re followed within ten years by critics of tastes
so varied as the dramatist of domesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant
lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philosophic and 'ever-memorable' John Hales
of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the stage and court, Sir William
D'Avenant. Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly established,
in a public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms at Eton, the
proposition that 'there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he
could produce it much better done in Shakespeare.' {328} Leonard Digges
(in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that every revival of
Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a
little later date, Shakespeare's plays were the 'closet companions' of
Charles I's 'solitudes.' {329a}

1660-1702. Dryden's view.

After the Restoration public taste in England veered towards the French
and classical dramatic models. {329b} Shakespeare's work was subjected
to some unfavourable criticism as the product of nature to the exclusion
of art, but the eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is
commonly admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of
Shakespeare's indifference to the classical canons attracted attention,
but awoke in England no substantial echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy'
(1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on 'Othello,' and reached
the eccentric conclusion that it was 'a bloody farce without salt or
savour.' In Pepys's eyes 'The Tempest' had 'no great wit,' and
'Midsummer Night's Dream' was 'the most insipid and ridiculous play;' yet
this exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of
Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9,
seeing 'Hamlet' four times, and 'Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 'a
most excellent play for variety,' nine times. Dryden, the literary
dictator of the day, repeatedly complained of Shakespeare's
inequalities--'he is the very Janus of poets.' {330a} But in almost the
same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was held in as much
veneration among Englishmen as AEschylus among the Athenians, and that
'he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the
largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . When he describes anything,
you more than see it--you feel it too.' {330b} In 1693, when Sir Godfrey
Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of
Shakespeare, the poe