_ Shakesperian. Tempests

The Shakesperlan Tempests. By G. Wilson Knight. (Oxford

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IN the house of criticism there are many rooms, and Mr. Wilson Knight has chosen for his own the one where you_ investigate the words, singly and in association, which a poet uses, both to penetrate the poet's meaning—the one, that is, beyond the merely syntactical—and to make you more alert

to both words and meaning when you go back to the original' and read them. This is a line of criticism more than wort while, and Mr. Knight has already given us two admirable ekamples of it in The Wheel of Fire and The Imperial Theme,' his poet being always Shakespeare.

In this new book he attempts to get still closer to grips with Shakespeare by tracing throughout his works the imagery and association of tempests and storms in Shakespeare, and up to' a point this is extremely useful and stimulating—even exciting. That tempests should indicate passionate emotions, tragic tensions, dreadful happenings ; and that music on the other

hand should be the left-motif of love and -concord, is, of course, not strange. What is extraordinary is the consistency with which Shakespeare used them. What, however, is more im- portant is the gradual growth Mr. Knight has revealed of the

significance of tempests in Shakespeare's plays. In the earlier plays, and in the poems, they are somewhat episodic ; tempests and music intertwine with the other symbols and actualities, and help to make up the body of the work. Let Mr. Knight state his own further thesis :

" In the Histories tempests are powerfully related to the tur- bulences of actual life, but they are for the most part confined to imagery. In the Romances they are, in relation to tho several plots, often actualized ; but those plots themselves are close. twined with realism, and the tempests, actual though they be, remain in the background. In the great Tragedies, however, the tempest becomes often the very heart of the organism."

And later :

" The last group of plays shows again a development. We have seen tempests become wedded to the plot, closely entwined therewith, and expanding their significance symbolically throughout' the drama. . Now the poetic image tends not only to blend with, but actually to become tho plot.'

All that is extremely interesting. The question is whether Mr. Knight does not, on the top of this, force the issue much too far and too minutely, in pursuing the significance of.

Shakespeare's handling as he " penetrates into the meta- physic of disorder."

In his Introduction (in which he by the way slashes some? what too sweepingly at the " disintegrators " ) Mr. Knight inveighs against scholars who attach themselves too firmly to one angle of criticism, and singles out the students of sources. lie says, quite rightly, that the discovery of sources does not a explain " Shakespeare ; but has anybody ever supposed that it doeS ? He goes on to say, with reference to Antony and Cleopatra, that " Shakespeare read and re-read Plutarch, especially because the Plutarchan and Shakesperian imagina-

tions ' have much in common." We must therefore conclude that there was much in common imaginatively between Shakespeare, Daniel, Dryden, and—save the mark—Sir Charles Sedley ; so that much ice does not seem to have been cut there. It is true, of course, that any room in the house of criticism may become a prison ; but the doubt is whether, Mr. Knight has not converted his own room into just such an airless enclosure.

For our faith in the value of his investigation begins to' weaken when we find him bringing every little sprat into his net : a number of sprats make an impressively large haul, but they do not make a whale ; and when Mr. Knight asks us to see profound " tempest " significance in " floods of tears " (to. 'choose one out of many commonplaces), we begin to wonder whether the *hale will not on closer inspection turn out to be a boatload of sprats. If Shakespeare were to have written the sentence I have just concluded, Mr. Knight would com- ment enthusiastically on the characteristic sea imagery (if I had said " bargeload " he would become more excited still), symbolic fishing references, and so on. Take again : we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies Of every wind that blows.' Wherein ` chance ' and ` wind ' are clearly equated."

But—good heavens !--what is there in that ? Every- body knows that "the wind bloweth where it listeth."

Reading only this book, an innocent might suppose that Shakespeare was a dull dog, with a very limited range of ideas, and a constantly recurring succession of the same images to express them in. In fact, Mr. Knight has spoilt a very good theme by hunting it beyond its proper limits. One of the merits of a good critic is to know exactly what any particular instrument will do, and to make it do that and no more. Mr. Knight has ignored the principle.

In his Conclusion he abandons any critical pretensions, and indulges in a long outpouring of emotive passages in a kind of Paterian rhythm—without, however, any of Pater's pre- cision of thought and phrase—but which conveys nothing to

the reader except Mr. Knight's own reactions to storms and to the sea, and to music, at the end of which he declares with glorious irrelevance : " Thus the dynamic and universal drama-

of the Christian Trinity does not, must not, personify the spirit of Negation . . . . " To go on : " Likewise tempests and music, interdependent in their reciprocal action and continual recreation, their blending and withdrawal, the many facets which they present to our contemplation, these are positive ultimates beyond which the mind can scarcely dream a pro- founder possibility." To arrive at this finality we have been . asked to consider Shakespeare's plays, David Copperfield, Yilktte, Wuthering heights, Lycidas, Ode to the West Wind, Spenser, Dryden, Byron, Browning, Bacon, Dante, Burton, Moby Dick, D. IL Lawrence, Mr. T. S. Eliot, Hudson, The Ancient Mariner, " Britannia Rules the Waves," Carlyle, the wreck of the Titanic ' . In short, this time Mr. Knight has disappointed us. BoxAnn- Donatz.