SOURCE: Hibbard, G. R. “Crabbe and Shakespeare.” In Renaissance and Modern Essays: Presented to Vivian de Sola Pinto in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by G. R. Hibbard with the assistance of George A. Panichas and Allan Rodway, pp. 83-93. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.

In the following essay, Hibbard argues that Crabbe was one of the few Augustan poets to successfully make use of Shakespeare in his writing, and delineates the influence of certain of Shakespeare's plays on Crabbe's works.

Regarding the heroic as the highest form of poetry, the great Augustans had more sense than to write it. Instead of seeking to rival Homer, Vergil and Milton, Dryden and Pope preferred to translate the Ancients into the idiom of their own time, to utilize the work of all three, in no belittling spirit, for the purposes of mock-epic, and, above all, to enrich their own...