there is
always scope for the personal equation in judging literature, because
criticism is empiricism in any case, being opinion set against opinion.
Different people think different things, and that is the end. Literary
criticism can never be an exact science, and everybody may have and
should have an opinion. Great productions have never had their meaning
exhausted, since meanings are an infinite series. So, to get an
interpretation of Cymbeline, say, get into the midst of the drama, as
if it were a stream and you a boatman in your boat. Commit you to the
drama's flood, omitting for a time what others have thought, and read
as if the poem were a fresh manuscript found by you, and read with such
avidity as scholars of the Renaissance knew when a palimpsest of
Tacitus or Theocritus was found. Let your imagination, as well as the
poet's, spread wings. Become creative yourself; for this is true: No
one can rightly conceive any work of imagination and be himself
unimaginative. Read and re-read, and at length, like the cliffs of
shore rising out of ocean mists, dim, but stable and increasingly
palpable, will come a scheme of meaning. Miss nothing. Let no beauty
elude you. Odors must not waste; we, in a spirit of lofty economy,
must inhale them. Watch the drift of verbal trifles; for Shakespeare
uses no superfluities. His meaning dominates his method; his
modulations are prophetic. See, therefore, that he does not elude you,
escaping at some path or shadow, but cling to his garments, however
swiftly he runs. Such study will bear fruit of sure triumph in your
conceiving a hidden import of a great drama. This method of
self-assertiveness in reading is logical and invigorating. Think as
well as be thought for.

Of all poets, Shakespeare is richest in the material of simile. He
thought in pictures, which is another way of saying he wooed
comparatives. Thought is inert; and he is greatest in expression who
can supply his thinking with ruddy blood, flush the pallid cheek, make
the dull eye bright, and make laughter run across the face like ripples
of sunshine across water touched by the wind. In Shakespeare's turn of
phrase and use of figure is a fertility of suggestion such as even
Dante can not approximate. He is unusual, which is a merit; for thus
is mind kept on the alert, like a sentinel fearing surprise. Of this
an essay might be filled with illustrations. He does not try to use
figures, but can not k