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Pope was not so deep in the drama as in other matters, and Cibber was one of its luminaries; he wrote some of the best comedies of his day. He also succeeded where Dryden, for lack of true dramatic taste, failed. He tampered successfully with Shakespeare. Colley Cibber's version of "Richard the Third" is impudent and slightly larcenic, but it is marvelously effective.
"Huh!" says I, glancin' over to where Hartley is springin' sort of a sheepish smile at a buck private who's pattin' him on the back, "I think you can most call it a job now." And then again, you can't always tell. I forget whether it was Bill Shakespeare first sprung that line, or Willie Collier; but whoever it was he said a whole bookful at once. Wise stuff. That's it. And simple, too.
Often they wrote verses of an amatory character, not particularly because they happened to be in love, but because the bulk of English lyrical poetry, to which they went for their models, was, regrettably, of an amatory character. It rather looked as if he had been reading Herrick, or possibly the Shakespeare sonnets ... the dark lady, you know.
Nature does not teach religious toleration by any such direct method; and the result is no one knew it better than Lessing himself that the play is not poetry, but only splendid manufacture. Shakespeare is eternal; Lessing's 'Nathan' will pass away with the mode of thought which gave it birth. One is based on fact; the other, on human theory about fact.
Shakespeare at the Lyceum is always a magnificent spectacle, and "Coriolanus," the last Shakespearean revival there, was a magnificent spectacle. It is a play made up principally of one character and a crowd, the crowd being a sort of moving background, treated in Shakespeare's large and scornful way.
"I don't know about Got and Regnier. But what we are going to see is Shakespeare," he said, with a little awe, "that is not just like a common play." Mr. Derwentwater had been astonished by Bice's indifference to his own instructive remarks.
The amusements of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral than they were later; and although the theatres were denounced by such reformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison; they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays of Shakespeare were out of fashion.
He was in particular partial to the poets, could quote at will from Gay and Thomson and Goldsmith and Gray, and even from Shakespeare, much to my own astonishment and humiliation. Saving only Dr.
As to their knowledge of the English language, it bade fair to eclipse many of the High School girls of the present day, for they did understand in the first place its literature, and in the next its grammar, and were well acquainted with the works of Shakespeare and those other lions of literature whose names we are so proud of and whose works we love.
He can adore Shakespeare and Spenser without denying poetical genius to the author of Alexander's Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy, and exquisite humor to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to our own time, and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.
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