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Otago Witness, Issue 2181, 19 December 1895, Page 55

DUNEDIN SHAKESPEARE CLUB.

The Danedin Shakespeare Club gave one of its enjoyable recitals at the Choral Hall ou Wednesday. Mr A- WilsoD, M.A., president of the club, occupied the chair, and there was a good attendance* The Chairman delivered the following address dealing with -the construction of and the characters in the play from which readings were to be given :—: — If yon were to put the plays of Shakespeare to the general vote, I do cob supple that " The Winter's Tale " would come very high up in the poll. - Yet it has a very special interest among the dramas of Sh»ke?peaie, and the club does well not to omit "Winter's Tale" from its series of reading plays. Apart from outside , evidence of date, it bears unmistakable internal j marks of late workmanship. Omitting coneideralkn of the versification, which' is undoubtedly in the late manner, members of the club have, no doubt, from its crabbed, elliptical, »nd obscure Style, "discovered painfully for themselves its approximate date. It is a play full of veibal difficulties, rnxny of them due, no doubt, to errors of redaction, for *• The Winter's Tale" was first printed in the very incorrect folio of 1623, but most of them due to the fact that Shakespeare, by the time he wrote the play, had acquired a shorthand manner of expressing bimeelf, suppressing necessary link« of thought and using words and phrases in a forced, allus'we, and arbitrary way permissible to none other than himself. " The Winter's Tale "is thus one of the most important plays as regards the study of Shakespeare's style. { It is also important as giving us some insight into Shakespeare's views of hie own arfc, in the latest and most mature period of his judgment. If he were a smaller man, one might regard the play almost ks a challenge to the critics, as a defiance of all the literary decencies that have been considered most Aristotelian and most sacred ;- by the Greek and French schools of drama at least, for ' Shakespeare has educated bis own nation into a superiority to rigid , dramatic canons. It is certainly a striking ' thing that in the last act of this play we should see a woman married who is not 'yet born when the curtain first tises ; and it ii making a large demand on our credulity (• uk ni to believe it poisible that a queen

should bo slowed away in concealment for 16

years, all alive and sound, patiently waiting for j 91 chance to be sulJjßbly teifcored to list husb&ud. J Tfeere,have been patient Gristlda 7 , bub few so ' pali'-nb as this. Then if one is at all a stickler for accuracy in time and place, there are inaccuracies enough in "Wiuter's Tale" to shock his genlle beuses. • To make Delphi, an island, to represeut its oracle as in full swing in the time of Qiulio Roaiano and of psalm-singing puritaup, to shear sheep ia August, and so on,, are inaccuracies that offend agaiast the merest schoolboy's stock of knowledge. And' yet Shakespeare so offends. Npw when anyone whose sanity of judgment we have learned to trust neglects certain points of fact, we may be sure it is because he considers them unessential to his main object, and,, knowing him to be a person of sane judgment, we readily allow them to be unessential ; though if one came to us less well accredited than Shakespeare we should nob readily permit him to shear his aheap in August, and, generally speaking, to confound time and apace. , Of course it may be said that "Winter's Tale" is a pl*y by itself — that it is a "Midwinter Night's Dream," — and is no more bound to consider probability and accuracy of fact than a "Midsummer Night's Dream." There is something in this. Yet I believe that we may take this play as in some measure indicating Shakespeare's views regarding the necessity for literal accuracy ia the dramatic setting. Glancing now at the characters of "Winter's Tale," I cannot find any that comes into the first rank of Shakespearean creations. On the subject of Perdifca I am afraid I am a heretic, for it seems to me that only the most fanat ; cal enthusiasm for Shake3peara can find in this creation anything but the moat conventional lines of character. She is a charming picture in the Wabteau style, and every one of the few words she utters is poetry, Jbhis bst feature implying an innate refinement of thought and feeling and a finished grace of manner that could in the circumstances never have been hers. The poetry of flowers in its sublimated essence is in the words that fall from Perdita's lipa. There is no doubt much virtae in heredity, and if a king's daughter were brought up to tend sheep it is believable that blood might tell even amid sordid surroundings, though in that case the royal maid would have to spring from better blood than that of Leontes. Bub Perdiba is no shepherdess. Her words and manners are those of a lovely and imaginative Duchess of Pemhrofcs masquerading as *d Arcadian

shepherdess, in stomacher and fArthingnlo, with garlands of flowers and a ribbon-bedecked crook. Of distinctive character there is little except a natural dignity and a certain suggestion of independence of spirit. She is refinsd, she i* mo&est, and she U ready to run away with Florizel, not kecauso he is heir apparent of Buliemia, bub all for love. Now theee are features of character which you would find probably in- nine out of any teu English girls of good "birth and breeding — with the c-xc option, perhaps, of the running away. They are the. mere ground - work of "all wholesome characters. The exceptional thing, and the particularly Shakespearean thing, a"bout Pefditaiß'that she is a poetess. Compare her words with the base vulgarities of Mopsa and Dorcas and you will best understand wherein lies her charm and her individuality. Her charm is refinement;, and the charm is none the less that it is unexpected. Still, refinement, essential a3 it is, is no such rare thing. It is the kiud of refinement that is rare in Perdita ; it is the refinement of a poetess and therefore the refinement of intellect, not the mere boarding-school article, You feel that if Perdita milked her ewes she would do it as a duchess would, not very well perhaps, but with, si grace, with an air, so that a pint of her milking would count foe a gallon of anybody else's. Now, as far as my judgment serves me, I thiuk Shakespeare intends Perdiba to be of quite secondary importance in fchedrama. She is a mere episode. But as far as she goes she is to be noble, and Shakespeare's invariable way of ennobling his women, when there is no great action or moral test to indicate nobility, is to make them in the first place pure and simple, and then to lend them distinction by indicating exceptional alertness of | intellect— by making them what is nameless in English, but what the French call spirituel. Take Portia, for instance, a much more commanding figure than Ferdita. How large a space she occupies in the imagination of every reider of Shakespeare ! Yet what doss she do that is exceptionally noble ? Nothing. She does nothing that any good woman in Dunedin would not do, with the same interests at stake, and nothing that requires any fortitude except when she submits to the foolish conditions of her father's will. Her ehnrm is essentially the same as Perdita'e. Shakespeare gives her the good wearing qualities to begin with — purity, modesty, acuteness of moral sense, and depth of heart,— qualities which every good woman has, oven if Baa wean

her life out over a washtub. But then ha adds the Shakespearean distinction — the refinement, the spirituality, the alertness of intellect and imagination, which you find also, though in a less striking degree, in Perdita. Of course an entirely new element, enters when Shakespeare subjects his women to some great moral ftrain, where their character is stamped by tbeic conduct in trying circumstances. Then" they have not merely to speak — they have to act; and the character notes become correspondingly di&tinct and impressive — accentuated by their suffering or their passion, as in Hermione, Juliet, Imogen, Ophelia, Isabella, and Constance. There was an opportunity for a display of the higher nobility ia Perdita's caso. Shefound herseAf faco to face with a great difficulty, but Shakespeare chose that she should get out of it ia the less noble way. She just missed being heroic ; for there was no heroism in following her inclinations, though there would have been in renouncing them. It seems to me that Shakespeare's young men excite an unfairly smalL share -of interest as compared with his young women. What it Ferdinand beside Miranda ? Orlando beside Rosalind? Florizel beside Perdita? Yefc Florizel is a very proper young gentleman, and in his poetic love-ecstacifis comes within measurable distance of. Romeo. From Shakespeare's own point of view he is more heroic than Perdita, for, he makes the greater sacrifice; but with aIL- artists of representation, with the painter and sculptor as well as the dramatist, the younj* man hai always been a subject of less interest than the young woman. Leontes and Hermione naturally challenge comparison with Othello and Desdemona, a ■ comparison by which Leontea suffers and ' Hermione perhap3 gains. The character of Leontes is psychologically much lejs consistent' than that of Othello. In Othello the birth and growth of jealousy are exactly, naturally, and credibly presented. Indeed, , nowhere in Shakespeare is the working of a passion exhibited in such" a -masterly fashion aa in' Othello. But the jealousy of Leontes is not accounted for except by supposing the king insane. And just as unsatisfactory as his jealousy is the repentance of Leontes. The readings for the evening consisted of selections from each of the acts of " AWinter'B Tale." Several slight hitches occurred during the recital, which affected itt general success, these being possibly attributable in part to the f aot thftt in consequence of Mr Haolon, who had been

cast as Polixenee, being called oufc of town, that patt had at the eleventh hour to be assigned to a member who, while he read his lines very well, had not had the advantage of studying them. So far as the reading itself went, there was abundant reason for the congratulation of the members, the majority of vrhom acquitted themselves very satisfactorily. Mr Whitson, who took the part of Leontes, always reads his lines effectively, and a similar remark applies to Miss Alexander, who was cagt as Paulina. Mr Paacogarea capital- rendering of the part of Auto'ycua, and his singing of the ballads, the music for which was composed by Miss Annette Wilson, was greeted with applause. Mr Burton was very amusing in his. reading of the .pirt of the clown, and Mr Brugh's Plorizel aho deserves a word of commendation.' In Miss de Salamos and Miss Favell the club has two distinct acquisition! to the ranks of its lady readers, the former lady doing justice to the part of Hermione and the latter reading with good effect the lines of Ferdita. Messrs J. R. Webb, H. A. W«bb, Moore, Fleming, and Wathen were also included ia the cast. The musical items in the programme were contributed by Miss Gwendolen Roberta, who played a pianoforte solo with much artistic skill, and Miss K. Mullen, who sang Schubert's " Hark ! hark the lark."

An Otaki settler went to the local railway station to take delivery of a reaper and binder bought by- him, and loaded up with the paraphernalia of a " merry-go-rouud " instead. Fortunately for him, the stafcionmaster discovered the mistake before the load was taken away. The death has taken place, in his ninetythird year, of the Very Eev. Thomas O'Reardon, flrsb cousin of Daniel O'Connell. He waß formerly afc the bur, where he had a large practice, and on taking orders he went to America, where he worked laboriously among his fellow-countrymen. On his 'return to Ireland in his eightieth year he took up his residence at Killarney, hit birthplace, where for years he had given away hundreds a year to the poor, living himself in the simplest manner.