my ge . g , , a g preserver of game , and so might have been the son . In answer to a calumnious supposition , I beg leave to suggest , and I think it a likely solution of _ the riddle , that Shakespeare attacked , on the stage , the younger knight of Charlecote , for his vexatiously jealous preservation of game , and that he was prosecuted for that attack . Such a prosecution
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
William Shakspere.
anxiety eA'inced by some of his commentators to represent him as a combination of recklessness in conduct and Avonderful mental powers . This has ever been their favourite theory . The man is to excite both the admiration and the horror of his readers . We very much Avonder that , in the magnificent line of Hamlet" Use every man after his desert and who shall
, ' scape Avhipping ! " these acute critics did not detect some sly allusion to the numerous castigations administered to him by this knight , almost incredibly jealous in the preservation of his A'enison . Yet these terrible and Avell-merited punishments were all to aid and further the eventual triumph of the bard . Shelley says : —
" Great souls are cradled into poetry by wrong , And learn in suffering what they teach in song . " In adapting this theory to the training of our great dramatic bard , his critics point out the suffering Avhich served his future fame so wonderfully , and prove that he Avas made a poet by the lash . They represent him as being goaded against his will , and in spite of " the unluckinesse" to Avhich he Avas so much given , into the composition of some of the finest poems Avhich
ever yet delighted and instructed mankind , and assisted the progression of the human race . It Avere difficult to imagine criticism more utterly absurd ; and we should scarcel y condescend to notice such nonsense , were it not that the extent to Avhich it has been circulated and even credited amongst educated men , renders some reference to it imperative . In a work b y
Mr . Charles Armitage Brown , * Avhich , although rather fanciful in some parts , is a creditable performance , the author , after alluding to the facts fully proved by Malone , that Sir T . Lucy neA'er possessed deer , and that the statutes of the time SIIOAV the penalty for deer-stealing to have been of too mild a character to cause flight on the part of one guilty of such an
offence , supposing the father or the son to be alluded to in the passage from the " Merry Wives of Windsor , " says : — " The allusion , not positive , to the family coat of arms seems to show that one or the other was meant ; and Justice Shallow thus accuses EalstafT : ' Enight , you have beaten my men , killed my deer , and broke lod' The old kniht of Charlecotoit is knownAvas riid
open my ge . g , , a g preserver of game , and so might have been the son . In answer to a calumnious supposition , I beg leave to suggest , and I think it a likely solution of _ the riddle , that Shakespeare attacked , on the stage , the younger knight of Charlecote , for his vexatiously jealous preservation of game , and that he was prosecuted for that attack . Such a prosecution