Blackwell Reference Online

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In describing William Shakespeare as ‘Fancy's child’ who would ‘Warble his native wood-notes wild’ (L'Allegro, 134), John Milton paid tribute to a poet without formal education who wrote from natural intuition. The advocacy of genius and originality among such eighteenth-century critics as Joseph Addison, Edward Young and William Duff prepared the way for the ‘Bardolatry’ in the Romantic reception of Shakespeare. When Addison (Spectator nos. 279 and 411–21; 1711) praised his ‘great natural genius’, he made it clear that ‘natural’ was the crucial attribute distinguishing Shakespeare's work from the sort of literary excellence achieved through imitation of established forms of art. Thus, Shakespeare's ‘natural genius’ was more evident in his creation of Caliban, shaped from his own imagination, than in his Julius Caesar, derived from historical sources. The concept was also part of a nationalist argument, as becomes apparent in Addison's assertion that works of'natural genius’ are ‘infinitely more beautiful than all the Turn and Polishing of what the French call a Bel Esprit’ (Spectator no. 160). As had John Dry den in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), Addison declared Shakespeare's superiority over the polished refinement of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine and Jean-Baptiste Molière. Adherence to the unities of time, place and action, indispensable to the playwrights of French neo-classicism, ... log in or subscribe to read full text