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The German Student. —No. XIX. 



[June 1, 



M'as to (liiuk of writing any tiling more 

 iipou, for, or against liim, neither to 

 excuse or blame liiin ; but to explain — 

 to feel liim as he is. May these lines 

 contribute to it ? 



Shakespesire's boldest enemies have 

 blamed and laughed at him, in every 

 possible manner, for being, though a 

 great poet, no good dramatic poet, or, 

 at least, not so classical a tragedian as 

 Sophocles,Euripides,Corneillet and Vol- 

 taire, who have attained (he summit of 

 this sublime art. And Shakespeare's 

 boldest friends have, in general, been 

 satisfied Mith exculpating him ; with 

 compensating his irregularities by his 

 beauties ; with absolving him as an ac- 

 cused person, and with extolling his 

 grandeur the louder, the more faults 

 they had to shrug their shoulders at. 

 And iu this situation remains the affair 

 among the newest editors and commen- 

 tators. 1 hope these pages will change 

 the point of view, so as to bring his 

 image into a better light. But is not 

 this hope, too bold, too presumptu- 

 ous, against so many great men M"ho 

 have written about him? I think 

 not. If I prove that both sides have 

 built, merely upon a prrjiidice, a wrong 

 notion ; if, consequently, I have nothing 

 to do but to take a cloud from before 

 the eyes without changing any thing in 

 the eye or in the object, perhaps the 

 moment I have chosen, or mere chance 

 may have occasioned my finding, the 

 spot on which I now stop the reader : — 

 *■• Stand here, or thou wilt see nothing 

 but caricature." Were we to do no- 

 thing but wind and unwind the great 

 chain of learning without getting for- 

 ward with it, it would be deplorable 

 indeed ! 



From Greece were inherited the words 

 Drama, Tragedy, and Comedy ; and, as 

 the literature of the human race, on a 

 small spot of the earth, took its way 

 only by means of tradition, it was na- 

 tural that, iu its laji, and with its lan- 

 guage, a certain quantity of rules, 

 which seemed inseparable from the 

 doctrine, should be received with it. 

 As no child can be formed by reason, 

 but by authoritj', im;)ression, and the 

 godliness of example and custom, so 

 are whole nations, in all they learn, still 

 mere children. The kernel does not 

 grow without the shell, and cannot be 

 obtained without it, as useless as the 

 latter may be. This is the case with 

 the Grecian and northern Diama. 



In the north the Drama could not 

 have the same origin as iu Greece. It 



was in Greece what it cannot be in the 

 north ; consequently, it is, and ought 

 not to be, in the north what it was in 

 Greece; and Shakespeare's and Sopho- 

 cles' Drama are two things, which, in a 

 certain point of view, have s<;arcely the 

 name in common. I hope I shall be 

 able to prove these affirmations from 

 Greece itself, and tiuis considerably to 

 imfold the nature of (he northern Dra- 

 ma, and of the greatest northern dra- 

 matist, Shakespeare. We shall observe 

 the production of one thing by another ; 

 but, at the same time, such transform- 

 ation that they no longer remain the 

 same. 



The Greek tragedy took its rise fi-om 

 a single entr)', as it were, from the 

 Dythyrambic impromptus of the mimic 

 dance of the chorus. This received 

 additions, metamorphosis. ^Eschylus 

 brought two acting persons instead of 

 one upon the stage; invented the idea 

 of a principal character. Sophocles 

 added a third person : completed the 

 invention. From such a beginning 

 rose the Greek tragedy to its greatness ; 

 became the master-piece of human ge- 

 nius, the highest summit of poetry, 

 which Aristotle honours so highly, and 

 which we cannot suiliciently admire in 

 Sophocles and Euripides. 



But we must observe, at the same 

 time, that from this origin certain 

 things can be explained, wh ich, if gaped 

 at as dead rules, must mislead exceed- 

 ingly. That simplicity of the (ireek 

 fable, that frugality of the Greek man- 

 ners, that supported majesty in the ex 

 pression, that music of the stage, the 

 unity of time and place, — all this lay so 

 naturally and essentially in the origin 

 of the (ireek tragedy, that, without 

 being adapted to all this, its existence 

 would not have been possible. This 

 was the shell in which the kernel grew. 



Look back into the childhood of tiiosc 

 times. Simplicity of fable was really 

 so closely woven into every thing that 

 was called action of the past age, of the 

 republic, of the conntrj', of the religion, 

 into every heroic action, that the poet 

 was more at a loss to discover parts in 

 this simple whole, and dramatically to 

 introduce a beginning, middle, and 

 end, than to separate them with vio- 

 lence, to mutilate them, or to compose 

 one whole out of several separate events. 

 No one who has read ^Kschylus or So- 

 phocles can find this incomprehensible. 

 What are the tragedies of the former, 

 but an allegorical, mythological, half- 

 epical painting, almost %vitbout any 

 connect iou I 



