A. C. Bradley

thumb| Andrew Cecil Bradley, FBA (26 March 1851 – 2 September 1935) was an English literary scholar, best remembered for his work on Shakespeare. Quotes It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not speak at our bidding, nor answer in our language. It is not our servant; it is our master. Poetry for Poetry's Sake (1901), p. 32 Shakespearean Tragedy (1912) After Hamlet the style, in the more emotional passages, is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes more swelling, even tumid. It is also more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. 3. "Shakespeare's Tragic Period—Hamlet", p. 88 Hamlet's melancholy...would excite but little, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a nature distinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel–Coleridge type of theory lays stress. Such theories misinterpret the connection between that genius and Hamlet's failure, but still it is this connection which gives to his story its peculiar fascination and makes it appear (if the phrase may be allowed) as the symbol of a tragic mystery inherent in human nature. Wherever this mystery touches us, wherever we are forced to feel the wonder and awe of man's godlike 'apprehension' and his 'thoughts that wander through eternity,' and at the same time are forced to see him powerless in his petty sphere of action, and powerless (it would appear) from the very divinity of his thought, we remember Hamlet. And this is the reason why, in the great ideal movement which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, this tragedy acquired a position unique among Shakespeare's dramas, and shared only by Goethe's Faust. It was not that Hamlet is Shakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that Hamlet most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul's infinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes that infinity but appears to be its offspring. 3. "Shakespeare's Tragic Period—Hamlet", p. 127 Quotes about Bradley I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s GhostSat for a civil service post.The English paper for that yearHad several questions on King Lear,Which Shakespeare answered very badlyBecause he hadn’t read his Bradley. Guy Boas, "Lays of Learning", in Punch (17 February 1926); cited in Michael Taylor, Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford UP, 2001) ch. 2, p. 46 External links Category:Literary critics Category:People from London Category:University of Oxford alumni Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:1851 births Category:1935 deaths