Project Gutenberg's The Age of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Title: The Age of Shakespeare
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
Release Date: December 3, 2004 [EBook #14252]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
BY
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMVIII
TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES LAMB
When stark oblivion froze above their names
Whose glory shone round Shakespeare's, bright as now,
One eye beheld their light shine full as fame's,
One hand unveiled it: this did none but thou.
Love, stronger than forgetfulness and sleep,
Rose, and bade memory rise, and England hear:
And all the harvest left so long to reap
Shone ripe and rich in every sheaf and ear.
A child it was who first by grace of thine
Communed with gods who share with thee their shrine:
Elder than thou wast ever now I am,
Now that I lay before thee in thanksgiving
Praise of dead men divine and everliving
Whose praise is thine as thine is theirs, Charles Lamb.
CONTENTS
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
JOHN WEBSTER
THOMAS DEKKER
JOHN MARSTON
THOMAS MIDDLETON
WILLIAM ROWLEY
THOMAS HEYWOOD
GEORGE CHAPMAN
CYRIL TOURNEUR
INDEX
THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
The first great English poet was the father of English tragedy and the
creator of English blank verse. Chaucer and Spenser were great writers
and great men: they shared between them every gift which goes to the
making of a poet except the one which alone can make a poet, in the
proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor
invention will suffice for that: no poet is great as a poet whom no one
could ever pretend to recognize as sublime. Sublimity is the test of
imagination as distinguished from invention or from fancy: and the first
English poet whose powers can be called sublime was Christopher Marlowe.
The majestic and exquisite ex
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