[1]
In place of the narrow limits of the old dramatists, he had the wider
and maturer modern vision, and, despite his mastery of language, he
was free both from the exaggeration and redundance of Oriental drama,
and from the mere passion for describing, which so often carried
Calderon away.
In him too, the subjectivity, which the Renaissance brought into
modern art, was still more fully developed. His metaphors and
comparisons shew this, and, most of all, the very perfect art with
which he assigns Nature a part in the play, and makes her not only
form the appropriate background, dark or bright as required, but
exert a distinct influence upon human fate.
As Carriere points out:
At a period which had painting for its leading art, and was
turning its attention to music, his mental accord produced
effects in his works to which antiquity was a stranger.
Herder had already noted that Shakespeare gives colour and atmosphere
where the Greek only gave outline. And although Shakespeare's
outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual
beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy
with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in
_Hamlet_, breathe the bracing Highland air in _Macbeth_, the air of
the woods in _As You Like It_; the storm on the heath roars through
Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate outside
Julia's window.
Pages:
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219