The Shakespearean Myth: William Shakespeare and Circumstantial EvidenceCincinnati, Robert Clarke & Co, 2015 M01 9 - 92 páginas Example in this ebook Mguizot, in his History of England, states the Shakespearean problem in a few words, when he says: "Let us finally mention the great comedian, the great tragedian, the great philosopher, the great poet, who was in his lifetime butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical manager, and whose name is William Shakespeare. In twenty years, amid the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of instructing his actors, he composed the thirty-two tragedies and comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of human nature, and an unequaled power of imagination, terrible and comic by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of his experience and for ever remaining the treasure of the age—all this being accomplished, Shakespeare left the theater and the busy world, at the age of forty-five, to return to Stratford-on-Avon, where lived peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing and never returning to the stage—ignored and unknown if his works had not forever marked out his place in the world—a strange example of an imagination so powerful, suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing, once for all, the door to the efforts of genius." But M. Guizot is very far from suggesting any prima facie inconsistency in this statement as it stands. Since every man reads the Shakespearean pages for himself and between the lines, much of what we are expected to accept as Shakespearean criticism must fail of universal appreciation and sympathy. But none who read the English tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as to who wrote those pages; and it would be affectation to deny that the intense realism of our day is offering some startling contributions to the solution of that question. For instance, the gentlemen of the "New Shakespeare Society" (whom Mr. Swinburne rather mercilessly burlesques in his recent "Studies of Shakespeare") submit these dramas to a quantitative analysis; and, by deliberately counting the "male," "female," "weak," and "stopped" endings, and the Alexandrines and catalectics (just as a mineralogist counts the degrees and minutes in the angles of his crystals), insist on their ability to pronounce didatically and infallibly what was written by William Shakespeare, and at what age; what was composed by Dekker, Fletcher, Marlowe, or anybody else; what was originally theirs, touched up by William Shakespeare or vice versa, etc. It is curious to observe how this process invariably gives all the admirable sentiments to William Shakespeare, and all the questionable ones to somebody else; but at least these New Shakespearean gentlemen have surrendered somewhat of the "cast-iron" theory of our childhood—that every page, line, and word of the immortal Shakespearean Drama was written by William Shakespeare demi-god, and by none other—perhaps, even opened a path through which the unbelievers may become, in due time, orthodox. There are still, however, a great many persons who are disposed to wave the whole question behind them, much as Mr. Podsnap disposed of the social evil or a famine in India. It is only a "Historic Doubt," they say, and "Historic Doubts" are not rare, are mainly contrived to exhibit syllogistic ingenuity in the teeth of facts, etc., etc. The French, they say, have the same set of problems about Molière. Was he a lawyer? was he a doctor? etc.—and they all find their material in internal evidence—e. g., an accurate handling of the technique of this or that profession or science: parallelism, practical coincidence, or something of that sort. To be continue in this ebook |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 26
... Copies of the play-bill or the newspapers of the day might chance to be discovered; but these—the internal testimony of the play itself, if any, and a sort of tacit presumption growing out of a statement it was nobody's cue to inquire ...
... copies of the plays were written in Shakespeare's autograph, and were all the more available on that account, because he ... copy of these plays from the manager's—William Shakespeare's—own hand, seems to make it evident that he did not ...
... copy of the first sketch of the play.—All the Year Found. Such was the employment which fell to the part of William ... copies, and not the original manuscripts of the Shakespearean plays. With the exception of Ben Jonson (to whose ...
... copy we have bears imprint of that year). It is dated "Butler's Merston in Warwickshire, April, the 10th, 1693;" is signed, "Your very faithful kinsman and most aff'te humble serv't till death, John at Stiles," and is addressed, "These ...
Alcanzaste el límite de visualización de este libro.
Contenido
PART III THE JONSONIAN TESTIMONY | |
PART IV EXTRA SHAKESPEAREAN THEORIES THE DELIA BACON THEORY | |
PART V THE BACONIAN THEORY | |
PART VI THE NEW THEORYTHE SONNETSCONCLUSION | |
INDEX | |