In all three of them the
power of passionate and imaginative eloquence is not only equal in spirit
or essence but identical in figure or in form: in those two of them which
deal almost as much with speculative intelligence as with poetic action
and passion, the tones and methods, types and objects of thought, are
also not equal only but identical. An all but absolute brotherhood in
thought and style and tone and feeling unites the quasi-tragedy of
_Troilus and Cressida_ with what in the lamentable default of as apt a
phrase in English I must call by its proper designation in French the
_tragedie manquee_ of _Measure for Measure_. In the simply romantic
fragment of the Shakespearean _Pericles_, where there was no call and no
place for the poetry of speculative or philosophic intelligence, there is
the same positive and unmistakable identity of imaginative and passionate
style.
I cannot but conjecture that the habitual students of Shakespeare's
printed plays must have felt startled as by something of a shock when the
same year exposed for the expenditure of their sixpences two reasonably
correct editions of a play unknown to the boards in the likeness of
_Troilus and Cressida_, side by side or cheek by jowl with a most
unreasonably and unconscionably incorrect issue of a much older stage
favourite, now newly beautified and fortified, in _Pericles Prince of
Tyre_.
Pages:
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202