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His Place and Influences
Since his death
Shakespeare’s plays have been almost continually performed, in
non-English-speaking nations as well as those where English is the native
tongue; they are quoted more than the works of any other single author. The
plays have been subject to ongoing examination and evaluation by critics
attempting to explain their perennial appeal, which does not appear to
derive from any set of profound or explicitly formulated ideas. Indeed,
Shakespeare has sometimes been criticized for not consistently holding to
any particular philosophy, religion, or ideology; for example, the subplot
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream includes a burlesque of the kind of
tragic love that he idealizes in Romeo and Juliet.
The strength of Shakespeare’s plays lies in the absorbing
stories they tell, in their wealth of complex characters, and in the
eloquent speech—vivid, forceful, and at the same time lyric—that the
playwright puts on his characters’ lips. It has often been noted that
Shakespeare’s characters are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and that
it is their flawed, inconsistent nature that makes them memorable. Hamlet
fascinates audiences with his ambivalence about revenge and the uncertainty
over how much of his madness is feigned and how much genuine. Falstaff would
not be beloved if, in addition to being genial, openhearted, and witty, he
were not also boisterous, cowardly, and, ultimately, poignant. Finally, the
plays are distinguished by an unparalleled use of language. Shakespeare had
a tremendous vocabulary and a corresponding sensitivity to nuance, as well
as a singular aptitude for coining neologisms and punning.
There has been a great variety of critical approach to
Shakespeare’s work since his death. During the 17th and 18th century,
Shakespeare was both admired and condemned. Since then, much of the adverse
criticism has not been considered relevant, although certain issues have
continued to interest critics throughout the years. For instance, charges
against his moral propriety were made by Samuel Johnson in the 18th century
and by George Bernard Shaw in the 20th century.
Early criticism was directed primarily at questions of form.
Shakespeare was criticized for mixing comedy and tragedy and failing to
observe the unities of time and place prescribed by the rules of classical
drama. Dryden and Johnson were among the critics claiming that he had
corrupted the language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity. While some of
his early plays might justly be charged with a frivolous use of such
devices, the 20th century criticism has tended to praise their use in later
plays as adding depth and resonance of meaning.
Generally critics of the 17th and 18th century accused
Shakespeare of a want of artistic restraint while praising him for a fecund
imagination. Samuel Johnson, while agreeing with many earlier criticisms,
defended Shakespeare on the question of classical rules. On the issue of
unity of time and place he argued that no one considers the stage play to be
real life anyway. Johnson inaugurated the criticism of Shakespeare’s
characters that reached its culmination in the late 17th century with the
work of
A. C. Bradley. The German critics
Gotthold Lessing and
Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel saw Shakespeare as a romantic, different in
type from the classical poets, but on equal footing. Schlegel first
elucidated the structural unity of Shakespeare’s plays, a concept of unity
that is developed much more completely by the English poet and critic Samuel
Coleridge.
While Schlegel and Coleridge were establishing Shakespeare’s
plays as artistic, organic unities, such 19th century critics as the German
George Gervinus and the Irishman
Edward Dowden were trying to see positive
moral tendencies in the plays. The 19th century English critic William
Hazlitt, who continued the development of character analysis begun by
Johnson, considered each Shakespearean character to be unique, but found a
unity through analogy and gradation of characterization. While A. C. Bradley
marks the culmination of romantic 19th century character study, he also
suggested that the plays had unifying imagistic atmospheres, an idea that
was further developed in the 20th century.
The tendency in the 20th century criticism has been to
abandon both the study of character as independent personality and the
assumption that moral considerations can be separated from their dramatic
and aesthetic context. The plays have been increasingly viewed in terms of
the unity of image, metaphor, and tone. Caroline Spurgeon began the careful
classification of Shakespeare’s imagery, and although her attempts were
later felt to be somewhat naive and morally biased, her work is a landmark
in Shakespearean criticism. Other important trends in 20th-century criticism
include the Freudian approach, such as
Ernest Jones’s Oedipal interpretation
of Hamlet; the study of Shakespeare in terms of the Elizabethan world view
and Elizabethan stage conventions; and the study of the plays in mythic
terms.
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