' We remember that Mr Masefield has much better
than this to say of Shakespeare in his little book; but we fasten upon
this sentence because it is set before us in the _Variorum_, and because
it too 'is an intellectual form in which a literary man with obsessions
illustrates his idea of criticism.' Genetically, it is a continuation of
the shoddy element in Coleridge's Shakespeare criticism, a continual
bias towards transcendental interpretation of the obvious. To take the
origin a phase further back, it is the portentous offspring of the
feeble constituent of German philosophy (a refusal to see the object)
after it had been submitted to an idle process of ferment in the softer
part of Coleridge's brain.
_King John_ is not in the least what Mr Masefield, under this dangerous
influence, has persuaded himself it is. It is simply the effort of a
young man of great genius to rewrite a bad play into a good one. The
effort was, on the whole, amazingly successful; that the play is only a
good one, instead of a very good one, is not surprising.
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