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Shakespeare on the Wars of England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
In these grim and heavy years, despite all their inroads upon leisure, it seems likely that Shakespeare is read more widely and loved more deeply in this country than for many generations past, and since foreign communiqués as well as British ministers of the crown have been known to quote from him, it may be conjectured that the world as well as these islands is sensible of a part of the debt that humanity owes him. Be that as it may, there is perennial refreshment in the blended wit and wisdom and fancy of his immortal pages, and a timely privilege for his countrymen in the fact that his Histories dealt with anguished, bitter years. To be sure, we read him more for his timelessness than for his timeliness, and allow, with the speaker in King John that ‘He is but a bastard to the times, That doth not smack of observation.’ Such observation is just philosophy; but even philosophy reacts to the stimulus of its immediate environment.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1943
References
page 140 note 1 I am not referring to the order in which the plays were written.
page 142 note 1 It was not till 1683 that John Sobieski destroyed the Ottoman menace to Europe at Vienna.