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Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists (1); With Other Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge
Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists With Other Literary Remains of S T Coleridge - 1 Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume: 1 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1849 Original Publisher: W. Pickering Subjects: English drama Literature Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Drama / Shakespeare Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / Drama Literary Criticism / Shakespeare Notes: This is a black and w... more »hite OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Shakspeare s Judgment equal to his Genius. Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as may be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by mere in- ! stinct, that he grew immortal in his own despite, and sank below men of second or third-rate power, when he attempted aught beside the drama -- even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey to admirable perfection; but would in vain attempt to build a nest. Now this mode of reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling of pride, began in a few pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the great model of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its rules, and finding that the Lear, Hamlet, Othello and other master-pieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles, nor in obedience to Aristotle, -- and not having (with one or two exceptions) the courage to affirm, that the delight which their country received from generation to generation, in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and habits, was wholly groundless, -- took upon them, as a happy medium and refuge, to talk of Shakspeare as a sort of beautiful lusus nature, a delightful monster,' -- wild, indeed, and without taste or judgment, but like t...« less