THE REAL SHAKESPEARE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 16, 19 January 1914, Page 4

THE REAL SHAKESPEARE.

Dr. Georg Braudes, who'was introduced to his audience by Mr Edmund Gosso as “the acknowledged leader

of cosmopolitan criticism,” recently lectured in London on “Shakespeare.” Ho said that for more' than half a century Shakespeare had been marked out as posing as the author oi works of which he had not created a single one, but the master of which was Lord Bacon. Behind this idea lay the disbelief that a man of Shakespeare’s deficient schooling had been able to manifest the knowledge which his dramas evinced. • It was not tin excellence of his school knowledge which made a poet of genius. The idea that Bacon wrote Shakespeare could only be entertained by tho.se who know nothing about either writer; some were half-educated, sonv uneducated, and some lunatics. Dr. Brandes went on to criticise trie criticisms made upon Shakespeare, by Tolstoi, Mr Bernard Shaw, anr Mr Frank Harris, and said; “The latest English essay dwells upon liif weakness, Ids vanity, and snobbery and ends with the sentence that i J is impossible to honor Shakespeare o' to worship him.' Ido the - impossible (Cheers.) And I do it without shame 1 see in all these judgments a testimony of the unwillingness of the lui man mind to bow itself to the trul} great. His contemporaries'were unable to appreciate his greatness, but later times should remedy that fault. Ho had human weaknesses, but wc know far too little of him to defirn them more nearly. It was no weak ness in him that he was a poet (Cheers.) The only thing we real!; know is his genius, which still as tonishes the world, and which In lavished so prodigally that he did no* even gather his productions int books, but left half of Ins plays unprinted. If one should name mankind’s greatest names, and there should be no more th an twelve, if would be impossible to pass over tm name of Shakespeare.” Discussiu. Shakespeare’s personality through the medium of his plays, Dr. Braude? said that Ids drama wr.s addressee primarily to the best elements ci the public, and Ids aristocratic method of regarding the course of hi : - tory must have been' acquired from the young aristocrats who were hi patrons. His heroes were prince; and barons of England; it was alway

they in his eyes who made history It was Henry V. who won the chi} at Agincourt; yet the whole issue o this war depended upon the foot sol diers. He could not understand thro it was the rise of the middle classvf and their spirit of enterprise whies constituted the strength of Lapkin' under Elizabeth. Shakespeare > sonnets seemed to he the host sourc f of acquaintance with his persona feelings. He hated women s paint ed faces and false.hairj he dislike,; jealous" wives and effeminate men

Puritans, and pretensions of all kinds