ABSTRACT
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) remains the critic who first looked closely at Webster, at the plays as literature, thus removing the dramatist from the possession of the booksellers and anthologists. His 'Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare1 (1808) was understandably not a popular success; yet it had the effect of revitalizing the dramatists through Lamb's enthusiastic, impressionistic appreciation. We are taken on a tour of the writers, and are shown 'scenes of passion, often of deepest quality', and in Webster's case, this scenic route proved salutary. Critics have since noted Lamb's debt to the antiquarians and anthologists; T.S. Eliot would later fault Lamb for setting in motion the fatal idea that to the word-lover, drama and poetry are two separate things (Four Elizabethan Dramatists, 'Selected Essays', 1934). Indeed, Swinburne and Gosse refer to Webster's 'poems'. Nevertheless, we remain in Lamb's debt: Dyce's edition would follow afterwards, and Lamb's critical observations, often in a single sentence, would provide arguing points for critics into the twentieth century.
