ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an article published in Poet-lore, 2 (1890). Much as has been written and said in a critical way of Shakespeare, something new awaits us in Walt Whitman’s view of him. That Whitman has reverenced Shakespeare’s genius as devoutly as the most ardent of us seems certain. But he has already spoken of Shakespeare’s works as having no place in America “as authoritative types of song.” In his view, they should simply be relegated to a dead past which the Eastern hemisphere has outlived and the Western hemisphere never experienced. The new and patriotic departure which Whitman indicates for us admits of no half loyalty. Shakespeare draws us the picture of Henry V, often stripped of the attributes of royalty, but always revealing the large heart of a hero, which we know he understands as well as Whitman.
