SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2894, 5 October 1916, Page 9

SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC

THE REALITY OF FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

(By "Sylvius.")

From modest beginnings the business that is being done in Shakespearo at tho Grand Opera House has growil to substantial dimensions, and even tho most sceptical havo been brought to* realise tliat the bard can be played at moderate prices of admission and still be presented.with the respect and deconoy duo to tho majesty of genius. It woitld be idle for me or anyone else to say that the plays could not he more adequately presented. That could scarcely bo said of any ■ploy, no matter when or where performed, but for allround competency tho company is (as Shylock might have safa) sufficient, or a little better than that somewhat nig; /pirdly term implies. After being used tor some years to companies flying through the country playing only one play at a time, it is all the more striking to have with us a company that .can give us three Tragedies and threo ' comedies—pearls from the Shakespearean treasure-house—within the short spaco of threo weeks, and play them i better than ordinarily well at cheaper prices of admission than any company ploying legitimate drama for over a decade pasr. What has been surprising to me, an intense lover arid'vagrant student of Shakespeare, is to find so little being said about what must be regarded as the theatrical event of the year. Wliero are the Shakespearean societies, tho collegeSj and schools, that they are hot taking -advantage of tho company's viai-fc to learn "the practice of Shakespeare" ? The text books on English and composition still tako . extracts from the plays for analysis and ing, for reading,', and elocution; yet here is a' company giving living lessons in these immortal plays that we all prato so much of in our sententious moods, and little more than passing notice is being taken of the occasion.. Not even a controversy as To whether Hamlet was mad or not I What's coming over the student Shakespearean? Perhaps the major-, .ity of. him is at the war. If so,' pence, be with him—ho is learning more of war in ten minutes in the trenches than "Henry V" could teach him in ten years. Biit speaking of Hamlet and other protagonistio roles which so frequently come under discussion, and aro profoundly and laboriously torn to pieces by analytical critics and commentators, does it not striko anyone that the habit of treating fictitious characters as personages who have had a being lies at tho root of half the pseudo-criticism of- Shakespeare that burdens the world? It was Edgar Allan Poo who put this point very clearly, though he did not even scotch, leave alono kill, it when he said: —

"In all commentating upon Shakes-, peare, there has been a radical error never yet mentioned. It' is tho error of attempting to expound Mb characters, to account for their actions, to reconcile their inconsistencies, not as if thoy were the coinage of a human brain, hut as if they had actual existence on earth. ... If Hamlet had really lived, and if the tragedy wore an actual record of his deedfi, from this record (with some trouble) we might, it is true, reconcile his inconsistencies, and settle, to. our satisfaction his true character. But the task becomes tho purest ■ absurdity when wo deal only with a phantom. It is not the inconsistencies of the., acting that we havo as a subjeot of discussion, but the whims'and vacillations, the conflicting energies iind"ind6lencos of the poet.It seems to us little less than n miracle that this obvious point should havo been' overlooked."

While Shakespearean characters havo been treated as vital human entities with an oxiatence and dissected as such, it is interesting to note the fact that wo do not find critics delving into tho inner lives and obscure purposes of Claudo Mebiotto;- or Dr. Pangloss. or Wilfred Denver, or Virginius. It is only the Shakesperoan characters which havo earned this "windy suspiration of forced breath," and to what ond? It was the renowned Helen Faucit who invented quite a- history about Ophelia, told when her' mother had died, and how sho- had been brought up in a' convent until taken to live with vber father as Elsinore, and such was her devotion to tho character that she actually believed tho story her sympathetic brain had created. As a matter of fact, many commentators appear to havo given far more time to tho analysis of Shakespearean characters than Shakespeare himself had time to do, for it must not bo forgotten that lie wrote practically tho whole of his plays in twenty years, and was a busily-employ-ed actor himself at the same time, so that ho could have had little time to dream'on "might-have-beens," his business was to clothe theidcaß of others in that majesty of thought and beauty of languago wherein lay i his geiiius. Shakespeare really- little. 'Cher© are few plays in tho series that had not some origin elsewhere,' but his was the genius to raise such stuff from the dust of mediocrity or less, and enshrine it among the literary- gems # of all times, without a thought at the time that his work was pre-eminently superior to other great writers of that most wonderful of all ages in tho history of English letters. \ .'