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Shakespeare; Or, The Poet
by
[Footnote 632: Phidian sculpture. Phidias was a famous Greek sculptor who lived in the age of Pericles and beautified Athens with his works.]
[Footnote 633: Gothic minsters. Churches or cathedrals, built in the Gothic, or pointed, style of architecture which prevailed during the Middle Ages; it owed nothing to the Goths, and this term was originally used in reproach, in the sense of “barbarous.”]
[Footnote 634: The Italian painting. In Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries pictorial art was carried to a degree of perfection unknown in any other time or country.]
[Footnote 635: Ballads of Spain and Scotland. The old ballads of these countries are noted for beauty and spirit.]
[Footnote 636: Tripod. Define this word, and explain its appropriateness here.]
[Footnote 637: Aubrey. John Aubrey, an English antiquarian of the seventeenth century.]
[Footnote 638: Rowe. Nicholas Rowe, an English author of the seventeenth century, who wrote a biography of Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 639: Timon. See note on Gifts, 466.]
[Footnote 640: Warwick. An English politician and commander of the fifteenth century, called “the King Maker.” He appears in Shakespeare’s plays, Henry IV., V., and VI.]
[Footnote 641: Antonio. The Venetian Merchant in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice.]
[Footnote 642: Talma. Francois Joseph Talma was a French tragic actor, to whom Napoleon showed favor.]
[Footnote 643: An omnipresent humanity, etc. See what Carlyle has to say on this subject in his Hero as Poet.]
[Footnote 644: Daguerre. Louis Jacques Daguerre, a French painter, one of the inventors of the daguerreotype process, by means of which an image is fixed on a metal plate by the chemical action of light.]
[Footnote 645: Euphuism. The word here has rather the force of euphemism, an entirely different word. Euphuism was an affected ornate style of expression, so called from Euphues, by John Lyly, a sixteenth century master of that style.]
[Footnote 646: Epicurus. A Greek philosopher of the third century before Christ. He was the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man’s chief aim and that the highest pleasure is freedom.]
[Footnote 647: Dante. (See note 258.)]
[Footnote 648: Master of the revels, etc. Emerson always expressed thankfulness for “the spirit of joy which Shakespeare had shed over the universe.” See what Carlyle says in The Hero as Poet, about Shakespeare’s “mirthfulness and love of laughter.”]
[Footnote 649: Koran. The Sacred book of the Mohammedans.]
[Footnote 650: Twelfth Night, etc. The names of three bright, merry, or serene plays by Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 651: Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the sense of “gipsy.” He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by the gipsies.]
[Footnote 652: Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century.]
[Footnote 653: Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth century, the author of Don Quixote.]
[Footnote 654: Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and Jeremiah.]
[Footnote 655: German. Such as Luther.]
[Footnote 656: Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in Representative Men.]
[Footnote 657: A pilgrim’s progress. As described by John Bunyan, the English writer, in his famous Pilgrim’s Progress.]
[Footnote 658: Doleful histories of Adam’s fall, etc. The subject of Paradise Lost, the great poem by John Milton.]
[Footnote 659: With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by Dante in his Divine Commedia, an epic about hell, purgatory, and paradise.]