Criticism; English essays; English poetry -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Poetry
Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakespeare may recognize that he
too was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the
Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to
this man also divine; _un_speakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven:
‘We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!’ That scroll in Westminster
Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any Seer.
But the man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante
the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call
Shakespeare the still more melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism,
the ‘Universal Church’ of the Future and of all times? No narrow
superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or
perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold
hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men
worship as they can! We may say without offence, that there rises a
kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakespeare too; not unfit to make
itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony
with these, if we understood them, but in unison!--I cannot call this
Shakespeare a ‘Sceptic’, as some do; his indifference to the creeds
and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither
unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism; no sceptic,
though he says little about his Faith. Such ‘indifference’ was the
fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand
sphere of worship (we may call it such); these other controversies,
vitally important to other men, were not vital to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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