Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Commanding genius in English romantic theatre
- 1 Constituting bodies politic and theatric
- 2 Coleridge's German revolution: Schiller's Wallenstein
- 3 A stage for potential men
- 4 Romantic antitheatricalism: surveilling the beauties of the stage
- Conclusion. A theatre of remorse
- Notes
- Index
1 - Constituting bodies politic and theatric
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Commanding genius in English romantic theatre
- 1 Constituting bodies politic and theatric
- 2 Coleridge's German revolution: Schiller's Wallenstein
- 3 A stage for potential men
- 4 Romantic antitheatricalism: surveilling the beauties of the stage
- Conclusion. A theatre of remorse
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In a series of remarks preparatory to analysis of Romeo and Juliet, Coleridge makes a surprising assertion, unravelling the logic of which constitutes the project of this chapter. Having already articulated several well-recognized prerequisites to the appreciation of Shakespeare, Coleridge finds it still “necessary” to “say something of the language of our Country” in order to “[aid] himself as well as others in judging of all writers of all countries.” He then specifies the peculiar advantages of several European languages by way of arguing that “various languages arising from various circumstances of the 〈people〉 might fit them more for one species of Poetry than another.” “Take the French,” he says in that offhand manner that bespeaks the intensity of his focus. It is “best fitted for” the “expression of light passion” because it “appear[s] to have no substratum; constantly tampering with the morals without offending the decency. As the language for what was called modern genteel comedy all other nations must yield to them.” But “in the English,” there is that which is “possessed by no other modern language, and which appropriate[s] it to the Drama” (LoLi: 290–1).
Coleridge's habit of conducting warfare between England and France on literary terrain is documented in recent scholarship on him. Contradicting prior assurances that “he never could agree that any language was unfit for Poetry,” Coleridge in this lecture implies what he later comes out and says: the French language is “wholly unfit for Poetry.”
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- Chapter
- Information
- In the Theatre of RomanticismColeridge, Nationalism, Women, pp. 30 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994