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Olivia's Household

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John W. Draper*
Affiliation:
West Virginia University

Extract

If Shakespeare's plays, as is generally admitted, are incomparably greater than their sources, their greatness must inhere mainly in his changes and additions. Most scholars have attributed this precious residue to the dramatist's imagination, which, they seem to suppose, created it from nothing. Certainly his imagination informed the whole: but the additions that he built into his originals, supplying motivation and verisimilitude, he took from the life around him; for this was the material that both he and his audience knew best: thus he elizabethanized the stories that he used, and made them reflect the popular attitude toward the characters and the themes that he portrayed; for, in an age of little learning, he could not hope, even had he wished, to educate his audience to a different point of view. Dogberry, as a constable, must be stupid; Henry V must appear as a national hero; and interest on money in The Merchant of Venice must be hateful—all to accord with contemporary fact or opinion. But modern readers see such characters and themes quite out of focus, and interpret them in modern ways.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934

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