The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-10-16

| tional appreciation, ] refer to the vir-
tue which has primary reference to
| God. as those already mentioned have
| to man or the state. Though he can at
times manifest tenderness and rever-
ence in his illusions to sacred things
! Gas e. g., Il Hen. w." I. l., 1927;
Hamlet" |, j., 15S-164: "AlPs Well"
II, i. fl, 1S9-i44, vet for reverence for
worship for holiness of life, he in gen.
eral has but slight regard. The anna
bic friar in Romeo and Juliet by no
means inspires unqualified reverence;
the ambitious Gloucester not yet be-
come King Richard III, is willingly
supported in his young hypocrisy by
two bishops, and the sanity seeming
Angelo in Measure for Measure,
has but stolen the livery of the court of
heaven to serve the devil in Shakes
peare came between the earlier ages
of faith with their eXaltation of reli-
gion. and the puritanisrn of the. seven
teerth century. He finds the middle
ages picturesque and despises the pu-
| ritans; he himself is a child of the re-
naissance, and his kingdom is a king
dom of this world.
5. While Shakespeare's prime interest
is in humanity, he yet has an open eye
for the terror. the majesty and the
beauty of the physical universe, and for
the aspect of all things visible Take
but two illustrations-the one of the
sun C'Richard H." Ill. H., 41-2), when
From under the terrestrial ball
He fires the proud tops of the eastern
pines;
the other of the winds ('2 Henry w."
III, l., 22-):
Who take the ruffian pillows by the tops.
Curling their n1onatrous heads and hang
ing them
With deafening clamor in the slippery
clouds;
or, if you wish another. add the pic
ture of a navy afioat C'Henry W. III,
prof. 7-16). But in any case note how
he personifies-how he makes nature
alive with man.
6. Shakespeare has definite views
concerning poetry. it's nature and pro-
cesses. Thus he proclaims the office of
poetry to soften and refine 1.-TWO Gen
tlemen Of Verona" III, H., 70 ff.):
Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
For Orpheus lutte was strung with poets
sinewS
Whose golden touch could soften steel and
stones,
Make tigers tame and huge levfathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on
sands.
Again, he tells us what is the poets
master faculty C'Midsunmner Nights
Dream" v, l., IBID:
The poets eye. in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from
earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poets
pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy
nothing
A local habitation and name.
He affirlns a deep and hard truth
GAS You Like IT. III, ill.,, 49,: THE
truest poetry is the most feigning''
He. perceives that are may su1pass ma
ture c'Venus and Adonis, 2S9 ff):
Look when "a painter would surpass the
In Thinning out a well-proportioned steed,
HIS art with natures workmanship at
strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed.
So did this horse excel a common ore
In shape in courage. color, pace and bone.
And in the perplexed question con-
corning the relative superiority of art
and nature he gives an ilIunlinatiVe
decision CtWinters Tale" ", w., 80
fl:
Nature is
Made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so over that
art
Which Won say adds to nature is. an. art
That nature makes.
This is an art
Which does mend nature, change 1t
rather. but
The art itself is nature.
Finally when he speaks ofl@@tfe ele.
gancy.s facility and golden cadence of
poesy. he has at once named the trait
By which the unlettered most readily
recognize 1t. and the quantity Of which
the greatest masters are the quickest
to appreciate the charm. Shakespeare