WHY READ SHAKESPEARE?

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 31, 6 August 1923, Page 11

WHY READ SHAKESPEARE?

Shakespeare bored Darwin dreadfully in his later years, and the great naturalist waa man enough to' con-, fess.it,: writes Mr, H- G, Wells in.

"John o' London's Weekly." .For quite other reasons Shakespeare may bpre or displease you. There is no need to be ashamed of it. Personally I cannot have too much of Falstaff and Juliet's nurse and the players in. the "Midsummer Night's ' Dream," but many girls and women, find these characters coarse and. unpleasing. On the other hand, I find Juliet's love-making about as delightful as the squeak of a passionate slate pencil. It is known that all the plays ascribed to Shakesieare are not by him, and all those entijusiastio roetv of letters who talk in snob, a ravished way about his inimitable quality differ interminably about what he did or did not write. There is ;|n enormous literature about the play of "Hamlet" u,nd what it js about. A play that, puzzles people like that is fiot a, supreme work of art at all; it is a failure qr an inexcusable rjddle. People cannot even mak«j up t|ieir minds wher ther Hamlet is mad or shamming madness, and the whole play has the efr teet r.t being written by a man tired iv or unsympathetic with the gory plot he, has uhoseu. only j s he tired of his plot, but he is tired and irritated by iiis world. ■ He breaks sW, a.5 or.c is apt to do under eunh circuivBt.o.nces, into digressions and artificini and secondary issuw. Tt is thgse in cidental qutbr?aks that give the pjay o! rfqiulet" its value—foi- those who apjHBCKUE its incidental outbreaks. They is a vigorous attack on eonteniporarv qctors, and Poloniqs is pretty plainly 9 ranc^tiire of .Sir Francis Bacon bhaKesneare did a conskiora.ble a^iiount pf jeenn B in In? plays, and manifestly had an unloving eye for many of Ins contemporaries; one may doubt, jf the other iUiaabothans were us delightful to live '.vjtl. as many people assume. But yqutli and maiden are exhorted to read this play of "Hamlet" aa though it was the erowniny utterance of a divinity, vj R really ve ,.y [liotre'ssiiig to think of the endloss aspiring Belf-edu-iictors who must liuvo beun bogged and lost in utter despiiir by the. forcing oE unsuitablu anil iin-:o:ig(,'fiiivl master, pieces on their unprepared minds.