...describe things; Shakespeare shows, or even becomes, things. Dryden's Neander had declared Shakespeare 'the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul':41 so comprehensive, indeed, that Pope could declare that 'every single character in Shakespear...

...Allegory; his works are the comments on it."i6 Dryden, in a phrase equally familiar, calls Shakespeare "the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul."i7 The suggestion in all of these cases is of a kind of transcendent ventriloqmsm. It is as though...

...instance, here is Dryden in a famous passage in An Essay of Dramatic Poesie. Shakespeare, he writes, was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and the most comprehensive soul ... If I would compare him Qonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge...

...that heavenly music seemed to make. III. ON A POET From Dryden. To begin then with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient...comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily. When he describes anything, you more...

...the phenomenal in his own transcendent consciousness. In Dryden's influential portrait, Shakespeare "had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him" (1:67), or, elsewhere, "Shakespeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions"...

...scholarly attention to the works of Shakespeare. In it, DRYDEN wrote of Shakespeare that 'he was a man who of all Modern and perhaps Ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul'. In I 709, Nicholas ROWE produced the first complete edited collection of Shakespeare's plays which...

...- for his versification, his diction, his classical correctness - but that he loved Shakespeare: He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient...him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily . . . Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally...

...playwrights of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as contemporary France, Dryden wrote: '[Shakespeare] was the man who of all Modern and perhaps Ancient...any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too', concluding that while he admired Jonson's learning, 'I love Shakespeare'.' The minor poet and satirist...

...Beaumont and Fletcher. The present extract is spoken by Neander. To begin, then, with Shakespeare: he was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient...them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning* give...

...further back from individual plays, we, like Dryden, wonder at the range and power of his mind : ' He was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient...Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.' Coleridge was later to call him 'myriadminded ', in that phrase catching the bafflement that mixes...