Doubleday, Page & Co.]
[Footnote 80: From Aristophanes' "Frogs," l. 1043. Translated by Frere.]
SHAKESPEARE[81]
THOMAS CARLYLE
As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically
the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its
Inner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life
of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours,
ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world,
men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in
Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe
was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us
the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us
the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent
for it, the man Shakespeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had
reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow
or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign
Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to
take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it.
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