MUSIC, MORALS, AND MOONSHINE

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22823, 23 September 1939, Page 16

MUSIC, MORALS, AND MOONSHINE

“The man that hath no music in himself . . . There is nc need to continue the quotation. We all know what that kind of person is fit for. And there the matter might have been allowed to rest. It was Bishop Warburton who stirred up all the trouble. In his edition of Shakespeare, published somewhere about the middle of the eighteenth century, Warburton sa - fit to underline his author’s sentiment in a note. “The thought here,” said the bishop, “is extremely fine.” Then the storm burst. Six words of prose did what six lines of poetry had failed to do. Sleeping dogs were roused. The bishop had sounded the tocsin of war, and for about half a century editors, commentators, scholars, and arbiters of elegance raged furiously together in the cockpit of footnotes and on tne wider battle-field of dissertations and prefaces, debating the question whether Shakespeare’s thought was really so extremely fine after all.

Another of Shakespeare’s editors. Steevens, opened for the negativei His note was less concise and dog.matic than the bishop’s, and required ' a long paragraph for its leisurely malice. Steevens will have none of ‘‘this capricious sentiment of Shakespeare’s.” The passage in question is neither pregnant with moral truth nor poetically beautiful. It has mdrely had the fortune to be repeated by those whose “inhospitable memories” refuse to entertain worthier matter, by “vacant fiddlers and coxcombs in music.” Warburton might have added that Peachum and his light-fingered “gentlemen” (in “The Bqggars’ Opera”) were accomplished musical amateurs. Not for Gentlemen Steevens, it will be allowed, has scored. But he has not finished yet. He clinches his argument by an appeal to high and well-bred contemporary authority. “Music,” writes Lord Chesterfield in a-letter to his ■ son, “puts a gentleman into a very frivolous and contemptible light, brings him into a deal pf bad company, and takes up a great deal of time which might be better employed.” After that, it might have been thought there was not much more to be said. But a poet was yet to enter the lists. The Rev. Mr Pye, Poet Laureate, came down pretty firmly on both sides of the question. His opinion anticipated that of the more modern* wit who confessed that he would rather hear Offenbach than Bach often. Music, thought Mr Pye, was' a good thing, an excellent good thing, but for \his part he felt one could have too much qf a good thing. ‘T confess that even I, who would almost as soon stand up to my neck in-water as sit . out a concert, should have ho great 'opinion of the man who was dead to the effect of a pathetic song, set to a simple melody.” Admirable;Pye! If we do not nowadays read your poetry, we might do worse than emulate your honesty. . O sisib crimes! And as to the - more positive side of your remark, was it hot the custom of Squire Western, every afternoon when hei was drunk, to have his daughter, play, and sing to him? 'Which proves that the Squire’s heart was in the right place.

' Yet M r Pye’s trumpet gives forth ar» uncertain note. He has moved a soijrt of amendment,on behalf of the man that x hath a little—but not too much—music in himself. But a debate which the negative team had opened with such spirit could not decently be allowed to cjoae with such a weak concession. The last word came fittingly, from one. of the ancient seats of learning. “Music,” said.a. Cambridge don,, “is a very good thing for a man who can’t afford to keep a horse.” The saying is unfortunately anonymous. Perhaps the philp|QPh er whom we owe it was a younger brother of the nobleman in Disraeli’s novel, who declined to join an excursion to the .Holy Land, on the ground that there is positively no sport in that country.

(SPECIAL!.* WBITTBS KOR THE PRESS.) IBy F..SXNCLAIRE]

If one may venture to adjudicate on this debate, it seems to me that the Noes have it, and that the dogmatism of Shakespeare and Warburton is less convincing than their opponents’ appeal to fact. I know that Shakespeare has many supporters among his fellow poets. That irritable and self-assertive race, ready as they are to cry up their own wares, generally display a strange and puzzlingly abject humility in their references to the sister art. Before the musician they stand abashed, like Mark Antony in the presence of Caesar. Perhaps it is only another case of “omne ignotum pro magnifico.” But then, one or two at least of our great poets have been accomplished musicians. Perhaps, then, it is merely that one gentleman knows another, or—to put the same thing more vulgarly—that, dog does not eat dog. But the matter passes my comprehension, and I leave it to the psychologists.

What surprises me, as I review the debate, is that the anti-episcopal party should have failed to play some of their best cards. It was all very well to quote Lord Chesterfield, but why did they not bring forward a professional musician to support him? Music, said his lordship, brings a man into a deal of bad company. But the s.ime opinion had already been expressed more tersely and forcibly by the elder Mozart, when he described the world in which he earned his living as “the hell of music.” Let the Jew Stand Forth Aqd since Peachum of “The Beggar’s Opera” had been cited as a witness, why did no • one think of bringing forward Shylock out of the very play in which the offending lines occur? The Warburtonians might indeed have made something of Shylock’s dislike for drums and fife bands. Whether that dislike places him outside the musical pale, musicians must decide. And anyhow, the argument cuts both ways. The unmusical Shylock may not have been a good man. But he was not half as consummate a villain as the musical lago. My reason for bringing in Shylock is that the lines about music are spoken by his son-in-law, Lorenzo. They are part of the syllabus of lecturettes which that extremely musical young man delivers to his runaway bride as the two walk or sit in Portia’s moonlit garden at Belmont. What he means, of course, is to assert the moral superiority of people—himself, for instance—who are musical, temperamental, and generally arty; Now it is just on that point that I should like to hear the opinion of his father-in-law. The old gentleman would very likely see things in a drier light than moonshine. He had reason to know something'of musical souls. He had paid for that experience to the tune—the expressipn seems apt enough—of two sealed bags of ducats, together with the ring which was a keepsake from his dead wife—which ring his daughter (she was never merry when she heard sweet music) had since exchanged for a pet monkey. Shylock, I say, would not have seen eye to eye with these .bright young folk on the subject of monkeys- and music, nor of treasons, stratagems, and spoils.

And Shakespeare himself—what did he think abbut it all? Was he of Lorenzo’s-party, or of.Shylocks? To the romantic reader the question will seem preposterous. But Shake--1 speare was not so romantic as some of his readers. He was a little nn Shylock’s line himself. He lent money, and took good'care to get at back. In the words of his biographer, “he stood rigorously by all his rights in his business relations.” With such a man, a prospective borrower would not have ingratiated himself by proposing. as security a passionate love of music. Like Hamlet, the poet' would have asked for grounds more relative. To him, business was business.' Some day, perhaps we shall have a learned and unreadable book proving that Shylock is \Shakespeare. (There is an M in Macedon. and there is an M in Monmouth.) I do not myself go so far. But I should be even

sorrier to suppose, with Warburton, that the voice of Lorenzo is the voice of Shakespeare. Such identifications violate the most elementary lessons of interpretation. I 'do not believe, and I should be sorry to believe, that in those lines about music the, poet is unlocking his heart. But if he was, he was slandering by anticipation some of his most devoted servants and admirers —Johnson, to whom music was only a disagreeable variety of noise; Lamb, who never succeeded in mastering the tune of the National Anthem; Tennyson, tone-deaf, who on his death-bed called for a volume of Shakespeare, apd died almost in the act of readying one of tlje songs in “Cymbeline.” Shakespeare-Lorenzo would banish from the company of honest men three at least of the most honoured nar es in our literature. I prefer to believe that Shakespeare wrote sometimes wnth his tongue in his cheek.

What happened, on this hypothesis, would be something like this. When Shakespeare dismissed Shylock in the fourth act, he had done with the only man in the play. No other character was real enough, to interest him as a dramatist. He had still a fifth act to provide out of material for which he cared nothing. Clearly it was a case for writing down to the taste of his audience, for finding out moonshine, for indulging the Marlowe, the Tennyson, and the Barrie he contained within himself, for amusing himself by purveying a few hundred lines of “charm,” made up of scraps of classical mythology, music, and sentimentality. Vith his divine fluency and his easygoing artistic conscience—or, if you like, his good-natured contempt for his audience—the task was easy.

Blowing the Gaff x

So it may have been. So I hope it was. But I confess to doubts. “The Merchant” is a comparatively early play. The man who wrote it had not yet completely emancipated himself from the cant of art. There was a time, it would Seem, when he was fairly- contented to inhabit his circle in the hall of art. But in that world of grease paint and wooden daggers, of squeaking boys and Bohemians and demi-reps, of vanities and jealousies and tavern brawls, he was never quite at his ease. In one of his earliest comedies he had dared to take the whole race of poets, tie them up in a single bundle with lovers and lunatics, and dismiss the lot as victims of illusion. In the same comedy he had laid hands'on one of those pretty classical lovestories which were part of the contemporary poetical stock in trade, and turned it into a piece of buffoonery. The appearance of Shylock is an even more striking signal of approaching emancipation from the world of pretty make-believe into the more bracing air of reality. But Shakespeare has not yet escaped. In “The Merchant” he seems to stand, like the young Keats, between two worlds. There is Shylock; but there are plso the caskets and the rings, the moonlight and music. The time has not yet come to pack up for Stratford, dig in as a man of property, forget the theatre, and leave his own plays to be rescued, seven years after his death, by the chance offices of others.

So Shakespeare gave his audience a fifth act after their heart’s desire. But he did not omit to take his revenge. By a stroke of irony so quiet and. unobtrusive that it escaped not only his first audience but most of his readers to this day, he wrote those lines about music, and embodied them in a dialogue between Lorenzo, red-handed from his bridestealing stratagems and his ducatstealing spoils, and his monkeyfancying bride. Thus did the gentle Shakespeare blow the gaff on the cant of music. The cant of poetry was to receive his attention presently. But that is another chapter.

The International Anti-Commun-ist Entente published two years ago, in French, “Organisation and Activities of the Communist International,” An English version, The Red Network (Duckworth. 91 pp. l/->net), has just been issued with a foreword by Mr J. Baker White. In this study there Is a full and thorough list of the aims and organisation of the Communist Party, its origin, development, and affiliations. However, the more important part of Mr White’s work is to accompany each report with comments or explanations, laying bare the wicked reality behind the - formal, unthreatening mask. Mr White has a good case to present—so good that propaganda will fail, if it fails, only because he is intemperate and invidious in his illustrations and quotations. An interesting section is a list of organisations affiliated to or working in close connexion with the Communist Party, They include, according to Mr White. Unity Theatre, Prospect Tours, Film and Photo League, Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Left Book Club. Many members of these bodies would be surprised to learn how close they are to Communism.

Burbank’s own story is told in his own words in An Architect of Nature (Watts. 139 pp. 1/- net,). This greatest of gardeners was a spiritual man In that he believed in the immortality of influence. “It is the one sure, certain, permanent, eternal thing we can know anything positively about. It is in our own keeping and .possession; it is ours to make what we will.” . Burbank’s own influence was always good, and his ideal kept him undiscouraged. and pure in motives. In two qualities he was superior to nearly all men. First, he was unremittingly patient and thorough and cheerfully laboured for years and made tens of thousands of experiments to evolve one desired plant. Second, as he himself recognised, he was wonderfully gifted with an

instinct for selection. This talent was born in him, but he educated it, gave it experience, and did all he could to cherish his sensitiveness, Pain, poverty, toil he suffered gladly to Indulge his passion; he was modest, but knew the value of his work; he lived to be useful, to develop plants that were hardy and helpful to mankind, not ornamental, freakish forms. Not only is the narrative of this man’s character and spiritual growth of interest in itself, but his single triumphs are romances vividly and clearly told.