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Lear
We wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about it. All that we can say must fal...
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy which Shakespeare has written entirely on a love-story. It i...
The Midsummer Night’s Dream
Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He is the most romantic of me...
The Tempest
There can be little doubt that Shakespeare was the most universal genius that ever lived. ‘Either...
Hamlet
This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, and whom we seem almost to remember i...
Antony and Cleopatra
This is a very noble play. Though not in the first class of Shakespeare’s productions, it stands ...
Troilus and Cressida
This is one of the most loose and desultory of our author’s plays: it rambles on just as it happe...
Coriolanus
Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed in history and state affairs. Coriolanus i...
Timon of Athens
Timon of Athens always appeared to us to be written with as intense a feeling of his subject as a...
Othello
It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. That is, it substitutes...
Julius Casesar
Julius Caesar was one of three principal plays by different authors, pitched upon by the celebrat...
Cymbeline
Cymbeline is one of the most delightful of Shakespeare’s historical plays. It may be considered a...
Preface
It is observed by Mr. Pope, that ‘If ever any author deserved the name of an original, it was Sha...
Introduction
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) came of an Irish Protestant stock, and of a branch of it transplanted...
Lecture VIII. On the Living Poets.
"No more of talk where God or Angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd ...
Lecture VII. On Burns, and the Old English Ballads.
I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture respecting Chatterton, should h...
Lecture VI. On Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, &c.
I shall in the present Lecture go back to the age of Queen Anne, and endeavour to give a cursory ...
Lecture V. On Thomson and Cowper.
Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals and of poets. But he was also...
Lecture IV. On Dryden and Pope.
Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry in our language, as the p...
Lecture III. On Shakspeare and Milton.
In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are sometimes disposed to wonder...