The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

407. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. _Poet._

610 words | Chapter 433

[Born at Stratford-on-Avon, 1564. Died there, 1616. Aged 52.] William Shakspeare stands at the head of those whose intellectual domain is the spirit of man. This is the master character of his mind, to which poetry is in him an accidental direction. His insight into man is his title to universal interest. He is the chief painter of humanity that the world has seen, combining, at once, perfect intimate knowledge of human nature, and perfect creative power of representation. The drama had suddenly awakened in his country, and he obeyed the instinct of his time, the poetic bent of which was created for him, as he for it. There were with him, before him, and immediately after him, great poets, with whom the dramatic elements existed in high native strength and beauty; but in him alone are those elements mastered, so as to produce entire works of art, complete in power, and in consistent, though not regular, form. Sharing the intuition of Aristotle, which makes the action in the play the root out of which the characters and all else grow, he directs the stream of events as connectedly as it flows in the human world; and, as in the world, so in his inspired writing--agents appear born for their work, as the work to do seems to offer itself to the agents. All beauties of language, all flights of poetry, all particular scenes and speeches, powerful and impressive as they may be, are merely subordinate. No character, how exquisitely or elaborately soever conceived and finished, is drawn for itself; but one and all are relative to the scope of the play and to one another. He seems to have undertaken a great task, and to be seriously and solely intent upon advancing to its fulfilment. No form of human life is foreign to him; the most heroic and the humblest, the most illustrious and the most obscure, of all times, in all places, are in presence before him. He seizes the spirit of time, place, and theme. Natural, preternatural, light, weighty, laughter, tears, terror, are all alike to him---all under his mastery, and flung forth with free power. Grace and gigantic strength, are spirits equally at his bidding. The learned and the unlearned are both attracted by his spell. The ignorant feel the fascination, the erudite have never exhausted the study. His country, with her innumerable titles to renown, ranks amongst the highest his great name. With school instruction of the most ordinary kind, by universal and unerring observation, by profound and intense meditation of men, with the creative power of the highest imagination, he gave out, spontaneously, works of that kind whose study makes men learned: and they are so viewed and studied by all civilized nations, every day more and more, at home and abroad. In him England competes for the crown of poetical glory with all other nations of old or modern fame. She has had other great poets, but they all, besides their own natural offerings, have brought poetry from other lands and languages, into their own. In him alone she feels, that what she displays SHE has produced. Little is known of the life of William Shakspeare. [From the well-known monumental bust in the church at Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakspeare lies buried. It was executed by an artist named Gerard Johnson, very soon after the death of Shakspeare, and erected between 1616 and 1620. The original is in common limestone, and was painted to resemble life. The eyes were a light hazel, the hair and beard auburn: the doublet was scarlet, and the loose gown black. It was repainted precisely in the same manner in

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