II Division Into Periods
The history of opinion of Shakespeare may be divided into three periods, represented broadly by the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Definite limits cannot be assigned to these three periods. Epochs of literary history must be determined ultimately, not by the work produced in them, or by the lives of the producers, but by the influences which gradually brought them into being. Thus, there must always be at the beginning and end of a period of literary history a kind of dovetailing with it of the periods before and after. Still, the three periods I have indicated are reasonably distinct. The first begins with the earliest mention of Shakespeare in print, and may be taken to end with the death of Dryden. The second period was largely affected by Dryden’s influence, and thus may be said to begin with the eighteenth century. And the last period, which is due to the reaction from the Augustan age of English literature, may be fairly dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The style of the literary products of these three centuries respectively goes to confirm the division. The first period is that of personal knowledge and oral tradition, and tributes to Shakespeare are for the most part in verse. It is the period during which his historical position was in the making. The second period is that of critics and emendators—the period when people begin to realise that there is some great power in Shakespeare’s work which finds no parallel in their own time, and must therefore be praised blindly, accounted for, or explained away. Tribute is clothed equally in verse and prose; it is, in short, the period of doubt and astonishment. The last period is that of æsthetic criticism, and tribute is mostly in prose. Shakespeare’s position is an accepted fact.
Of the three periods, the second is by far the most interesting to the literary historian. Opinion of Shakespeare during the first period was to a large extent prejudiced by personal knowledge and tradition. The praise is practically equivalent to that of friends; which is to say, it is largely that of blind admiration. In the third period it is open-eyed, intelligent admiration. The matter has been sifted. The question of Shakespeare’s genius is no longer a debatable point. The praise is that of disciples who appreciate the logical basis of their master’s teaching, and who see the necessity of lucid explanation for the purpose of adding recruits to their number. But the second period is the time of trial. Shakespeare’s title to fame is weighed judicially, and is not found wanting.