ANACHRONISM IN SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1091, 1 April 1911, Page 9

ANACHRONISM IN SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM.

,Dr> Jo-Mson advised people to read Shakespeare's plays without glancing at commentators (writes Mr'; Andrew L'ang, in the "Morning ■Post"). Perhaps from indolenco I have'taken Dr. Johnson's advice, and have but rarely looked at what Coleridge or Hazlitt, or a menagerie of professors, British and foreign, have written about him. No doubt there is much to bo learned from the essays of Mr. Bradley and Mr. Syramonds among the moderns, of Coleridge and Hazlitt among the ciders; dark, places aro made clear, and beautiful passages are adequately recommended. But ono is not anxious • to find new points in Hamlet's soul, as yet untouched by Germans, because the' old points, which any reader can see for himself, are at least sufficient. Perhaps Shakcspearo did.not See all his points himself, or, at least, did not see them as the critics do, for-he. "had indeed brave notions," and they crowded so, fast into his intelligence thatißen Jonson wished someone would put on the drag. • "His. epithets and single phrases are. like sparkles, thrown otf from an imagination fired by the-, whirling.rapidity of its own motion'," says Hazlitt, and his ideas aro born with the" same rapidity. "Before.,one., jdeaS.hns burst its sliell," says'timn/ "another is hatched an<l clamorous for disclosure.". ' ■ ( In the work of an imagination so. fertile "it may be that, ,hs Aristotlo says; 1 "fortune favours, 'art'," ' arid' moro is given than the poet.had any pre-con-ceived purpose to give; more than he afterwards could account for having given;:. hall he been his own critic. Genius does not work so consciously and conscientiously, as the critics who come plodding" after it, examining its results through modern microscopes. "He. has; a magic power over words: they como winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places. ... In trying tq recollect any other author," says Hazlitt, "one sometimes stumbles in case of failure on a word as good. In Shakespeare any other word but the true one is sure to be wrong." (In ? noting six words of Shakespeare, Hazitt gave two absurdly wrong, and never corrected them.) Yet wo feel assured that Shakespeare did not, like that unhappy Flaubert and our modern precieux, sit biting his pen for an hour hunting for the right word: the right word "came winging to him." There is' evidence enough from their manuscripts and corrected proof-sheets that Izaak Walton, 11. L. Stevenson, and Thackeray would write a phraseover and over again till it was fashioned'to their liking; we have no such evidence in Shakespeare's case, but we are apt to conceive that the hurrying thoughts came winging ready clad in their appropriate plumage. . . . Now, not to be anachronistic in our views of Shakcspearo, we are asked, apparently, to throw ourselves back into the very frame of mind, thought, and taste of Shakespeare's contemporaries, say, of Chapman himself, Johnson, Chettle, Decker, Southampton, Pembroke, and so on. But.they were all in different conditions of mind, thought, and taste j not one of them was in Shakespeare s, and the thing cannot be done. Shakespeare tried to write for his contemporaries, of course, but his genius carried him beyond them, beyond all men. Ho "was noUfor an age, but for all time," said Ben Jonson, witli literal truth; nor can the minds of any age of the world have an exhaustive knowledge of his excellences. Consequently his critics, in each age, must contemplate him from their own belvedere; whicli is inadequate, of courso, but may lend a moro extensive view than the standpoint of his contemporaries. Tho criticisms, if just, will bo anachronistic,.that is, will not be Elizabethan criticisms; though, indeed, they cannot bo moro just than the lino of Ben Jonson which I have cited. If. it bo urged that modern students will bo judging Shakespeare ' in tho light, true or false, of ideas and conceptions of which ho Can never have dreamed, I reply that mortal man is r.over likely to have any ideas (worth anything) which had not passed through Shakespeare's mind.. Of course, I do 'not mean that ho iiad contemplated all our now inventions in mechanical..de? tail—aeroplanes, wireless .telegraphy, quick-firing guns, and so forth. AVhat I mean is that all our largo ideas about human destinies, society, religion, evolution, tout le trembh-mont, are, in the rough, as old as homo npiens, and that every one of our Modern specula-1 '-tons has its prototype in the thought' of the lowest savages whom we are able, to study. AV.o only put the notions into our scientific jargon. That my.statements are true is the slightly disenchanting lesson of anthropology. It follows that we aro not likely to hit on any essential idea which had not been contemplated by a mind like Shakespeare's. ■Mr. Stoll savs that Mr. Shaw and Count Tolstoy have done- much "to explode tho notion that the thoughts and devices of the Sixteenth Century, aro. not different from those of the Twentieth." As ho adds that these gentlemen arc "uncritical, unhistorical in temper," what' they say about criticism and history may not bo very important. In the Sixteenth Century certain prevalent idfas of ours —say, anarchism, socialism, atheism, pnntliofsm, any "ism" you please —were "sail - hadden doun." but they were all in existence, aiid Shakespeare had thrown his eyo over them. "A man may see bow this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine

ears-; see howyond Justice'rails uponyond simple thief. Hark itithino ear; change places; and, handy dandy, which is tho Justice, which is the, thief? . . . None docs offend, none, I say none: I'll able them." Lear is the speaker; ho is anarchist enough, modern enough, for any mortal, however advanced. Of course, if we talk popular science about matters which wo do not understand, such as heredity, and attribute tho same ideas to Shakespeare, wo do him injustice. Ho was not Professor Lornbrosol If his characters explain things by tho influences of tho stars, he does not: other characters of his laugh, liko Pico dolla Miraudola, at that old superstition. The notion of the sub-conscious self may be only a century old in our speculation, but tho Bishop of Ely, m "Henry V," seems to bo familiar with it. If Napoleon said that "Shakespeare had no strategy," one asks what he had to do with strategy, as his forces wero a few bucklers 'and three rusty rapiers.. . I do not know what a "symbolist" is, a boro probably, and if "symbolism" is a new idea'and a bad idea (it is improbable that.any idea should be new), no doubt Shakespeare was. not a symbolist. I am not defending all the interpreters of Shakespeare; I am suro be is not tho same sort of genius as Maeterlinck or Ibsen. He had a sense of humour. Certainly the critic is anachronistic who studies Shakespearo through spectacles provided by Ibsen and Maeterlinck. "It is the day of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Pater," and therefore, it seems, "we no longer believe in compensation or retribution."' Wo may disbelieve in what we please, but no critic .can possibly know what Shakespeare believed in. Mr. Stoll'himself has a glimpsc-of "this:" "the endings of Shakespeare s.plays warrant no conclusions touching his views of life."' Of course they don't, and if any critic thinks they, do he is like Lord Chesterfield's herald, .who. "did not know even his own silly old business." Mr. Stoll seems to bo concerned with a queer sentimental up-to-date' cot of critics, who interpret Shakespeare, into their own ephemeral jargon. But it is just as foolish to suppose that Shakespeare was limited to "Sixteenth Century ideas." All centuries had all ideas. 'The religion and the society of the Ages of Faith.were riddled through with every form of doubt and discontent, bu« authority, suppressed them, as far as possible. I am not intimately familiar with the doctrines of Count Tolstov, but if ho has anything now to teach tho author of "Piers Plowman" (who preceded Shakespearo by two centuries) 1 do not, know what it can be. It is only ignorance that makes us think our ideas are new.