The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-06

his time, ana WILL DC ll4HoEIdi iof AL tline
to come.
Shakespeare was not photographer; not
a taxidermist; he was poet, an artist; an
inspiring teacher without trying to teach
or conscious that he taught. Shakespeare
drew men Of coarse vices and rank talk,
but he never would have drawn "Soion
shingIe" for the stage any more than he
would have peopled his plays with gum
chewing or snuf-dipping women or cigar
ette-smoking men. Richard the Third
was hunchback, but he was good deal
more than that, and he takes his place IN
the play not because he is hunchback,
but in spite of it; he stands for the picture
of q man of heroic though Satanic intel
lectuaI size struggling with the worst pas
sions Of human nature. whose busy med
ding fiends-drag him down to moral ruin
and material defeat Whatever Richard
may be he is not contemplate, any more
than Milton's Satan is contemplate.
Queen Margaret is Cassandra with blood
in her eye and tongue Of fame, but she
is no more wooden doll than Richard is
q wooden dude to be derided. Goneril
and Regain are terrible women; but the
man they lose their souls for is, like Mac
beth, villain of heroic, Satanic stature.
They are bad women who go to the devil
for the sake of man. but Shakespeare
does not, after the method of certain
school Of modern fiction, paint a good
woman as going to the bad for
- LaI
makes this mistake; never paints
a picture that is an outrage on
human nature. In Measure for
Measure" Isabella refuses to die moral
death to save her brothers head, and
Hamlet, the avenging son, loathes his
mother while he spares her life. Good
and noble men and women have gone to
the block rather than do wrong, but good
and noble women do not do wrong to
their most precious womanhood as a
vicarious redemption for some bad man
who seeks TO save his own skin at the cost
Of the woman's soul. A weak woman, an
MIGRANT or cheap creature, might persuade
herself TO stab her own soul to death,
for some man who had become badly
mired in the marshes of Sodom and Co
moran, but no pure, strong, brave woman
ever gave away her soul as a sacrifice for
man who was sinking with pirate ship.
She might give him her property; might
give him everything 10 cancel any debt of
gratitude she owed him, but she could not
give herself up to an opium-eater, a drunk
ard and roue to pay any sort of real or
fancied debt or obligation.
Shakespeare could make a bad woman,
like Cleopatra, live and die for bad man,
like Antony. but Shakespeare never antici-
pated the modern school of fiction, and
outraged his art and human nature by
making Cordelia behave like Cleopatra
and immediate herself for the sake of some
worthless Antony. The modern school of
realistic, non-romantic fiction would have
made Richard hero. not because he was a
mighty man. but because he was a hunch-
back; would have sketched Falstaf, not
because he was witty and fascinating man
without particle of moral sense, but be-
cause he was a fat fellow; and if anybody
yawned over the book because it had
photographs OF wooden hunchbacks,
yiragoes and obesities; of stuffed
prophets instead of Falstaffs, the an
swer would be that the world was full
of such people and that the photographs
were excellent. In other words. because
there is an inane Kingdom Of Lilliput
in this world, inhabited by dolls, dudes
and snobs, that Lilliput is life because
it is densely inhabited. You might
IS well say that an an thil is life
because it is populous. There are
more ant hills than there are sky-piercing
mountains, and yet Mount Rainier, unin-
habited, is more to a man of soul than
many ant hills. There are more tumble
bugs in the world than skylarks, and vet
who cares about 4 million tumble bugs?
Who is there that does not listen to the
woodthrush? The tumble bug is as true
to nature as the thrush, but We do not
care any more about him than We do about
the scavenger that carts away the garbage
of the streets.
1t is so with fiction and pictorial art.
Why sketch a world filled chiefly with
dolls, dudes, snobs and barren. dull medi-
ocrities on the plea that their dumb dogs
make up considerable part of the popu-
lation? You might as well fill a great
picture with nothing but rats, mice, fieas
and mosquitoes because they vastly out
number the higher forms of animal life.
If this kind of non-romantic American
fiction is the whole truth and nothing but
the truth, what is 10 become of a
people with whom moral enthusiasm and
the manhood and womanhood of chiyalry
are dead with whom heroism is no longer
virtue, but only. the diseased action of
morbid minds: with whom romance is rot
and systematic selfshness your true saint,
evangelist and guardian angel. The
American novelist Is no longer an artist;
he is an industrious photographer and
clever taxidermist. He meets more dolls
and dudes, more dull hogs than he
does noble men and women; therefore
his world of fiction is filed with cheap
creatures. The tumble bugs. the snail,.
the wasps and the locusts are in the ma
Iorlty, and therefore they are average
American life to him rather than the glow
worm, the fire fly, the bobolink or the
wood thrush. He fills his vases with
flowers that have neither color nor fine
fragrance, and would have us believe that
to love the sweet brier was superstition;
to inhale with delight the morning breath
of the violet was bigotry and Ignorance
out Of place in the articulated civilization