It was in the later German and Italian
mystics--for example, Bruno, Campanella, and Jacob Boehme--that a
more subjective and individual point of view was attained through
Pantheism and Protestantism.
The Protestant free-speaking Shakespeare shewed a far more intense
feeling for Nature than the Catholic Calderon.
CHAPTER VI
SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE
The poetry of India may serve as a measure of the part which Nature
can play in drama; it is full of comparisons and personifications,
and eloquent expressions of intimate sympathy with plants and
animals. In Greek tragedy, Nature stepped into the background;
metaphors, comparisons, and personifications are rarer; it was only
by degrees, especially in Sophocles and Euripides, in the choruses
and monologues, that man's interest in her appeared, and he began to
greet the light or the sky, land or sea, to attribute love, pity, or
hate to her, or find comfort in her lonely places. During the Middle
Ages, drama lay fallow, and the blossoming period of French tragedy,
educated to the pathos of Seneca, only produced cold declamation,
frosty rhetoric; of any real sympathy between man and Nature there
was no question.
Over this mediaeval void Calderon was the bridge to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare reached the Greek standpoint and advanced far beyond it.
He was not only the greatest dramatist of modern times as to human
action, suffering, and character, but also a genius in the
interpretation of Nature.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218