Modern research into Hellenic and
Asiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and
greatly enhanced our enjoyment of them. A fair comprehension of the
Divina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions that
rent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit that
banished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of a
sepulchre in the pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of his
age; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated in
him. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulated materials
of centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His variety and
multiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in the
coinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed,
stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there were
certainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage before Shakespeare. In him
were received the imaginations, the inventions, the aspirations, the
superstitions, the humors, the supernatural intimations; in him met the
converging rays of the genius of his age, as in a lens, to be sent onward
thenceforth in an ever-broadening stream of light.
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