For while Montaigne had nothing but prose at his command, and
not too rich a prose, as he himself complains, Shakespeare in magic of
expression has had no equal in recorded time, and he used the lyric as
well as the dramatic form, poetry as well as prose, to give his soul
utterance.
We are doing Shakespeare wrong by trying to believe that he hides
himself behind his work; the suspicion is as unworthy as the old
suspicion dissipated by Carlyle that Cromwell was an ambitious
hypocrite. Sincerity is the birthmark of genius, and we can be sure that
Shakespeare has depicted himself for us with singular fidelity; we can
see him in his works, if we will take the trouble, "in his habit as he
lived."
We are doing ourselves wrong, too, by pretending that Shakespeare
"out-tops knowledge." He did not fill the world even in his own time:
there was room beside him in the days of Elizabeth for Marlowe and
Spenser, Ben Jonson and Bacon, and since then the spiritual outlook,
like the material outlook, has widened to infinity.
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