The Primacy of Shakespeare

Abstract

29 DEW Y sermon' piously begins by citing a text from literary gospel of our time, Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. Shakespeare, we say, was one of a group of English dramatists working around i6oo, and also one of great poets of world, so says Professor Frye. first part of this is a statement of second a value-judgment so generally accepted as to pass for a statement of fact, he goes on. it is not a statement of fact. It remains a value-judgment, and not a shred of systematic criticism can ever be attached to it. This, if we accept it, does not sound very encouraging for systematic criticism. Rightly to begreat, as Shakespeare himself envisaged it, was difficult and could be illusory, though he never ceased to ring changes on that theme. That adjective itself, with its various congeners, has been applied some twenty times by Swiniburne to Victor Hugo, during course of one short article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, would make a good point for Mr. Frye: an argument which might be termed, in Shakespearean phrase, the abuse of greatness. Great in first place, etymologically speaking, had meant something coarse or large, then heavy in particular meaning of pregnant, or, on another plane, noble by virtue of a designated social rank; it was originally an objective and more or less quantitative conception. Greatness in sense of acknowledged preeminence had to come as a later moral refinement, a qualitative and therefore subjective evaluation, yet one arrived at through democratic consensus, and authoritative enough to shape men's lives and claim their persistent attention. If Mr. Frye wants facts-and he does not always-I wish he could be present at this conference. I do not mean simply in order to take part in our discussions, much as these may contribute to critical understanding; but, even more significantly, to speculate on what is presupposed by unique existence of a monumental library primarily devoted to study of a single author whose work forms main concern of a professional body of scholars, now converging to celebrate that work in capital of a foreign country 357 years after his death. The facts of Shakespeare's universal pervasion need scarcely be attested here at Folger Shakespeare Library, of all places. The accumulated bibliography of editions, monographs, articles, and translations, not to mention productions, makes Ossa like a wart. Mr. Frye is well aware of all this, and I suppose he must regard it as an incidental phenomenon of cultural history. But German critics might call it Rezeptionsdsthetik. The fact that Shakespeare furnished more than one out of every eighteen plays for theatrical repertory of Midwestern frontier, as statistically investigated by Ralph L. Rusk, might