The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-02-06

story at all in the Sonnets; but this is
to 90. one feels. a step too far. The
personal note rings plain enough in
them for him who has ears to hear, and
we may still hold with Wordsworth,
Hugo. Kreyssig, Swinburne, FUrnivaH
and Dowden that Shakespeare Son
nets express his own feelings in his
own person. The story Of The poets
life lies buried there, but st present it
seems as if the cloud of mystery that
hangs around it were not soon to De
dispelled.
Probably the sanest and most salts
factory attempt % discover something
of the personality Of Shakespeare in
his plays has been made by Professor
DOWden. His division Of the poets work
into four periods, which he respectively
christened In the Workshop In the
World, "Out Of tne Depths" and con
the Heights" is we'll known. These
periods, he holds, are distinguished not
merely by differences in the poets pow
er Of expression, but also by the sub
teCtS with which they deal. and by the
widely varying tone and temper which
inform them. The whole purpose of
Professor DOwden'S Mind and Art of
Shakespeare" is to trace the evolution
of the poets genius and the changes
Of the poets mind from the earliest
stage Of gay apprenticeship to the final
closing of the drama, when the master
! broke his staff and buried his book and
went back to die in quiet Stratford. The
| result Of the critics study is summed
| up in the words 1.-The Shakespeare in
/ variably bright, gentle, and genial is
/ the Shakespeare Of a myth. The man
/ actually discoveTable behind the plays
was a man tempted to passionate ex-
! tremeS, but Of strenuous will, and
whose highest self pronounced in favor
/ Of sanity"
/ More pretentious but hardly so reli-
able is the elaborate work, William
I Shakespeare, by DR.. Brandes, the
( greatest living critic of northern Eu-
rope. This is a splendid effort to re-
/ construct the man from his work, and
/ to interpret that work by the known
/ facts Of Shakespeare's life and the in
/ huence of his environment. The purpose
I Of the book, he declares, is Ito prove
/ that Shakespeare is not thirty-six plays
and a few poems Jumbled together, but
a man who has felt and thought, re-
/ jOiced and suffered, bToOded, dreamed,
and created" Unfortunately DR.
/ Brandes, with all his wealth Of learn
/ ing and undOubted keenness of critical
/ perception, has given far too free a
! reign TO his fancy. He often mistakes
theory for fact and builds elaborate
The book as a whole is rather an eX-
ercise OF imaginative criticism than a
! genuine biography. Yet it is always in
/ teresting, always stimulating, and a
distinct addition TO the great library
Of Shakespeare literature.
The principles Of this school have
been pushed TO an unconscious reductiC
ad absurdum by Mr.. Harris, the late
editor Of the Saturday Review. In a
series Of essays on the true Shakes
peare Which appeared in that periodical
during the year 1888, he asserts that the
work Of Shakespeare is Of so subjective
a character that il is easier to realize
his personality than that Of any other
writer. By the simple process of iden-
tifying Shakespeare with various char
acters Of his plays, q presses by nc
means devoid Of ingenuity and sugges-
tiyeness. he arrives at the conclusion
that the poet was "a combination OF