"And this is the point at which I must part company with Mr. Wyndham Lewis. Mr. Lewis proposes a Shakespeare who is a positive nihilist, an intellectual force willing destruction. I cannot see in Shakespeare either a deliberate scepticism, as of Montaigne, or a deliberate cynicism, as of Machiavelli, or a deliberate resignation, as of Seneca. I can see that he used all of these things, for dramatic ends: you get perhaps more Montaigne in Hamlet, and more Machiavelli in Othello, and more Seneca in Lear ... Mr. Lewis, and other champions of Shakespeare as a great philosopher, have a great deal to say about Shakespeare's power of thought, but they fail to show that he thought to any purpose; that he had any coherent view of life, or that he recommended any procedure to follow."
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Novelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandPolitical authors from EnglandNovelists from CanadaPolitical authors from Canada
Original Language: English
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T. S. Eliot, 'Shakespeare', Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932), pp. 114-115
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wyndham_Lewis
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Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was an English polemicist, novelist, essayist, critic and Vorticist painter.
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