| | 1 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Add | | | Title: | Westward ho!  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “O rare Ben Jonson!” said some one, and
O rare Beaumont and Fletcher say we; for in
honest sincerity we prefer this gentle pair to all
the old English dramatic writers except Shakspeare.
For playful wit, richness of fancy, exuberance
of invention, and, above all, for the
sweet magic of their language, where shall we
find their superiors among the British bards?
It is not for us obscure wights to put on the
critical nightcap, and, being notorious criminals
ourselves, set up as judges of others; but we
should hold ourselves base and ungrateful if
we did not seize this chance opportunity to
raise our voices in these remote regions of
the West, where, peradventure, they never
dreamed of one day possessing millions of
readers, in humble acknowledgment of the
many hours they have whiled away by the creations
of their sprightly fancy, arrayed in the
matchless melody of their tuneful verse. But
mankind must have an idol, one who monopolizes
their admiration and devotion. The name
of Shakspeare has swallowed up that of his
predecessors, contemporaries, and successors;
thousands, tens of thousands echo his name that
never heard of Marlow,—Marlow, to whom
Shakspeare himself condescended to be indebted,
and whose conception of the character of
Faust is precisely that of Goëthe;—of Webster,
Marston, Randolph, Cartwright, May, and all
that singular knot of dramatists, who unite the
greatest beauties with the greatest deformities,
and whose genius has sunk under the licentiousness
of the age in which it was their misfortune
to live. The names of Massinger, Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are, it is true,
more familiar; but it is only their names and
one or two of their pieces that are generally
known. These last have been preserved, not
on the score of their superior beauties, but because
they afforded an opportunity for Garrick
and other great performers to reap laurels which
belonged to the poet, by the exhibition of some
striking character. Far be it from us to attempt
to detract from the fame of Shakspeare. Superior
he is, beyond doubt, to all his countrymen
who went before or came after him, in the peculiar
walk of his genius; but he is not so immeasurably
superior as to cast all others into
oblivion; and to us it seems almost a disgrace
to England that a large portion of her own
readers, and a still larger of foreigners, seem
ignorant that she ever produced more than one
dramatist. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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