READING. It is very different to measure the greatness of Shakespeare; but there are several external as well as internal standards with which we may compare him

It is very different to measure the greatness of Shakespeare; but there are several external as well as internal standards with which we may compare him, and we shall thus be helped to a more definite notion¹ of his real power.

(a) He was one of the greatest poets that ever lived. Perhaps Homer², who lived in a younger and more childlike time, is greater than he; but the forms of their poetry are as different and as wide apart as the times in which they lived, and it would be difficult to compare them.

(b) He was one of the greatest artists³ that ever lived. He understood how to show the beauty and poetry that lives in everything and every man that God has made. So far as polish and beauty of rhythm is concerned⁴, Dante is perhaps his superior, but not always.

(c) He shows a greater mastery over language than any poet or prose-writer⁵ that ever lived.

There are many poor uneducated persons, chiefly in the agricultural districts of England, who go through life from the cradle to the grave with a vocabulary of only 500 words. The number of words in ordinary use, for the purposes of business and communication, is 3000. The ordinary vocabulary of a writer like Thackeray⁶ amounts to 5000 words; while the vocabulary of Milton rises to 7000 words. But the vocabulary of Shakespeare reaches the astonishing number of 21,000.

The power of making new phrases that shall be accepted by the nation and become part of their language is a power possessed by genius⁷. The number of new phrases thrown by Shakespeare into the treasury of our language is estimated by hundreds. The language is saturated with them; and we speak Shakespeare and think Shakespeare, whether we will or whether we do not will⁸, both consciously and unconsciously.

(d) Shakespeare shows a greater knowledge of human nature than any other writer that ever lived. He seems to have known everything⁹. He has contributed to literature a larger number of "characters¹⁰" than any other writer. Shakespeare knew and understood character as a whole, and always works upon it and develops it from within, and never from without. The springs of action in a real person¹¹ are infinite and infinitely complex; and Shakespeare understood this better than any other writer.

(e) He has written more good acting plays than any other dramatist.

(f) He has covered a greater extent of ground in the selection of his characters¹². He has drawn them from Greece and Italy as well as from England; and he has drawn them from all periods of time.

(g) He has written in a greater variety of styles than any other writer. He has a style for every one of his great characters, by which that character is distinguished from every other.

To sum up —

(a) He was a great poet.

(b) A great artist.

(c) The greatest master of words and phrases.

(d) The most learned person in the human heart.

(e) The most fruitful in good plays.

(f) The most varied stylist.

From:A Biographical History of English Literature.