contrast
became a constant theme in Restoration allusions to the two poets.

Two other early critical ideas were to be elaborated in the last four
decades of the century. In the first Folio Leonard Digges had spoken of
Shakespeare's "fire and fancy," and I.M.S. had written in the Second
Folio of his ability to move the passions. Finally, throughout the last
half of the century, as Bentley has shown, Shakespeare was admired above
all English dramatists for his ability to create characters, of whom
Falstaff was the most frequently mentioned.

All of these opinions were developed in Dryden's frequent critical
remarks on his favorite dramatist. No one was more clearly aware than
he of the faults of the "divine Shakespeare" as they appeared in the new
era of letters that Dryden himself helped to shape. And no man ever
praised Shakespeare more generously. For Dryden Shakespeare was the
greatest of original geniuses, who, "taught by none," laid the
foundations of English drama; he was a poet of bold imagination,
especially gifted in "magick" or the supernatural, the poet of nature,
who could dispense with "art," the poet of the passions, of varied
characters and moods, the poet of large and comprehensive soul. To him,
as to most of his contemporaries, the contrast between Jonson and
Shakespeare was important: the one showed what poets ought to do; the
other what untutored genius can do. When Dryden praised Shakespeare, his
tone became warmer than when he judicially appraised Jonson.

Like most of his contemporaries Dryden did not heed Jonson's caveat
that, despite his lack of learning, Shakespeare did have art. He was too
obsessed with the idea that Shakespeare, ignorant of the health-giving
art of the ancients, was infected with the faults of his age, faults
that even Jonson did not always escape. Shakespeare was often incorrect
in grammar; he frequently sank to flatness or soared into bombast; his
wit could be coarse and low and too dependent on puns; his plot
structure was at times faulty, and he lacked the sense for order and
arrangement that the new taste valued. All this he could and did admit,
and he was impressed by the learning and critical standards of Rymer's
attack. But like Samuel Johnson he was not often prone to substitute
theory for experience, and like most of his contemporaries he felt
Shakespeare's power to move and to convince. Perhaps the most trenchant
expression of his final stand in regard to Shakespe