1817
                  SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES

                       by William Hazlitt









şiElectronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
DAK Upgraded Edition, Copyright 2000, DAK Industries 2000, Inc(R)şI

{SHAKESPEARES_CONTEMPORARIES
                     Shakespeare's Contemporaries


  WE affect to wonder at Shakespeare and one or two more of that
period, as solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own dearth
of information that makes the waste; for there is no time more populous
of intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, than the one we
are speaking of. Shakespeare did not look upon himself in this light,
as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his contemporaries as
'less than smallest dwarfs,' when he speaks with true, not false
modesty, of himself and them, and of his wayward thoughts, 'desiring
this man's art, and that man's scope.' We fancy that there were no such
men, that could either add to or take any thing away from him, but such
there were. He indeed overlooks and commands the admiration of
posterity, but he does it from the table-land of the age in which
he lived. He towered above his fellows, 'in shape and gesture proudly
eminent;' but he was one of a race of giants- the tallest, the
strongest, the most graceful and beautiful of them; but it was a common
and a noble brood. He was not something sacred and aloof from the
vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with nature and the circumstances
of the time, and is distinguished from his immediate contemporaries,
not in kind, but in degree and greater variety of excellence. He did
not form a class or species by himself, but belonged to a class or
species. His age was necessary to him; nor could he have been wrenched
from his place, in the edifice of which he was so conspicuous a part,
without equal injury to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton,
that 'his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' This cannot be said
with any propriety of Shakespear, who certainly moved in a
constellation of bright luminaries, and 'drew after him a third part of
the heavens.' If we allow, for argument's sake (or for truth's, which
is better), that he was in himself equal to all his competitors put
together; yet there was more dramatic excellence in that age than in
the whole of the period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries,
with their united strength, would hardly make one Shakespear, certain
it is that all his successors would not make half a one. With the
exception of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his
(Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry
(I do not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men of the
age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They are a mighty phalanx of
kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the same orbit, and
impelled by the same causes in their whirling and eccentric career.
They had the same faults and the same excellences; the same strength
and depth and richness, the same truth of character, passion,
imagination, thought and language, thrown, heaped, massed together
without careful polishing or exact method, but poured out in
unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature and genius in boundless
and unrivalled magnificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the thought of
Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his young-
eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton,
Heywood's ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep designs, add
a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless
nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of
Shakespear's Muse. They are indeed the scale by which we can best
ascend to the true knowledge and love of him. Our admiration of them
does not lessen our relish for him: but, on the contrary, increases and
confirms it.
                                  'General View of the Subject'


                               THE END