John Dryden, 1667 (1631-1700)
As when a tree’s cut down, the secret root
Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;
So, from old Shakespeare’s honour’d dust, this day
Springs up and buds a new reviving play.
Shakespeare who, taught by none, did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art.
He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects law,
And is that Nature which they paint and draw.
Fletcher reach’d that which on his heights did grow,
Whilst Jonson crept and gather’d all below.
This did his love, and this his mirth digest:
One imitates him most, the other best.
If they have since out-writ all other men,
’Tis with the drops which fell from Shakespeare’s pen.
The storm which vanish’d on the neighb’ring shore,
Was taught by Shakespeare’s Tempest first to roar.
That innocence and beauty which did smile
In Fletcher, grew on this Enchanted Isle.
But Shakespeare’s magick could not copy’d be,
Within that circle none durst walk but he.
I must confess ’twas bold, nor would you now
That liberty to vulgar wits allow,
Which works by magick supernatural things:
But Shakespeare’s pow’r is sacred as a king’s.
Those legends from old priesthood were receiv’d,
And he then writ, as people then believed.
Prologue to the Tempest or the Enchanted Island, by Sir William D’Avenant and John Dryden. 1676.
See also Dryden’s Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, spoken by Mr. Betterton representing the Ghost of Shakespeare.
1668
To begin, then, with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi.
Of Dramatic Poesie, an Essay, 1668, p. 47.
The following is from Dryden’s Defence of the Epilogue:—Let any man who understands English read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; and yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny.
——Neque ego illis detrahere ausim
Hærentem capiti multa cum laude coronam.
But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots; many of which, especially those which they writ first (for even that age refined itself in some measure), were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” nor the historical plays of Shakespeare; besides many of the rest, as the “Winter’s Tale,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “Measure for Measure,” which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.