SHAKESPEAREAN DEFINITIONS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] S;11,—In the review of my book, The Seven Ages of Venice, which appeared in the Spectator of July 30th, your Reviewer indicates that the application of the terms " Justice Age " to the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a wresting of Venetian history, because all Venetians at that period were not Justices.
Now, Shakespeare uses the word " Justice " as typical of human life for the period of, say, from forty-five to sixty years of age, though not one man in a hundred ever is a Justice during that or any period of his life. Also Shakespeare's middle-aged man has a beard of formal cut, yet few men of our degenerate age have any beards at all, and do the members of the New Health Society look upon William Shakespeare with a cold disapproval because his typical man has a " fair round belly with good capon lin'd " ? Shakespeare's generali- zations are none the less true, although each and every one of his descriptive epithets cannot in strict accuracy be applied to ninety-nine per cent. of mankind to-day. So with Venice; there was fighting and trading, art and architecture, during the period in question, yet I submit that these are the centuries of Venetian history analogous to the period of human life described by Shakespeare as the Justice Age.—I am, Sir, &e.,
Previous page
