Krótka historia o tym jak „słodki łabędź z Avonu” stał się ikoną literatury europejskiej

Abstract

The article aims to show and analyse how initial, tentative idolatory attitudes towards Shakespeare, expressed by Ben Jonson in the First Folio ode ‘To the memory of my beloved, The AUTHOR Master William Shakespeare’, saw their full realization in the eighteenth century Europe. It is argued that bitter criticism launched against the Bard by the staunch advocators of French classicism, such as Voltaire and Thomas Rymer, only helped to boost bardolatory trends and securely set Shakespeare on the road to become a literary and cultural icon. Moreover, as early as the end of seventeenth century John Dryden already announced that Shakespeare had long ago reached the status of “Political Church and State”. Numerous editions of Shakespeare’s works that emerged in the first half of the eighteenth century strengthened the feeling that the ‘word’ of the Bard is sacred. That overlapped with deep dissatisfaction of theatre audiences which were offended by outlandish Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare plays and demanded to see great dramas of Elizabethan stage unadapted and intact. Further, the enthusiasm with which German critic embraced the English playwright, granting him the position of the ‘Nordic genius,’ changed the reading of the Bard into new secular religion.