William Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage Volume 4 1753-1765
Language: English
Pages: 600
ISBN: 0415487293
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
adventure. As Cecil Price has put it, mid-eighteenthcentury taste ‘was very conservative. Almost a third of all the plays given at Drury Lane in the whole of the season were by Shakespeare…. The same comedies and tragedies went on appearing year by year’ (Theatre in the Age of Garrick, p. 196). The statistics of H.W.Pedicord27 and G.W. Stone (The London Stage, 1747–1776, I, pp. clxii ff.) for the period 1747 to 1776 show that Shakespeare was by far the most popular dramatist at both theatres. Of
our taste but to the amazing power of our poet’s imagination, which could explore the undiscovered regions of eternity, and recall the fleeting spirit with a solemnity of ideas responsive to the occasion. With us islanders Shakespeare is a kind of established religion in poetry. His bays will always flourish with undiminished verdure. When I say this I am far from maintaining that he is not guilty of transgressions; but for his transgressions he recompences his auditors with beauties which no art
accommodate the difference, telling him that the attempt made upon him by his servants was not with any intention of doing him harm but only to make trial of his strength and courage, promising at the same time to restore to him his lands and other possessions in as good condition as when they first came into his hands: which brought about a reconciliation, sincere on Gamelyn’s part but not so on the other’s. A wrestling having been proclaimed at some distance from his brother’s house, Gamelyn
a thousand Years should come within the Compass of three Hours is no more an Impossibility than that two Minutes should be contain’d in one. (Vol. 2, p. 186) The argument that once you allow any disproportion between time represented and time acted then you cannot subsequently limit the first was made in challenging terms by Fielding in Tom Jones (1749), in a prefatory chapter headed ‘Of THE SERIOUS in writing, and for what purpose it is introduced’: Who ever demanded the reasons of that nice
Othello and King Lear in the theatre, 1755 CHRISTOPHER SMART on Shakespeare’s learning, January 1756 DAVID GARRICK, from his adaptation of The Winter’s Tale, 1756 DAVID GARRICK, in defence of Shakespeare musicals, 1756 DAVID GARRICK, from his musical adaptation of The Tempest, 1756 CHARLES MARSH, from his adaptation of The Winter’s Tale, 1756 TOBIAS SMOLLETT and SAMUEL DERRICK on the current adaptations of Shakespeare, March 1756 ix 53 56 60 84 110 147 156 159 171 175 178 184 199 207 218 222 229