- cid
- bafkreiaqr437wfpmxsjgxc4cvy5bkhq74zzxjqawvuz36xbgzjnk2diiee
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- 06_poems_pericles_facsimiles_1905_oxford_page_0472.jpg
- height
- 2400
- key
- pdf-page-1769752548799-2kvpgfbqt3k
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 472
- size
- 530988
- text
- SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 61
position. Malone, in reply, confessed no enthusiasm for Shakespeare’s sonnets, but claimed for their ‘beautiful lines’ a rare capacity for illustrating the language of the plays. He agreed that their ardent expressions of esteem could alone, with propriety, be addressed to a woman.
About the same date, Capell, who gave Malone some assistance, carefully revised in manuscript Thorpe’s text, as it appeared in Lintott’s edition of 1710. But his revised text remains unpublished in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Steevens was to the end irreconcilable, and in an Advertisement prefixed to his last edition of Shakespeare, 1793, he justified his continued exclusion of the sonnets from Shakespeare’s works on the ground that the ‘strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service’.¹ The sonnets figured in Thorpe’s text, revised by Malone, in the latter’s edition of Shakespeare’s works of 1790, in the Variorum of 1803, and in all the leading editions of Shakespeare’s works that have been published since.
The reasoned and erudite appreciation, which distinguished eighteenth-century criticism of Shakespearean drama gives historic interest to its perverse depreciations or grudging commendations of the Sonnets. Not till the nineteenth century was reached, did the tones of apology or denunciation cease. Nineteenth-century critics of eminence with a single exception soon reached a common understanding in regard to the transcendent merit of the poetry. Hazlitt, alone of Nineteenth-century criticism.
¹ Steevens added: ‘These miscellaneous poems have derived every possible advantage from the literature and judgement of their only intelligent editor, Mr. Malone, whose implements of criticism, like the ivory rake and golden spade in Prudentius, are on this occasion disgraced by the objects of their culture. Had Shakespeare produced no other works than these, his name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has conferred on that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more elegant sonneteer.’
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:18:49.714Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1750