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Emerson and Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert P. Falk
Robert P. Falk*
Affiliation:
Southwestern University (at Memphis)
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Extract

Students of Emerson, as well as those who have followed the reception of Shakespeare in America, have been disturbed over the words in the essay “Shakspeare; or, the Poet” from Representative Men in which Emerson seems finally to condemn Shakespeare as a “master of revels to mankind” who, after all, shared “the halfness and imperfection of humanity.” Thus Emerson's criticism, it has been said, is “deficient in sympathy,” and “the key to all he has said and written is to be found in the fact that his point of view is not that of the acceptor, the creator,—Shakespeare's point of view, but that of the refiner and selector, the priest's point of view.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , June 1941 , pp. 532 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 532 John Burroughs, “Emerson” in The Writing of John Burroughs (Boston, 1877), iii, 191.

Note 2 in page 532 American Criticism (Boston, 1928), ii, 109.

Note 3 in page 533 W. C. Brownell, American Prose Masters (New York, 1909), p. 187.

Note 4 in page 533 Burroughs, op. cit., iii, 195–196.

Note 5 in page 533 Journals, x, 27 (footnote by E. W. Emerson). Note: references to the Journals and the Works are to the Centenary Editions.

Note 6 in page 533 Ibid., ix, 187. Note the spelling of ‘Shakspeare.’ Emerson regularly left out the final ‘e’ after ‘k.’ Frequently, too, he omitted the final ‘e.’

Note 7 in page 533 James Elliott Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ii, 719 (From a lecture by Emerson on “Shakspeare” delivered Nov. 5, 1835).

Note 8 in page 533 Journals, v, 125–126.

Note 9 in page 534 Works, xi, “Shakspeare,” 451. Shakespeare is “king of men” (453); a “catholic genius” (449); and a “magician” (451).

Note 10 in page 534 Journals, x, 383.

Note 11 in page 534 Works, iv, “Shakspeare; or the Poet,” 204.

Note 12 in page 534 Journals, x, 23.

Note 13 in page 534 See the treatments of Emerson's literary theory by Norman Foerster, American Criticism (Boston, 1928) and E. G. Sutcliffe, “Emerson's Theories of Literary Expression,” Univ. of Ill. Studies, viii, (1923).

Note 14 in page 534 Shelburne Essays, xi, 87.

Note 15 in page 534 Journals, x, 31.

Note 16 in page 534 Works, iii, “The Poet,” 78.

Note 17 in page 535 Works, iii, “The Poet,” 74.

Note 18 in page 535 Quoted by Norman Foerster, American Criticism, ii, 77.

Note 19 in page 535 Journals, viii, 62. Compare Emerson's view of Shakespeare's “great equality” with Whitman's, who sees him as “the soul of feudalism.” See R. C. Harrison's study “Walt Whitman and Shakespeare,” PMLA, xliv (Dec, 1929), 1201–1238.

Note 20 in page 535 Ibid., ii, 234–235.

Note 21 in page 535 J. E. Cabot, op. cit., ii, 719. See also Works, i, “Nature,” 53.

Note 22 in page 535 Journals, x, 27.

Note 23 in page 535 Journals, iii, 290.

Note 24 in page 535 Works, i, “Nature,” 53.

Note 25 in page 535 Ibid., xii, “Art and Criticism,” 294.

Note 26 in page 535 Journals, vii, 140.

Note 27 in page 536 Works, viii, “Poetry and Imagination,” 3.

Note 28 in page 536 Regis Michaud, Emerson: the Enraptured Yankee. Tr. by George Boas (New York, 1929).

Note 29 in page 536 Works, viii, “Poetry and Imagination,” 3.

Note 30 in page 536 Journals, x, 29.

Note 31 in page 536 Works, vi, “Works and Days,” 182.

Note 32 in page 536 Journals, iii, 479.

Note 33 in page 536 Works, vi, “Power,” 58.

Note 34 in page 537 See his astute discovery of a collaborator's hand in Henry VIII (Works, iv, 195–196).

Note 35 in page 537 Works, iv, “Shakespeare; or the Poet,” 189.

Note 36 in page 537 Norman Foerster, American Criticism, ii, 109.

Note 37 in page 537 Works, i, “Nature,” 27.

Note 38 in page 537 Works, i, “Nature,” 27.

Note 39 in page 537 Journals, ii, 402.

Note 40 in page 537 O. W. Firkins, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 230. See also John Burroughs, Writings, iii, 195. He writes: “What he seems to value most in Shakespeare is the marvelous wit, the pregnant sayings.”

Note 41 in page 537 Works, iv, “Shakespeare; or, the Poet,” 214.

Note 42 in page 537 Journals, x, 267.

Note 43 in page 537 Ibid., vi, 79. See also Journals, iii, 478; x, 34–35; and Works, iv, 214, for further substantiation of Emerson's sense of form in art.

Note 44 in page 538 Works, iv, “Shakespeare; or the Poet,” 212.

Note 45 in page 538 Ibid., iii, “Compensation,” 108.

Note 46 in page 538 Ibid., “Spiritual Laws,” 134.

Note 47 in page 538 Richard Garnett, Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 153.

Note 48 in page 538 O. W. Firkins, op. cit., p. 232.

Note 49 in page 538 Works, iv, “Shakspeare; or the Poet,” 210.

Note 50 in page 538 Journals, iv, 332.

Note 51 in page 539 Works, iv, “Shakspeare; or, the Poet,” 211.

Note 52 in page 539 Ibid., 209.

Note 53 in page 539 Ibid., viii, “Poetry and Imagination,” 43–44.

Note 54 in page 539 Journals, ii, 482.

Note 55 in page 539 Journals, iii, 482. See also for some qualification of this interpretation of Emerson's ‘humane’ viewpoint the conversation recorded by E. P. Whipple with Emerson about the characters vs. the poetry in Shakespeare (Harper's Monthly, 1882).

Note 56 in page 539 Ibid., i, 108.

Note 57 in page 540 Journals, v, 105.

Note 58 in page 540 Ibid., i, 149. Yet he could write in the same year (Ibid., 128) of the drama, “... this is the most attractive, naturally, of all forms” and its advantage is “to copy the manners of high and low life, to act upon the heart.”

Note 59 in page 540 Ibid., viii, 350.

Note 60 in page 540 Ibid., i, 161. See also Works, iv, 215: “He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace.”

Note 61 in page 540 Elizabeth L. Cary, Emerson, Poet and Thinker (New York, 1904), 192.

Note 62 in page 541 Journals, viii, 360.

Note 63 in page 541 J. E. Cabot, op. cit., ii, 719–720.

Note 64 in page 541 Works, i, “Nature,” 52.

Note 65 in page 541 Writings, iii, 192.

Note 66 in page 541 Work, iv. “Shakspeare; or, the Poet,” 216.

Note 67 in page 541 Ibid., 217.

Note 68 in page 541 Work, iv, “Shakspeare; or, the Poet,” 218.

Note 69 in page 541 Ibid.

Note 70 in page 542 Ibid., 219.

Note 71 in page 542 Ibid., iii, “The Poet,” 30.

Note 72 in page 542 E. L. Cary, op. cit., 193, writes: “This touch of ascetic narrowness [his Puritan disdain for the theatre and forms of public amusement] is the ‘concealed thing’ limiting his appreciation of Shakespeare.”

Note 73 in page 542 Works, iii, “The Poet,” 30.

Note 74 in page 542 Journals, iv, 186.

Note 75 in page 542 Works, xi, “Shakspeare,” 450.

Note 76 in page 543 Ibid., 451.

Note 77 in page 543 Ibid., 449–450.

Note 78 in page 543 Ibid., 453.

Note 79 in page 543 Works, iv, “Swedenborg; or, the Mystic,” 143.