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Shakespeare; Or, The Poet
by
[Footnote 607: Ben Jonson, etc. In his Timber or Discoveries, Ben Jonson, a famous classical dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare, says: “I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature: had an excellent fancy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped…. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter…. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.”]
[Footnote 608: Sir Henry Wotton. An English diplomatist and author of wide culture.]
[Footnote 609: The following persons, etc. The persons enumerated were all people of note of the seventeenth century. Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. John Donne, Abraham Cowley, Charles Cotton, John Pym, and John Hales were Englishmen, scholars, statesmen, and authors. Theodore Beza was a French theologian; Isaac Casaubon was a French-Swiss scholar; Roberto Berlarmine was an Italian cardinal; Johann Kepler was a German astronomer; Francis Vieta was a French mathematician; Albericus Gentilis was an Italian jurist; Paul Sarpi was an Italian historian; Arminius was a Dutch theologian.]
[Footnote 610: Many others whom doubtless, etc. Emerson here enumerates some famous English authors of the same period, not mentioned in the preceeding list.]
[Footnote 611: Pericles. See note on Heroism, 352.]
[Footnote 612: Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German critic and poet of the eighteenth century.]
[Footnote 613: Wieland. Christopher Martin Wieland was a German contemporary of Lessing’s, who made a prose translation into German of Shakespeare’s plays.]
[Footnote 614: Schlegel. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, a German critic and poet, who about the first of the nineteenth century translated some of Shakespeare’s plays into classical German.]
[Footnote 615: Hamlet. The hero of Shakespeare’s play of the same name.]
[Footnote 616: Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, author of critical lectures and notes on Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 617: Goethe. (See note 85.)]
[Footnote 618: Blackfriar’s Theater. A famous London theater in which nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.]
[Footnote 619: Stratford. Stratford-on-Avon, a little town in Warwickshire, England, where Shakespeare was born and where he spent his last years.]
[Footnote 620: Macbeth. One of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, written about 1606.]
[Footnote 621: Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier. English scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who edited the works of Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 622: Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont: The leading London theaters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.]
[Footnote 623: Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, famous British actors of the Shakespearian parts.]
[Footnote 624: The Hamlet of a famed performer, etc. Macready. Emerson said to a friend: “I see you are one of the happy mortals who are capable of being carried away by an actor of Shakespeare. Now, whenever I visit the theater to witness the performance of one of his dramas, I am carried away by the poet.”]
[Footnote 625: What may this mean, etc. Hamlet, I. 4.]
[Footnote 626: Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of Shakespeare’s plays.]
[Footnote 627: The forest of Arden. In which is laid, the scene of Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It.]
[Footnote 628: The nimble air of Scone Castle. It was of the air of Inverness, not of Scone, that “the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.”–Macbeth, I. 6.]
[Footnote 629: Portia’s villa. See the moonlight scene, Merchant of Venice, V. 1.]
[Footnote 630: The antres vost, etc. See Othello, I. 3. “Antres” is an old word, meaning caves, caverns.]
[Footnote 631: Cyclopean architecture. In Greek mythology, the Cyclops were a race of giants. The term ‘Cyclopean’ is applied here to the architecture of Egypt and India, because of the majestic size of the buildings, and the immense size of the stones used, as if it would require giants to perform such works.]