Oxford Lectures on Poetry   By: Andrew C. Bradley (1851-1935)

SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

LECTURES ON HAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEAR, MACBETH

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OXFORD LECTURES ON POETRY

BY

A. C. BRADLEY LL.D., LITT.D.

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AND FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE

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ST MARTIN'S PRESS New York 1965

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First Edition, May 1909. Second Edition, November 1909 Reprinted 1911, 1914, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1934, 1941, 1950, 1955, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965

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TO MY OXFORD FRIENDS 1869 1909

'They have seemed to be together, though absent, shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds.'

PREFACE

This volume consists of lectures delivered during my tenure of the Chair of Poetry at Oxford and not included in Shakespearean Tragedy . Most of them have been enlarged, and all have been revised. As they were given at intervals, and the majority before the publication of that book, they contained repetitions which I have not found it possible wholly to remove. Readers of a lecture published by the University of Manchester on English Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age of Wordsworth will pardon also the restatement of some ideas expressed in it.

The several lectures are dated, as I have been unable to take account of most of the literature on their subjects published since they were delivered.

They are arranged in the order that seems best to me, but it is of importance only in the case of the four which deal with the poets of Wordsworth's time.

I am indebted to the Delegates of the University Press, and to the proprietors and editors of the Hibbert Journal and the Albany , Fortnightly , and Quarterly Reviews , respectively, for permission to republish the first, third, fifth, eighth, and ninth lectures. A like acknowledgment is due for leave to use some sentences of an article on Keats contributed to Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1903).

In the revision of the proof sheets I owed much help to a sister who has shared many of my Oxford friendships.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This edition is substantially identical with the first; but it and its later impressions contain a few improvements in points of detail, and, thanks to criticisms by my brother, F. H. Bradley, I hope to have made my meaning clearer in some pages of the second lecture.

There was an oversight in the first edition which I regret. In adding the note on p. 247 I forgot that I had not referred to Professor Dowden in the lecture on "Shakespeare the Man." In everything that I have written on Shakespeare I am indebted to Professor Dowden, and certainly not least in that lecture.

CONTENTS

PAGE POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 3

THE SUBLIME 37

HEGEL'S THEORY OF TRAGEDY 69

WORDSWORTH 99

SHELLEY'S VIEW OF POETRY 151

THE LONG POEM IN THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH 177

THE LETTERS OF KEATS 209

THE REJECTION OF FALSTAFF 247

SHAKESPEARE'S 'ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA' 279

SHAKESPEARE THE MAN 311

SHAKESPEARE'S THEATRE AND AUDIENCE 361

POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE

POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE[1]

(INAUGURAL LECTURE)