Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-19

dents on the public's way of study
ing Shakespeare, it sounds con-
vlnclng and final So did the
proclamations of Napoleon the Lit
tie. So do the views of Mr.. Rockefeller
on the welfare of the American repub-
lie. SO will the de facto pronounce
ments of pompous and patronizing men
in power till the end OF time.
l admire their pomposity and find
their patronage amusing, but l do not
agree with them, any more than you.
In the beautifully careless speech of the
man on the street l think they are
talking through their hat-a large and
Commodious hat that has served infal-
lible philosophers since Noah's neigh
bors declined TO enter the Ark. But our
real quarrel must be with the students
of Shakespeare who have misinformed
managers like Mr. Harris. And the
sad, sad thing about these good literary
folk is that the more they study Shake-
speare the less they understand him.
They do not know him any better than
the managers. For Shakespeare did not
write for precise professors or crotchety
critics or any other painfully special
ized persons. He wrote for the gang.
It's alarming. but true. He wrote for
mad hatters and sane plumbers and sad
bookkeepers and gay men about town.
He had the shocking notion that they
were all human at heart. He wrote to
make them laugh, and cry, and go home
and talk about his show. Even Charles
Klein-noble humanitarian that he is
has moments of the same amazing SIM
plicitY.
For good many years Shakespeare g
plays were actually played-year in
and year out-merely because they drew
the money. A number of eastern stock
companies are still playing them for
the same mercenary reason. But little
b. little literary folk began to write
about Shakespeare in an awestruck and
grandlloquent way that made you and
me very tired. His very name became
a bore. We got tired of hearing how
ignorant we were of Hudson's COM
mentary on him or how shamelesSly we
ignored Rolfe's amiable glossary of all
the things he might have meant, but
didn't We heard that a fellow named
Ignatius Donnelly honestly doubted
whether there ever was such, a man..
and we almost hoped he was right. The
Shakespeare whom we had to memorize
at school was bad dream. We tried
TO forget him.
The stage helned us forget him. The
managers took the professors word for
it, and Shakespeare got the hook
And the sole and only reason for 1t all
was that people had created, out of
their own active imaginations, a false
Shakespeare, a Shakespeare who wrote
poetry, not shows a Shakespeare who
talked in meter, not English. We still
marvel at his colossal nerve in stealing
plots and sometimes a budding play
wright steals a plot from him with as
little compunction as did Gentle VIII
from Boccaccio. But Shakespeare the
playwright, who drank at the Mermaid
and sold his stuff at the Drury Lane.
Is now forced into the stuffy Seclusion
of the libraries. He must be quite as
dry rs Georgia under prohibition
mavhNp a bit dryer.
Why not rout him out? Sothern and
Marlowe have done so So have Man
tell and Louis James Either the Bur-
bank or the Belaseo stock companies
could give a better production of "As
You Like IT. than many a travelling
troupe which has visited us. I fancy