Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: A Popular Illustration of the Principles of Scientific Criticism

by Richard Green Moulton, Eric Bentley (Introduction)

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443 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

1849-1924

Reviews

[Bettie]

Opening: The Two Stories Shakespeare borrows for his Merchant of Venice.

THE starting-point in the treatment of any work of literature is its position in literary history: the recognition of this gives the attitude of mind which is most favourable for extracting from the work its full effect. The division of the universal Drama to which Shakespeare belongs is known as the 'Romantic Drama,' one of its chief distinctions being that it uses the stories of Romance, together with histories treated as story-books, as the sources from which the matter of the plays is taken; Romances are the raw material out of which the Shakespearean Drama is manufactured. This very fact serves to illustrate the elevation of the Elizabethan Drama in the scale of literary development: just as the weaver uses as his raw material that which is the finished product of the spinner, so Shakespeare and his contemporaries start in their art of dramatising from Story which is already a form of art. In the exhibition, then, of Shakespeare as an Artist, it is natural to begin with the raw material which he worked up into finished masterpieces.

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