Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

In other words Scott applied the same principles to Shakespeare that he applied in his
own writings where, as discussed earlier, he used history modernised and clarified sufficiently to
reconcile what was historically authentic in his material with contemporary taste. He met his
readers on ground where, while all was, according to Hazlitt, ‘new and startling’ yet, as in
Planché’s King John, all was comprehensible and there was therefore a ‘general air’ rather than a
literal representation of truth. 104 The effect, as Hazlitt describes it, is very much what Herder and
Schlegel describe in advocating an historical view of Shakespeare, the accumulation of fact in
the service of ‘romance’ until ‘Nothing is wanting –the illusion is complete’. 105 A great deal has
been written about the relationship between Scott and Shakespeare and most of it lies beyond the
scope of this thesis. 106 What is of concern here is the reciprocity that Scott and his
contemporaries perceived between the two as authors which, in turn, became involved with that
other antiquarian project, the creation of a personality, a home and a face for the Bard, a living,
individual William Shakespeare who was ‘sensible’ in every way, knowable as a man, feeling,
breathing and responsive.
It was Scott himself, for all his later disclaimers, who first made the comparison in an
anonymous review of his own book, Tales of my Landlord, in the journal he had helped to found,
the Quarterly Review, in 1817. 107 ‘The characters of Shakspeare are not more exclusively
human, not more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those of this mysterious
author’ he wrote. 108 Despite being an abuse of editorial privilege on a par with Jeffrey’s at the
rival Edinburgh Review, Scott’s assessment of his work was not far removed from his
contemporaries’. The romantic critics’ ‘supremely empathetic’ approach to Shakespeare
celebrated him as the creator of individual characters from every walk of life, embodying both
the essence of human nature and at the same time, the expression of another age. 109 The analogy
with Scott was natural and Hazlitt was not unconscious of the parallels indeed he made them
explicit.
104
Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, p.104.
105
Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, p.107.
106
Most recently Garbin, ‘ “Not fit to ties his brogues”’ which gives an account of the literature.
107
See Garbin, ‘ “Not fit to ties his brogues” ’, p.142.
108
Quoted in Garbin, ‘ “Not fit to ties his brogues” ’, p.142.
109
Bate, The Romantics on Shakespeare, p.8.
256