Certain Nezv Elucidations of Shakespeare 3 



There are of course many other aspects from which so unchallengeable 

 a masterpiece deserves to be studied. We may seek, for example, to fix 

 its date and define its place in order of time among Shakespeare's writings ; 

 but that has been done for us, nearly enough. Or may we search for light 

 on Shakespeare, the man himself, and on his history — so obscure in the 

 main, though here and there lit up by flashes of evidence, contemporary 

 and convincing so far as they go. For my part, while admitting such 

 curiosity to be human, and suffering myself now and again to be intrigued 

 by it, I could never believe in it as a pursuit that really mattered. All 

 literature must be personal : yet the artist — the great artist — dies into his 

 work, and in that survives. ..." Men are we," and must needs wonder, a 

 little wistfully, concerning our forerunners, our kinsmen who, having 

 achieved certain things we despair to improve or even to rival, have gone 

 their way, leaving so much to be guessed. " How splendid," we say, " to 

 have known them ! Let us delve back and discover all we can about 

 them ! " 



" Brave lads in olden musical centuries 



Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, 

 Sat late by alehouse doors in April, 



Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising. 



" Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises. 

 Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables; 



Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted. 

 Love and Apollo were there to chorus. 



" Now these, the songs remain to eternity. 

 Those, only those, the bountiful choristers 



Gone — those are gone, those unremembered 

 Sleep and are are silent in earth forever." 



No : it is no ignoble quarrel we hold with Time over these men. But after 

 all, the moral is summed up in a set of verses ascribed to Homer, in which 

 he addresses the Delian women. " Farewell to you all," he says, " and re- 

 member me in time to come: and when any one of men on earth, a stranger 

 from far, shall enquire of you, ' O maidens, who is the sweetest of min- 

 strels here about? and in whom do you most delight?' then make answer 

 modestly, " Sir, it is a blind man, and he lives in steep Chios.' " 



But the shutters are up at The Mermaid : and, after all, it is the master- 

 piece that matters — the Sphinx herself, the Iliad, the Parthenon, the Per- 

 seus, the song of the old Heaulmieres, Tartufe, Macbeth. 



Lastly, I shall not attempt a general criticism of Macbeth, because that 

 work has been done, exquisitely and (I think) perdurably, by Dr. Bradley, 

 in his published Lectures on Shakespearian Tragedy ... a book which I 

 hold to belong to the first order of criticism, to be a true ornament of 

 our times. Here and there, to be sure, I cannot accept Dr. Bradley's judg- 



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