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Transcriber's note


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    THE CRITICS

    Versus

    SHAKSPERE

    A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENDANT

    By

    FRANCIS A. SMITH

    The Knickerbocker Press
    New York
    1907

    COPYRIGHT, 1907

    BY

    FRANCIS A. SMITH




    THE CRITICS
    _versus_
    SHAKSPERE

    A BRIEF FOR DEFENDANT.

    By FRANCIS A. SMITH,
    of Counsel.


Many years ago, I was retained in the great case of THE CRITICS AGAINST
SHAKSPERE, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during three
centuries. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and as
often reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who have
again and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothing
to reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the ground
of newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony from
all lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury of
mankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action.

Ben Jonson said that Shakspere "wanted art"; the highest appellate court
decided that "Lear" was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles ever
produced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of French
criticism, decided that Shakspere was "votre bizarre sauvage;" the world
has reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the
"Henriade" is neglected for "Hamlet."

During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumont
and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and
even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary
to the memory of the "immortal" Cowley,--

     "By Shakspere's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
      Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.

       *       *       *       *       *

      Old Mother Wit and Nature gave
      Shakspere and Fletcher all they have;
      In Spencer and in Jonson, art
      Of slower Nature got the start.
      But both in him so equal are,
      None knows which bears the happiest share."

One knows not which to admire most, the beauty of the poetry or the
justice of the encomium.

James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, said
in 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in
1652, that he was the "plebeian driller."

Philipps, the pupil of Milton, refers to Shakspere's "unfiled
expressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of the
critical." Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarely
observed the Aristotelian laws of the three unities," but was good
enough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "He
is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches,
his serious swelling, into bombast."

Thomas Rymer, another disciple of the unities, in 1693, declared
"Othello" to be a "bloody farce without salt or savor," and says that
"in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff there is a
meaning, there is a lively expression, and... more humanity, than many
times in the tragical flights of Shakspere." How much humanity may be
shown in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff may be
left to the impartial judgment of the jockey or the dog fancier, but the
world has got beyond the criticism of Rymer. In his view, "almost
everything in Shakspere's plays is so wretched that he is surprised how
critics could condescend to honor so wretched a poet with critical
discussions."

John Dennis and Charles Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dust
of more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere's
plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to
nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far
below the ancients in all essential points,--in composition, invention,
characterization.

Dennis says Shakspere paid no heed to poetic justice... "the good and
bad perishing prom