A Little Less Than Kind

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 329, 12 October 1945, Page 8

A Little Less Than Kind

TATION 3YL’s latest literary recording was a lecture on the speaking of verse by the late John Drinkwater, English poet. My sympathy was won at the start by the remark that "there flourished within living memory a race of men and women known as elecutionists," and the observations on the customs of these fauna which vigorously followed. But one point, occurring in the more general remarks towards the end, seems to me worthy of disputation: it is thé statement that, supposing a work of art to exist of supreme merit and perfection, there can be*only one way of presenting it. Advancing the example of actors in the part of Hamlet, Mr. Drinkwater took arms against a sea of Hamlets, he said that though we might never hope to chieve all that Shakespeare meant by this character there could none the less be only one right way of doing it -to admit any other principle was to turn our attention not to Hamlet who was thus most.dreadfully attended. But surely not; the whole point of an idealthe one perfect and unattainable principle (supposing Hamlet to be such)is that there can be an indefinite number of approximations to it, all different, all equal or nearly so in merit, all falling short of the many-splendoured thing. If there is in Hamlet something which is all mankind, no actor can hope to achieve it, for the simple reason that "every man hath business and desires." But we may look for what part of that something each several actor can attain; and to look not at Hamlet but at an actor in the part of Hamlet need be no more reprehensible than to look not at the universe alone but at man’s part and lot in it.