ABSTRACT
Criticism of William Shakespeare, like every criticism, has followed and expressed the progress and alternations of the philosophy of art, or aesthetic; it has been strong or weak, profound or superficial, well-balanced or one-sided, according to the doctrines that have there been realised. To German criticism of the speculative period and to the vast monographs that it produced upon Shakespeare must be given the credit of having tried to discover and determine the soul of Shakespeare’s poetry. However, the new methods of German criticism soon made their influence felt in England and it seemed to the Germans that these writers had preserved the true tradition of the race and had reillumined the fire that was languishing or had been altogether extinguished among their brethren of the same race, and that they had dissipated the heavy cloud of classical, French and Latin taste, which was hanging over England.
