... which the dramatic methods of the Elizabethans were a prey. Wisdom and poetry are intertwined with flatness and folly; splendid situations drift purposeless to impotent conclusions; brilliant psychology alternates with the grossest indecency and the feeblest puns. 'O matter and impertinency mixed!' one is inclined to exclaim at such a spectacle. And then one is blinded once more by the glamour of Lear and Othello; one forgets the defective system in the triumph of a few exceptions, and all plays seem intolerable unless they were written on the principle which produced ... — Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
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