It was not merely the recognition of the
critical and highly educated that Shakespeare received in person. It
was by the voice of the half-educated populace, whose heart and
intellect were for once in the right, that he was acclaimed the
greatest interpreter of human nature that literature had known, and,
as subsequent experience has proved, was likely to know. There is
evidence that throughout his lifetime and for a generation afterwards
his plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and gallery alike. It is true
that he was one of a number of popular dramatists, many of whom had
rare gifts, and all of whom glowed with a spark of the genuine
literary fire. But Shakespeare was the sun in the firmament: when his
light shone, the fires of all contemporaries paled in the contemporary
playgoer's eye. There is forcible and humorous portrayal of human
frailty and eccentricity in plays of Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben
Jonson. Ben Jonson was a classical scholar, which Shakespeare was not.
Jonson was as well versed in Roman history as a college tutor. But
when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson both tried their hands at dramatising
episodes in Roman history, the Elizabethan public of all degrees of
intelligence welcomed Shakespeare's efforts with an enthusiasm which
they rigidly withheld from Ben Jonson's.
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