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Untitled Article
lings are well disposed of , and his time usefully and improvingly employed . There are , indeed , two species of this class ; the one just described , all of picture and pantomime discretion ; the other , who , with similar tastes , combines a susceptibility to poetical beauty , philosophical maxim , and Shakspeare ' s verbal aptness : he is of the first class , united to the first division of the second class .
lie , with the pantomime and spectacular action , receives the added pleasure of hearing his favourite language declaimed whether with truth of perception and feeling matters not ; ' the actor must be sure to make him hear it . This auditor may congratulate himself on a trifling extraction from his purse , and three hours so charmingly occupied . The language may be now more deeply cut on the tablets of his memory .
From any of the forementioned will be elicited some sympathy with the story or the events of the play . The varying condition of the persons whose fortunes , dilemmas , passions , and feelings form the groundwork of the fable , will , more or less , as spectators ma y be morally and intellectually constituted , kindle an
interest with the passing action , superadded to the pleasure of listening to the poetry and the precepts , which , to him of the first class , is the principal attraction , or to the spectacular enjoyment of the second class ; though much more exalted will be his pleasure , more ready and expansive his sympathies , who , of the second class , combines the moral qualities of the first , viz . the
disposition to poetic beauty and expressive language . P \ o auditor is altogether destitute of these sympathies . But there is a third (class of readers to whom the tale , the links of events , and the catastrophe or the denouement , the What is it about ? what will come of this V are the only objects of reading , or going to see after such reading ; for them the seeing will still possess the
freshness of novelty . Perhaps this playgoer has less of the philosophically dramatic spirit in him when he enters the theatre than any of the former classes ; but he is likely to quit it with more of the germs of true thought than they are . An unanticipated mingling of his senses in the excitements of sorrow and circumstances of suffering which pass under his gaze , will enfold him in the enduring bonds of sympathy , and lay to his heart a lesson on which he will ponder long and fruitfully . Often ,
without perceiving how the spirit to do so has grown in him , he will be led to trace effect up to cause , and from cause to go on to consequence ; thus imbibing a store of knowledge , which , while it induces a habit of thinking , and quickens his perceptions , will be lastingly beneficial in soothing many corrosions of thought towards his fellows . Probably lie will not like the Merchant of Venice , because Shylock is ho remorselessly cruel ; or Othello , for that Iago is so deceitful a villain ; and Richard the Third nia y be no favourite with him , because there is in that play such
Untitled Article
Readers of Shakspeare . Ill
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 111, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/27/
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