The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 51

The Otago Witness WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.

(WEDNESDAY MARCH 11, 1908.) THE WEEK. " KnaquMi tlfad ottura, altad uplentU dlxlt."— Jvvbbai. "Qaad auur* and good nau nun m? join."— Fora. At length, after a number of abortive attempts, there is a prosThe Snnrested pect of the removal of one Shnkesptare of the greatest reproaches Memorial. which lie at the door of i the British .Empire — viz., that the man. who is at once the glory and the crown of British literature and of the British race has no monument erected to his memory. There is a sense, of course, in which a man's works 'are his best monument, and this is eminently true > of William Shakespeare. But seeing t hatcritics have expended floods of ink and < reams of paper in discussing the proper spelling of the name of the Bard of Av*n, it is passing strange that although nearly 350 years have elapsed since the birth of this great genius, nothing has been done in. the way of perpetuating his memory in visible and permanent form. It is more than 30 years since Victor Hugo hurled the reproach at England, in his essay on William Shakespeare, that no monument had yet arisen to mark the memory of so great a man. And at the present juncture, when a tardy effort | is being made to remove the reproach, the eulogy of the famous French writer may well be recalled. Victor Hugo said : — " Shakespeare is the chief glory of England. England has in politics, Cromwell ; in philosophy, Bacon ; in science, Newton; three lofty men of genius. But Cromwell is stained with cruelty, and Bacon with meanness ; as to Newton, his edifice is at this moment tottering.. Shakespeare is pure, as Cromwell and Bacon are not, and unshaken as Newton is not. Moreover, his genius is loftier. . Shakespeare has equals, but no superior. It us singular honour for a land to have borne such a man. England is selfish; selfishness is an island. This Albion, who minds her own business and is apt to be eyed askance by other nations, is a little lacking in disinterested greatne<is; of this Shakespeare gives her some portion. With that purple robe he drapes his countqy's shoulders. By his fame he is universal and cosmopolitan. He overflows island and egotism on every side. Deprive England of Shakespeare, and consider how soon this nation's far shining light would fade. Shakespeare modifies th© English countenance ami makes it beautiful. He lessens the resemblance of England to Carthage." f - Following this French tribute to William jjhakespeare jomes a The Reproach characteristic passage, emI of bodying a keen reproach, Tlctor Hug*, couched in Victor Hugo's best and most satirical vein : — " When one arrives in England, the first thing the eye seeks is the statue of Shakespeare ; it falls upon the statue of Wellington. Wellington is a general who, in collaboration with chance, gained a battle. If you insist you are taken to a place called Westminster, where there are kings — a crowd of king 6; — there is also a nook called 'The Poet's Corner.' There in the shade of four or five magnificent monuments, where some royal nobodies shine in marble and bronze, you are shown a statuette upon a little bracket, and beneath this statuette the name ' William Shakespeare.' Furthermore, there are statues everywhere — statues to the heart's content. Statue of Charles, statue of Edward, statue of William, statues of three of four Georges, one of whom was an idiot. . . . Everywhere, in every street, in every square, at every step, gigantic notes of admiration in the shape of columns : a column to the Duke of York, which should take the form of a note of interrogation; a column to Nelson, witn Caraccioli's gjHost pointing the finger at it; a column to Wellington, already mentioned ; columns for everybody ; it fe sufficient to have trailed a sabre a little." And now the cable informs us that the site chosen for the Shakespeare architectural monument and statue is in Park Cneqsent, looking down upon Portland place, and that an effort is being , made to raise £200,000 for the monument, and in furtherance of Shakespearian interests. It is just about 12 months ago that Mr Sydney Lee, the well-known Shakespearian enthusiast," published a book entitled "Shakespeare and the Modern Stage," in which he directly appealed to the British public to no longer delay, but achieve something definite in. this matter of a Shakespeare memorial. At the time of the Shakespeare tercentenary, when a similar movement was on foot some quidnunc wrote to The Times, or to one of the leading English journals, advocating that the memorial take the form of " a Bust embracing a Statue." Whereupon Punch improved the occasion, and promptly came out with a cartoon representing a bust of Shakespeare in th© act of embracing a statue. This heaped such ridicule upon the whele project that for a time it was abandoned. And now apparently the effort has been revived and is likely to be put upon a proper business basis, with, it is to b© hoped, some measure of success. The argument in favour of tne erection of a Etatuo to Shakespeare The Tardy ™ magnificently put by Beeofitltldn Victor Hugo in the conof a tinuation of th» essay from Great Giniuf. which we have already quoted. And be it remembered that the words were written 34 years ago, just before the celebration of Shakespeare's tercentenary, -when the French author fully expected that the would be shortly erected* And

Hugo asks :—": — " Wherefore, indeed, it monument to Shakespeare? s The statu* he 'has irade for himself with all England for a pedestal is better.. Shakespeare has no need. for a pyramid — -he has his work. What do you suppose marble could do for him? What can bronze do where there ie glory? Malachite and alabaster are of no avail ; jasper, serpentine, basalt, and red porphyry like that at the Invalides, granite, marble of Porus and Carrara, are a waste of pains; genius is genius without them. What though every variety of stone had its place there, would that add a cubit to this man's stature I What arch could be more indestructible than this— 'The Winter's Tale,' 'The Tempest/ 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,*- ' Julius Csesar,' ' Coriolarius ' ? What [ monument sublime* than ' Lear,' sterner than ' The Merchant >f Venice,' more dazzling than 'Romeo and Juliet,' more amazing than 'Kichard III'? What more could shed about tie pile a light more mystic than that of a ' Midsummer Night's Dreami'? What capital, even London, could rumble around it ac tumultuously as Macbeth's perturbed soul? What framework of cedar or of oak . will last as long as ' Othello' ? What bronze can equal the bronze of 'Hamlet'? No construction of lime or rock or iron or cement is worth the deep breath of genius, which is the respiration of God through man. A head containing- an idea, such ia the. summit: no heaps of^ brick and stone «can rival it. What edifice equals a thought I Babel is less lofty than Isaiah; Cheops i« smaller than Homer ; the Colosseum ie inferior to Juvenal; the Giralday of Seville is dwarfish by the side of Cervantes ; the St. Peter's of Rome does not reach to the ankle of Dante. What architect has skill to build a tower as high as the name of Shakespeare! Add anything if you can to a mind! Imagine a monument. Suppose it splendid, suppose it sublime—a triumphal arch, an obelisk, a circus with a pedestal in the centre, a cathedral. No people is more illustrious, more noble, more splendid, more highminded than the English people. Wed these two ideas — England and Shakespeare, — and let their issue be a monument. Such a nation celebrating such • man-— -the spectacle would be superb. Imagine the monument, imagine /the inauguration. Th 4 peers axe there, the commons follow, the bishops officiate, the princes join in the procession, the Queen is present. . . . Cannons boom,' the curtain drops, the unveiled statue seems to say 'At length.' It has grown, in the, darkness, for" 300 (years — three centuries: the youth of a colossus, — how vast it ist'i . . . When, therefore, the universal, voice of England demands of England a monument to Shakespeare, it is not for, the sake of Shakespeare; it is for the sake of England. There are cases ia which the repayment of & debt is of greater import to the debtor than to the cieditor. A monument is an example.,, The lofty head of a great man is a light.Crowds, like the waves, require beacons above them. It is good, therefore, that the passer-by should know that there are great men. People may not have time to read ; they are forced to see. One passes that way, and stumbles against the pedestal; one is almost obliged to raise* the head and to glance a little at file inscription. Men escape a book : they cannot escape a statue. . . . The people need such an introduction to their great men. The monument incites them, to know more of men. They desire ta learn to read, in order to know what this bz-onze means. A statue is a nudge to ignorance. The erection of such monuments is, therefore, not merely a matter of national justice, but of popular utility. "- But it must be remarked that there is an irony in the suggested 1 More About tardy recognition of the Monument. Shakespeare's genius — that is to say, so far as material recognition in the shape of a memorial 1 in bron'^e or stone is concerned — which a perusal of Victor Hugo's 'essay fully brings out. There is no need to comment? upon the passage which follows ; it speaks for itself, and may usefully be pondered? at the present time — " As was easy to foresee, England will build a monument to her poet. At the very moment when we finished writing the pages you haya just read, announcement was made ia London of the formation of a committee for the solemn celebration of the three-hun-dredth anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. This committee will dedicate to Shakespeare, on the 13th of April, 1864, a monument andi a festival, which will surpass, we doubt not, the incomplete programme we have just sketched out. , . . Nations are hard of hearing, but! so long of life that their deafness is in no way irreparable. They have time to I change their minds. The English are at last awakening to their glory. England begins to spell that name, Shakespeare, upon which the world has laid her finger.'- 4 We wonder what Victor Hugo, were h« still in the flesh, would say to-day, 34 years after he had written the lines, "Ia April, 1864, three huqdred years after Shakespeare's death, England raises a statue' to Shakespeare. It is late, but it! is well." Wherefore the committee which has the matter in hand may well bo stimulated to success by pondering yet these other words of Hugo, especially, appropriate at the present moment : "In the end England will . certainly yield to the temptation of performing an act at once useful and just. She is the debtor of Shakespeare. To leave such a debt in abeyance is an attitude hardly, compatibles with national pride. It is a debt of morality that nations should pay theijf debts of gratitude. When a man ie m glory upon his nation's brow the nation that fails to recognise the fact excites tb> amazement of the race."