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


search, the question, How to study
Shakespeare? is best approached
through the question, What shall we
4 look for in Shakespeare?
/ l shall of course not attempt to
enumerate all the things which one
may reasonably hope to find in the
dramas which, by common consent,
stand at the summit of England's liter
AZURE, if not of the worlds, but shall
content myself with mentioning few
of the more obvious, if at the same
time they represent fundamental as
poets of the poets work and are profit
able subjects for prolonged considera-
ton.
1. 1t is related by St Augustine that,
| upon the recitation in the theatre OF the
famous line of Terence, Il am a man,
and 1 consider naught that is human
beneath my regard" the whole audi
ence broke out into thunderous ACCLAIM
alton. Shakespeare might have adopted
the line as. his motto. Beyond any
other writer he has eXemplified Pope's
sentiment, THE proper study Of man
| kind is man." He was q hero-wor-
! shipper when herO-worship was possible;
when he could not approve, he yet
loved; and when he could not live, he
scrutinized, he analysed, he revealed.
! The individual soul is to him infinitely
attractive, nay engrossing; he is ap-
preciative of its virtues and aspira-
! tons tolerant of it's foibleS and amused
| by it's harmless or delightful eccen-
| tricities; he sounds its deepest passions,
comprehends the mainsprings of it's ac-
| tivity, and, while watching how it is
| impelled by desire or precipitated by
| circumstance toward an eScapabe flu
ture, he is touched by it's pathos and its
| tragedy or eXults in it's attainment and
it's joy Partake Shakespeare's delight
4 in life, and in the play fife upon life,
| if you would derive impulse and in
struction from the vast spectacle of
man. if you would find a village rife
with momentous mystery, and make
/ the circle of your acquaintance a the
atre replete with the curious and the
wonderful. Begin this study in any
! play of Shakespeare. Count up its dis
tinct characters; note their individual
traits; see to what types they severally
belong and to what classes of society;
obserse how they behave in different
situations and how they react one upon
another; and discover how far they re-
semble the men and women that you
know or that you have read about
When you have done this with half a
dozen dramas try to form some concep-
! ton of the range of interests, the close
ness of observation and the quickness
and versatility of sympathy of the man
who could imagine and create this
| world of human beings. You will thus
| have begun to study Shakespeare, and
| perhaps to find a new meaning in the
world about you.
! 3. Notwithstanding Shakespeare's alb
sorption in the individual soul, notwith-
standing his sympathetic Interpretation
of the beggar, the serving man, the
thief, the drunkards or the monster
lower than man-if any monster can
! be lower than degraded man.yet he
is never at a loss to exhibit a scale of
values for his personages. They are,
not equal in spiritual rank and he
never pretends they are. We feel with
Caliban, as more righteous beings than
ourselves would feel with Indians and
other barbarians, when he says:
When thou earnest first
/ Thou strokest me and made much of me,
wouldst give me
Water with berries in t, and teach me
how
To name the bigger light and how the
less.
That burn by day and night, and then I
And showed thee all the qualities o the
The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place
- and fertile
/ Cursed be 1 that did so, All the charms
| of Sycorax toads. beetles, bats, light on
For am all the subjects that you have
| Which first was mine own king, and here
In this hard rock whites you do keep
from me
The rest o. the island.
Yet though we resent the apparent in
Justice which he suffers, we never sup
pose him to he the peer Of Miranda or
Prospero. We may make merry with
Falstaff and find his wit. his roguery