Characters of Shakespeares Plays | Page 6

suddenly throws him up
in the air to kick the beam: that he has provoked a comparison which
exhibits his own performance as clever but flimsy.
Nor is this impression removed by his admirer the late Mr. Ireland, who
claims for the Characters that, 'although it professes to be dramatic
criticism, it is in reality a discourse on the philosophy of life and human
nature, more suggestive than many approved treatises expressly
devoted to that subject'. Well, for the second half of this
pronouncement--constat. 'You see, my friend,' writes Goldsmith's
Citizen of the World ,'there is nothing so ridiculous that it has not at
some time been said by some philosopher.' But for the first part, while
a priori Mr. Ireland ought to be right--since Hazlitt, as we have seen,
came to literary criticism by the road of philosophical writing--I
confess to finding very little philosophy in this book.
Over and above the gusto of the writing, which is infectious enough,

and the music of certain passages in which we foretaste the masterly
prose of Hazlitt's later Essays, I find in the book three merits which, as
I study it, more and more efface that first impression of flimsiness.
(1) To begin with, Hazlitt had hold of the right end of the stick. He
really understood that Shakespeare was a dramatic craftsman, studied
him as such, worshipped him for his incomparable skill in doing what
he tried, all his life and all the time, to do. In these days much merit
must be allowed to a Shakespearian critic who takes his author steadily
as a dramatist and not as a philosopher, or a propagandist, or a lawyer's
clerk, or a disappointed lover, or for his acquaintance with botany,
politics, cyphers, Christian Science, any of the thousand and one things
that with their rival degrees of intrinsic importance agree in being, for
Shakespeare, nihil ad rem.
(2) Secondly, Hazlitt always treats Shakespeare as, in my opinion, he
deserves to be treated; that is, absolutely and as 'patrone and not
compare' among the Elizabethans. I harbour an ungracious doubt that
he may have done so in 1816-17 for the simple and sufficient reason
that he had less than a bowing acquaintance with the other Elizabethan
dramatists. But he made their acquaintance in due course, and
discussed them, yet never (so far as I recall) committed the error of
ranking them alongside Shakespeare. With all love for the memory of
Lamb, and with all respect for the memory of Swinburne, I hold that
these two in their generations, both soaked in enjoyment of the
Elizabethan style--an enjoyment derivative from Shakespeare--did
some disservice to criticism by classing them with him in the light they
borrow; whenas truly he differs from them in kind and beyond any
reach of degrees. One can no more estimate Shakespeare's genius in
comparison with this, that, or the other man's of the sixteenth century,
than Milton's in comparison with any one's of the seventeenth. Some
few men are absolute and can only be judged absolutely.
(3) For the third merit--if the Characters be considered
historically--what seems flimsy in them is often a promise of what has
since been substantiated; what seems light and almost juvenile in the
composition of this man, aged thirty-nine, gives the scent on which
nowadays the main pack of students is pursuing. No one not a fool can
read Johnson's notes on Shakespeare without respect or fail to turn to
them again with an increased trust in his common-sense, as no one not

a fool can read Hazlitt without an equal sense that he has the root of the
matter, or of the spirit which is the matter.
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH 1916

TO CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.
THIS VOLUME IS INSCBIBED AS A MARK OF OLD
FRIENDSHIP AND LASTING ESTEEM
BY THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS
PREFACE CYMBELINE MACBETH JULIUS CAESAR OTHELLO
TIMON OF ATHENS CORIOLANUS TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA HAMLET THE TEMPEST THE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM ROMEO AND JULIET LEAR
RICHARD II HENRY IV IN TWO PARTS HENRY V HENRY VI IN
THREE PARTS RICHARD III HENRY VIII KING JOHN TWELFTH
NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF
VERONA THE MERCHANT OF VENICE THE WINTER'S TALE
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING AS YOU LIKE IT THE TAMING
OF THE SHREW MEASURE FOR MEASURE THE MERRY
WIVES OF WINDSOR THE COMEDY OF ERRORS DOUBTFUL
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE POEMS AND SONNETS

PREFACE
It is observed by Mr. Pope, that 'If ever any author deserved the name
of an ORIGINAL, it was Shakespeare. Homer himself drew not his art
so immediately from the fountains of nature; it proceeded through
AEgyptian strainers and channels, and came to him not without some
tincture of the learning, or some cast of the