Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1887 — Shakspeare Study. [ARTICLE]

Shakspeare Study.

Among the many solemn humbugs by whu h the world is fooled, theie is not one more shallow than the pretense of some tragic r.Vu to be considered w hat are cahH “students of Sin ksptare.” If thk means anything, it presumes that the works of tl ;s poet are of, such mystic, and misty profundity that deep research and ki idr.d inspiration are required to <ll-cover his balden meaning, and then a-io s are ordained to expound thi< biMe of the stage. Humbug! Atr < <•.!/ ,« n great literary effort designed, not' to be read or meditated upon, but to be represented before a mixed audience. Its language, therefore, should be clear and unmistakable as it lows from the mouths of the speakers: its ac.ion should be clear and perspicuous. If it is not so, then the poet is all at, fault. He is not a prophet; his business is not to tell lies about what is to be; so he has no reason to be obscure. There are no two ways about him; he lias nd reason for misleading or for mystifying the people. The so-called student of Shakspeare Is a narrow-minded fellow who seeks to torture the palpable meaning of trivial passages into what are termed “new read gs” for the purpose of rendering himself consp cuous at the expense of the poet, to whom he imputes obscurity, the very worst fault a dramatist can .exhibit. If such fellows could arouse the sleeping spirit of the grand oldman, recall him like the gm -t m “Hamlet’* to revisit the’glimpses of the moon, and then submit to him their new readings, I can imagine his reply.

“What on earth does it matter? Either interpretation will serve. I cannot remember which I intended. My dramas were written under the spur of necessity to meet the crying needs of the theater of which I was one of the managers. They will be found to contain errors and blemishes. Let them be so, and do not encourage infatuated worshipers to turn defects into beauties. Nature is full of imperfections, aneb if it pleased the great author to leave this work so to eternity, why seek perfection in every miserable little heap of dust? These trivial details you bring to my notice do not affect the purpose and shape of my play; and if they concern neither the action nor tha passion nor the characters, why make so much ado about nothing ? lam neither bonoied nor flattered by the blind worship bestowed upon my works by some writers. If my existence had depended upon these text grubbers, I should have been shelved two centuries ago between Ben Johnson and Massinger, or buried with Beaumont and Fletcher. I owe my existence to the stage, to the actor. No dr c poet has any existence in the do • ' Out of my thirty-six plays, about a ■>. :ed survive. The rest are preserve <j for the admiration of those who never read them. Each of the dozen will bo found to afford a conspicuous and all-absorb-ing character for the great actor or actress. Whenever a well-written play affords such an opportunity, it will hold its life on the stage.

“The ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ and ‘ Love’s Labor Lost ’ are read as a matter of duty to the author of ‘ Hamlet* and ‘ Othello.’ I owe my existence to such actors as Edmund Kean and Garrick, who joined spirits with me, embraced my passion, and embodied my characters. They changed my language and reshaped my work to fit their qualities, and they did it well. This is the way to study Sbakspeare.” The actor’s power to represent a passion ip a gift, not a deliberate artistic effort obtained by study. It is a faculty, to be developed and improved by practice. The poet only affords the actor an opportunity to display his powers; one is the complement of the other in the grand result. The actor who is built on a poet—such is the socalled student —is merely a mouthpiece, not an artist, for he should obtain his inspiration as the poet gets his, out of his inner gifts. I, who say this, am both an actor and a poet, and I speak of what I know. Then —may I be forgiven for saying so—there are some young women whose education has stopped short somewhere between writing and spelling, who are thrust up into conspicuous positions on the stage, and taking refuge behind their good looks, profess to be students ©f Shakspeare. O, the humbug of it all! and how the dear world is fooled by it!— Dion Bcn& eicault.

A MMDICAL Journal statea that average Chinese baby weighs but firs pounds. The journal did not state whether’ the Chinese baby’s capacity for ■quailing was less, in proportion to weight, than that of any other baby, but if they howl in the Chinese language as loud as the American kid does in the United States language, how the pool mother must suffer. If any one has ever heard two Chinamen holding a convention in their native tongue, they can readily see that a child who is just learning to lisp a few syllables in the Chinese language would make Home howl-- r«ck’t dt/TK