Sir Henry Irving used to tell how he and Toole had gone together to
Stratford, and fallen into talk with one of its inhabitants about his
great townsman. After many cross-questions and crooked answers, they
arrived at the fact that the man knew that Shakespeare had “written for
summat.” “For what?” they enquired. “Well,” replied the man, “I do think
he wrote for the Bible.”
This story illustrates a general law which one might, perhaps, if one
were inclined to pseudo-scientific categories, call the law of perverted
reputations. I am thinking more particularly of literary reputations,
which are those I happen chiefly to care about. And literary reputations
probably get perverted more frequently than others, for the simple
reason that literature always has been and (despite the cheap manuals,
Board schools, and the modern improvements) still is an unfathomable
mystery to the outer busy world. But, to get perverted, the reputations
must be big enough to have reached the ears of that outer world. What
happens, thereafter, seems to be something like this. The man in the
back street understands vaguely that so-and-so is esteemed a great man.
Temperamentally and culturally incapable of appreciating the works of
literary art, for which so-and-so is esteemed great, the back-streeter
is driven to account for his greatness to himself on grounds suitable
to his own comprehension, which grounds in the nature of the case have
nothing to do with the fine art of literature. The general tendency is to
place these grounds in the region of the marvellous. For the capacity for
wonder is as universal as the capacity for literature is strictly limited.
Thus you have the notorious instance of Virgil figuring to the majority
of men in the middle ages not as a poet but as a magician. Appreciation
of his poetry was for the “happy few”; by the rest his reputation was
too great to be ignored, so they gave it a twist to accommodate it to
the nature of their own imaginations. In more recent times, indeed in
our own day, there is the equally notorious instance of Shakespeare. The
Stratford rustic knew nothing of Shakespeare’s plays, but did know (1)
that there was a great man called Shakespeare, and (2) that there was
a great book called the Bible. He concluded that Shakespeare must have
written for the Bible. But I am thinking of a very different perversion
of Shakespeare’s reputation. I am thinking of the strange people,
exponents of the back-street mind, who, being incapable of appreciating
Shakespeare’s poetry and dramatic genius—having in fact no taste for
literature as such—have assigned his greatness to something compatible
with their own prosaic pedestrian taste and turned him into a contriver
of cryptograms. Again you see the old appetite for wonder reappearing.
The imputed reputation, as in Virgil’s case, is for something _abscons_,
as Rabelais would have said, something occult.
It is the old story. Superstition comes easier to the human mind than
artistic appreciation. But superstition has played an odd freak in the
case of Shakespeare. It is actually found side by side with artistic
appreciation, of which it presents itself as the superlative, or
ecstatic, degree. There is, for instance, an Oxford professor to whom
the world is indebted for the most delicate, the most sympathetic, as
well as the most scholarly appreciation of Shakespeare in existence. Yet
this professor is so affronted by the flesh-and-blood domination of the
actresses who play Shakespeare’s heroines, the dangerous competition of
their personal charm with the glamour of the text, that he has committed
himself to the startling proposition that poetic drama perished with
Shakespeare’s boy actors! Jealousy for Shakespeare’s individual supremacy
in artistic creation, which must “brook no rival near the throne,”
has turned the professor into a misogynist. This I venture to call
Shakespearian superstition. And there is another Oxford professor (oh,
home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs!) who assures us that we can
unravel all Shakespearian problems by a careful study of the text alone.
Don’t trouble your minds about the actual facts in view of which the
text had been written and in which it was to be spoken. Don’t ask where
Shakespeare’s theatres were and what the audiences were like and what
kind of shows they were used to and continued to expect. Don’t bother
about the shape of the stage or its position in regard to the public.
Stick to the text, and nothing but the text, and all shall be made plain
unto you. It is this same professor who occasionally treats Shakespeare’s
imaginary characters as though they were real persons, with independent
biographies of their own. He obliges us with conjectural fragments of
their biographies. “Doubtless in happier days he (Hamlet) was a close
and constant observer of men and manners.” “All his life he had believed
in her (Gertrude), we may be sure, as such a son would.” Shakespearian
superstition again, you see, not merely alongside but actually growing
out of artistic appreciation.
Literary critics, as a rule, have suffered less than so-called literary
“creators” from perverted reputations. The reason is plain. The man in
the back street has never heard of criticism. But what, it will be asked,
about the strange case of Aristotle? Well, I submit that in his case the
perversion arose from the second cause I have indicated—not from the
ignorance of the multitude but from the superstitious veneration of the
few. Who was it who began the game by calling Aristotle “the master of
those who know”? A poet who was also a scholar. Who declared Aristotle’s
authority in philosophy to equal St. Paul’s in theology? Roger Bacon
(they say; I have not myself asked for this author at Mudie’s or _The
Times_ Book Club). Who said there could be no possible contradiction
between the Poetics and Holy Writ? Dacier, an eminent Hellenist. Who
declared the rules of Aristotle to have the same certainty for him as the
axioms of Euclid? Lessing, an esteemed “highbrow.” The gradual process,
then, by which the real Aristotle, pure thinker, critic investigating and
co-ordinating the facts of the actual drama of his time, was perverted
into the spurious Aristotle, Mumbo Jumbo of criticism, mysteriarch,
depositary of the Tables of the Law, was the same process that we have
seen at work in the case of Shakespeare—enthusiastic appreciation
toppling over into superstition.
But none of us can afford to put on airs about it. _Mutato nomine de te._
For, after all, what are these various cases but extreme instances of the
“personal equation” that enters into every, even the sanest opinion? Can
any one of us do anything else towards appreciating a work of art than
remake it within himself? So, if we are to avoid these absurd extremes,
let us look to ourselves, do our best to get ourselves into harmony with
the artist, and “clear our minds of cant.”