SHAKESPEARE STUDY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 64

SHAKESPEARE STUDY

THE COMPARATIVE METHOD.

(Paper read . by Mr B. Stocker before the Wellington Shakespeare Club.) A most impressive lesson in philosophic method is afforded by the work of two modem Shakespearian scholars, Dr Evelyn Abbott and Dr Alexander Schmidt. Dr Abbott, in 1869, published a little book entitled “A Shakespearian Grammar: An attempt to illustrate some of the differences between Elizabethan and modern English: for the use of schools.” Dr Schmidt followed in 1874 with a much larger book, in two big volumes, entitled “Shakespearian Lexicon : A complete dictionary of all. the English words, phrases, and constructions in the works of the poet.” The similarity of their aims and methods might be inferred from the following passage in Dr Schmidt’s preface to the first volume of the first edition of his Lexicon: — “[Foreign and dialectic words and phrases used by Shakespeare will he collected in an appendix to the second volume, for which are also reserved some grammatical remarks designed to prove the justness of several interpretations which would else, perhaps, appear arbitrary and hazardous. They are fewer in number than was at first •anticipated, for the excellent ‘Shakespearian Grammar’ of Mr Abbot, published in the meantime, together with (Sidney Walker’s ‘Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare,’ reduced the task to that of a gleaner following in the footsteps of reapers, and picking up a few neglected ears.” The method which both workers have in common is briefly this:—To out up the whole of Shakespeare into thin slices and to sort these into classes according to such characteristics as any of them may have in common. While Dr Schmidt has sorted in this manner all the passages that resemble each other in containing the same word, Dr Abbott has sorted those that resemble ) each other in illustrating the same peculiarity of grammatical usage. Similar diversities of arrangement are familiarly exemplified in a postal directory, which consists of a collection of several different lists of the same people grouped in different ways. In one section they are sorted dictionary fashion, all those being grouped together that have the same name; while in another section are arranged all that live in the same town or in the same street; and in yet another division the very saane people are sorted into a fresh series of groups, according to their occupations. The labours of Abbott and Schmidt have done more, perhaps, than those of any other scholars to facilitate and to popularise the study of the language, the English, of Shakespeare; for they have collected and classified and arranged vast stores of materials that now enable any serious student of Shakespeare to make his own comparisons for himself, and to draw his ‘ own conclusions. Neither Abbott nor Schmidt desires in the least to insist on his own views on any debatable question: the views of great men like these are always provisional, never final. Abbott’s aim, as gathered from his prefaces, is to make his Grammar as complete as possible, by leaving nothing out that ought to go in: he regards it always as a work of reference. Schmidt’s conception of the purpose and scope of his Lexicon is worth quoting in his own words. . And they are literally his own words, not a translation; for though he was a German himself, and his Lexicon “made in Germany,” it is all written in English, and good English too. He says:— “In such a kind of book as this lexicon it is not so much in the opinions of the author that its usefulness consists as in the accuracy with which the necessary materials are brought together to enable those who consult it to form an opinion of their own.” Dr Schmidt, you see, was a good man, without false pride or false modesty. It takes a good man to know both Ids own strength and his own •weakness: to recognise his own limitations, and the limitations of the medium or material in which he works. Now, the philology of Shakespeare—his syntax, his prosody, his English—is to same of his readers the least attractive of his many aspects. But if there is present this evening one earnest stu-

dent of that mother-tongue, which we all of us —and especially the ladies- —• share with Shakespeare, I have a word of encouragement for her—the probabilities are in favour of its being a her —'and also a word of warning. The encouragement is to he found in the frequency with which your own independent original comparison of the passages collected for you by these laborious benefactors will lead you to form the same opinions as theirs; and also, paradoxical a.s it may sound, in the frequency with which you will find yourself unable to agree unreservedly with either of them. So now for the warning You must never yield to the temptation of fancying that there is any value or merit in any conclusion .that you may have drawn—after you have drawn it. The value of it to- you is in having worked it out for yourself from the raw materials by the comparative method, instead of adopting it readymade. The two methods of study differ in much the same way as the woollen mill at Petone differs from a secondhand clothes-shop. O, ho, monster, we know what belongs to a frippery!’ ; In reading the literature of by-gone periods there is always a danger that the student may be betrayed into the fallacious belief that when /he has made himself fairly familiar with, the vocabulary of an author he lias succeeded in mastering that author’s language. But vocabulary is only one of the many elements of language, and it is the one that presents the -fewest difficulties. Changes in the vocabulary of a language and changes in its grammar proceed at very different rates of speed. Words come and go like the fashions of garments, but a grammatical change “ cometih not with observation ” ; it is what the astronomer and the geologist call secular. Changes of vocabulary are rapid enough to be perceptible within the lifetime of one man; hut changes of idiom are too slow to be noticeable, except by very careful comparison at intervals that may most conveniently be reckoned in centuries. The growth and decay of words is comparable to the birth, life, and death of the individual. The growth and decay of idioms is more like the development. and extinction of species. Thus it happens that while English has altered much during the last three centuries both in vocabulary and in grammar, the changes in vocabulary s,ve conspicuous and easily discerned, but the changes iu idiom, though certainly as real, and possibly as numerous, are decidedly less obvious and noticeable. To have mastered Shakespeare’s vocabulary is, no doubt, a desirable preliminary to the study of Elizabethan English; and the task is one that can readily he accomplished by any young student; for it is chiefly an exercise of the memory, which in young people of studious tastes and habits is usually good. But the study of Elizabethan grammar and idiom is a work of an entirely different character, calling for the exercise of those higher powers of the intellect which ripen as memory weakens. The method of such study must be comparative in two ways: unfamiliar forms of speech must be compared with one another to discover in what respects they resemble each oftier, and they must be compared with tire modern forms of speech in order to formulate the differences, and eventually, if possible, to account for them. Of course we all know, when we pause to think about it, that there must have been English, of sorts, even before Shakespeare’s day. And the people that have made a study of such English inform us that the age of Elizabeth was one of particularly rapid change and development. Malony and Caxton had been dead about a hundred years when Shakespeare was beginning to write; and it is questionable whether the language had not altered more in the one century that preceded Shakespeare than it has in the four that have followed him. Some of Shakespeare’s language that puzzles the mere Victorian may present no difficulty to a student familiar with the earlier Tudor English, who can attack Shakespeai'e problems in front and rear at the same time. Things that in a modern hook would be called solecisms may turn out in Shakespeare to be merely survivals, more or Less belated, of forms that were current not long before his day, that were falling out of fashion while he was still writing, and that have since become entirely extinct and forgotten. Many an isolated passage of Shakespeare, on account of apparent irregularity or obscurity, as judged from the standpoint of Queen Victoria, or even of Queen Anne, has been thoughtlessly condemned as corrupt, and Theobalds and Bentleys have vied with one another in suggesting alterations and repairs. But when a number of similar passages from different poems and plays are collected together and placed side by side, the supposed irregularity turns out to he a current usage of The language of the time, and the obscurity vanishes in the concentrated light of this mutual illumination.

There are now five plays that have been «’ead by this club and studied in various i ays by its members. And I should be much rejoiced to learn that one per cent, of the membership has worked solidly through even one play, going honestly to the bottom of every

difficulty of language encountered in it, and writing original notes on it instead of merely admiring somebody else’s. That is the way a Civil Service coach had to work before school editions of English classics were invented. The herculean pioneering of Abbott and Schmidt has made this now not merely possible, but almost easy for all that come after.

I now propose to conclude by giving one example of the way in which these two doctors can disagree. I refer to the question of the position of the accent on compound words of two syllables derived from the Latin.

Abbott has compared a number of pssages in which words of this type occur, and he has speculated, somewhat doubtfully, it is true, about their accentuation, which he supposes to be controlled by some considerations of syntax. Schmidt has compared possibly more .passages that Abbott, for he has compared all there are, while Abbott does not profess to have dealt exhaustively with more than thirteen of the plays. And Schmidt comes to the conclusion that the accentuation depends on considerations, not of syntax, but of prosody. And he does this in spire of having read all that Abbott had to say about it. And the reason why Abbott failed to reach the same conclusion is tolerably obvious. He had unfortunately swallowed some remarks of Ben Jonson’s on the accentuation of English words of Latin origin, and so he approached his inquiry with biassed mind. He seems to Jiavfe been looking for evidence to support an opinion alreadyformed, whereas Schmidt got the evidence first and formed his opinion afterwards. Now, supposing Schmidt to be right—and of that you must judge for yourselves—it does not follow that the accentuation of these words at the present day is subject to the same rules that it obeyed in Shakespeare’s day. The considerations that then determined such questions may be outweighed how by considerations that did not then exist. Now for the moral of all this. Don’t believe in your notes. Don't believe in Abbott, or Schmidt, or Dowden, or any authority, great or small. Don’t take it for granted that anything you have heard this evening is true, but check it and test it, and verify it for yourselves. Believe in nothing but the efficacy of solid, honest work, done with an open mind. This is the real faith that removes mountains. -