Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide - Nick Groom, Piero 2013

“By the dim light of Nature”

Shakespeare-the-natural-genius was a myth already popular during his lifetime. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607-8) wrote …

And from all learning keep these lines as clear

As Shakespeare’s best are, which our heirs shall hear

Preachers apt to their auditors to show

How far sometimes a mortal man may go

By the dim light of Nature.

Later still, Samuel Taylor Coleridge concurred …

Shakspeare, no mere child of nature; no

automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of

inspiration possessed by the spirit, not

possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated

deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge,

become habitual and intuitive, wedding itself to

his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to

that stupendous power, by which he stands

alone, with no equal or second in his own class;

to that power which seated him on one of the

two glory-smitten summits of the poetic

mountain, with Milton as his compeer not rival.

NEVERTHELESS, IN TRULY ROMANTIC FASHION, HE GOES ON TO EMPHASIZE … HE WAS THAT CHILD OF NATURE, AND NOT THE CREATURE OF HIS OWN EFFORTS.