The San Francisco call., 1905-05-21
ENGLISH BARD
AND INSOMNIA
Critic Unearths Evidence in
His Writings That Shakes
peare Did Not Sleep Well
SHOT TAKEN AT SHAW
Sidney Lee Makes a Singing
Reply to the Playwright's
Comments on the Dramas
Special pispatch 70 The call


LONDON, May 2o-Of the making of
theories about Shakespeare there is no
end, and the latest person of prominence
to weave one is Professor Churton Collins,
who thinks that the bard suffered from
insomnia.
He must says this eminent Shake
spearean authority, in a magazine article
just published, "have been distressingiy
familiar with the tortures of this malady.
Time after time his characters are made
to refer to the agonies of sleeplessness
and the blessing of repose. To say moth
ing of the famous lines in 'Macoeth,' and
of the to great soliloquies IN the second
part OF Henry w and in Henry " is
Margaret's curse on Richard III:
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine
What is lagos first exclamation after
he has wrecked Othello's peace Of mind?
Not poppy. nor mandragora.
For all the drowsy syrups of the world.
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
What is Friar Laurence's instructive
comment when Romeo comes to visit
him in the early morning?
Care keeps his watch in every old mans eye.
And where care lodges sleep will never lie:
But where unbruised youth with unstuff d
brain,
Doth couch his linbs-therc golden sleep doth
reign.
~ tat says Brutus as he bends over
the sleeping boy Lucius in Julius
Caesar?
Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of siumber;
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies
Which busy care draws in the brains Of men;
Therefore thou sleepst so sound.
And how admirably is the state ia
miiiar to bad sleepers described in Ham
let: $
Sir. in my heart there was kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep; methought lay
Worse than the Iautines in the bilboes
Again in no fewer than four of the
sonnets the pains of sleeplessness are
dwelt on concludes Mr. Collins.
Meanwhile another Shakespearean ex-
pert, Sidney Lee, who recently visited the
| United States, has been voicing the gen.
eral dismay among students in this eoun-
| try at the rate at which early editions
of Shakespeares plays and poems are
| going to America. In a speech at Dudley
! the other cay, Mr.. Lee bewailed parucu-
| larly the unique first Quarto of Titus
Andronicus,'' and the 'surpassingly rich
library of the late Locker Lampson. re-
Gently rcquired by New York dealer.
Never in the history of English book
| collecting, the speaker declared, had
| Great Britain lost suddenly and secretly
/ such a treasure. Before the officers OF
! any public institution like the British
Museum or the Bodleian library. before
any private English collector had any
| suspicion Of their intending fate, these
Rowfant volumes crossed the Atlantic,
never. in all probability. to return.
While we admire the superior enter
prise of the American collector" said
! Lee. I'VE cannot but grieve over the in
sensibility of our own rich men who
| allow these heirlooms TO leave our shores
without making any effort to retain them
| here"
| Lee also took shot at George Bernard
Shaw, in reply to some more than COM
mcnly irreverent things which the au-
thor of Man and Super-Man" has been
saying about the bard of late. Lee de-
clared that Shaw's inversions of the COM
monplace and portrayals of sentiment
upside down were in his own plays most
refreshing. But when he publicly assert
ed that LAS You Like tt was romantic
nonsense and that he had written very
many better plays himself, the Shakes
pearean authority said one could. only
recommend Shaw to ponder Bacon's OBJ
servation that Vain glorious men are
the scorn of wise men, the admiration of
fools the idols of parasites and the
slaves of their own vaunts."
One of the first things that Signor Mar
conf will do on his return from the United
States will be to unvei a tablet which
has just been placed on the house in
Clifton once occupied by that pioneer
of science, Humphry Davy. The tablet
to be unveiled by Marconi will also state
the fact that two other famous people
are connected with the same house
Thomas Lowell Beddoes. the poet. with
whose family Davy lodged, and Beddoes
aunt, Maria Edgeworth.