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I will conclude by saying of Shakespear, that with all his faults, and with all the irregularity of his Drama, one may look upon his works, in comparison of those that are more finish’d and regular, as upon an ancient majestick piece of Gothick Architecture, compar’d with a neat Modern building: The latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more solemn. It must be allow’d that in one of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments; tho’ we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does the Whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, tho’ many of the Parts are childish, ill-plac’d, and unequal to its grandeur.

NOTES:

Alexander Pope

48. His Characters. The same idea had been expressed by Gildon in his Essay on the Stage, 1710, p. li.: “He has not only distinguish’d his principal persons, but there is scarce a messenger comes in but is visibly different from all the rest of the persons in the play. So that you need not to mention the name of the person that speaks, when you read the play, the manners of the persons will sufficiently inform you who it is speaks.” Cf. also Addison’s criticism of Homer, Spectator, No. 273: “There is scarce a speech or action in the Iliad, which the reader may not ascribe to the person that speaks or acts, without seeing his name at the head of it.”

50. To judge of Shakespear by Aristotle’s rules. This comparison had appeared in Farquhar’s Discourse upon Comedy : “The rules of English Comedy don’t lie in the compass of Aristotle, or his followers, but in the Pit, Box, and Galleries. And to examine into the humour of an English audience, let us see by what means our own English poets have succeeded in this point. To determine a suit at law we don’t look into the archives of Greece or Rome, but inspect the reports of our own lawyers, and the acts and statutes of our Parliaments; and by the same rule we have nothing to do with the models of Menander or Plautus, but must consult Shakespear, Johnson, Fletcher, and others, who by methods much different from the Ancients have supported the English Stage, and made themselves famous to posterity.” Cf. also Rowe, p. 15: “it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of.”–Is it unnecessary to point out that there are no “rules” in Aristotle? The term “Aristotle’s rules” was commonly used to denote the “rules of the classical drama,” which, though based on the Poetics, were formulated by Italian and French critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

51. The Dates of his plays. Pope here controverts Rowe’s statement, p. 4.

blotted a line. See note, p. 43. Though Pope here controverts the traditional opinion, he found it to his purpose to accept it in the Epistle to Augustus, ll. 279-281:

And fluent Shakespear scarce effac’d a line.
Ev’n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.

52. Pope’s references to the early editions of the Merry Wives and other plays do not prove his assertions. Though an imperfect edition of the Merry Wives appeared in 1602, it does not follow that this was “entirely new writ” and transformed into the play in the Folio of 1623. The same criticism applies to what he says of Henry V., of which pirated copies appeared in 1600, 1602, and 1608. And he is apparently under the impression that the Contention of York and Lancaster and the early play of Hamlet were Shakespeare’s own work.