Shakespeare's Testimonials
A History of Shakespearian Criticism. By Augustus Balk. (Oxford University Press. Humphrey Milford. 2 Vols. 42s.fid.)
GAVE before me a worn volume of plays in half-calf, which includes Hamlet as performed at the Theatre-Royal in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The frontispiece is a charming engraving of Mrs. Lessingham in the character of Ophelia, with hair falling below the waist and a profusely flowered, loose-bodied gown. The text is pared to the quick and salved with some engaging footnotes. " (Enter two Grave- diggers.) (These gentry, and their quibbling humour, cer- tainly trespass upon decorum ; but the moral reflections occa- sioned by the grave, &c., make ample amends)" On Hamlet's Alexander soliloquy the comment is : " Read this speech, titled Pomp, with due attention, and shrink into thy original nothingness." Time has his revolutions. Will the obiter dicta of our commentators to-day seem as fantastic to posterity We note two things. First, the moral attitude of the eighteenth century, whose dictator complained, however, that Shakespeare seems often, to write with to moral purpose- auftes temps, mitres wears. And secondly, the style. Much may be justified by style. Now Mr. Ralli has made an abstract of all that has been written about Shakespeare in England, France and Germany from Ben Jonson to the present time. It has been a labour of Hercules, a labour of love, such as Shakespeare often inspires. But what is the substance without the style ? " Jonson's mind," says Mr. Ralli, " was critical—but he was great enough to discern
Shakespeare's opposite genius. Yet he . . . withdrew much of his earlier praise by over-insisting on Shakespeare's carelessness and facility." Yes, indeed ! Or as Ben himself puts it : " . . . call forth thundring Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pee-mitts, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To live again, to hear thy buskin tread, And shake a stage or when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come."
And contrariwise :
" He was, indeed, honest, of an open and free nature ; had an excellent fancy, bravo notions, and gentle expressions, wherein ho flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should he stopped. Suitarsinandus ems, as Augustus said of Haterius. His a it was in his own power ; would the rule of it had been so too."
Criticism, Raleigh tells us, is literature suggested by a book. But Shakespearian criticism when it has been through Mr. Bath's abstracting and condensing machinery ceases inevitably to be literature; and therefore ceases to be criticism. Let me give one more example. Johnson has a magnificent paragraph on Shakespeare's conceits. It opens thus :
" A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller he follows it at all adventures ; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malig- nant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible."
And .closes : _ " A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world and was content to lose it."
The whole paragraph becomes for Mr. Raiff's purposes : " He will always turn aside to pursue a quibble."
For my part I am not sophisticated enough, I confess, to prefer a meat tabloid to a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I do not wish to disparage Mr. Ralli's industry ; his summaries are-level-headed and conscientious. But for whom are these two monumental volumes designed.? Not, I hope, for the student. The overworked lecturer and journalist, all those dealers in literature who keep one eye on the clock, all those who prefer to have their reading done for them and their minds made up by others, will be assisted in their business of stuffing out an article or in their aspirations to appear men of learning. There is a place for these two volumes in a small library which has no space for the texts themselves. One can discover in a moment what Giklon- said in 1714; what. Tieck said in 1826 ; how Celtic the Bard appeared to Chevrillon in 1016. I have much enjoyed making the acquaintance of Elizabeth Griffith (1775) who points out that the Midsummer Night's Dream contains the lesson that children should obey their parents. The eighteenth century, like the Duchess in Alice, sought in all things for a moral, and Mrs. Barbauld was distressed at its omission in The Ancient Mariner, although it is perhaps as moral a poem as any in the language. On the other hand, Mrs. Griffith is original and acute when she denies that Polonius should be played by a comic actor. For the learned few then A History of Shakespearian Criticism has its possibilities ; for the unscrupulous it has its uses ; but I would warn off the undergraduate. Let him go to the texts themselves ; to criticism which by virtue of its style is also literature. The Shakespeare reading list presents every year (at Cambridge, at any rate) a difficult problem. I venture to advike as follows : Johnson's Preface, A. C. Bradley, Granville Barker, Shakespeare's Roman Plays (141acCallum), Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (Lawrence) ; and certain' pamphlets : The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text (Pollard), Shakespeafe's English (Gordon); Leading Imagery (Spurgeon), A Plea for the Liberty of Interpreting (Abercrombie). There are others, of course, to be explored (Dryden, Hazlitt, Coleridge), but this is a beginning. At a much later stage Mr. Ralli's labours will open diver.ie roads.
This is an article about a book about books about a book. It only remains for someone to write a letter about this article about a book about &c., &c., &c., for the unreality of criticism to be gloriously exemplified. The more humdrum alternative would be tore-read King Lear. One serious omission is to be noted—George III, who said of Shakespeare : " Sad stuff Sad stuff ! " Might not Shakespeare make the truly Eliza- bethan retort to all his critics : quoque!" •
GEORGE RYLANDS.
Previous page
