SHAKESPEARE AND SENECA.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 205, 28 August 1909, Page 9

SHAKESPEARE AND SENECA.

THE ROMAN AN 1 !) ELIZABETHAN* DRAMAS. LIEXTTURE BY PROFESSOR DETTMANX. Despite the very inclement weather, there was a large audience in the lecture hall of the Leys Institute last night, when Professor Dcttmann delivered a popular lecture on "Shakespeare's Debt . to Roman Drama." Mr. T. W. Leys (president), in intro- , dueing the lecturer, said that although , three centuries had elapsed since he died, , Shakespeare was still the king amongst . men of the English race in the field of , literature. To-day controversialists were . engaged in a war of words as to the ; source of Shakespeare's inspiration. A • foolish attempt had been made to dis- , credit some of hie plays by reflections , on the defective classical knowledge they , revealed. But it was certain that genius , was not the product of a classical education, which, indeed, was more likely to | mar by conventionalism than to stimu- . late original thought. Objections of the he referred to might be used , against other giants in art, literature, . and music. Let those who marvelled | that Shakespeare should have manifested j so little interest in his productions that he took no steps at all to preserve his . work think of Franz Schubert, whose . effects when he died were sold for the sum of £2 10/. Those effects included ■ a pile of musical compositions, which flowed from the press for ten years after his death, and thrilled the cultured world by the marvellous beauty and skill of their composition. If this was possible in an enlightened city like Vienna less than a century ago, what ( might not have happened to artistic productions three centuries ago, when there was no copyright, and special , measures hnd to be adopted to prevent , pirating. It was therefore much move generous and rational to trace the kinship between Shakespeare's mind and , the minds of the great men of other rlnys than to wrest the laurel from hi 3 , brow, and this was the theme of Professor Dettmann's lecture. (Applause). Professor Dettmann, who was received with applause, claimed that his subject ■ ! was largely new ground, and acknowledged deep obligations to Professor MacOalliUYi, of Sydney. Few people now- ( adays read Terence and Plauuis, even i , ' in translation, which is odd when one j , considers that so much of Roman comedy . is not written for the young person; a scholar with any deep knowledge of the tragedips of Seneca is rare. Yet Seneca is not a negligible quantity; he is a prime factor in the making of. ' Shakespeare. Ben Jonson, who said that ' Shakespeare had "small Latin and less ' Greek," wrote from the point of view of the most erudite classio of his age. > Though Shakespeare was profoundly ; careless of the minutiae of scholarship, I and could never have written the works of Bacon, he could yet read Latin, Greek, t and Italian in the original, and his » Roman plays, though flagrantly incorrect i in detail, are finer than these of Jonson because truer to the broad life of humanity. The function of the Remans ,in the history of literature and of culture is that of mediating and interpreting in art, philosophy, poetry. Their very defects, in particular their lack of imagination, helped to stimulate"one of the" only 7 two" gTeat lifraginative, literatures of supreme 'merit that' the world has seen. The Senecan spirit of irre- ! ligion, the bloodthirsty tone cf Roman 1 tragedy, the rhetorical exaggeration of ' its diction, all appealed to the Elizabethan far more than did the calm, reverent, flawless drama of Greece. The • eleven tragedies of Seneca all preach a r held speculative creed of atheism, of . defiant rebellion against iron destiny, 1 and seek their interest in incredibly sen- [ sa.tional and fanta-stic horrors. All these attributes are akin to Renaissance feel- ■ ing. And, with this, the Greek's humar interest in the external world had , widened with Seneca into something like ; the modern romantic passion for Nature, i with more of life, more subjective ( emotion, more psychological subtlety, showing itself, for example, in sudden transitions of passionate Reeling, and . more subtle development of character. Seneca lays stress on the inner conscious- , ness of guilt and makes great use of , the essentially romantic motif o-f pre- ' sentiment and premonition of evil. The lecturer illustrated these points at some ' length from the great play "Thyestes." Further, the modern world-weariness, the deep-seated vein of melancholy in the 1 practical Roman and Teutonic tempera- ' ment, the longing for death as a release, ' the passionate and almost morbid yearn- ' ing for the calm life of nature—all this is quite alien to Hellenic serenity and sanity, but can be abundantly illustrated ! from Seneca and from the Elizabethan ' dramatist. Even Shakespeare, in his period of "storm and stress," enters fully > into this fevered existence, but he gets ■ beyond it. He works himself baok to . the stern sanity and sad serenity of the ! old Greek drama, but in his plays it is • a far fuller and richer; thing. He real- , ises that sorrow and sin and shame enter i into the heart of life, therefore into [ the heart of truth, therefore into the heart of beauty—a beauty that is truth \ and the whole truth, the truth of life seen steadily and seen whole. This poet . who never preaches, who never moralises, is the greatest of preachers, the sternest of moralists. Yet it is a kindly pitiful sternness, for it preaches not the irony of life, but its essential rightness. Shakespeare's tragedies sound the stern Puritan note, true now as it was in the dave of Aeschylus and of Plato: The wages of sin is death, death in the midst of ; living, the Nightmnre Life-in-Death. But I ringing along with it. often a little i hushed, but never wholly overwhelmed, I and always clenr as a bell at the close, iis the music of Faith, Hope, Charity— j these three, the echo of the purely ! Christian wistfulness that de3ireth not J the death of any sinner. And so, at the I ]a?t Life's mad strivings and strugglings ! nnd strainings, are rounded off with c I perfect peace. A vote of thanke was accorded to the Professor for his lecture. Mr. Farrow during the eveninsr sansf two songs "Blow, Blow. Thou" Winter Wind" and . "Salvia" —both of which were much ' . enjoyed. j