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Updated: June 19, 2025
The only one of her tastes that conduced to the peace of the house was for reading; and even this made her mother uneasy; for the books she liked best were fit, in Mrs. McQuinch's opinion, for the bookcase only. Elinor read openly what she could obtain by asking, such as Lamb's Tales from Shakespear, and The Pilgrim's Progress.
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage! My Shakespear rise: I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."
It is said of Gray's Elegy, 'This little poem, however humble its pretensions, is not without elegance or merit. The characters of prophet and critic are not always united. There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. His comparison between Ovid and Virgil and his character of Shakespear are masterpieces of their kind.
The Tales from Shakespear, it will be remembered, were described always as being by Charles Lamb, although Mary did far more than half, and it was at the outset her book. Her share of Mrs.
Shakespear had not been accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators. No notes for this essay.
Oh! your humble Servant your very humble Servant, Sir. When you write yourself you will find the Necessity of Alterations. Why, Sir, wou'd you guess that I had alter'd Shakespear? Wit. Yes, faith, Sir, no one sooner. Mar. jun. Alack-a-day! Was you to see the Plays when they are brought to us a Parcel of crude, undigested Stuff.
At the end of the unaltered play of Lear, there is a beautiful example of poetic painting; the old King is introduced as dying from grief for the loss of Cordelia; at this crisis, Shakespear, conceiving the robe of the king to be held together by a clasp, represents him as only saying to an attendant courtier in a faint voice, "Pray, Sir, undo this button, thank you, Sir," and dies.
The originality of Shakespear's version lay in his taking the lunatic sympathetically and seriously, and thereby making an advance towards the eastern consciousness of the fact that lunacy may be inspiration in disguise, since a man who has more brains than his fellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. But Shakespear did not do for Pistol and Parolles what he did for Hamlet.
Shakespear, besides the Queen's bounty, was patronized by the Earl of Southampton, famous in the history of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that nobleman he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis, and it is reported, that his lordship gave our author a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase he heard he had a mind to make.
Dryden and Row's manner, Sir, are quite out of fashion; our taste has gone back a whole century, Fletcher, Ben Johnson, and all the plays of Shakespear, are the only things that go down. 'How, cried I, 'is it possible the present age can be pleased with that antiquated dialect, that obsolete humour, those overcharged characters, which abound in the works you mention? 'Sir, returned my companion, 'the public think nothing about dialect, or humour, or character; for that is none of their business, they only go to be amused, and find themselves happy when they can enjoy a pantomime, under the sanction of Johnson's or Shakespear's name. 'So then, I suppose, cried I, 'that our modern dramatists are rather imitators of Shakespear than of nature. 'To say the truth, returned my companion, 'I don't know that they imitate any thing at all; nor, indeed does the public require it of them: it is not the composition of the piece, but the number of starts and attitudes that may be introduced into it that elicits applause.
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