SHAKESPEARE STUDY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5679, 29 August 1905, Page 2

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 1809, published. a little book entitled ."A Shakespearian Grammar: An attempt to illustrate some of the differences between Elizabethan and modem English: for the use of sohools.” 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 poiet.’ 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 interprei tations 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 tip 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, these 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 dictionaiy. 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 jh the same street; and'in yet another division the very same 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 soopo 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 SaHra}‘dt, you sec, 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 owii 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 some of his Headers the least attract five of his .many aspects. But if there is present this evening one earnest student of that mother-tongue, which we all of us—and especially the ladiesshare with Shakespeare, I hate 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 be found in the frequency-with which your pita 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 as it may sound, in the frequency with which you ..Will -find yourself unableto' agree unrcaervedly with either of them. Bo now far the warning You must neyqr'yield to the temptation of fancying that there is any value or merit in any conclusion that j'ou-may have "drawn—after you'have drawn.it, The yalue of,.it, to;yqu- 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 tile woollen mill" at Petohe -differs, from a secondhand clothes-shop. "'O, ho, monster,' we know what bs- ' longs 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 w'ith the vocabulary of ah author he has succeeded in mastering that author’s language. But vocabulary is only one of the many elements of language, find 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 hke the fashions of garments, but. a grammatical change “ cometh not with observation ’’; ft is what the astronomer and the geologist call secular.. Changes of vocabulary, are rapid enough to bo perceptible within the lifetime of one man; but changes of idiom are too slow to be noticeable, except by very careful comparison at intervals that may most conveniently be reckoned in centuries; Tho growth afld decay , of words is comparable to the. birth, life, and death of the individual. 1 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, tho changes in vocabulary conspicuous and easily discemedj but tho changes in idiom, though certainly as real, and possibly as numerous, are decidedly less obvious and, notiodablo. 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 be accomplished by aliy 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 oiher, and they must be compared with the modern forms of speech in order to formulate the 'differences, arid eventually, if possible, to account for them. Of course we all know, when we pause tc 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 bad 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 tlie earlier Tudor English, who can attack Shakespeare problems in front and rear at the same time. Things that in a modern book would be called solecisms may turn out in Shakespeare to he merely survivals, more or less belated, of forms that were currept 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, gs judged from thq standpoint of Queen Victoria, fir eyeu 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 arid placed side by side, the supposed irregularity turns out to bo a current usage of the language. .of the time, and the. obscurity vanishes in the oonwmtrated light of this mutual illumination. • There are now five. plays that have been read by this club and studied in various ways by its members. Arid 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 writitig Original notes bn it instead of merely admiring somebody elso’s. That ia the way a Civil Service coach had to work before school editions ' of English classics were invented. The herculean pioneering of Abbott and Scjimidt has made this now not merely possible, but almost easy for all that come after. ‘

I now propose to conclude by giving ope example of the way in which these two dootorg ban disagree, I refer to the question of the position of the accent on compound words of two syllables derjyod 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 ho supposes to be controlled by some , tonsiderations, of syntax. Schmidt has compared possibly more passages that Abbott, for he 1 has compared all there are, while Abbott . does not profess to bare dealt exhaustively with more than thirteen of the plays. And Schmidt .comes to the conclusion that the accentuation depends on considerations; net 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 tho accentuation of English words of Latin origin, and so he approached his inquiry with biassed mind. He,seems to been looking for evidence to support an opinion already formed, 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 flay 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, dr 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.