SHAKESPEARE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19762, 8 October 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHAKESPEARE.

BY KOTAHE.

FINDING THE MAN.

Although we may take it as a maxim uf interpretation that Shakespeare so com pletely identifies himself with his character* that in no case are we justified in assuming a personal expression of opinion on his part, yet one is sorely tempted, on occasion, to hazard the suggestion that sometimes he reveals, perhaps unwit tingly, the depths of his own heart and his own reaction to the hard buffeting of life's bitter experiences. Dowden was perhaps the most successful of Shakespearean critics 'n finding in the chronology of the plays the record of his advance from the easy optimism of a young man to whom love and youth are oniy things that matter, the things for which the world was made, to a deepei sense of human values and a more reasoned faith in man; then come the shadowed years when truth and goodness are on the scaffold and treason and wrong ascend the throne. Something has come botween him and the sun He still has his faith in th# ultimate supremacy of goodness; but he sees that it fares very badly in a world constituted as this world is He wins through at last. His latest plays have no bitterness. "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest," his last plays, are bathed in the serene light of evening Nothing matters now but the love that expresses itself in forgiveness and recon ciliation. He has fought despair, and though it nearly vanquished him he has reached the heights at last. With the calm tolerance of the victor he looks down on the human comedy, looks back on the grim arena where he fought with wild beasts, and now he sees that life is good if men will only be kind. Dowden. Certainly, Dowden seems, on broad lines, to have made out a good case. Tak ing the plays as a whole, there is that change of attitude, and. it is absurd to imagine that Shakespeare's attitude to life would not alter as his experience widened and deepened. Probably t there is some such soul-history as the critic has imagined behind the plays. A T et even here we are far from being on sure ground. Did Shakespeare turn to tragedy after the magnificent triumphs of the great comedies in response to a change within himself, or did he begin writing tragedies because the public was tired of comedy and . ..was demanding blood and horror once again ? Shakespeare was a practical man He made his living out of the stage, and he was the last man to try to force on the public what the public very obviously did not want. We do not know what he thought of the literary value of his work. Apparently he thought so little of that aspect of things that he made no effort to preserve the plays for posterity after they had served their turn on the stage. What plays were published during his lifetime were either unauthorised editions issued by pirates, or were printed as -a protest against the liberty the pirates had taken with his work. The First I< olio of 1623 was the outcome of a friend's devotion, and when it appeared Shakespeare had been sleeping for seven years in Stratford Church, "near ther northern wall of the chancel." I suppose most students of Shakespeare have passages in which, to their mind, the great dramatist for a moment slips off the mask, forgets the stage setting, and speaks out of the fulness of his own heart and experience. To me there are two special occasions when the authentic voice comes through The first is Prospero's reiterated and apparently quite uncalled for admonition to Ferdinand and Miranda to avoid a mistake we know Shakespeare made at the outset of his career. Here we have him at the end of his literary life remembering with bitterness and shame the sin of his early vouth. That long expiated folly is still", after all the years, a bitter ingredient in every cup. Only a sensitive soul, unhardened h v all the bludgeonings of fate, would still have «.vo»n the sackcloth for an indiscretion mercifully hidden in the mists of the past. The Authentic Voice. The other authentic note is Polonius' speech in "Hamlet." Polonius is s,ijing good-bye to his son Laertes, who is sailing for the delights of Paris. He gives him final words of counsel and warning. Polonius is the old statesman who, for the service he tendered Denmark in his prime, still holds a privileged position in the court. He is almost wholly a ridiculous figure. Shakespeare does not spare him. Usually he loves his fools, but he does not love Polonius. The old man does not realise that the mind which once con trolled the destinies of nations has lost its grip. Denied the wider fields of diplomacy, he exercises what are of his talents, with the subtlety and indirection he has learned in international affairs, in hunting and purveying the court tittle-tattle arid in trying to run the love affair of his daughter , . But this foolish old man jumps right out of the picture when he delivers one of the finest and sanest speeches in the play Practically every phrase in this marvellous deliverance has become part of the common proverbial wisdom of the English race Be thou familiar but by 110 mentis vulgar; The friends thou bast, and their adoption Grapple 'them to thy heart with hoops of steel ... Beware Of entrance lo a quarrel, but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of ibee. Give evary man thy ear but few tfty voice Costly thy habit aa thy purse can buy. Rut not expressed in fiinry: rich not gaudy; For the apparel nft proclaims y innn . . This nbovei all to thine own pelf be tree, \nd it ninet follow as the nitfht the d:iy. Thou eanst not then be false to any man It has been maintained that this speech is wholly in character. The old man can not now grapple with a complex situation, but he is full of wise saws and modern in stances. The wisdom of the very old assumes this distinctive gnomic form. It easily, and on the slightest provocation, flows over into pithy phrase and apt apothegm. Here Shakespeare ingeniously gives Polonius a chance to display the sagacity that made him in his prime the directo* of tlie destinies of a great people Shakespeare feels that he has not been fair to the old man throughout the plav. and on the earliest possible occasion assigns to him one of the finest speeches he ever composed. Laertes and Hamnet. Others have denied the quality of this speech of his. It is full of the ordinary commonplace wisdom any intelligent man of the world would naturally accumulate if he went through life with his eyes open. There is no high moral principle shown -here, only the prudential morality of the man to whom expediency ts the final arbiter in all problems of conduct. Tt may be so But. I frankly confess I can tint see it this way. Polonius to me rises here to a dignity and powei inexplicable in terms of his character as Shakespeare carefully outlines it in the rest of the nl.iv. Shakespeare bad tost his only son. Hamnet, some six years before he turned his attention to " Hamlet." We udge this was the great sorrow of his 'ife Bv the time Shakespeare was writ ing '"Hamlet," the boy, if be had lived, would have been a young man, facing the world just as Laertes was facing it in the nlay. Shakespeare is writing a scene in which a father is giving to a son going out nto the world his parting benediction ind counsel. In a flash the foolish old r ace of Polonius fades out of the picture Tn place of Laertes stands his own Hamnet. and out of the years of struggle and failure and sin and triumph lie gathers up the wisdom he would have lovingly handed on to his own boy. Just a fancy perhaps; but it makes this passage of "Hamlet" one of the tenderest and most revealing Shakespeare ever wrote.