The Cult of Shakespeare (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Cult of ShakespeareThe Cult of Shakespeare is a survey (not over-solemn, I hope) of the fortunes of Shakespeare from the time of his death to the present day, an account of the rise of bardolatry and the more frenzied excesses of the devotees of his cult: of the liberties that have been taken with his work and the follies that have been committed in his name. Few people, I think, are fully aware of this history and of the power of the spell that the great name has exercised throughout the centuries.Yet, when the Stuarts were restored to the throne in 1660 there was no magic in the name. Even before the theatres were closed in I Shakespeare had been overshadowed by Beaumont and Fletcher and Ben Jonson, and when they were reopened at the Restoration he was remembered not very vividly as a once-popular dramatist Who wrote before the age of enlightenment. His plays as they Stood were unacceptable to an age polished by its contact with France, but, as there was a dearth of new drama after twenty years Without demand, they might be made to serve if skilfully adapted. And so we get the refined classical versions of Davenant, those strange outrageous hybrids with which the modern popularity of Shakespeare began. The refining process was continued by Dryden, Tate, Cibber and others, until at the beginning of the Georgian era poets and scholars began to return to what Shakespeare had really written, and to wrangle about the restora tion of his text. The pope-theobald-warburton-hanmer squabble is not the least diverting episode in this history.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.