Within the span of time from Shakespeare’s death to the end of the nineteenth century Western language and culture evolved, schools of thought came and went. Shakespearean commentary and criticism evolved and changed along with everything else, reflecting the values and ideal of the times. What follows is a brief survey of distinctive periods during those nearly three hundred years and notable Shakespearean critics and schools of thought, with a particular focus on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Macbeth was published in the year 1623 as
one of sixteen plays registered by Blount and Jaggard
for Folio I. The source for the plot of the play was Holinshed’s
Chronicles of
The earliest commentators on Macbeth were, of course, Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Simon Forman, a critic taking in a performance at the Globe Theater in the year 1610 or 1611 did little more than summarize the plot of the play in the Book of Plaies.
...ther was to be obserued, firste, howe Mackbeth and Bancko, 2 noble men of Scotland, Ridinge thorowe a wod, the stole before them 3 women feiries or Nimphes, And saluted Mackbeth, sayinge, 3 tyms vnto him, haille Mackbeth, king of Codon; for thou shalt be a kinge, but shalt beget No kinges.… (Halliday 258)
Shakespeare’s contemporaries were understandably too close in time and relations to see him and his work in proper perspective. John Dryden (1631-1700) wrote in On the dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, in 1672 that Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s close friend and fellow actor:
In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth, which are not to be understood, …used to say that it was horror; and I am much afraid that this is so. (Halliday 258)
Dryden, a great critic of the Restoration
period (roughly the latter half of the 17th century) considered Shakespeare
the father of
Dryden was a poet and dramatist as well as a critic, and therefore his criticism of Shakespeare was in a certain sense dramatic. Living in an age he considered more refined, Dryden felt Shakespeare’s characters would be improved by speaking the elegant language of the Restoration, and that Shakespeare’s thoughts would be greatly helped by adding some of his own. An omission of a scene to get rid of barbarisms and the addition of a character to improve the symmetry was, after all, in the true interests of Shakespeare, who lacked modern tools early in the history of the language.
For it must be remembered that the audience of Restoration times was very small and confined almost entirely to Court circles… the Puritan middle classes shunning the theatre as something dangerously licentious, as indeed it often was. (Halliday 7)
With the onset of the eighteenth century criticism changed from dramatic to literary. The adaptations of Dryden and others of the Restoration were used on the stage, but criticism turned to the plays as written by Shakespeare and as printed in the Folios, the fourth and last of which was published in 1685.
The next notable critic of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to consider is Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson wrote extensively on Shakespeare over the greater part of his working life. He published a pamphlet in 1745 entitled Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir T. H.’s (Sir Thomas Hanmer’s) Edition of Shakespeare. Much of his work has been compiled into Johnson on Shakespeare, a collection of his essays with an introduction by Walter Raleigh.
Johnson’s essay in The Rambler, No. 168 in 1751, considers the use of Shakespeare’s language as Macbeth is readying himself to commit murder. He writes,
“In this passage is exerted all the force of poetry; that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter.” (Johnson 202) He gives high praise to the poetry but takes special exception to two words in the passage. He calls attention to the word “dun”, which he identifies as “an epithet now seldom heard but in the stable”, and “knife”, the “name of an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments”. (Johnson 202)
Johnson’s well-known Preface to his 1765 edition of Shakespeare
…is remarkable not so much for what it says as for what it is, the judicial summing up of the opinion of a century; it is the impartial estimate of Shakespeare’s virtues and defects by a powerful mind anxious not to let his prejudices prevent the defects as he saw them from weighing too lightly in the balance. It is the final verdict of an epoch. (Halliday 11)
Johnson saw through the eyes of the Age of Reason. According to F.E. Halliday
enthusiasm and curiosity were in chains, and minute discrimination was rejected in favour of the broader and safer generalization. … We do not look to Johnson, therefore, for any analysis of Shakespeare’s characters - … Nor do we look to Johnson for an appreciation of Shakespeare’s poetry, the music and mystery of which lay beyond the reach of common sense. (Halliday 11, 12)
The critics of the Classical school viewed Shakespeare’s work as a whole, but at arms length. Though they admitted its power and quality, they disliked its lack of organization, coherency and mixture of styles. However, the pre-Romantic critics recognized Shakespeare’s creative power in the characters he created within the confusing diversity. That is, therefore where they focused their attention.
Thomas Whately died in 1772 while he was working on a book devoted to the analysis of Shakespeare’s characters. His only complete work of this type is the essay comparing Richard III to Macbeth, published after his death. It is an important piece of critical writing to note as being a fragment from what would have been the first book dealing exclusively with Shakespeare’s characters.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, a group of writers
from
In Strasburg, in the winter of 1770-71 a young Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe (1749-1832) was introduced to Shakespeare’s work. Goethe became
a life-long admirer and champion of Shakespeare in
August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s (1767-1845) brilliant translation of the plays from 1797 to 1810, besides being one of the most significant achievements of the Romantic school, made Shakespeare into a national poet of the German people. The German critics generally saw a deeper significance in his plays than had previously been perceived; a significance that was appreciated by the English Romantics and was a powerful influence in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). It was the discovery of Shakespeare by the Germans that was partly responsible for William Hazlitt’s (1778-1830) book on The Character of Shakespeare’s Plays in 1817, the first English book of Romantic Shakespearean criticism. He writes that the English Romantics were “piqued” that it was up to foreign critics to provide the reasons they should have faith in Shakespeare. Hazlitt produced an interesting essay on the principle in Macbeth whereby evil rejoices at the destruction of good, as the witches use MacBeth’s ambition to destroy him.
Coleridge, however, above all others, is the interpreter of Shakespeare. He is the inspired critic who revealed the immense range of Shakespeare’s genius for the first time, and pointed out many previously unexplored approaches to appreciation of it. The doctrine, the discovery, the experience of organic unity is part of Coleridge’s contribution to the history of Shakespearean criticism…. (Eastman 70)
Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare in the years 1811 and 1812 as reported with precision by J. P. Collier, and various collections of his notes, contain a wealth of insight into Shakepeare’s characters.
Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings, and, after the deed done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers, - like delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their reach…. (Halliday 261)
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was
another great Romantic critic. DeQuincey wrote the famous essay On the Knocking
at the Gate in Macbeth in 1823. In it, he confesses his long-held,
and inexplicable feeling of solemnity over the knocking at the gate after
the murder of
The first half of the Victorian age was a bleak period for Shakespearean commentary. A confused and confusing picture emerged at that time. The only true bright spot came just at the end of the Victorian age. In 1904 A.C. Bradley’s (1851-1935) Shakespearean Tragedy was published. Bradley’s sole object was dramatic appreciation, to increase the understanding and enjoyment of the four principle tragedies as dramas. The book has done as much for the appreciation and understanding of Shakespearean tragedy as any other that has been written. It brought Victorian criticism to and unexpectedly brilliant conclusion.
There are several other notable Shakespearean critics and works of criticism, especially of the Romantic age, that have not mentioned in this survey due to the lack of time and space. All critics mentioned by name in this survey produced some quantity of commentary on the play, Macbeth. Further exploration into those included and those omitted would certainly reward the curious reader.