MARGINAL COMMENT
IFEEL sorry for authors whose books appear at a moment when public attention is distracted by external events. Mr. Geoffrey Scott's Architecture of Humanism, for instance—a book that in normal times would have created a sensation—was published within a few weeks of the outbreak of the First German War, at a moment when we were so bewildered by the retreat from Mons that we were unable to accord even a passing thought to Palladio or Bramante. A similar misfortune occurred to Mr. George Rylands, whose Shakespearean anthology, The Ages of Man, first appeared. if I mistake not, only a few days after September 3rd, 1939, during those dim expectant months that were described, to my mind incorrectly, as " phoney." I suppose and hope that after the first moment of inattention this slim but weighty volume slipped its way into the wide rough pockets of many a battle-dress, its pages gritted by the sands of Libya or splotched by the ice-sprays of Murmansk. It is a discouraging thought that the young men of England should only start reading poetry when in imminent danger of their lives. During each of the two wars there were some optimists who nursed the belief that once our gallant soldiers, whether at Arras or Cassino, had contracted the habit of reading poetry, and surmounted the school-boy belief that it was an effeminate thing to do, they would go on reading poetry for the rest of their lives. These expectations were not fulfilled. The moment the danger had passed. the majority of these young men threw away their poetry-books and resumed the normal English habit of reading nothing at all. I hope that if the eyes of any of these recidivists or their relations fall upon the lines I write, they will purchase the new edition of The Ages of Man, now published by Messrs. Heinemann, for the most rewarding price of eight shillings and sixpence. It will provide them for many years to come with desultory moments of instruction, encouragement and solace.
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Mr. Rylands's sympathy with Shakespeare is based upon the careful scholarship that one would expect from a Fellow of King's ; it is also lit by rays that are all his own. He is so familiar with Shakespeare's diction, he possesses so close an acquaintance with the artifice, the lilt and the intonation of Shakespeare's voice, that for all his inevitable awe and veneration he can treat the swan of Avon with the affectionate irreverence of an intimate. There are some dry men who contend that Shakespeare never wrote The Passionate Pilgrim or the Phoenix and the Turtle ; it is, I regret to say, now generally agreed that As It Fell Upon a Day was written, by Richard Barnfield ; one should be grateful to Mr. Rylands for possessing so quick an instinct for Shakespeare's naturally convivial disposition that he knows how warmly the sweet poet would have welcomed the inclusion in this anthology of poems not his own. Mr. Rylands's knowledge of the whole Shakespearean vocabulary, his receptive- ness to the true Shakespearean tune, enables him to assert, with- out a twitch of the cheek, that Shakespeare helped Fletcher to write Two Noble Kinsmen. What is the point of collecting an anthology unless one sweeps with an audacious and excited gesture? His inclusions, though they may shock the puritans, do in fact add much to the extracts from the more authentic or familiar works. Mr. Rylands has also–added some notes of his own. Tetchy they are at moments, and at moments prim ; they may disconcert the heavier type of reader, but they will delight those who, like myself, enjoy the fussy jerks of dons, their sharp little asides. I like being told, without having asked, that " embossed " was. one of Shakespeare's favourite words, or that " unbarb'd sconce " means " unarmed head." Yet I quite see that very methodical people may complain that Mr. Rylands ought either to have decked his anthology with glossary and commentary or else written no notes at all. I disagree with this complaint ; I enjoy Mr. Rylands's inconsequent interjections. Being obliged last week to Undertake a long train journey to the North and back, I read through The Ages of Man from start to finish. I admit that this was unfair both to Shakespeare and to Mr. Rylands. Anthologies are not meant for continuous reading ; they are intended as bedside books, to be dipped into. while awaiting the slow soft tides of sleep. I do not recommend my experiment to others, although I found it rewarding. Mr. Rylands's anthology was composed in order to oblige us to approach Shakespeare's language directly, divorced 'from all associations of dramatic narrative or character delineation. When we read the plays as plays a continuity of interest is provided by the unfolding of the drama, even as variety of impression is produced by the different temperaments and conditions of the main personages. The actual voice of Shake- speare is deflected and distorted by these extraneous elements. In The Ages of Man, therefore, Mr. Rylands has grouped his chosen passages, not under the headings of the plays or characters, but into categories or themes, such as Love, Magic, War, Old Age, Passion and Character. Thus as one reads his extracts one forgets that it is Coriolanus or Perdita speaking, and derives the impression of listening to a monologue spoken by Shakespeare himself. The effect of omitting what Dr. Johnson called the progress of the fable and the tenor of the dialogue " becomes even more disconcerting if one reads the book continuously. * * * * .
The monotony, the meaningless rhetoric, the frequent repeti- tions, the conceits and tricks of Shakespeare's style become terribly prominent ; it is against this background of a hurried and rather lazy worker that the flashes of genius spread widely, as lightning when seen not from the recesses of a valley or a wood, but under the huge flat sky of deserts or fens. One is conscious that one becomes much wearied by Shakespeare's Holinshed patriotism ; one is irritated by his fustian words- " the princes orgulous," " yon cataracts and hurricanoes," or " fluttered your Volscians in Coriofi " ; one is depressed by such heavy and humourless conceits as " that infected moisture of his eye " or " huge leviathans forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands " ; one is exhausted by all the hyperbole and taffeta phrases, by the constant repetition, by the verbal trick of dupli- cating the simple by the elaborate epithet. From this mood of lassitude, even of displeasure, one is startled suddenly by the boom and exhilaration of the great high bells. The astonishing beauty of some monosyllabic line—" As that vast shore washed with the furthest sea "—or the deliberate flights away from the Globe Theatre to the " brightest heaven of invention " will come to remind us that Shakespeare, careless as he may' have been, was, after all, one of the three greatest poets that have come to comfort and enhance mankind. Passages of " pure " poetry. when Shakespeare surrenders utterly to the intoxication of his own fancy—" Her bed is India ; there she lies a pearl " or "Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! "—grip one with the mingled pleasures of recognition and surprise.
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Mr. Rylands, in one of his asides, remarks that, although we may each of us differ in our interpretation of Shakespeare's mind and character, we murii all, if we be reasonable beings, agree as to the kind of man that he was not. He was not " a courtier, or a Catholic, or an intellectual, or a scholar, or a satirist, or an imperialist." In fact, he was not Sir Francis Bacon. The shape and condensation of this anthology, in that it takes us away from the dramatic medium of his expression, away from his constant psychological preoccupation with the divided mind, forces us to concentrate upon the language of his thought. He remains unalterably the same ; yet Mr. Rylands's method does give us a fresh angle of vision, and force us to ruminate anew upon the mystery of this great genius.
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