Shakespeare's Universalism, Chap. 1-2 Summary and Analysis

Shakespeare's Universalism

Pp 1-20

Many authors have published critiques of the plays of Shakespeare. Some of the best known romantic critics are Hazlitt, W. H. Auden and A.C. Bradley. Contemporaries of Shakespeare include the playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. The critic Dr. Sam Johnson reminded us that we owe Shakespeare for the invention of the human personality. Some characters from Shakespeare like Hamlet and Falstaff seem larger than life. Hamlet and Falstaff are charismatic in the way they move the reader and can be compared to the Old Testament God in the Bible.

Later authors copied Shakespeare in creating characters that have personalities and true inner mental lives. Shakespeare plays made writers tend toward self-reflection. The critic G. K. Chesterton thought that Shakespeare was a Catholic moralist like himself, while others saw the...