The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-10-04

nS ifxe. Of tnts ufe-WtSo0m tcefe IS DO stronger negative proc. than his absolute indifference 70 the aliurement of that ignis fa,uus, pos,humoasf fame. For this he seems 10 have cared nothing: of is he seems not ,c have thought. There IS no evidence, even of an indirect sor,, that 1t entered al all into his calculations as part of the reward of his labor. And why should il have tempted him to give one day more 10 work. or ore hour less to pleasure !. Fame IS sweet but fame post Iaortem what IS IL. More shac- owy than Falstaff-s honor. would no, sacrifice one year of happy life, one sub- stzntial benefit to those l love. 10 leave behind me even the fame of Shakespeare To be Shakespeare, 10 see what he saw. think what he thought, and feel what he felt, might have been in itself a iife cf highest happiness-and it might no, {: but be he in heaven or in hell. or be ne simply nowhere, his pos,humous fame. supreme and dea;hless though i, is, IS no reward to him for any grief he suffered or any loy he lost by being Shakespeare. Wherever his soul may be, whatever may have become of if, wha: IS this fame now 10 him. What knows he oft: \ fame which glds the lives and lifts the hearts of mans children is payment for much labor and sorrow but beyond iha, fame is naught-sinply naugh,. Shakespeare saw ;ha, ia these cases as well as in those 10 which Macbeth refers, we still have ludgmen, here 4 mans earthly reward for his work IS what he gets, and wha, he yond ,h ai is not his.
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 of his Plays was partly due 10 ,h.s e& ei lposthanaois fame and partly :e his ecs sire as '' gentleman 10: ,o g,ve p;ou:- inence or endurance to h.s the ..ric AI reputation. As ,o h,s work l.seii ny own indivIdua. opinion, slowly !osiaea through some years of study. IS thA:. II he had been sitting with Nisg .--ar.' :" Hamlet and Othello before h,la n manuscript, unac;ed and unread ba; by him, and Southampton had offered hum one hundred pounds each fneariy 5;5 coo now 10 destroy them and never Iesll;e them. the tragedies would have fitted mo the ire, and the money been glee- fully locked up ID the poets strong box. He seems to have given up ea.ly n his career even the desire for eontemp orary fame n literature, "Iu-rece. written in ,e5, when he was ,wen,y-nine years old, was his second and last public effor, in pure literature. Ills sonne,s were private performances. for the gathering and publication of which the world owes a heavy debt of gratitude 10 a mysterious MT. W. H.,-iei;ers the shacow of dead mans name. In Saakespeare's lime plays were no. regarded IS literature the praise that he received liyine. was al- most wholly for his Venus and Adonis r ard his :. Lncrece.' Had he, after wri,- ing Lucrece," been ambitious of higher literary fame, he could have as elsily published another poem and a greater as have written those wonderful sonne,s merely for his private friends bu; he seems 10 have been content. and to have bid adieu 10 literature as a profession before he was thirty years old, to give himself up ic the business of play-writing and money-saving: Hence, in grea, measure, ;ha: heedlessness of style, that readiness 10 torture words and twist con- struc;ions, ,ha, we find in his plays. and in his plays only, and chiefly in the lat ter. Anything to get his work into act able shape. As 10 the thoughts and the beauties he wrought into it. they COS, hin neither time or trouble: they came by nature. His razors were made 10 sell 1: they happened 10 be brigh, and keen because he had nothing bu, steel of which 10 make them.
 \ fact has just beenA mentioned which is well known 10 all bough,ful students of Shakespeare dramas, but which must be here repeated and considered-ihat certain conspicuous faults n his style ap- pear chiefly in his later plays. They are found mostly in those plays, and only in his blank verse never in prose dialogue We have in Shakespeare the striking phenomenon-isola,ed, believe, ip the history of literature and art-of a loss of the command of the methods and ma teriai of art accompanying practice and maturing years This was no conse- qu.nce of the enfeebling influence of age or of ill-health: nor could its cause have been the weariness of overwork. Shake sPeare last play was written when he was only forty-nine years old, a period of life when a mans intellect commonly uaites as his then did unite the vigor of maturity with the vivacity of youth : and he had then been working as play wright only twenty-three years. Yet his later plays are, as literary work, far in- ferior to his earlier. This we have to say of him who was not only the might jest intellect-intsllect strongest. freshest, mos, original, most elastic, and mos, re- sourteful-known to the world, bu, also the greates. and completes, master Of all the mystery of the poets art. [, IS A If Raphael and Titan had los, ther mastery of form and color as their faculties ma tured as if their technical skill had di- unfinished with practice Shakespeare's thought became grander, higher-reach ing, as he grew in years, and his con- captions, his imag g:naiion, rose with his thought Of this he could not but give evidence: he ould not be other than himself. Bu. his writing. as literary work, fel. often into slovenliness and confusion i; his verse los; much of its nobility and it's