SHAKESPEARE CLUB.

Otago Witness, Issue 1957, 27 August 1891, Page 32

SHAKESPEARE CLUB.

The Dunedin Shakespeare Club gave one of their public readings on Friday night in the Choral Hall in the presence of a large and critical audience. The main items in the programme for the evening were the reading of selections from " King Richard II " and from " Much Ado About Nothing." The portions of the former play that were selected for reading were taken from the fourth scene of Act I, the first and second scenes of Act 11, the second and third scenes of Act 111, and the first scene of Act IV. always sings well. A feature of the club's periodical public appearances, whfch never fails to be appreciated, is the address that is expected from the president of the club (Mr A. Wilson, M.A.). Upon the present occasion Mr Wilson took the

LIMITATIONS OF SHAKESPBAEE'S GENIUS as the subject; of his remarks, and spoke in the following terms :— It is customary to speak and to write about Shakespeare as if his genius were universal and subject to no limitations. Yet, I think, there is at least one direction in which Shakespeare's genius comes short of what we find in men who are pigmies by comparison with him. For the construction of plot Shakespeare had little genius, or if he had he did not indulge it. That nioety and ingenuity in dovetailing the parts of a story, so that their exquisite fit shall give us the kind of gratification we derive from the correlation of parts in an intricate problem: that cunning skill in stimulating the cariosity so that we advance with eager interest from point to point in the development of the drama ; and that art of perplexing the intelligence with a maze of conflicting probabilities and motives — to surprise and delight us at last by a simple and strikingly ingenious unravelment; — this power either Shakespeare had not, or, having it, disdained to use it. No plot that Shakespeare ever contrived will bear comparison with the best work of Qaboriau 'lor Wilkie Collins. Indeed, he was at no trouble to contrive plots, bub took a good thing whenever he found it — appropriated it, " conveyed " it. As regards plots Shakespeare w?s the most magnificent thief that ever stole. The age, the language, or the author was matter of little consequence to him— provided only he found to his band workable stuff. Nor was be — Hike meaner thieves — at pains to ch«nge the appropriated wares beyond risk of identification. The plots he honoured with his notice were often poor aud bald enough, and you know what magnificent compositions they were when he had passe 1 them through his hands; but yet, as plots, they were not changed much for the better, and remaiucd quit ) recognisable. It was his divine faculty of characterisation that

transformed the unlikely stuff into a living, breathing, palpitating human group— the members bound each to each by the most various social instincts and interests. What after all is the plot of Hamlet ? Can it be said that there is any cunningly-compacted scheme leading up to the grand shambles scene in the last act? And can it be thought an ingenious way of unknotting the general tangle, to sweep off into everlasting darkness the whole of the chief persons of the drama? Of course a large number of Shakespeare's plays deal with episodes of history ; and here he allows himself to swim with the historic stream, quite satisfied with the incidents supplied to him by Holinshed or Plutarch, but imparting to the characters a life in comparison with which even the vividness of Plutarch is dim. No play, perhaps, better illustrates Shakespeare's independence of plot and reliance on characterisation than "Much Ado About Nothing." Coleridge has pointed out how independent of the story is the interest of the play. The plot, clumsy and almost puerile as it is, is taken in its essential particulars either from Ariosto or from Bandello, possibly from both. A young man falls in love with a gentle and amiable girl, proposes for her hand and is plighted to marry her. A villain, however, contrives to make him believe that the lady is playing him false. The brutal young man instead of taxing the lady with her faithlessness when he imagines he detects it, bides his time, and when she comes before the altar to be married, he denounces and shames her before the assembled company. The lady swoons and is taken away for dead. Meanwhile the villain's scheme is discovered, and the young bridegroom finds that he has made much ado about nothing. He knows that he has slandered, and believes that he has killed, an innocent lady ; whereupon, as a sort of atonement, he consents to wed her father's niece, who, of course, turns out to be the lady herself. Such is the plot — poor at the best, and none of Shakespeare's. Wherein then lies the interest? For "Much Ado " has always been a favourite amongst Shakespeare's comedies. It may be said that the interest lies not at all in the plot, which hardly equals the poorest story in the " Arabian Nights," but in the characters of three of the dramatis persons* added by Shakespeare to the list of somewhat wooden and conventional persons in the original story. Take away Beatrice, Benedick, and Dogberry, and, except that in individual lines and passages there is that beauty of golden music which we recognise at once as Shakespeare's, there is little farther to interest us. Beatrice and Benedick enter in the first scene and each at once strikes the note of character. Everything else henceforth is of subsidiary interest, and the play moves forward in proportion as the love affair of the two proceeds. They are not a heroic pair, they are not lovable, they are of little importance to the main story — but they are exactly the people whom, if we met them, in the world, we should j find supremely interesting. In respect to its variety, human character is like landscape oharacter. It is not the flat or smoothly rounded country-side that interests us most, however it is spread with cornfields and pasture land. We may have our homes there ; we may love its peace, and its sweetness, and its comfort;. but it is in the rugged mountain ground where nature is sternest and least lovable that we find the greatest interest. So with human character. No doubt it is 'he smoothly rounded, soft, and unresisting., people of the world who are the best beloved— the amiable namby-pamby Heros and Amelias. But it is the more complex people, those who require knowing and of whom we are half or wholly afraid, that are the most interesting — the people who present some variety of character — who have a certain tartness mixed with their sweet, and whose strength is duly chequered with their foibles. Such people, at least, are Benedick and Beatrice; and how interesting they are, with those sharp, ungracious corners to their characters A large part of the charm of the play lies no doubt in the clash of wit with wit: a larger share, I venture to think in the ourions inconsistencies and weaknesses of characters naturally strong. Who feels any interest in the folly of the fool or the weakness of the weak ? But the foibles of the strong and the folly of the witty and the wise— l am afraid even the wickedness of the goodhave a salt of piquancy which has a savour for most people. It is not agreeable to find other people offensively stronger, wiser, more virtuous than ourselves; and when they vaunt their strength, their wisdom, or their virtue, we are not sorry to discover a flaw in their harness. One philosopher, indeed, goes the length of assigning this discovery of inferiority in others and consequent superiority in ourselves as the basis of all laughter. It is at any rate the basis of much of the laughter in " Much Ado." Benedick and Beatrice are both found tripping jwafc where they had vaunted themselves strong. They had both somewhat aggressively and offensively pronounced their superiority to what they considered the weaknesses of their fellows, and had unmercifully made others the butt of their trenchant wit. That they should in turn become the subject of laughter for others is the delightful part of the comedy. Benedick is at bottom a good, kind-hearted, honourable fellow, but yet with a considerable admixture of the coxcomb and some little of the fool. He exposes a weak side to the enemy, who set a springe to catch the strutting woodcock. The trick played upon him is exceedingly amusing, because it is not ill-natured; we feel that it is just the trap he is most likely to walk into. A replica of the same practical joke is played off on Beatrice, but I must confess that I have never been able to believe that Beatrice was the woman to be gulled in this simple fashion. Observe that Beatrice was not a vain woman, except perhaps in respect of her wit ; nor indeed does Shakespeare represent her as caught by her vanity, like Benedick ; and her sudden conversion is reasonable and probable only on the hypothesis that it was no conversion, but that Beatrice was really kindly disposed to Benedick from the first, and that she easily believed what she wished to believe. Only on this supposition, it seems to me, is the character thoroughly consistent. On no other are her early jibes at Benedick either likely or tolerable. It is the only supposition, indeed, that saves her from being a detestable shrew. Works that interest rather by characterisation than by plot, you will find, are marked by this feature — that they are almost as enjoyable when taken piecemeal as they are when taken as a whole. I am sorry to say that I have read — so far as I know— almost everything that Dickens ever wrote — sorry, of coarse, in the way that the boy is sorry when he has eaten his cake. But there is this happy feature about the work of Dickens that you can open one of his best books anywhere, and reread a chapter, or even part of a chapter, with almost as much relish as when you read it first; indeed, in one way, with more relish, for not being hurried on with the interest of the story, you can loiter, and taste deliberately and conscionsly the full flavour of the humour or characterisation, or whatever it is, that pleases you ; in fact, unlike the boy, yon can both eat your cake and have it. On the other hand take any of your mere sensational stories of the Haggard and other schools, could you read such things twice? Not to save yourself from the galleys. But presently you will listen as if you had never

'istened before, to the witty sparring of Beatrice and Benedick ; because true wit and the complexity of human character never become Btale when they are presented with the unerring and spontaneous power of superlative genius.—* (Applause.)