‘… the worst of models – though the most extraordinary of writers’: Shakespeare, the Romantics and Byron

Abstract

No history of Shakespearean criticism would be complete without a substantial reference to the writings of the Romantic period. Hazlitt and Coleridge, De Quincey and Lamb made important additions to the body of Shakespearean criticism, and they changed its focus in significant ways.

The interest in Shakespeare also went beyond the more familiar tragedies and comedies. So, for example, in Walter Scott’s Journal there are quotations from no fewer than twenty-eight Shakespeare plays, including Parts 2 and 3 of Henry VI, and Henry VIII. Scott observed: “When I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare,” adding, “The blockheads talk of my being like Shakespeare – [I am] not fit to tie his brogues” (252).

Like many of his contemporaries, Byron had an interest in Shakespeare that was wideranging. But the nature of this interest was very different from that of other Romantic writers, and he appears to share almost nothing of their common though diverse interest in the psychological and dramatic contexts of Shakespeare’s words. An exploration of this difference is
illuminating.