Attempt a critique of Shakespeare's dramatic poesie
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John Dryden was recognized as the greatest poet of his day; and his All for Love, based on Antony and Cleopatra, is in fact an original work, best enjoyed if its relationship (which is not especially close) to the earlier play is forgotten. Dryden was not only a playwright and poet; as critic he is still read with respect, partly because of his critical insights, partly because in many ways he summarizes best the attitudes of his time. The passage which follows is a brief selection from his criticism on the drama of the preceding age.
To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of Nature were still present to him and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches [puns], his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.[As do cypresses among the bending shrubs.]The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eaton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equaled them to him in their esteem: and in the last King’s court, when Ben’s reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him. . . .If I would compare Jonson with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
Some of Dryden's comments are repeated from earlier writers, notably the assurance that Shakespeare’s art was “natural,” this time used almost as an excuse to justify the awkward fact that he did not follow the classical rules as carefully as Jonson. The dislike of the pun in Dryden’s age (and the ages succeeding) has also become a criticism of Shakespeare.
Dryden did not pull his punches when it came to describing what he saw as Shakespeare’s faults. He found Shakespeare’s plots absurdly loose in construction, and deplored the “bombast” of his passionate speeches; density of imagery was not admired. Dryden was prepared nonetheless to forgive Shakespeare because the Elizabethan age was clearly barbarous.