On the Superlative in Samuelson

Abstract

I was once assigned, as an undergraduate student of English literature, a paper, “On the Superlative in Shakespeare.” As I recall my sopho-moric effort of a generation and a half ago, it was long enough and conventional enough for an excellent grade. Shakespeare, I said with no claim to originality, was a master of tragic, comic, and historical drama all three, and likewise of the sonnet cycle in poetry. He was not an innovator in matters of form, but a superb practitioner of the conventional forms of his own era. In other ages he might have mastered the eighteenth-century novel, the Homeric epic, or the Wagnerian music-drama, although he would hardly have invented any of these. Furthermore, I realized, Shakespeare’s historical dramas were now considered badly flawed and biased as history, while the wit and humor of his comic genius were now comprehensible, if at all, only darkly through the glasses of commentary and footnote. Finally, in my opinion, Shakespeare burned himself out early, accomplishing nothing of note after the age of 45 and dying at 52. I nevertheless claimed that English literature had not yet seen his equal for the range of his several excellencies.