Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1919. HOW SHAKESPEARE WORKED.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIII, Issue 16, 21 January 1919, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1919. HOW SHAKESPEARE WORKED.

;SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH appears to bo all that a Professor of English Literature ought to be. He

trea’.s literature in a human manner. It is not- something ito be analysed, I but to be felt. So much critical dusthas settled upon Shakespeare that it I is refreshing to find a great authority treating Shakespeare himself as* a living person- and seeking to discern just 1 -what Shakespeare was trying to do as I a playwright. This was his job. How ; did he set about it? Thus in his book , “Shakespeare’s Workmanship, the author discusses Shakespeare’s main dif- . Acuity in writing “Macbeth,’' which | was to -make a hero out of a criminal. “Instead of extenuating Macbeth’s j criminality, 'Shakespeare doubles and redoubles it. Deliberately this magnificent artist locks every door on condonation, plunges the guilt- deep as

hell, and then—tucks up his sleeves.” And the author shows us how Shakespeare makes us accept the murder, and yet forces us into terrified sympathy—into- actual fellowVheelihg with, the

murderer. That is the artistic secret of the drama. We see, itoo, how and why the playwright deliberately “flattened down” every other character to throw Tip Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into higher relief. He even flattened back his whole stage; and the Elizabethan stage, as wo -are reminded, was not flat at all; its centre thrust forward intp the audience like an isthmus. . “Along this isthmus a player who hafl some specially fine passage to declaim advanced and began, laying his hand to his heart, ‘All the world’s a stage. . . ,!’ or, ‘The quality of ’ or rais-

mercy is not strained ~. . ing liis 'hand to his. brow) ‘To be or not to be . . / and, having delivered himself, pressed his hand to his heart again, bow*ed ito the discrimin-

ating applause, retired into the frame

of the play. An Elizabethan audience loved these bravuras of conscious rhetoric, and in most of his playg Shakespeare was careful to provide opportunity for them.” But- there are hardly any in “Macbeth.” iSihakiespeare having once vmployqd a stage device -with some degree of success, had never the smallest) scruple about using it again. This fact leads Quiller-Couch to see him “as a magnificently indolent man, not agonising to invent new . plots, taking old ones as clay to hie hands, breathing life into that clay; anon unmaking, re-mould-ing, re-inspiring it. We know for a fact that he worked upon old plays, old chronicles, other men’s romances.” The author allows us to see Shakespeare at work on “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.” Here is a young author commissioned to write a wedding plajfr-pa play to be presented at court. The working of the playwright’s mind is wonderfully imagined. But- Quil-ler-Couch 'obes not suggest that Shakespeare worked it out in just that way I; what wo want to complete our

understanding of Shakespeare is to discover how the thing was done. That is infinitely more useful than discussing “origins” or searching for “sources.”

The pther .professors can do (that for us—and a fat lot of enjoyment do we get out of it! Whan Shakespeare tackled thie difficult job of rehandling an old play about a Jew of Venice, his first task was to distract attention from the monstrosities and absurdities

in the plot. And we are permitted to see how hj« set to work. But iShylock ran away with his creator—as literary charctera have a happy knack of doing. Faletaff was another who took charge of his inventor. The author suggests that, to Shakespeare, Falstaff and the rest wore all types of the old interlude; “The Clown, the Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine; Pierrot, Pierette, . Punch, Judy; Faletaff (■Gluttony.), with a fat paunch; Bardolph (Drunkenhess), with a ‘ red nose; .Mietr.ass Quickly, .the conventional. Hostess—-al! ' tyge*—‘Here ■ we '■. |»* »* Yet how ~ out of a jnere figure in*asi 'interlude? ■ ‘‘‘Lethe 'gf* out of his mjsJ all the eo-,lejp'.-.<&cWumß of . all' ’the ; ccram'entators who, neyer created a play. or a. ndyelor a «cpne or a character, in their lives, and no psora kngw Ijow it hap* ■ <aa t44*r to. ■

real character, once brought . to birth, any more than a mother thenceforth develops or fashions a child.* It has a separate life; It takes charge; the older it' grows the more it takes charge. What are wo to suppose? That Shakespeare took charge of Falstaff, or that Falstaff ran away with Shakespeare?”

And Shakespeare had to kill Falstatf; for in “Henry the Fifth” the playwright’s job was >to present King Harry as England’s darling. Hence he must not bo allowed ito meet. Falstafl'l; for Falstaff was the better man of the two; and “Falstaff could kill the king -with a look.” It was Henry who had wronged Falstaff and killed his heart ; therefore you cannot present Harry of Agincourb as your beau ideal of a warrior king unless you get Falstaff out of his way. So much has been written of “Hamlet” that Quil-ler-Couch has to remind us that, first of- all, it "was an acted play. And this new kind of professor quietly says that nine-tenths of the stuff written . about "Hamlet” is rubbish. Why not .take Shakespeare .before"all his critics? “At all events he- wrote ithe play, and they did not.- He wrote it to be acted on a stage, before an audience.” And not an audience of Goethes and Coleridges, but an audience of ordinary men and women. In Shakespeare’s day, it was a popular play. When everything else fails the box office puts up “Hamlet”—and the box office never makes a mistake.- QuillerCouch points out another thing. Every actor wants to play Hamlet; and he always plays it successfully ! Apparently the part is actor-proof. Shakespeare- knew what he was about; he, wouldn’t have written hji s plays for repertory companies if he had lived in these days. An interesting fact about this masterpiece Ts that i: was an old play built upon, taken down, rebuilt, and again pulled to pieces, before it reached the “Hamlet” of the 1623 Folio, the form in which we are familiar with it. That is the sort of thing that happened with plays in the Elizabehan theatre; it happens with plays to-day., (For thirty years, from one tform to another, and 1 always a popular play, it grew, grew at the back of the theatre; until at some point Shakepeare took the thing in hand. Quil-ler-Couoh’sl discussion of the later plays, especially his appreciation of “The Tempest’ ’ —which, incidentally, is the one work of art that, if he were permitted to choose, he would most like to" have written himself—-is equally stimulating, equally full of common sense and urbanity.