BARDOLATRY TODAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 108, 10 May 1939, Page 18

BARDOLATRY TODAY

BRITISH POSITION

SHAKESPEARE AS INDUSTRY

Of the making of books about Shakespeare there is no end, writes W. A. Darlington in the "Daily Telegraph." The poet's contemporaries did not contribute much to the flood. They were not greatly given to writing about one another; and in any case, they took Shakespeare pretty much for granted -—one of the best writers of the time, but no outstanding genius.

If they had written more, later generations might have written less. Obviously, you can find more to say about a subject when there are no facts to hedge you in. There is a vast library of guesses about Shakespeare, and j doubtless more to come. j Meanwhile, the facts —as represented | by the plays themselves, and the few direct references to Shakespeare—have j been so industriously studied by critics and scholars that they can hardly be expected to yield many more secrets. To write a book about Shakespeare which is both nev/ and true is a feat. It has just been performed, and well performed, by Ivor Brown and George Fearon in their book. 'Amazing Monument." These authors discuss Shakespeare not as artist, or as man, or as fraud, usurper or myth. They discuss him as an industry. Their thorough and extraordinarily amusing book is a history of bardolatry. They trace its growth from the first flickerings of interest in anecdotes and souvenirs of Shakespeare after the Restoration down through a multiplicity of the oddest manifestations to the present day, when it is strong enough to keep a big theatre going to a handsome annual profit in Shakespeare's little native town. TOWN KEPT HUMMING. Also it keeps that town humming with trippers and tourists whose real interest in the arts generally and the poetic drama in particular is in other places not discernible. The subject lends itself to satirical writing, for the bardolator (by which is meant not the man who truly admires Shakespeare, but the man who thinks he ought to try to) is an absurd person. The eighteenth century, which was antipathetic to everything that Shakespeare stood for, made itself especially ridiculous. The authors have had great fun at the expense of the notables who followed Garrick to Stratford in 1769, and revelled there in acute discomfort and Shakespeare's honour, while the rain fell, the river and the prices for accommodation rose, and the rustics gaped and guffawed. Mr. Brown and Mr. Fearon are very down on Garrick; I feel pretty sure that he cared more for Shakespeare (and even perhaps a little less for Garrick) than they make out. But they recognise that he started something big and worth while at his silly jamboree in the mud. It is entirely legitimate, of course, for those whose appreciation of Shakespeare is a real emotion, based on knowledge, to laugh at bardolatry, but not to despise it. Some of its manifestations are pretty fearful—the intellectual snob is always hard to bear —but on the whole it is the honest reflection of an honest feeling. We are. as a nation, proud of Shakespeare, whether we happen as individuals to appreciate him or not. We are told from our earliest youth by those who ought to know that he is one of the greatest writers that ever litfed. We accept _ that verdict and are pleased that our entry for the international literature competition should do us such credit. An inability to understand or like what he wrote no more affects the average man's pride in Shakespeare than my inability to grasp how machinery works affects my pride in George Stephenson. My pride in Stephenson argues a respect in me for engineering; the unliterary man's pride in Shakespeare argues a respect in him for literature. Impelled by that respect, he was ready in the eighteenth century to buy, and treasure as precious relics, snuff boxes which were falsely claimed to be made of the wood of a mulberry tree which in any case could not be proved to have been planted by Shakespeare. Under the same impulse, he is today ready to drive his car many miles across country in order to see a play which he would passionately refuse to visit in his own town; or if he cannot quite bring himself to do that, he will surprisingly often pay a shilling to look round the theatre where the play is to be performed. Let him alone. If the play is well done, he may find he likes it. Indeed, he often does.

In any case, he is paying his respects to literature—and we do. as a nation, need a little more of that. I was told the other day. of an expensively educated young woman who married a country squire and went to live in * remote district. A friend of mine, a novelist, asked her what library she got her books from. "Books?" she said "Oh, well, we've only been married three months. We haven't needed a book yet."