man of business who “adapted” and rearranged old plays to suit the
requirements of the Globe Theatre; and he flung out the splendid rays
of his dazzling poetic genius over these dry bones of romance and
history as freely and with as grand an absence of self-consciousness as
the sun which shines alike on the just and the unjust.
Nothing probably would have surprised him more or moved him to such
incredulous smiling as to have been told that in three hundred years
his fame would surpass that of any other Englishman ever born! He would
have put aside the prophecy with good-humoured laughter and would never
have given it another thought. For his wordly aims were perfectly
straightforward and simple; they were, plainly--to earn a sufficient
competence and to stand on an independent footing with his fellows,
to live with his family in ease and comfort, and to end his days in
peace in the town where he was born. No ideal could be more free from
arrogance. His whole career is an object lesson of infinite Greatness
to the infinitely Little!
The vital centre of Shakespeare’s marvellous power is surely his
impersonality. His creative spirit moved behind the passing show of
kings and queens and historic events, moulding them to his mood, but
never displaying itself. Like light it shed colour on whatsoever it
illumined. So little may we guess of Shakespeare’s personality from
his writings that he has made of himself an Enigma. We cannot even
tell what form of creed he professed, though we know and feel that the
devout worship of an invisible and intelligent Force behind Nature
filled him with highest faith and purest service towards God. We cannot
find out his special likes or dislikes, save in slight indications
here and there, such as his plainly indicated abhorrence of Jews--and
Germans! Great as is the professed admiration of the Teuton for our
English Master-Mind, we wonder how he can get over such lines as
these:--
“A German from the waist downward, all slops!”
_Much Ado About Nothing._
“Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one.”--_Cymbeline._
“Three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.”
_Merry Wives of Windsor._
“Holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners.”
_Henry V._
“Like a German clock,
Still a’repairing, ever out of frame.”
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_.
While the discussion between Portia and Nerissa in the _Merchant of
Venice_ caps all:--
NERISSA: How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew?
PORTIA: Very vilely in the morning when he is sober, and most
vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk; when he is best, he is a
little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better
than a beast.
One other thing we may perceive, and that is our Poet’s scorn of
pettiness and treachery. Individual deceit--public or private
hypocrisy--these seem to Shakespeare’s mind unforgivable. The
“black-handed” hit--the cruel slander--the malicious lie--against these
he delivers his most trenchant blows; but farther than this we are
unable to penetrate into the kingdom of his heart or sentiment.
To woman he assigns the highest place as inspirer and saviour of
man; when he shows her other than this, as in Lady Macbeth, he makes
remorse half condone her sins and death conclude them. He seemed to
be absolutely unconscious of any superiority in himself to others of
his own calling. His poetic gift was like song to a nightingale that
warbles for sheer delight and amorousness, in delicious ignorance of
the entrancing beauty of its melody.
What affects, or _should_ affect, us most deeply to-day is the
deplorable fact that for three hundred years we have had no poet, no
dramatist, to approach Shakespeare in any sense--neither in beauty of
language, loftiness of thought, nor simple naturalness of expression.
He towers among us as a veritable giant among pigmies--for the men of
letters in all parts of the world at this epoch, men who are scrambling
and pushing themselves forward to offer a very poor and inadequate
“homage” to this mightiest genius of all time, are of such microscopic
attainment when compared with him that one needs a mental lens to
perceive them at all.
These are they for whom Self is not only the keynote, but the whole
tune. Some of them take pride in their “style”; whereas Shakespeare had
no “style” save his own, which has become a living part of the English
language. He defied laws and conventions and dramatic “unities”; he
dared to be his own master; and fortunately there were no newspapers
in his day to publish venomous criticisms which might have daunted or
discouraged his efforts.
The earliest newspaper, or _News Packet_, as it was called, was
issued in 1619, three years after Shakespeare’s death. Shakespeare’s
critics were the public--in fact, the “gallery.” He “played to the
gallery,” and played “up”--never “down.” Moreover, he was apparently
so indifferent to his own literary reputation that he made no
effort to publish any of his works, and allowed them to be pirated
wholesale. Only in the case of the two poems dedicated to the Earl of
Southampton--“Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”--does he seem
to have taken any personal interest in his own productions.
One may perhaps venture to suggest that probably he attached no
importance to what he knew were “adaptations” of old plays, and thought
nothing of the rich poesy wherewith he had endowed them. The most of
his work was this of industrious “adaptation”; so that he might have
modestly considered it to be scarcely his own and that the magnificent
speeches he put in the mouths of his stage puppets were only a part of
what is called “business.” The superb indifference he thus displayed to
his own place in the estimation of others was a striking proof of his
sub-conscious power. That his contemporaries mentioned him but little
would not have troubled a mind like Shakespeare’s and Robert Green’s
jealous attack upon him as “an upstart Crow, beautified with our
feathers, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide,” would but
have moved him to a compassionate smile at such an outburst of malice
and envy.
The chief lesson we may learn from Shakespeare’s unapproachable fame is
of that greatness which is “impersonal.” The literary men of our day
are all painfully personal and are seldom satisfied unless they are
elbowing each other out of the way or scrambling over each other to the
front; and some of them are never happier than when they can fasten
themselves, like barnacles, to the splendid ship of Shakespeare’s
immortal genius, which sails serenely onward over the seas of the
infinite. _As_ barnacles they do no particular harm; for, cling as they
will, the great waves of time generally sweep them off in the progress
of the voyage, while the great Ship goes on, carrying its messages of
truth, honour, and strong patriotism to all the world! And it will
still sail on, till the English language shall be no more. For if, in
centuries to come, nothing should be left of England but Shakespeare,
his name would be sufficient to prove that England once had lived!
SHAKESPEARE’S WAR BIRTHDAY IN 1917
NEGLECTED HONOURS
Many of our newspapers devoted columns of matter to “St. George’s Day”;
and the writers of the various articles on this subject “gushed” in
special and particular fashion over a purely mythical knight, whom
legendary lore supposes to have killed a purely mythical dragon. But a
very general omission was made of a real and a far greater personage
than St. George, whose day of birth and death coincides with that of
the dragon-slayer, namely, William Shakespeare, “the beautifullest
English soul this England confesses to have made, the pink and flower
of remembered Englishmen, the greatest thing, it appears, that we
have yet done and managed to produce in this world,” according to
right-thinking Thomas Carlyle. America, too, bears witness to the same
truth through the golden voice of her noble teacher Emerson, who thus
writes: “All the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his
mind as truly, but as softly, as the landscape lies on the eye.” He
was, and is, our greatest Englishman--our finest patriot--and, when all
is said and done, he will be our chief claim to remembrance in history.
Very strange has it seemed to thousands of us, especially Americans,
that during the present crisis and stress of war the Press of Great
Britain should have apparently forgotten to mention the name of perhaps
the greatest Maker of England on his natal day. Some one tells us, “It
has never occurred before.” Then why has it occurred now?
Had Shakespeare been alive to-day we can easily imagine his attitude
in regard to the war. Very English of English, he would have tolerated
no half measures. He, like Sir Francis Drake, would have had short
shrift for any foe that sought to “raid” the shores of his beloved
Britain! Not for him would have been the message of the Vice-Admiral
at Dover: “We were _fortunate_ in being able to save the lives of ten
German officers and ninety-five men from the vessels which were sunk!”
He would have exclaimed: “Out upon such ‘fortune’!” And he might have
judged it as somewhat of a _mis_fortune that a British Vice-Admiral
lived who could write it down as “fortunate” to rescue any members
of the same savage Hun tribe that sank the _Lusitania_ and scruples
not to sink hospital ships! Another word might have been found for
the occasion; and Shakespeare would have been the man to find it. To
Shakespeare’s mind, a friend was a friend--a foe was a foe. Treachery
was his chief abhorrence. When he lived in Stratford-on-Avon for
the last remaining years of his career we know by various records
that he was subjected to many petty annoyances at the hands of his
own townsfolk, so that almost up to his death he was involved in
litigation, defending himself from libel and his daughter from scandal.
The Corporation were ready enough to borrow money of him--yes! that
goes without saying. But for sympathy, comprehension, and friendship he
had to seek outside his native town altogether. It would seem he has
to do that still; and not only has he to go outside his native town,
but outside his native land. In America his works are much better
known, loved, and honoured than in Great Britain; in France, where it
is difficult to understand him owing to the insuperable obstacles of
his language for Frenchmen, there is a “société” founded by an erudite
Israelite, with a British committee who are entirely unknown as _real_
students of Shakespeare, but who have “names” distinguished in other
walks of life. In Russia the bard is viewed as a sort of demi-god,
for his verse translates into Russian superbly; and in the Germany
of the past Lessing’s translation of the plays made him the father
of German literature, as represented by Goethe, Schiller, and others
who distinguished themselves before the black night of Hohenzollern
decadence. But if we take our own islands--in Scotland he is hardly
understood; in Ireland, seldom read or acted; in Wales, almost a sealed
book; while in England itself--well, as Martin Harvey has recently
said, a quarter of one day’s war expenses would establish a National
Theatre, where the great plays could be produced in a fitting manner as
part of the national education.
* * * * *
In Stratford-on-Avon this year’s anniversary of the poet’s birth and
death has passed almost unmarked. No actor has urged his willing
service to his Master in the theatre by the Avon, though this, for
many reasons, is not to be wondered at. True, the bells of the church
rang--true, the flags of nations were unfurled, and there was a
dolefully shabby “flower” procession; but in the Memorial Theatre there
was only a lecture, _not_ on Shakespeare, but on a movement inaugurated
by the lecturer himself. Then there were all the usual “pats on the
back” of every person to the other concerned, a trifle of music, and
there an end. Shakespeare himself was nowhere, though--yes!--perhaps
out in the moist woods, where the primroses are beginning to push
through the mould and the call of the cuckoo is faintly heard, one
might have met his tranquil Spirit moving apart from all “alarums and
excursions,” and have heard his voice in words which he could well
address just now to England.
“Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.”
“DON’T TRAVEL”
A HARD HIT
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
We are all called upon to make sacrifices, both public and personal.
No one can assert that we do not make them willingly, and for the most
part uncomplainingly. But our Dictators appear blind to the fact that
in many cases their orders and “restrictions” are ruining British
trades, while affording the greatest possible relief and satisfaction
to the Boches. The well-fed Huns heard with malicious glee the
admission of Mr. Bonar Law that we were at one time short of fighting
men by a hundred thousand--an undiplomatic avowal which for sheer bad
tact ranks alongside of Lord Devonport’s “grave” warnings of “food
shortage,” and Captain Bathurst’s advertised appetite for “pickled
herrings.” If “shortage” of any kind exists, why “give it away” to the
enemy? It is of a nature to be dealt with “in secret Session,” not in
the open House, where prominent members themselves admit that whatever
is said is at once taken to Germany. Is it surprising, then, that with
the crazy exaggerations and falsehoods of the German Press, our foes
assert that “England is starving!” and that “there are not enough men
left to us to fight with!” How much wiser and more dignified it would
be to let them clearly understand that, honestly, we are not suffering
at all from any real food hardships, and that we shall have more
than a hundred thousand extra men ready to fight them should occasion
arise. Mr. Bonar Law may be a Scottish “man of iron,” but he is also
very guileless if he does not realise the derision and delight of the
Boche over the statements he made in the House--statements repeated
throughout Germany, just as Mr. Lloyd George’s unfortunate phrase, “the
horrible danger of the submarine,” was caught up by Bethmann-Hollweg,
and repeated with devilish laughter at every street corner in Berlin.
When we are at grips with a foe it is not advisable to show him the
loose joints in our armour. To us British there should be never a
thought or a word of “horrible danger,” especially as we know we can
grow our own necessary food if we make up our minds to do it; nor
should we ever publicly admit any “shortage” of any kind, whether in
men or supplies. To admit weakness is to court attack.
Now we are told “not to travel”; not to take the much longed-for Easter
rest, with Easter hope of the slowly coming spring, and there is no
doubt that those of us who have comfortable homes are willing enough
to stay in them. But for the brave, patient men and women who have
given up their homes to toil day and night at munition work, and who
naturally crave for a breath of country or sea air, whose bodies and
souls are weary, and who need, if only a few hours, change of scene
and movement for their very health’s sake, the restrictions of train
and motor service are surely rather an exercise of tyranny? Not only
does the ban affect the travelling public (we presume the Cabinet
Ministers will not deny themselves their Easter recess?), but it spells
ruin to thousands of hard-working folk who depend for their living at
this season on letting lodgings in the country or at the seaside; to
say nothing of the disaster undeservedly inflicted on all our lovely
watering-places and rural resorts, which exist, in a great measure, on
the influx of visitors, whose patronage keeps them going. Surely it
may be asked, Why destroy the prosperity of our own people? Why lay a
paralysing hand on our own trades and industries? Is it to give the
Boche a better chance when the war is over? Before the outbreak of the
Hohenzollern madness, hotels and lodging-houses in all our pleasure
resorts were numerous and prosperous, and the greater part of them
were carried on by--Germans! One could not go anywhere without meeting
German managers and German waiters. Now, when there might be the faint
ghost of a chance for the British hotel-keeper, the British caterer,
the British tradesman, the public are warned off with “Don’t travel!”
What joy for the Germans! Our Dictators simply “fall” into their hands
like drugged moths into a net, and the way they go to work suggests
an attempt to “Prussianise” England, and make ample preparation for
a German “boom” after the war, when our own people, half ruined by
“restrictions,” have not even the time to recoup their losses or
start afresh on any new line of possible prosperity. If the enormous
expenditure of the war is to be met by the people, every chance must
be given them to earn the money wherewith to meet it. None of the
workers would trouble the railway service if motor-cars and conveyances
were allowed to carry them out for an Easter breath of Easter air,
but though military “swaggerers” at home are allowed to dash about
everywhere in cars with apparent freedom, the “restriction” on petrol
holds up all the rest of the public. Yet, as a matter of common
hearsay, it is asserted that “there is no real scarcity of petrol!”
What are we to believe? One thing is pretty certain, and that is that
the British public, though so patient “a hass,” may kick at last and
refuse to take “rations” of thistles, while the German Hog is fed on
carrots and corn. To quote from a well-reasoned article in a morning
contemporary: “The blind and fatal shears of promiscuous prohibition
cut off the just and the unjust together. They are, moreover, a
most disturbing element in trade, and are reducing our merchants
to despair.” True! And if the “disturbing element” is not promptly
checked, we may look out for storms!
“TE DEUM LAUDAMUS”
THE GREAT THANKSGIVING
(_Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”_)
It is time we gave thanks--indeed, it is more than time! Perhaps,
had we seen more clearly into the future we might have given thanks
long before this--thanks for our kinship with America--for the
ties of blood, of language, of tradition, memory, and association
which have made us, as some say, “cousins,” but as we prefer to
believe, brothers--brothers in heart and soul, as we are to-day
brothers-in-arms. Let it be admitted that we have not always quite
understood each other. Small rancours, petty jealousies, trifling
differences have arisen casually from time to time between the people
of a great Empire and the people of a great Republic, which seem now
but the merest gossamer cobwebs spun by the ever-working spiders of
rumour and mischief, easily brushed away at a touch. The trumpet blast
of a noble Cause has brought to our side our youngest comrade, alive
with energy, passion, and enthusiasm, expressing in every attitude
Tennyson’s eloquent lines:--
“I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told,
And I hail once more the banner of battle, unroll’d!”
* * * * *
And we have taken our comrade by both hands, and have knelt with him
under the great dome of St. Paul’s, giving our thanks to God for
bringing us this, our brother; and we claim to say with Lincoln that
we do not presume to ask the Almighty to be on our side, but we do
pray that we may be on the side of the Almighty! If President Wilson’s
“Declaration of War” against Germany means anything, it means that
right and justice, freedom and truth, are all of God; and therefore
to fight for the maintenance of these things is to fight for God’s
own Law and Order. The one piece of eloquence which stands out in
distinctive greatness amid all that has yet been spoken concerning our
world-contest, is this “Declaration,” which will go down to posterity
as matchless for high principle, reasonableness, and clearness of
diction--an oration which no statesman of old time, whether Greek or
Roman, has ever surpassed, in what we know of history. It should have
been read aloud in every church, every school, every theatre, every
public assembly, with as much impressiveness as a Pope’s “Encyclical,”
and more!
Nothing do we need so much in this country as to “catch on” to some
of the enthusiasm and eagerness which fires our American Ally, as he
springs to our side in the battle under the bright stars of the “Old
Glory.” He is young, ardent, and ready for anything--quick eyed, alert
of brain, he means to “hustle”! Some of us need to be infected by
this splendid youth. A curious lethargy clings to us at times--a kind
of dumb spell. Is it excess of feeling? Or--is it sheer egotism? Our
French friends marvel at the indifference we show at the victories just
won by Sir Douglas Haig. They thought to see all London beflagged in
the great soldier’s honour. Very certainly they had hoped the “Stars
and Stripes” might be flown from every public building on the day of
the President’s Declaration--but no!--not even in Stratford-on-Avon,
that shrine of America’s devoted Shakespeare-Worship, was any sign
given of the momentous event. Rather discreditable to Stratford,
remembering that in peace times Shakespeare’s Town depends very much
for its livelihood on its crowds of American visitors. But what does
Shakespeare himself say?
“Blow, blow thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude!”
Let us hope that it is not so much ingratitude as inability to
appreciate the situation.
* * * * *
No wonder Americans find it sometimes difficult to know or to
understand us. For months they have heard their President persistently
abused, they have seen him cruelly caricatured and jeered at in the
lower sections of the British Press, and they have had to possess their
souls in patience till their day of triumph came. It has come--the
bitter tongues are now all honey--and their generosity in forgiving and
forgetting wrongs and coming to us in perfect amity, glittering in the
panoply of battle, and placing almost inexhaustible supplies at our
service, is a truly great and wonderful thing. We have done ourselves
honour by the thanksgiving in St. Paul’s; and some of us who knelt in
the dim shadows of that vast shrine and heard the thunderous chords of
the American National Hymn surging in our ears, prayed that the two
great English-speaking peoples, now joined in a vaster Crusade than was
ever before undertaken, might find their union cemented, not only by
the blood shed for country, but by all the ties of mutual comprehension
and sympathy. To-day, we are as one in the resolve, that
“God’s just wrath shall be wreaked on a giant liar,
And noble thought be freer under the sun!”
And so shall the “Old Glory” help to make for us all the New!
THE WOMEN’S VOTE
NATURE VERSUS POLITICS