In the first place, the genius of the new poets was lyrical or descriptive, rather than dramatic.  The divorce between literature and the stage had not yet, indeed, become total; and, in obedience to the expectation that every man of letters should try his hand at play-writing, Thomson, at least, as well as his friend and disciple Mallet, composed a number of dramas.  But these were little better than failures even at the time; and while “The Seasons” has outlived all changes of taste, and “The Castle of Indolence” has never wanted admirers, tragedies like “Agamemnon” and “Sophonisba” have been long forgotten.  An imitation of Shakspere to any effective purpose must obviously have take the shape of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins nor Akenside, nor any of the group, was capable of a play.  Inspiration of a kind, these early romanticists did draw from Shakspere.  Verbal reminiscences of him abound in Gray.  Collins was a diligent student of his works.  His “Dirge in Cymbeline” is an exquisite variation on a Shaksperian theme.  In the delirium of his last sickness, he told Warton that he had found in an Italian novel the long-sought original of the plot of “The Tempest.”  It is noteworthy, by the way, that the romanticists were attracted to the poetic, as distinguished from the dramatic, aspect of Shakspere’s genius; to those of his plays in which fairy lore and supernatural machinery occur, such as “The Tempest” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Again, the stage has a history of its own, and, in so far as it was now making progress of any kind, it was not in the direction of a more poetic or romantic drama, but rather toward prose tragedy and the sentimental comedy of domestic life, what the French call la tragedie bourgeoise and la comedie larmoyante.  In truth the theater was now dying; and though, in the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, it sent up one bright, expiring gleam, the really dramatic talent of the century had already sought other channels in the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett.

After all, a good enough reason why the romantic movement did not begin with imitation of Shakspere is the fact that Shakspere is inimitable.  He has no one manner that can be caught, but a hundred manners; is not the poet of romance, but of humanity; nor medieval, but perpetually modern and contemporaneous in his universality.  The very familiarity of his plays, and their continuous performance, although in mangled forms, was a reason why they could take little part in a literary revival; for what has never been forgotten cannot be revived.  To Germany and France, at a later date, Shakspere came with the shock of a discovery and begot Schiller and Victor Hugo.  In the England of the eighteenth century he begot only Ireland’s forgeries.