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Henry Norman Hudson and the Whig Use of Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Stafford
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Extract

In the winter of 1843–44 Henry Norman Hudson, a Yankee schoolteacher in Alabama, began a series of Shakespearean lectures in Huntsville, Alabama. After repeating the lectures in Mobile and, in the spring, in Cincinnati, he moved on to Boston the following winter, “where the lectures were listened to by large and intelligent audiences, bringing the author both fame and profit.” From Boston he turned to other cities for single lectures or courses of lectures: Emerson pressed “Mr. Hudson's claims on the Curators” of the Concord Lyceum and Hudson lectured to Concord on Macbeth, 1 January 1845; the literati of New York were stirred into one of their innumerable controversies by his relatively unsuccessful course of lectures there in the winter and spring of 1845. Horace Howard Furness in later years remembered “the enthusiasm which attended his early course of lectures in Philadelphia and the unexampled crowds which attended them.” In short, according to his friend A. J. George, “Hudson soon became as popular as Emerson himself in lecture courses in all the great cities.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 5 , September 1951 , pp. 649 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 649 Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck, “Henry Norman Hudson,” in Cyclopaedia of American Literature (New York, 1855); letter to James Freeman Clarke, 26 Nov. 1844, Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk (New York, 1939), iii, 267, 267 n.; A. J. George, Introd. in Hudson, Essays on English Studies (Boston, 1906), pp. xiii-xvi.

Note 2 in page 649 Alfred Van Rensselaer Westfall, American Shakespearean Criticism, 1607–1865 (New York, 1939), p. 143.

Note 3 in page 649 Ibid., pp. 260–265, 198–199.

Note 4 in page 650 These and other facts in Hudson's life may be found in the DAB. For Jones and the professional critics see my article, “William A. Jones, Democratic Literary Critic,” HLQ, xii (May 1949), 289–302.

Note 5 in page 650 “Festus,” Whig Rev., V (Jan.-Feb. 1847), 43–61, 123–148.

Note 6 in page 651 “Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,” in Complete Works, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston and New York, 1903–04), x, 325.

Note 7 in page 651 See The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), pp. 267–305.

Note 8 in page 651 For this older critical view see William Charvat, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810–1835 (Philadelphia, 1936).

Note 11 in page 652 “Hudson's Lectures,” viii (July 1848), 41. The “some people” are so described by Hudson in “Festus.”

Note 12 in page 652 It should be clear that this is only one aspect, though an important one, of Hudson's criticism: when Hudson could forget his social biases, he could write admirable literary criticism.

Note 13 in page 653 Democratic Rev., xvi (May 1845), 468–482; xvii (July-Aug. 1845), 40–50; unpublished letter in the Duyckinck Papers at the New York Public Library.

Note 14 in page 653 i (May 1845), 483–496; Walt Whitman, “Notes and Fragments,” in Complete Writings, ed. Horace L. Traubel, Richard M. Bucke, and Thomas B. Harned (New York, 1902), x, 90.

Note 15 in page 654 “Festus” (see n. 5), pp. 43–61; 123–148.

Note 16 in page 654 “Religious Union of Associationists,” Whig Rev., V (May 1847), 492–502; “Macaulay's Essays,” Whig Rev., ix (May 1849), 499–522.

Note 17 in page 654 vi (Aug. 1847), 197–207.

Note 18 in page 655 “Whipple's Essays and Reviews,” Whig Rev., ix (Feb. 1849), 148–272 (for 172). After “friends and correspondents” of the Editor of the Whig protested the extreme High-Church position taken in the review, the Editor apologized in a later issue: “In a word, we endorse nothing of the ultraism of the offending article, and desire our kind readers to weigh against them the brilliancy and originality of style and manner for which its author is so justly admired.” He did not apologize for the defense of the English monarchy or for the High Tory political views. “Review of Whipple's Essays,” ix (April 1849), 437–438.

Note 19 in page 656 Whig Rev., V (May 1847), 470–481; Whitman (see n. 14 above), p. 81.

Note 20 in page 656 Lectures on Shakespeare (New York, 1848), I, vii. The Lectures are significantly dedicated to the elder Richard Henry Dana, who was an early Shakespearean lecturer in the United States. Dana shared the social and moral views of Hudson. In a letter to William A. Jones, Dana described a dinner at William Cullen Bryant's: Dana and Fitz-Greene Halleck talked of the virtues of a monarchy and a nobility; Bryant was shocked when they declared that they were serious. Dana commented drily: “Bryant still holds to simple democracy, I believe.” James Grant Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Eallech (New York, 1869), p. 542.

Note 21 in page 659 “Introduction,” i (Oct. 1837), 14–15; “The Great Nation of Futurity,” vi (Nov. 1839), 427; George N. Sanders, “Fogy Literature,” xxx (May 1852), 397.

Note 22 in page 660 From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle 20 April 1847, in The Uncollected Poetry and Prose, ed. Emory Holloway (Garden City, 1921), i, 159; “British Literature,” in Complete Writings, v, 276.

Note 23 in page 660 See n. 9 for reviews and also “Mr. Hudson's Lecture on Hamlet,” i (22 Feb. 1845), 123–124; “Mr. Hudson,” i (22 March 1845), 190–191; “Editorial Miscellany,” ii (1 Nov. 1845), 263–264.

Note 24 in page 660 Letter of 26 Nov. 1844, Letters, iii, 267, 267 n. For Emerson's disappointment with Shakespeare, see “Shakspeare; or, The Poet,” in Representative Men, Complete Works, iv, 187–219.

Note 25 in page 661 vii (17, 24 Aug. 1850), 125–127, 145–147; “Omoo,” Whig Rev., vi (July 1847), 45. 26 Horace Howard Furness, Jr., quoted in Westfall, p. 265.