SHAKESPEARE’S MIND

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 3

SHAKESPEARE’S MIND

MIDDLETON MURRAY’S INTERPRETATION

Sha j^sr.y e - J Middleton Murry. Jonathan Cape. 448 pp. It is perhaps natural that a reissue of this widely read book should follow m the wake of Middleton Murry’s very successful recent biography oi Jonathan Swift. But appearing now so close together the merits of the one and the defects of the other are more apparent. The life of Swift is scholarly, restrained and painstaking; it is lit up from time to time by special insights into character that are compelling, But the account of ShakesB aa 5 e . one J O1 ?S exercise in imaginainterpretation; the scholarship is tit so apparent, and occasionaiy tuitioii ShlP glves way entirely to in-

™}Yi ba i^ be niind of Shakespeare was hTmJij! 6 Middleton Mtirry decides Pi? “■ lng a cgnsiderable draught on Poetical character i u ed ., la . Keats s letters. Equipped canahilwS 1 - doctrine of "negative capability he goes to his task. Perhave become so to ? his vlew of Shakeswe forget how much it is really a Keatsian doctrine. It has its m S oi S . U 2- d ?P lab L y; - i,: 15 ? convenient forstatuiB briefly the capacious inyar\et? and selflessness of tne dramatist. It is also a convenient defence against the increasingly numerous scholars who are disa2™lmg that Shakespeare had a “philosophy of life ’ in the conventional Negative capability" seems to release a poet from such a mundane encumbrance; lacking that he possesses, apparently something much betterA_ A . nd , . wh at that is, this book in its way tries t 0 demonstrate. * or . no * Shakespeare was °L the iind J of imagination „‘ d ? 1 ? t i^ Murry endows him with must be the reader's decision, for in the end it is a personal decision. But while he is making the decision he will be impressed from time to time ®!l elong shalts of light tha t are thrown on some of the plays. The method employed assists glancing 11luminations, for the discussions do not Th^^ a h beu l g ayatematic or complete. They aim at revealing only what was the central imaginative intuition, or the state of the poet’s imagination, at of Inevitably the method is subjective, and if the rea°er m the end is not convinced that he has seen Shakespeare’s mind, he ton Mur?7s. g °° d pictUre of Middle -