Henry Norman Hudson's 1872 study opens with a striking claim: Shakespeare's genius has 'made the world better worth living in, and life a nobler and diviner thing.' The book's catalog subjects—Shakespeare's characters, English drama, and character in literature—suggest a straightforward reference work, but the excerpts reveal a sustained moral-philosophical argument. Hudson uses the fate of Cordelia and Kent in King Lear to defend Shakespeare against critics who demand poetic justice, asserting that virtue 'pays not her vows to time, nor is time's thrall.'

A Moral Defense of Tragic Outcomes

Hudson directly addresses the charge that Shakespeare's tragedies fail to reward the virtuous. He dismisses the expectation of 'an exact fitting of rewards and punishments to moral desert' as 'radically both unchristian and immoral.' Instead, he argues that characters like Cordelia and Kent possess a goodness that 'does not make suit to Fortune's favours.' Their reward is internal: 'the inward conscience of truth and right is the immediate smile of God himself.' Hudson's language is emphatic, even personal—'I heartily thank him for it; yes, heartily!'—and he recommends the Book of Job as a corrective for troubled readers.

The Historical Sketch and Its Role

The volume's subtitle promises 'An Historical Sketch of the Origin and Growth of the Drama in England,' and the table of contents lists sections on miracle-plays, moral-plays, comedy and tragedy, and Shakespeare's contemporaries. However, the excerpts do not include this material; they focus instead on Shakespeare's art and characters. The historical sketch appears to provide context for Hudson's later critical analyses, but its absence from the excerpts means the reader must infer its content from the chapter titles alone. Hudson's approach is not antiquarian but evaluative: he uses history to frame Shakespeare's achievement.

Hudson's Voice and Rhetorical Strategy

Hudson writes in a distinctive, sermon-like register, blending literary criticism with moral exhortation. He uses rhetorical questions ('Is it not, do we feel that it is, better to die with them than to live with those who have caused their death?') and direct address to 'students of Shakespeare.' His prose is dense with parallel constructions and biblical allusions, as when he contrasts 'the forces of Nature' that are 'strangely indifferent to moral distinctions' with the 'inward conscience' that is 'the Paradise of the truly good man's soul.' This voice positions Hudson as a preacher-critic, more concerned with the ethical impact of drama than with biographical or textual minutiae.

Readers should approach this volume as a work of Victorian moral criticism rather than a modern scholarly biography. Hudson's arguments are rooted in a specific theological and philosophical framework that prizes inner virtue over external reward. The historical sketch, though not excerpted, likely reinforces this perspective by tracing English drama's development as a moral force. Hudson's Shakespeare is a poet of conscience, not of worldly success.