The Nineteenth Century: “The Space(s) of the Critical Rivalry in London”

Abstract

“The Space(s) of the Critical Rivalry in London” examines the nineteenth-century versions of the relationship, beginning with Charles Lamb’s assessment of Shakespeare and Marlowe in his 1808 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, which “although delivered with little critical commentary, is heavily influenced by his own critical judgment.” The chapter then shows how William Hazlitt’s engagement with Edmund Kean set the two rivals in relief by comparing their staged dramas at Drury Lane. Kean’s performance of one central role from each of the writers—Barabbas in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice—helps to further complicate the distinction between the dramatists in the nineteenth century. The space of the printed reviews and public lectures of William Hazlitt aimed at the so-called “public sphere” of Jürgun Habermas is both complicated and conflicted during nineteenth-century London.