THE TWENTY-THIRD OF APRIL

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 63, 24 April 1869, Page 3

THE TWENTY-THIRD OF APRIL

By Diogenes the Younger.

I have no intention to inflict St. George and the Dragon upon your readers ; nor have I the slightest desire to magnify at the expense of the patron Saint, More of Morehall, who, with nothing at all, slew the Dragon of "Wantley. No, I write upon the Twenty-third of .April, .with another", amd hardly less objectionable purpose in view. Indeed, it has been my good fortune to observe, and take warning therefrom, that a man is sure, at some time or other in this life, to write or s;iy something about Sbakespere ; so I take this opportunity of having done with it, before long retention makes the dose more nauseous. I know nobody cares a cent for Shakespere ; but as it is . respectable to feign intense admiration for what few read and fewer comprehend, every one will congratulate me on my- "extensive acquaintance with the works of the great bard." This is not to be wondered at when the "extensive acquaintance" of a vast majority might be expressed as follows : —

William Shakespere was the Swan of Avon : he was transported for kissing keepers' wives and killing deer, but was pardoned on condition of writing Sir John Falstalf, chiefly through the exertions of Mr. Charles Kean, who brought out his plays at the Princess's with splendid scenery, and Macbeth in kilts and clan tartan. Shakespere's finest poem is " To be, or not to be." His works can be purchased for half-a-crown ; and he was the inventor of centenaries.

Such is the substance of the reply you might expect from nine out of ten, unless, indeed, any of them happened to be sporting men, when some doubts might be expressed whether the Swan of Avon was a four-oar or a pair. In fact, people humbug themselves into an intense admiration for Shakespere because it is " correct," and form fine examples of the principle which binds men to take oinne ignotum pro inirifico. The truth is, Shakespere's works were written for an earnest and adventurous people, near enough to the age of chivalry to be at times romantic, although strongly practical in the common affairs of life. Further, the time of their production was both a learned and a witty age, and the learning and wit was not confined to one coterie or clique, but scattered broadcast over the length and breadth of the land. How can we expect the favourite literature of such an age to be popular in times when an accursed spirit of gain has overcome all other feelings in the English heart ; when men care for nothing unless it will pay, and only take amusement 'as they would physic? Shakespere in the nineteenth century! I should thtnk not ; let him give place to Ricardo and Senior and all the collectors of bonedust who point out the path to riches. If we desire amusement, let Boucieault and Co. manufacture it for us ; let half-naked women attract thousands of the educated classes by their refined indecencies ; but for heaven's sake do not bore us with Richard, Duke of Gloster, or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You doubt this, my enthusiastic young friend ; but put the matter to the test, by having Miss Kemble to read " As You Like it," or- " Macbeth," in the Assembly Rooms on the same night a popular comic singer — The great Harry Loyd, or any other miserable mountebank — performs*in the Athenaeum, and you would soon discover which performance would be most likely to draw a house. Ask a young lady whether she would prefer a copy of Shakespere, or the works of Tupper or Tennyson, and her verdict will be at once in favour of the moderns ; indeed, the last Chronicles of crim. con." by Miss Braddon, is, I doubt not, far more extensively read than any of our so-called English Classics. Preaching is not my forte, but so great a revolution as is shown by this change in taste is worthy of some slight remark. In past years, Shakespere's works have exercised an unacknowledged but powerful influence on the formation of the English character ; and the next generation will show whether the substitution of sensational novels and sentimental nothingness in poetry is better fitted for the office than the works of the great dramatist. Shakespere painted men and women in a spirit of the. sternest realism ; and by the happy fate which almost compelled him to write in the dramatic form, has evolved a code for the regulation of human life unequalled by any moralist, and intensified by the individual interest with which it is surrounded. Hundreds of aphorisms embodying some great truth, and epigrammatic in form, when once uttered from the stage, were caught up by the audience, and. thus became household words in many homes where no other moral influence could penetrate. Further, the moral of each play was good, for, however vice might triumph for a time, retribution was certain to follow, stern and pitiless, and not to be avoided by tears, or golden hair, or infantile manners, as our popular novelists are prone to imagine. Not only has the dramatist displayed the horrible doom awaiting the villian, but he has also depicted, in the most sombre tints, the result of weakness and vacillation on the part of the virtuously inclined. When 'Hamlet falls in the very moment of his victory, we do not feel inclined to regard his fate as a triumph

of evil, but as a punishment of weakness. He was called to a work and undertook it ; but he faultered in its performance, and, like Lot's wife, has become a warning to all doubters. Nor has the influence of William Shakespere been confined to the moral life of the English people: to him much of that enlightened patriotism which has girt the world with great empires may be traced. An enlightened patriotism, however, not a development of that insular prejudice which has produced, and is producing, so many baneful effects : a patriotism which, while thinking there were livers out of Britain, could direct its whole energies to spread the influence of its native land without injuring or insulting others. I shall not allude ■to the effects produced by Shakespere in an, aesthetic point of view ; for, with " Under the Gaslight," the " Colleen Bawn," the " Black Crook," &c, &c, occupy* ing the stage>.pf a people blessed with a dramatic literature such as ours, I would seem guilty of cruel irony. The ebb has set in too strongly to be stemmed ; and a generation at once enterprising and frivolous, avaricious and lavish, will be succeeded by a worse, until some strong, untutored race from the boundless plains of Eastern Europe will sweep dowu with as resistless force as did Alaric fourteen centuries ago, and on tho ruin.3 of our abused magnificence enter on a new cycle of empire. The healthy manhood of our early literature is too strong for our enervated palate ; and this is one, and only one, of the signs of decadence visible to the thinker, who, from the teachings of the past, gathers warnings for the future ; and surely no fitter day in all the year could be found for musing on these than the anniversary of England's patron saint and her most god-like genius.