Preface to Shakespeare | Page 6

he seems not always
fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of
instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force
upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be
more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.
It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently
neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and, in
view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He
therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them,
and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.
He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or

nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of
another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of possibility. These
faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer
to his imagined in interpolators. We need not wonder to find Hector
quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta
combined with the Gothic mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed,
was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney,
who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his "Arcadia",
confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence,
quiet and security, with those of turbulence, violence and adventure.
In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his
characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest of sarcasm; their
jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his
gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently
distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners.
Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to
determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a
time of stateliness, formality and reserve, yet perhaps the relaxations of
that severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been
always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought
to chuse the best.
In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour
is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the
most part striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his
invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour,
meanness, tediousness, and obscurity.
In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a
wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in
many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.
Narration in dramatick poetry is, naturally tedious, as it is unanimated
and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should
therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption.
Shakespeare found it an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by
brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.
His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his
power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other
tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of

inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of
knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or
resentment of his reader.
It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy
sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he
struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in
words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by
those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.
Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is subtle, or
the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to
things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas
disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by sonorous
epithets and swelling figures.
But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge
their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved
to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the
fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is
not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible
equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts
himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked
and blasted by sudden frigidity.
A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller;
he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and
sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his
mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or
profundity of his