IN THE MATTER OF SHAKESPEARE. 



I HAVE sometimes found myself indulging 

 the fancy that Shakespeare's genius has been 

 greatly overrated or rather overstated 

 even by the most cautious critics and com- 

 mentators ; but I should not like to be forced 

 into a defence of the fancy. Monuments are 

 sacred things, and few men will deny that 

 the Bible and the body of Shakespeare's 

 works are, to English-speaking people at 

 least, the most venerated of all monuments. 



How could any man, no matter how self- 

 confident, go cheerfully about the attempt to 

 prove that Shakespeare has been overrated 

 as a genius ? In the first place, he would 

 have to be a most extraordinary genius him- 

 self, and distinguished as such in the world, 

 before he could command even respectful at- 

 tention as an iconoclast. In the next place, 

 he would have to stem the tide of what has 

 come to be hereditary popular opinion; and 

 he would have to bear the taunts, jibes, kicks, 

 and cuffs of all the Shakespeare- cranks in the 

 whole world to say nothing of the ire of all 

 the publishers who get a big income off the 

 old poet's books. Lastly, he would have no 

 way of proving that the poorest verse in 

 Shakespeare's poorest play is not better than 

 the strongest that Tennyson or Emerson ever 

 wrote. 



Most of us are slow to learn that a Booth 

 may do as much for Shakespeare as the great 

 dramatist can do for a Booth, and that Mod- 

 58 



