The chief academic critics, such as Professor Dowden and Dr. Brandes,
take pains to inform us that Biron in "Love's Labour's Lost" is nothing
but an impersonation of Shakespeare. This would show much insight on the
part of the Professors were it not that Coleridge as usual has been
before them, and that Coleridge's statement is to be preferred to
theirs. Coleridge was careful to say that the whole play revealed many
of Shakespeare's characteristic features, and he added finely, "as in a
portrait taken of him in his boyhood." This is far truer than Dowden's
more precise statement that "Berowne is the exponent of Shakespeare's
own thought." For though, of course, Biron is especially the mouthpiece
of the poet, yet Shakespeare reveals himself in the first speech of the
King as clearly as he does in any speech of Biron:
"Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall 'bate his scythe's keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.
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