Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher

*Shakespeare*

                                Ben Jonson

                          Beaumont And Fletcher

                            Notes and Lectures

                            by S. T. Coleridge

                               New Edition

                                Liverpool

                              Edward Howell

                                MDCCCLXXIV





CONTENTS


Shakespeare
   Definition Of Poetry.
   Greek Drama.
   Progress Of The Drama.
   The Drama Generally, And Public Taste.
   Shakespeare, A Poet Generally.
   Shakespeare’s Judgment equal to his Genius.
   Recapitulation, And Summary Of the Characteristics of Shakespeare’s
   Dramas.
   Outline Of An Introductory Lecture Upon Shakespeare.
   Order Of Shakespeare’s Plays.
   Notes On The “Tempest.”
   “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”
   “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
   “Comedy Of Errors.”
   “As You Like It.”
   “Twelfth Night.”
   “All’s Well That Ends Well.”
   “Merry Wives Of Windsor.”
   “Measure For Measure.”
   “Cymbeline.”
   “Titus Andronicus.”
   “Troilus And Cressida.”
   “Coriolanus.”
   “Julius Cæsar.”
   “Antony And Cleopatra.”
   “Timon Of Athens.”
   “Romeo And Juliet.”
   Shakespeare’s English Historical Plays.
   “King John.”
   “Richard II.”
   “Henry IV.—Part I.”
   “Henry IV.—Part II.”
   “Henry V.”
   “Henry VI.—Part I.”
   “Richard III.”
   “Lear.”
   “Hamlet.”
   “Macbeth.”
   “Winter’s Tale.”
   “Othello.”
Notes on Ben Jonson.
   Whalley’s Preface.
   “Whalley’s ‘Life Of Jonson.’ ”
   “Every Man Out Of His Humour.”
   “Poetaster.”
   “Fall Of Sejanus.”
   “Volpone.”
   “Apicæne.”
   “The Alchemist.”
   “Catiline’s Conspiracy.”
   “Bartholomew Fair.”
   “The Devil Is An Ass.”
   “The Staple Of News.”
   “The New Inn.”
Notes On Beaumont And Fletcher.
   Harris’s Commendatory Poem On Fletcher.
   Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale’s Edition, 1811.
   “Maid’s Tragedy.”
   “A King And No King.”
   “The Scornful Lady.”
   “The Custom Of The Country.”
   “The Elder Brother.”
   “The Spanish Curate.”
   “Wit Without Money.”
   “The Humorous Lieutenant.”
   “The Mad Lover.”
   “The Loyal Subject.”
   “Rule A Wife And Have A Wife.”
   “The Laws Of Candy.”
   “The Little French Lawyer.”
   “Valentinian.”
   “Rollo.”
   “The Wildgoose Chase.”
   “A Wife For A Month.”
   “The Pilgrim.”
   “The Queen Of Corinth.”
   “The Noble Gentleman.”
   “The Coronation.”
   “Wit At Several Weapons.”
   “The Fair Maid Of The Inn.”
   “The Two Noble Kinsmen.”
   “The Woman Hater.”






SHAKESPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE.




Definition Of Poetry.


Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is
opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of
science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and
immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.
This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works
of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional
character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise
distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now
how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and
the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that
natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure
and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work
a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all
this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable
emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the
poet himself in the act of composition;—and in order to understand this,
we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions,
or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common
sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of
the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection
of the truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant
activity modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in
which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed.
This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable
whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and
conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now
intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition,
opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as
attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of
excitement,—but distinguished from other species of composition, not
excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole
consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts;—and
the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest
immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the
whole.