POETRY AND ETHICS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20322, 2 February 1928, Page 13

POETRY AND ETHICS.

Requests by examiners to translate poetic ideas into prose generally result - ! in revealing a gulf between such ideas and schoolboy ethics (says the Age). Such-, a request regarding tfye lines uttered by Macbeth— I dare do all that may become a man, ; Who dares do more is none—produced the following interpretation;-’ “ I flatter myself I am as good and' chivalrous and brave and chivalrous as any upright gentleman need be. I consider that that is quite enough. If one tries to go beyond that, he is a prig, and" is striving only for personal advancement^ - He is batting for his average, not hid side.” . f. Another interpretation of the lines was:' “ I can do everything that a ifian cad do without losing his good decency. AndT he who dares to pass that limit is a rotter.” But on the whole a perusal of schooL boys’ howlers suggests that the examineeis often to blame as well as the pupil*; and that there is some justification fop the protest of the examiner’s victim who wrote .at the end of his examination;; paper: “ I apologise to the examiner for' the bad way in which I have answered, the paper—but at the same, time I would like to say I am but an ordinary schoolboy, and not a budding .author or poet as presumably he imagined when setting this, paper.”