SECTION 9 OBSERVATION. 73 



comparatively rarely. And yet, whilst by implication paying 

 deeper homage to Ben Jonson, and informing us that Beaumont 

 and Fletcher were greater stage favourites than Shakespeare, 

 two of their plays being performed for one of Shakespeare's, 

 a panegyric on Shakespeare appears which certainly is the 

 turning point in the fortunes of Shakespeare's fame. However, 

 the praise bestowed is hesitating. Summoning courage, Dryden 

 introduces the often quoted passage relating to Shakespeare, 

 by the following remark: "It will be still necessary to speak 

 somewhat of Shakespeare and Fletcher, [Ben Jonson's] rival 

 in poesy; and one of them, in my opinion at least, his equal, 

 perhaps his superior." (Ed. 1668, p. 47.) Dryden was, in fact, in 

 no sense an idolater, as witness the following passage : "I can- 

 not say he is everywhere alike. ... He is many times flat, 

 insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious 

 swelling into bombast." (Pp. 47-48.) "Shakespeare's language 

 is likewise a little obsolete." 



A little later, in 1674, Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, in 

 his Dictionary of Poets, speaks of a triumvirate consisting of 

 Ben Jonson, Fletcher, and Shakespeare, each excelling in cer- 

 tain directions. 



To the end of the seventeenth century, there was no pro- 

 gress towards the recognition of Shakespeare's supremacy and 

 uniqueness. Before its close, Thomas Rhymer, who had already 

 unceremoniously examined Beaumont and Fletcher, turned his 

 attention to Shakespeare, and, in the same spirit, severely criti- 

 cised Shakespeare for a variety of defects in his dramatic 

 works, singling out Othello and Julius Caesar for dissection. 

 The eighteenth century repudiated Rhymer's negative attitude, 

 but accepted his criticism almost in its entirety. From Dryden, 

 until after Samuel Johnson, for approximately a century, the 

 editors and champions of Shakespeare tempered their enthu- 

 siasm with a scathing critique which would appear to most 

 Shakespeareans of to-day little short of blasphemous. Pope, 

 one of Shakespeare's first editors, did not mince his words, as 

 the following extracts from his edition of Shakespeare's works 

 show: 



"For of all English poets Shakespeare must be confessed to be the 

 fairest and fullest subject for criticism, and to afford the most numerous, 

 as well as most conspicuous instances, both of Beauties and Faults of all 

 sorts. ... It must be owned that with all these great excellencies, he has 

 almost as great defects; and that as he has certainly written better, so 

 he has perhaps written worse, than any other. . . . With all his faults, and 

 with all the irregularity of his drama. . . . Nor does the whole fail to 

 strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, 

 ill-placed and unequal to its grandeur." 



So Dr. Johnson, in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare : 



"In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, 

 what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comic scenes, he 

 seerns to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tra- 



