ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an extract from an article published in The Prose Writings of William Cullen Bryant Ed. Parke Godwin. 2 vols. New York, 1964. The extract was a part of an address delivered on the unveiling of Shakespeare’s statue in Central Park, New York, May 22, 1872. The fame of our great dramatist fills the civilized world. Those who cannot enjoy the writings of Shakespeare in the original English, read him in translations, which have the effect of looking at a magnificent landscape through a morning mist. All languages have their versions of Shakespeare. The spot in which this statue is placed will henceforth be associated with numberless ideas and images called up to the mind of the visitor by the name of Shakespeare. To all whose imagination is easily kindled into activity it will seem forever haunted by the personages whom he created and who live in his dramas.
