SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 504, 18 February 1949, Page 12

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

SHAKESPEARIAN TRAGEDY. By H. B, Charlton. Pitt Press. English price, 12/6. T must be very difficult to find something to say about Shakespeare’s tragedies that no one has thought of before. The attempt to do so has in recent years led to some fantastic absurdities of interpretation; of these Dr. Charlton disposes with ease, being an apostle of enlightened common sense and a convinced Bradleyan..So much so that his

careful analyses of the tragedies should be found useful by examination candidates. Of course that is not all, Dr. Chariton is highly erudite, and has td his credit a number of authoritative publications on Latin, French, and Italian literature. His wide knowledge of other literatures enables him to enrich his interpretation with interesting comparisons and references that are entirely his own. His analyses déal essentially with the meaning and message of the tragedies, praise of Shakespeare as a poet consists of generalities, and the technique of dramatic construction does not specially interest him. In his own words: "Our main interest has been to observe the particular manner in which the tragic action propels itself to its tragic ending, assuring itself of its own inevitalS he There is so much room for diversities of opinion about Shakespeare that in reading a book of this kind one often feels doubtful or wants to disagree. Dr. Charlton does not think much of Romeo and Juliet, except as beattiful poetry: he can’t see any inevitability; Freytag, whose analyses are highly praised by Margoliouth in his edition of the Poetics, chooses Romeo and Juliet to show how in an Italian story where everything is fortuitous Shakespeare can make an intelligent observer say to himself: "Yes, thus and not otherwise it had to be." And then Hamlet: to Dr. Charlton one of the great tragedies, in which the data lead inexorably to the conclusion; to the inimitable Professor Joad, unsurpassed poetry, but it bores him, in fact, he thinks it silly. Quot homines tot sententiae.

G. W.

Z.