But
these two, Hamlet and Orsino, are in reality one; every quality of
Orsino is to be found or divined in Hamlet, and therefore the easiest
and surest way to get at Shakespeare is to take Hamlet and deepen those
peculiarities in him which we find in Orsino.
Some critics are sure to say that I have now given a portrait of
Coleridge rather than a portrait of Shakespeare. This is not altogether
the fact, though I for one see no shame in acknowledging the likeness.
Coleridge had a "smack of Hamlet" in him, as he himself saw; indeed, in
his rich endowment as poet and philosopher, and in his gentleness and
sweetness of disposition, he was more like Shakespeare than any other
Englishman whom I can think of; but in Coleridge the poet soon
disappeared, and a little later the philosopher in him faded into the
visionary and sophist; he became an upholder of the English Church and
found reasons in the immutable constitution of the universe for aprons
and shovel-hats. Shakespeare, on the other hand, though similarly
endowed, was far more richly endowed: he had stronger passions and
greater depth of feeling; the sensuousness of Keats was in him; and this
richness of nature not only made him a greater lyric poet than Coleridge
and a far saner thinker, but carried him in spite of a constitutional
dislike of resolve and action to his astounding achievement.
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