28 JUNE 1945, Page 13

BOOKS OF THE DAY

Shakespeare's Politicians

ONE would like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to John Palmer, who died while this book was printing. He did great service to the understanding of the drama, not by virtuoso plunges into depth-psychology or anthropology, nor by minute examinations of texts or of social conditions—which sometimes produce illuminating results—but by an almost inspired quality of common sense, a far rarer gift than is usually appreciated, since commonplace "common sense" only too often reveals itself as uncommon nonsense. It was this quality, and no theories, which made his book, The Comedy of Manners, the basis from which so many, one might almost say all, subsequent studies of Restoration comedy have sprung, and which made his writings appeal not to the specialist alone, but to the common reader or playgoer as well ; it was a common sense which can be, and with him was, as illuminating as any more obviously technical instrument. So this last book clears away many fusty cobwebs, sweeps clear. many encumbered side-issues, and brings us back to an alert normality from which other studies of Shakespeare may have delightfully diverted us.

John Palmer was not here concerned with the vexed question as to whether Shakespeare was or was not a true-blue democrat, except in so far as to show fairly conclusively that in his plays Shake- speare was merely the observer of genius, without much respect for the "scurvy politican "- on either side, whether of the rabble or "o' the right hand fi!e." What concerned him was to note how politicians as such behaved ; and what interested him still more was how the politician in a man reacted upon the human being within him, or how the human being affected the kind of politician the man was. In short, he was the completely detached artist, the Flaubertian ideal, intensely curious, miraculously perceptive about man in all his activities; including the political. Palmer summed it up in his Introduction:

Certain qualities are necessary to success in public affairs and

certain psychological consequences attend the exercise of power. Those qualities and consequences are noted by Shakespeare. Pre- senting a great dictator or the best of kings, he gives us the historical facts as he found them and depicts, with the entire sympathy of a creative dramatist, a human character with whom those facts can be squared. The astonishing veracity of Shakespeare's political charac- ters is due, indeed, to the small interest which he took in politics as compared with the great interest which he took in human nature. His main concern was not so much with politics as with the men who made them. He was immune from political bias and his political characters were therefore true for all time.

True for all time! The claim is large. But follow it up in Palmer's studies of Marcus Brutus, the Richards of Gloucester and Bordeaux, of Henry V (though, naturally, the Henry IV of plays), and of Corio- lanus, and then think of the political figures of the last twenty-five years ; there go the Brutuses and Coriolanusesi the Northumber- lands, the Yorks, the Buckinghams and Tyrrels. There they are, the types as Shakespeare reveals them to us. How prettily their moods and their uterances can be paralleled in the two ages, how exactly .their strength or their weakness, their generosify or their cruelty, the good or evil that they do, are reflected from the past in the contemporary scene! For though history never repeats itself, the human race is always throwing up variations on a familiar theme involving itself in similar situations: the struggle between good an evil, between vision and material needs, is monotonously repetitive. One great virtue of this book is that it makes the past live for us in terms of the present, and Shakespeare the best possible poetic (which is to say philosophical) commentator on our present position.

The book is delightfully readable, at a variety of levels, and equally enthralling at each of those levels. Palmer succeeded in the very difficult task of enabling those ignorant or forgetful of the plays to follow the exposition without ever insulting the learned. Packed as it is with copious quotations, it is a book for the common reader as well as for the expert, who will be reminded of Johnson or Cole- ridge, of Mr. Midd'eton Murry or Dr. Dover Wilson, without these critics being unduly forced upon the attention of the playgoer. Palmer shows how every play discussed handles a different aspect of the political -scene, uses a dfferent set of human counters' and he makes live every scene he discusses, follows each remark through

to its implications, even when made by the lesser politicians (in- cluding Falstaff—for he too has his political relevance, as has the gardener in Richard II), so that the whole book becomes very exciting and very convincing. Here and there, perhaps, we will boggle a little, especially maybe at being shown how a remark in one play foreshadows an utterance or an attitude in a later one. Had Shakespeare really this prescience of what he was going to do? we ask. Can the most consummate artist, in sober truth, sec the end in the beginning to that detailed extent? Even the inveterate bardolator may be a little hesitant at seeing that the accepted in- consistencies are after all consistencies. But whether Palmer was right or wrong in this, his method is so persuasive that it is reward-