Even the episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc,
and the like (which sometimes seem to me like interpolations allow'd,)
may be meant to foil the possible sleuth, and throw any too 'cute
pursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I should specially dwell
on, and make much of, that inexplicable element of every highest
poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve its real purpose
and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of this trait--hiding
the nest where common seekers may never find it--the Shaksperean works
afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations known to me. I would
even call that trait the leading one through the whole of those works.
All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I get
my new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, my
friend William O'Connor says:
They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming
to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,--and carry to
me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably
well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism
will reveal.... Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous
gloom,--they do not make us love the times they limn,... and it is
impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could
have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which
his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true,
certainly and subtly saps and mines.
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