Heminge and Condell tell us, accordingly, that there was scarce a blot in
the manuscripts they received from Shakespeare; and this is the natural
corollary from the fact that such an imagination as his is as
unparalleled as the force, variety, and beauty of the phrase in which it
embodied itself.[121] We believe that Shakespeare, like all other great
poets, instinctively used the dialect which he found current, and that
his words are not more wrested from their ordinary meaning than followed
necessarily from the unwonted weight of thought or stress of passion they
were called on to support. He needed not to mask familiar thoughts in the
weeds of unfamiliar phraseology; for the life that was in his mind could
transfuse the language of every day with an intelligent vivacity, that
makes it seem lambent with fiery purpose, and at each new reading a new
creation. He could say with Dante, that "no word had ever forced him to
say what he would not, though he had forced many a word to say what _it_
would not,"--but only in the sense that the mighty magic of his
imagination had conjured out of it its uttermost secret of power or
pathos. When I say that Shakespeare used the current language of his day,
I mean only that he habitually employed such language as was universally
comprehensible,--that he was not run away with by the hobby of any theory
as to the fitness of this or that component of English for expressing
certain thoughts or feelings.
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