Free English Literature Dissertations - 295 Preface). Setting Aside Modern Prejudices, Tate’s Work Does, At Times,
295 Preface). Setting aside modern prejudices, Tate’s work does, at times, bring ‘Regularity and Probability’ (ibid.) to a Shakespearean text that can seem reliant on contrivance and random misfortune; his excising of the Fool who does little to drive the plot, his creation of ‘poetic justice’ by having the play ‘conclude in a Success to the innocent distrest Persons’ (ibid. p.296), his creation of a more acceptable hero for affective tragedy in having Edgar disguise himself to watch over Cordelia, making a ‘generous Design that was before a poor Shift’ (ibid. p.295), turning Cordelia from tragic heroine to ingénue, and so on.
The rewritten plays of the Restoration themselves form a radical critique of Shakespeare alongside such criticism as An Essay of Dramatick Poesy, and are equally, if not more, instructive in expressing the opinions of contemporary writers towards the works of a dramatist who was, in fact, held in high regard, and whose reputation was largely perpetuated by the adaptive process, rather than damaged, as was previously held. This adaptive process stands in sharp contrast to the Romantics for whom, in some instances, the study-bound critique of Shakespeare assumes greater importance than the actual performing of the texts. Harry Levin notes that, for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Shakespearean canon was set ‘in a context of perusal rather than performance’ (in Wells 1996 p.225); Charles Lamb had already cast doubt on the role of the actor with On the Tragedies of Shakespeare and their Fitness for Stage Representation (1811), and William Hazlitt emphasized in The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817) that
we do not like to see [Shakespeare’s] plays acted, and least of all Hamlet. There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage.
(in Howe vol. IV p.232)
Like John Evelyn, Hazlitt sees Hamlet as entirely unfit for the stage, although for very different reasons. It is Hazlitt’s idea of the character, formed by studying the text, that is, for him at least, the perfect Hamlet, rather than any representation by an actor. He goes on to suggest that Hamlet cannot be enacted on the stage simply because he does not belong there, but rather he belongs in the audience, since he, like them, is a passive character given to spectating and procrastination rather than acting. Hazlitt’s statement is an extreme, but the Romantic period does seem to be one in which the idea of Shakespeare as printed text (to be studied), and Shakespeare as drama (to be staged) diverged most radically, with the character studies and marginalia of Coleridge on the one hand, and the showmanship of actors like Edmund Kean on the other. For poets such as Coleridge and Hazlitt performance was always unsatisfactory.
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