Arizona weekly citizen., 1889-07-20
DID NOT KNOW ART.
Shakespeare Evidently Was Not Farnilia
 with Painters and Painting.

Shakespeare Evidently Was Not Farnthas
 with Painters and Painting.
 Considering the universal character 5f Shakespeare's knowledge, it seems It first curious~th he should have displayed no very intimate acquaint- ance with the actual art of paint ng. This Is the more striking when we recollect how much he knew of the details and positive techni- que of-nearly every other profession, calling or handicraft under the sun' His familiarity with them, as shown by the use of purely professional phrases and trade words, has given birth to a host of profound treatises wherein the writers have striven to demonstrate that the poet must, in a sort, have served an apprenticeship to dozen different trades. His en- tire accuracy in these respects is un- doubted, and is testified to by masters and experts On this ground it has been attempted to prove that in turn he practIced as a lawyer, a surgeon, a physician, horse dealer, butcher, soldier, q sailor, a.farmer, gardener, school master and heavens knows what besides; whilst travellers have de- clared that unless he had himself wis ited many of the countries he describes, and been familiar with their Ian guages, he could never have alluded as he does to their numerous min ute characteristics.
 am not aware, however, that any one has been bold enough to assert that he was a painter or artist, as we understand the term Nor is this won- derful, perhaps, seeing, as l have hlnted, that we look in vain through his pagesfor anythingmore than aquite superficial knowledge of the use of the palette and brushes. Indeed the words palette and brush nowhere occur, nor do those of easel, Haulstiek or any of the paraphernalia of the studio. And this, 1 repeat, is rather singular, for if the art, with the means and ma terials for predicting 1t, were uncom- mon in England in Shakespeare's day, they could scarcely have been so in It. ally, Germany, Flanders or France; and he was so conversant with the habits of continental nations that one would have thought the artists life and its surroundings would not have escaped him in detail. Yet he never even mentions the painters brush, it IS always his ''penci;" and although we know that the word popularly ex- presses the instrument by which ar tistic work is produced, it is at least odd that the poet avoids the use of its literal synonym, especially remem- bering the vast scope of his vocabulary. The artist (Timon of Attn ens talks no shop" tells nothing about his models who sat to him, or the difficulty of getting the sort of heads he wants. Nothing Is revealed as to the technique, or the system of priming the canvas, or laying in this or that color first-or what, in a word, the process and progress of the work have been, as, I submit, might fairly have been expected. Neither is any further clew offered as to the nature of the subject, nor any hint as to its di- mensioEs; but later on, when the pa tron Timon sees it, he comments it and in spicing his admiration with some philosophic moralizing, pays a just tribute to the noble art thus:
 
 Painting Is alnySt the natural man;
 For since diShonor traffics with mans nature He is but outside; these penciled figures are Even such as they give out. ike your work; And you shall find like it
 If this significant promise was never performed, it was Master Paint CTS own fault, and he was rightly served. In the last act of the play we discover what he really is; and if our heaven gifted Swan of Avon" in tended to typify in him the artistic character generally, we can only say his opinion of it was not high. Would it be a terrible heresy to add thatit also betrays the shallowness of his ac- quaintance, if not with the art of painting, at least with its professors9 The scene is too iong to quote, but it is little less than a libel upon the whole community to have it exem- plified in the person of such a mean, contemptible, fawning sycophant as the painter shows himself.-Magazine cf A pf