Shakespeare on Art and Artists

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22883, 2 December 1939, Page 16

Shakespeare on Art and Artists

TO THE EDITOR O? THE PRESS. Sir, —“Of making many books there is no end,” and, as Leacock has noticed, there is no end to the making of many theories about Shakespeare. Professor Sinclaire’s array of evidence upon the subject of Shakespeare’s attitude to poets is illuminating. • He always reminds me of Carlyle in his temperament and attitudes, and when he speaks of poets and poetry I remember Carlyle’s vehement contention that “There is nothing in the whole gamut of the human emotions that cannot be adequately expressed in prose.” Now Professor Sinclaire would have us think that Shakespeare despised most poets and disbelieved in the poet’s vocation as a seer. The postulation is provocative. It is easy to believe that the realist revealed by Shakespeare’s characterisations would despise the professional poetasters and euphuists of his day. Was the author of the tragedies and sonnets so deeply preoccupied with his life’s conflicts that he thought little of the artistic expression of his experience in poem and play? Or was he so sure of his own poetic fame that he could afford to be careless of it? The truth lies, probably, in a combination of these factors; but he certainly evaded the questions and attentions of the literary gossips and biographers of hig own day, and, on the whole, one is glad of it. Professor Sinclaire has proved conclusively that in most of Shakespeare’s references to poets and poetry he was deliberately uncomplimentary, if not insulting, finding them sentimentalists, fictionists, sycophants, and general humbugs, and their utterances nonsense and lies. But when he quotes The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact, to show that imagination was synonymous with “hallucination,” I do not think that we should accept this as Shakespeare’s serious opinion and last word upon the subject. In gatherings of clergymen, is not the joke always against clergymen, among teachers against teachers, among bachelors against the bachelor? Among poets, especially in the days of clever-young-mannish exuberance, would not the joke be against poets, a roguery for the benefit of his friends, just as Shaw exaggerated the character of Higgins to amuse his friend the philologist? Such might well be the explanation of this and similar passages. Here the poet begins with his favourite sport of word-play arid exaggeration. Lovers are likened to madmen with Shaping fantasies that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. Having contrasted the uses of imagination and reason, he shows how fear moves the madman “to see more devils than vast hell can hold,” while the lover’s wishful thinking “sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.” Coming now to the poet, he seems to grow more serious in his mood: The poet’s eye, In a fine frenzy rolling. Doth glance from heaven to earth, and earth to heaven. And as imagination bodies forth The form of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. The poet’s, emotion is credited as noble, “a fine frenzy,” his motive

p * a disinterested desire for and definition. What is later caljM “strong imagination” might be translated “hallucination,” but “hallucination” seems too strong a word for the process described in the passage Has it not beep proved from the interpretation of dreams that the images which take shape under strong emotion must be those which give an imaginary reason for j it* ’ With artist, as with dreamer, the crystallisations and peculiar shapes will depend upon the mental, mate- - rial, and spiritual quality of : th&~ subject. In art as elsewhere. cannot gather figs of thistles. “Show": me the man. that is not passion’s slave,” cried Hamlet. Many pools are called, by virtue of their great - gifts; few, because of their lack of self-control, are chosen to be spiritual leaders. Hence Shakespeare’* ■ disillusioned view of poeu-. ■- He himself was not born upon thei heights, and does not belong amorg the poets who were also saints and seers. Being of like =s®.-. sions with the majority : of tempted mortals, he had to achieve wisdom through experience und from the under side. The tragedies,“Macbeth,” “Lear,” “Hamlet,’.’ and the others, record the revelation of good through experience of .the ■ punishments of evil, “There‘-is a destiny that shapes our ends.” Ig there not spiritual discovery in this? If there is, can we accuse its author ■ of the lack of spiritual imagination* ' Could it not be contended that Shakespeare’s real valuation of-the - poet temperament is found In the. Character of Hamlet? Would‘/not the - most poet-like of a poet’s creations express his own mind moat nearly? In Hamlet’s attempt to reconcile conscience and expediency do we not see the poet’s problem in every age and clime? In a harsh ■ environment little less than saint- ■ hood can save him from tragedy. How would Tennyson, Wordsworth, Keats, or Shakespeare himself have fared in Hamlet’s place? Shakespeare’s judgment of Hamlet coines from Horatio’s lips: “Now crackt> noble heart.” Noble indeed, in sw*. ing beyond the moral conventions of his time, yet lacking the courage' to obey his own instinct for nonviolence. As Rupert Brooke difiedv- - ered in a later day, it is not enough' to write poetrv; the true poet thust “live poetry,” first and finally prove himself as an individual. ‘ ‘ . Shakespeare, it is clear, • valued the individual above the poet,:,put. life before art. I think he would have rejoiced to see John Masefield upon Gallipoli, Bridges walking-his hospital, and Walter de la ■ Mere going daily to his office. —Yours, etc, ' N. F. H. MACLEOD. November 22, 1939. .