Transcriber's note
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. Minor punctuationerrors have been changed without notice.  Printererrors have been corrected, and they are indicated with    a mouse-hover    and listed at the    end of this book.
THE CRITICS

Versus

SHAKSPERE
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENDANT


By

FRANCIS A. SMITH
The Knickerbocker Press

New York

1907
Copyright, 1907

BY

FRANCIS A. SMITH
[1]
THE CRITICS
 versus
SHAKSPERE
A BRIEF FOR DEFENDANT.
By
Francis A. Smith,
of Counsel.

Many years ago, I was retained in the great case of The Critics againstShakspere, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during threecenturies. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and asoften reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who haveagain and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothingto reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the groundof newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony fromall lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury ofmankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action.[2]
Ben Jonson said that Shakspere "wanted art"; the highest appellate courtdecided that "Lear" was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles everproduced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of Frenchcriticism, decided that Shakspere was "votre bizarre sauvage;" the worldhas reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the"Henriade" is neglected for "Hamlet."
During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumontand Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, andeven the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituaryto the memory of the "immortal" Cowley,—
"By Shakspere's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.
Old Mother Wit and Nature gave
Shakspere and Fletcher all they have;
In Spencer and in Jonson, art
Of slower Nature got the start.
But both in him so equal are,
None knows which bears the happiest share."
[3]
One knows not which to admire most, the beauty of the poetry or thejustice of the encomium.
James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, saidin 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in1652, that he was the "plebeian driller."
Philipps, the pupil of Milton, refers to Shakspere's "unfiledexpressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of thecritical." Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarelyobserved the Aristotelian laws of the three unities," but was goodenough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "Heis many time                        
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