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Page 3
Two other early critical ideas were to be elaborated in the last four
decades of the century. In the first Folio Leonard Digges had spoken of
Shakespeare's "fire and fancy," and I.M.S. had written in the Second
Folio of his ability to move the passions. Finally, throughout the last
half of the century, as Bentley has shown, Shakespeare was admired above
all English dramatists for his ability to create characters, of whom
Falstaff was the most frequently mentioned.
All of these opinions were developed in Dryden's frequent critical
remarks on his favorite dramatist. No one was more clearly aware than
he of the faults of the "divine Shakespeare" as they appeared in the new
era of letters that Dryden himself helped to shape. And no man ever
praised Shakespeare more generously. For Dryden Shakespeare was the
greatest of original geniuses, who, "taught by none," laid the
foundations of English drama; he was a poet of bold imagination,
especially gifted in "magick" or the supernatural, the poet of nature,
who could dispense with "art," the poet of the passions, of varied
characters and moods, the poet of large and comprehensive soul. To him,
as to most of his contemporaries, the contrast between Jonson and
Shakespeare was important: the one showed what poets ought to do; the
other what untutored genius can do. When Dryden praised Shakespeare, his
tone became warmer than when he judicially appraised Jonson.
Like most of his contemporaries Dryden did not heed Jonson's caveat
that, despite his lack of learning, Shakespeare did have art. He was too
obsessed with the idea that Shakespeare, ignorant of the health-giving
art of the ancients, was infected with the faults of his age, faults
that even Jonson did not always escape. Shakespeare was often incorrect
in grammar; he frequently sank to flatness or soared into bombast; his
wit could be coarse and low and too dependent on puns; his plot
structure was at times faulty, and he lacked the sense for order and
arrangement that the new taste valued. All this he could and did admit,
and he was impressed by the learning and critical standards of Rymer's
attack. But like Samuel Johnson he was not often prone to substitute
theory for experience, and like most of his contemporaries he felt
Shakespeare's power to move and to convince. Perhaps the most trenchant
expression of his final stand in regard to Shakespeare and to the whole
art of poetry is to be found in his letter to Dennis, dated 3 March,
1693/4. Shakespeare, he said, had genius, which is "alone a greater
Virtue ... than all the other Qualifications put together." He admitted
that all the faults pointed out by Rymer are real enough, but he added a
question that removed the discussion from theory to immediate
experience: "Yet who will read Mr. Rym[er] or not read Shakespear?" When
Dryden died in 1700, the age of Jonson had passed and the age of
Shakespeare was about to begin.
The Shakespeare of Rowe's _Account_ is in most essentials the
Shakespeare of Restoration criticism, minus the consideration of his
faults. As Nichol Smith has observed, Dryden and Rymer were continually
in Rowe's mind as he wrote. It is likely that Smith is correct in
suspecting in the _Account_ echoes of Dryden's conversation as well as
of his published writings;[10] and the respect in which Rymer was then
held is evident in Rowe's desire not to enter into controversy with that
redoubtable critic and in his inability to refrain from doing so.
If one reads the _Account_ in Pope's neat and tidy revision and then as
Rowe published it, one is impressed with its Restoration quality. It
seems almost deliberately modelled on Dryden's prefaces, for it is
loosely organized, discursive, intimate, and it even has something of
Dryden's contagious enthusiasm. Rowe presents to his reader the
Restoration Shakespeare: the original genius, the antithesis of Jonson,
the exception to the rule and the instance that diminishes the
importance of the rules. Shakespeare "lived under a kind of mere light
of nature," and knowing nothing of the rules should not be judged by
them. Admitting the poor plot structure and the neglect of the unities,
except in an occasional play, Rowe concentrates on Shakespeare's
virtues: his images, "so lively, that the thing he would represent
stands full before you, and you possess every part of it;" his command
over the passions, especially terror; his magic; his characters and
their "manners."
Bentley has demonstrated statistically that the Restoration had little
appreciation of the romantic comedies. And yet Rowe, so thoroughly
saturated with Restoration criticism, lists character after character
from these plays as instances of Shakespeare's ability to depict the
manners. Have we perhaps here a response to Shakespeare read as opposed
to Shakespeare seen? Certainly the romantic comedies could not stand the
test of the critical canons so well as did the _Merry Wives_ or even
_Othello_; and they were not much liked on the stage. But it seems
probable that a generation which read French romances would not have
felt especially hostile to the romantic comedies when read in the
closet. Rowe's criticism is so little original, so far from
idiosyncratic, that it is unnecessary to assume that his response to the
characters in the comedies is unique.
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