"How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians"
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Walpole is doing two things at once: praising Shakespeare’s genius and quietly policing taste. The compliment hinges on a pointed contrast between “little circumstances” and the “circumstantial or vulgar historians” Shakespeare scavenged from. Shakespeare’s greatness, in Walpole’s frame, isn’t originality of plot so much as social alchemy: he lifts raw material associated with mere chronicle, gossip, and commonness into something elevated. “Improve and exalt” is a telling pairing. Improve suggests craft, revision, technique; exalt suggests elevation in rank, almost moral or aristocratic ascent. Walpole is describing art as refinement, a civilizing process that redeems low sources.
The subtext is classic 18th-century anxiety about cultural hierarchy. Walpole, a connoisseur-politician with an ear for pedigree, can admire Shakespeare while still insisting that value comes from transformation, not from the “vulgar” itself. He grants the historian a utility (a quarry) but denies them prestige (a laurel). That’s not just aesthetic snobbery; it’s a theory of authorship that keeps genius safely above the marketplace of facts. Shakespeare can traffic in the common, but only because he returns it purified.
Context matters: Walpole writes from a moment when Shakespeare is being aggressively canonized, edited, and “improved” for polite audiences. So his sentence doubles as self-justification for the age’s own curatorial impulse. Celebrate Shakespeare’s ability to elevate, and you quietly endorse a culture that believes greatness is proven by turning the messy record of life into something fit for drawing rooms, stages, and national pride.
The subtext is classic 18th-century anxiety about cultural hierarchy. Walpole, a connoisseur-politician with an ear for pedigree, can admire Shakespeare while still insisting that value comes from transformation, not from the “vulgar” itself. He grants the historian a utility (a quarry) but denies them prestige (a laurel). That’s not just aesthetic snobbery; it’s a theory of authorship that keeps genius safely above the marketplace of facts. Shakespeare can traffic in the common, but only because he returns it purified.
Context matters: Walpole writes from a moment when Shakespeare is being aggressively canonized, edited, and “improved” for polite audiences. So his sentence doubles as self-justification for the age’s own curatorial impulse. Celebrate Shakespeare’s ability to elevate, and you quietly endorse a culture that believes greatness is proven by turning the messy record of life into something fit for drawing rooms, stages, and national pride.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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