WHY READ SHAKESPEARE?

Shannon News, 7 September 1923, Page 4

WHY READ SHAKESPEARE?

Shakespeare bored Darwin dreadfully in his later years, and the great naturalist was man enough to confess it (writes Mr H. G. Wells, in “John o’ London’s Weekly”). For quite other reasons Shakespeare may bore or displease you. There is no need to be ashamed of it. Personally, I cannot have too much of Falstaff and Juliet’s nurse and the players in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but many girls and women find these characters coarse and unpleasing.On the other hand, I find Juliet’s love-making about as delightful as the squeak of a passionate slate pencil. It is known that all plays ascribed to Shakespeare are not by him, and all those cithuiastic men of letters who talk in such o ravished way about his inimitable quality differ interminably about what he did or did not write. There is an (-nor-' mous literature »bout the pay of “Hamlet’ ’and what it is abour. A r.lay that puzzles people like that is r ot a supreme work of ,rt at all: it is a failure or an inexcusable "ladle. Perils cannot even make up their minds whether Hamlet is mad or shamming madness, and the who'e play has ti<c effect of being written by a man tired of or unsympathetic with the gory plot he has chosen. Not only is he tired of his-plot, but he is bored and irritated # by his world. He breaks away as one is opt to do under such circumstances, into digressions, and artificial and secondary issues. It is these incidental outbreaks that give the play of “Hamlet its value—for those who appreciate its ineioer.tal outbreaks. Thercis r, vigorous attack on contemporary acto ’s, and polomus is pretty plainly a cancat.ire of Mr Francis Bacon. Shakespeare did a considerable amount .>2 jeering in his plays, and manifestly had an unloving eye for many of his eontempor.’i .• es, one may doubt if the other Elizabethans were as delightful »o jve with as many people assume. But youth and maiden are exhorted to read this play of "Hamlet” as though it was the crowning utterance of a divinity. It is really very distressing to think of the endless aspiring self-edu-cators who must have been bogged and lost in utter despair by the forcing ‘of unsuitable and uncongenial masterpieces on their unprepared minds.