excellent-true testimony concerning him. Jonson's view of Shakespeare is
astonishingly accurate and trustworthy so far as it goes; even his
attitude of superiority to Shakespeare is fraught with meaning. Two
hundred years later, the rising tide of international criticism produced
two men, Goethe and Coleridge, who also saw Shakespeare, if only by
glimpses, or rather by divination of kindred genius, recognizing certain
indubitable traits. Goethe's criticism of "Hamlet" has been vastly
over-praised; but now and then he used words about Shakespeare which, in
due course, we shall see were illuminating words, the words of one who
guessed something of the truth. Coleridge, too, with his curious,
complex endowment of philosopher and poet, resembled Shakespeare, saw
him, therefore, by flashes, and might have written greatly about him;
but, alas, Coleridge, a Puritan born, was brought up in epicene
hypocrisies, and determined to see Shakespeare--that child of the
Renascence--as a Puritan, too, and consequently mis-saw him far oftener
than he saw him; misjudged him hideously, and had no inkling of his
tragic history.
There is a famous passage in Coleridge's "Essays on Shakespeare" which
illustrates what I mean. It begins: "In Shakespeare all the elements of
womanhood are holy"; and goes on to eulogize the instinct of chastity
which all his women possess, and this in spite of Doll Tearsheet,
Tamora, Cressida, Goneril, Regan, Cleopatra, the Dark Lady of the
Sonnets, and many other frail and fascinating figures. Yet whatever
gleam of light has fallen on Shakespeare since Coleridge's day has come
chiefly from that dark lantern which he now and then flashed upon the
master.
In one solitary respect, our latter-day criticism has been successful;
it has established with very considerable accuracy the chronology of the
plays, and so the life-story of the poet is set forth in due order for
those to read who can.
This then is what I found--a host of commentators who saw men as trees
walking, and mistook plain facts, and among them one authentic witness,
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