f Shakspeare are the nature itself.
They cannot say even, which is the best of them!

He who would deny a mighty genius in Shakspeare, might say, that the sun
is a dark body. But, he who would approve a Lavinia, acting more than
three acts, after Chiron and Demetrius had chopped off her arms, and
tongue, without going to bed, it shows how ridiculous must be those, who
find beauties in every thing Shakspeare did write.

My purpose here, is not to write a criticism on Shakspeare: but, no lady
in the world could fall in love with Richard the third, the murderer of
her husband, king Edward the fourth; and at the very moment in which she
is going to bury him. Were Elizabeth not a lady, the love of ambition,
might change a woman into a monster, at least, a month after the crime was
committed. But, to love a cruel monkey, in the street, before the very
victim, and this victim her beloved husband, over whom five minutes ago
she shed bitter tears; to love the very Richard still reeking with her
husband's blood, at the very time in which he uses violence in stopping
the sacred burial, to love him, I say, because he flatters her, it is the
very parody, and the ridiculous caricature with which he wanted
demonstrate the power of flattery in woman's breast. Were woman such a
selfish, vain, degraded being, the honest man would shudder at, and feel
aversion rather than love the beauty. And if one of the best ladies has so
low a mind, what shall we think of those less perfect than Elizabeth? But,
the hyperbole is such a big one, for which nature wishes to have nothing
to do with it. And such a satire to woman, instead of striking at the
purpose, it becomes but a ridiculous exaggeration.

I brought here only these two instances to demonstrate, that, if the
english theatre has not yet reached the italian, or french perfection, it
is owing to a national, religious veneration for every thing written by
Shakspeare; and when the english critic will not be awed by the great
Shakspeare, and, really, Shakspeare is great, I do not see why the english
theatre will not be as good as any.

There is, perhaps, no present nation in the world more fitted to improve
the english theatre than America. And why? Sparta, Athens, and Borne had
been great republics, because the theatre instructed the people in that
_alto sentire_, in that patriotic feeling of virtue, and noble actions,
without which all the republics of the world had been turned into
monarch