Shakespeare As a Dramatic Artist: With an Account of His Reputation, at Various Periods (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: With an Account of His Reputation, at Various Periods

Yet the subject, however worn, continues to retain its freshness. In numerous ways Shakespeare has broken all literary records but it is to be doubted if among his many triumphs there is one more striking than the fact that, in Spite of the best or the worst that men have done to make him uninteresting by writing about him, his hold upon us has deepened instead of decreasing with the course of the centuries. He remains not merely an object of reverence to the few, but of intelligent curiosity to the many; and that too in a world in which the lamentable state of affairs exists, that the things we ought to want to know are as a rule very apt to be distinct from the things we actually want to know. Nor does this general desire to learn all that can or cannot be learned about him show the slightest sign of abatement. In truth, it is this very interest in the dramatist which gives whatever vitality it possesses to the theory which denies his existence as a dramatist at all.

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