1881.] Mr. W. H. Pollock on ShaJcspeare Criticism. 677 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING. 



Friday, May 20, 1881. 



William Spottiswoode, Esq. M.A. D.C.L. Prcs. R.S. 

 Vice-President, in tlic Chair. 



Walter H. Pollock, Esq. M.A. 



ShaJcspeare Criticism. 



The speaker began by noticing some of tlie absurd theories respecting 

 Shakspeare's life and works. 



Hume the historian said : " If Shakspeare be considered as a man 

 born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any 

 instruction from books or from the world, he may be regarded as a 

 prodigy. If represented as a poet capable of furnishing a proper 

 entertainment to a refined or an intelligent audience, we must abate 

 much of this eulogy. A striking peculiarity of sentiment adapted to 

 a single character he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration ; but 

 a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. 

 Nervous and picturesque expressions, as well as descriptions, abound 

 in him ; but it is in vain we look for purity or simplicity of diction." 

 Goldsmith makes " The Vicar of Wakefield " say, " Can the present 

 age be pleased with that antiquated dialect, that obsolete humour, 

 those over-charged characters?" Voltaire said 'Hamlet' was "the 



dream of a drunken savage with some flashes of beautiful thoughts." 



****** 



Gervinus truly says that, after two hundred and fifty years of 

 commentators' digging, as in a mine, Shakspeare has remained an 

 enigma to the literary world. This is due to a great error. Shak- 

 speare did not write for studious reading in the closet, but for 

 representation on the stage for ordinary understanding. He often 

 wrote carelessly ; not at all as if every word and line were to be 

 critically discussed. In fact, his plays were at first surreptitiously 



printed, which was considered injurious to his rc}»utation. 



****** 



After reading some of Mr. Pepys's amusing comments on the 

 renewed performance of Shakspeare at the Restoration in 1G60, Mr. 

 Pollock gave specimens of tlie sacrilegious manner in which the 

 plays had been dealt with by Davcnaut, Dryden, and others in the 

 seventeenth century. He referred especially to ' Iiomeo and Juliet,' 

 as dealt with by Otway, in which are striking examples of the " art 

 of sinking," and also to the Duke of Buckingham's alterations of 



* Julius Caesar.' 



♦ *•*** 



Mr. Pollock then read the story on which * Hamlet ' was founded, 

 from Saxo-Grammaticus, the Danish historian, to show the way 



