The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1890-10-30

to be road Ee borrowed boldly, def
antly, often adopting entire passages
from novels or other plays if they saved
time or suited his convenience. Never
theless, he individualized everything
made everything his own, Nature pass
ing through the alembic of his tempera
ment and becoming unrivaled Art.
The thought of criticism never oc
Cured to him-he wrote as he felt; wa
completely untrammeled. undisturbed
regardless of precedents, being a prec
| edenU and law to and for himself. II
this peculiarly have been ascribed thu
grandeur and glory of his diction, full o
technical faults of nearly every kind, ant
yet so fresh, so apt SO eloquent, so origi
nal as to be beyond compare. He is a
once unique and inimitaOle. Study hin
as you will, you cannot reproduce him
| Labor at his secret us yOu may, yOr
| shall never master it, or even approach
| it. Among the countless host of poet!
! there is but one Shakespeare. He shines
| like the sun, and is the center which
| gives light to others, about which other.
revolve. Any schoOiboy may point our
his benishes; the sun has its spots. but
still it is the SUN.
Unlike most great authors, unlike
Homer or Dante or Moliere, he is moi
simple. His style is a rich mosaic, made
upof precious stones and rare fragments
gathered from every land and age, and
arranged with infinite variety by his
own incomprehensible cunning. He is
the intellectual wizard of the world, the
magician Of thought, the sovereign en-
chanter of expression.
The fact that Shakespeare has taken
almost all his plots from the sources
whence he got his plays has induced
many to believe him deficient in con.
structive imagination. But this is an
unfair inference. He was evidently dis
inclined to form plot when he could
find one ready made, just as he fire.
quently adopted the exact phraseology
of other authors rather than frame his
own lines from his limitless equipment.
He did not care to take any needless
trouble; he was, again let it be said,
thoroughly and continually practical in
spite of his unrecHoned wealth of poetry.
To put it plainly he was bent on max,
ing money at the Blacllfriars theatre,
and on making it in the easiest way.
He felt more concern for direct pecun-
larry success than for any reputation
which his writings might yield. Had
he required plots there is small doubt
that he could and would have drawn
them in abundance from his inward sup
ply.
But his transcendent excellence is in
his creation of character-kings and
clowns, philosophers and simpletons,
dreamers and men of action, women
devilish and angelic, courtiers and fai-
ries, priests and cynics, wits and witches
beings of earth and ARA numberless
crew, but all individual, distinct, def.
mite, as if evolved from nature. No
other pet has revealed a 1.-THE of his
omnipotence in this respect, and he has
made every one Of them memorable and
unforgetable. Thousands of years hence
Hamlet, Timon, Benedick, Portia, Shy
lock, Desdemona, Brutus, Cleopatra.
Othello, Lear, Cordelia, Macbeth, Rosa
lind, Falstaff, Imogen, Cassius, Viola,
Dogberry, Cressida, will be as fresh and
human as they are today; as they were
when the ink was not yet dry that gave
them birth. One might almost say that,
if this planet should be lost, types of its
inhabitants might be reproduced from
Shakespeare's models. They are more
human than humanity, and yet more
ideal than our ideas of them.
The controversy still goes on over the
question whether the dramatist was
man of much or little culture. He APP
pears to have known all that was worth
knowing from books and observation
and imagination, and, above aught else,
from the clairvoyance of universal gen.
ius. Is nature educated? sounds much
like the queries concerning Shakespeare's
degree Of culture.
1t is not strange that the observation
of his personality should incite specula-
tors to the denial of his identity, to the
affirmation that he was only name:
that his plays were written by another
or by others, This view, instead of
lessening, merely augments the mys-
terry. We can understand how the mas
ter dramatist might hide his private self
from the world, but that Shakespeare
could be somebody else passes credence.
The poet of poets is so sinewy, so uni
versal, so ideal, so inexhaustible as tc
put all who understand him into closest
relation with him, and make them think
that they have got at the secret of his
power and influence. He is not whit
classic; he lis romantic, Teutonic. Gothic
above and free from all rule, despising
convention, challenging precedent. TIC
the Latin mind he makes no general APP.
peal; he belongs especially to the leu
tonic family, and is the rarest heritape of