The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-02-28
English Author Compares the Bard Of Avon With the Son of God and Says
$ the Artist Faculty in Jesus Was Not Sufficiently Understood
% and the Prophet in Shakespeare Overlooked

"a
20 see the "fat Knight Falstafr in
love" and whoever will compare 1t
with his Henry w" must realize the
difference between his art and his jour-
uul.sm. 1t is the very worst play OF
his maturity. a piece of work that
hardly represents him at all. Yet
here am I now trying to do what the
greatest have failed In. The earliest
English poem that 1 know-it dates
uom the end Of the thirteenth GEN.
.ury-puts the whole matter better
shan ! can phrase 1t:
VIVA, Il Art be slowe,
SV,ctiie let 1t grove.
~ groweth tender grass,
Nrath Goodies smalle ain.
Eut u Shoutyng. striving, crying. roar
yng. ightyng.
WlNeth nought save dust aloft,
Upon the PLANE.
Art is slow of growth. and IL In
these weekly articles ! have pften
failed to rise to the height of the
argument I must crave the forgive
ness Of my readers.
There above us in the quiet firma-
ment are the two stars which have
given most light to the sons Of men.
How do they compare? Do they diff
fer widely in radiance and influence?
Most people believe they do. The one,
q prophet and teacher in Judea who
Las been adored as a God for some
1900 or 1900 years by the most civI-
zel races of men, the standard bear
,rs of humanity: the other a play
wright and poet in London. who
passed away more than three cen
turtles ago. Yet both are living to-day,
neither influence completely assimi-
lated, neither spirit definitively
classed.
lnstinctively still men turn to gaze at
them and write about them, and those
who write are the greatest Of the time.
Goethe occupied himself for years with
both; Coleridge. too, in England; and
here in America, Emerson. Such diff
ferent spirits as Heine and Renan
were o satisfied till they had drawn
lines of relationship between them
selves and these fixed luminaries.
And still the subject is of provoking
interest. Jesus, we say. might have
been clearer to us by this time had not
The Son of Man been treated as a God.
Shakespeare assured.y would have
bee better known had he possessed
less humor and a smaller dramatic
wardrobe: but both these facts are
GOA; another way OF saying hat il
Jesus and Shakespeare had been
smaller men they would have been
sooner understood and assimilated.
1t is the artist faculty in Jesus
which has not been sufficiently UNDER
stood and the priest or prophet in
Shakespeare which has been over
looked. 1t is curious how the artist in
Jesus has been unnoticed, though IL
rounds him to completeness. The
Bible, it is true, tells us that he loved
TO speak in parables-apologues We
stoud call them, or short stories en-
bcdying some moral. ! don't think he
spoke N parallels wholly because Of
the unintelligence or prejudice Of his
hearers, though he gives this as the
rcason-"because they seeing. see not;
uni hearing they hear not, neither do
,.ry understand" This vas no doubt
q ~cortributory cause; it may even
have been the chief cause; but the i'm.
pu.se is always from within. He felt
~ every artist feels-that truth itself
is presented los perfectly besides be.
.g most easily apprehended when
.,uthed in some story. when the idea
has found its appropriate symbol.
one incident in his life delights me
'.pecially because it shows how light
irg quick he "A to recognize intelli-
g.. ce even when used against him
se.f-the artist acknowledging defeat
a, once. When the C%anaanite woman
. ''A' u lOl iitl udu6ttSt hO
Aer curtly: 1T is not meet to take the
3D. l1ren's bread and to cast it to dogs"
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the
dogs eat Of the crumbs which fall from
'nu masters table"
armed by the wit, Jesus cried al
or..: BE it unto thee even
as thou wilt"
Ills highest teaching is all in these
symbolic stories where the artist FAC
u.'y is as evident as the prophetic.
The artist faculty in Shakespeare
was 50 developed by the circumstances
OF his life that it has partly obscured
'ac high teacher in him. But az ne
crew older he became more n more
s~'r.ous, and after the breakdown in
LIS health, which l place about 1908.
when he was already A years of age,
has desire to teach directly became in
~'reasingly evident.
Emerson, having no conception OF
Sh~akespeare's spiritual growth, in
s.sls that he is q mere playwright and
poet and nothing more. ne calls him