Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist Author:Thomas RaynesFord Lounsbury Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V REPEESENTATIONS OP VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED The violation of the unities, the intermixture of comic scenes with tragic were two faults which in the... more » eyes of the classicists placed an ineffaceable stigma upon the romantic drama. About their essential depravity both continental and English critics were agreed. Shakespeare, in consequence of his exemplifying these atrocities, was regularly made the subject of the tale which he was not thought to adorn, and served constantly to point its moral It is true that he had not acted differently from almost every one of his contemporaries. They were as regardless of these rules as he. But while others had sinned as much against art, he was the only one who had really survived. He was the only one who continued to impress himself upon successive generations. Particular plays of certain of his contemporaries — Fletcher especially, and occasionally Jonson and Massinger — were from time to time refitted for the stage and brought out during the eighteenth century. But they had at best but a partial success; they often met with positive failure. " It may be remembered," said Colman in 1763, " that ' The Spanish Curate,'' The Little French Lawyer,' and ' Scornful Lady' of our authors," — that is, Beaumont and Fletcher, — "as well as 'The Silent Woman' of Jonson, all favorite entertainments of our predecessors, have within these few years encountered the severity of the pit, and received sentence of condemnation." l But of Shakespeare nothing of this sort could be said. His reign had never been disturbed. He had not only kept unbroken possession of the theatre, but was con- i stantly extending his occupancy. It was therefore upon him that the weight of criticism fell. ' But a third grand distinction existed between the V classic...« less