The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-11-04


once unique and inimitable- Study hin
as you viii, you cannot reproduce him
Labor at his secret rs you may, yor
shall never master IL, CT even approach
it. Among the couctieSs host OF poetl
there Is but one Shakespeare. He shine:
Like the sun, and is the center which
gives light to others. about which other.
revolve. ANY schooIboy may point out
his ble1nishes; the SUN has its spots, but
still it is the sun.
Unlike most great authors, unlike
Homer or Dante or Mohere, he is not
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 phrGseology
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 unreckoned wealth of poetry.
To put it plainly, he was bent on max
ing money at the Blackfriars 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 air-a numberless
crew, but all individual, distinct, def
mite, as if evolved from nature. No
other poet has revealed a 1.-THE of his
omnipotence in this respect, and he has
made every one of them memorable and
unforgetabie. 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 CT them.
The controversy still goes on over the
question whether the dramatist was a
man of much or little culture. He ap-
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.
JUS Is nature educated? sounds much
like the queries concerning Shakespeare's
degree of culture.
1t is nos strange that the observation
of his personality should inCite specula-
tors to the denial of his identity, to the
that he was only a name;
that his plays were written by another
or by others This view, instead Of
merely augments the mys-
terry. We can understand how the mas
ter dra1natist 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 to
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 BE is not whit
classic; heis romantic, Teutonic, Gothic,
above and free from all rule, despising
challenging precedent. To
the Latin mind he makes no general ap-
peal; he belongs especially to the leu
tonic family, and is the rarest heritage Of
the English speaking race, we Americans
approaching him far more, in the mass,
than our British hnsnen. The Germans
feel that he is especially related to them;
that his genius is their property, though
he CHANGED to be born on foreign soil.
They never tire of writing about him;
they are yeritable Shakespeariacs. They
are convinced that they have interpreted
him to US; that his Utmost spirit is open
10 them alone. Although transcendentaI
aud overdrawn they have brought limit
ess learning and ingenuity to his elucida-
ion, and the world of serious thought Is
indebted to them. He antici-
)ated the America Of today, and is in
Iced more American than English in
the highest idealism and the
greatest practicability.
In this country we are, in a way,
brought up on him, and our love of him
srows with our years. First and last,
lie Is a poet, but common sense forms
us base. lie is truly English in max
ne his dramas wholly suOservient to
earning money. He wrote Lear, Ham
ct, Henry Nv. Othello, not from passion
or literature. but from ineradicable de- !
ire to return to Stratford. to reinstate
HIMSELF there, and 10 write gentleman" /
Itter his name. Everlasting fame was
lothlng compared with his dearest wish |
o De, English Ike, respectable and COM
ortable. But in range and insight |
Is was the Jesus of the intellectual |
World JUSIUs HENRI BROWNE.
The Peanut in Different Localities