Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1916-03-25

How Browning Answered.
Browning brought him up with a
round turn, exclaiming: Did Shake.
speare? If so. the less Shakespeare
he"
In short, the world has made god
of its greatest poet. god illimitable,
inscrutable. In so doing the world has
stultified itself and wrought great in
jury TO Shakespeare.
There is a French saying that may
be paraphrased thus: Ito understand
is to love" II We do not love Shake
speare-and, with all our obsequious
reverence for his name, l am very
much afraid We dont-it is because
we have so abjectly refused to know
him in his habit as he lived"
Sonnets Reveal Much.
Few people capable of Judging have
nowadays any doubt that the sonnets
are, in a large measure, self-revealing.
The love story they tell is perhaps
the strangest and most Illuminating
in the whole scope of literary biog-
raphy. Read in the light of the son.
nets, moreover, the greatest come
dies and the greatest tragedies the
world has yet produced become in
turn documents in the biography Of
their creators soul. ...
But with Shakespeare's love story,
and with his unfolding as dramatic
artist, we have not now to do. First
let US know what we can of his out
ward personality-them manner of man
he was to his neighbors of Stratford.
to his fellow players of the Globe
theater and to his companion wits of
the Mermaid Tavern. t...-.-- =
The record they have left us is
clear, unmistakable-in spite of Stee-
vens' denial In 1892 Robert Greene,
on his deathbed, wrote a letter to GER
tain playwrights, friends of his, warn
ing them against the practises of &C.
tors-"buckram gentlemen, painted
monsters, puppets who speak from
their mouths, antics garnished with
our colors." These creatures, 1t APP
pears, had the presumption to revise
the work of the playwrights.
One Special Warning. ....-"
Against one actor-author he espe-
cially warned his Fellows. There is
an upstart Grow, beautified with our
feathers, that with his tigers heart
wrapt in a players hide supposes he
is as wen able to bumbast out q
blank verse as, the best of you, and
being an absolute Johannes factotum,
is, in his owne conceit, the onely
Shake-scene in the countrie.
It is a pittie men of such rare wits
las Greene's fellow playwrights)
should be subject to the pleasures of
such rude grooms." '... Il.
There is no doubt that the attack is
on Shakespeare. The three parts OF
Henry VI" were first written by sew
eral co1laborators, of whom Greene
was one. They were revised by
Shakespeare, then a young man of
some 81 years. One of the most yigor-
Gus passages contains the line:
"Oh, Tigers heart wrapt in woman'5
hide ....... 49,.
apparently a contribution of Shake.
speare's, which Greene travesties.
From other sources we have the state
n1ent that Shakespeare was first en-
ployed about the theaters as a
"groome," to hold the horses of spec.
tators. "Shake-scene" is manifest
pun on his name.
Tragic Power Ignored.
OF Shakespeare as master of vast
and profound tragic power, as the por-
trayer of all the deep passions Of the
human soul, nothing is said. At this
time, to be sure, he had written at
most his first and comparatively
crude draft of Romeo and Juliet"
Hamlet" Lear" and "Othello" were
still a decade and more in the fu-
ture. But. to the end of his life the
kindly, free and honest traits were
those which mainly, almost exclusive.
ly, impressed his contemporaries.
The lighter side of his temperament
was emphasized in the following year,
1893, by the publication Of Venus and
Adonis,"' and again in 1894 by "The
Rape Of Lucrece.", These were the
first of his works to be printed, and.
with the public of readers, remained
apparently the most popular of ALL
All Called Him Sweet"
=. The magic sweetness of the verse,
the limpid flow of the narrative and
the vivid color Of the imagery were
clearly recognized by the discerning.
William Covell, a Cambridge don,
gave in 1894 "all praise" to "sweer.
Shakespeare" and Edmund Spenser. in
the same year wrote: ~,
"A gentler shepheard may no, where
I. be found" s........ -. ..s~..z
Others called him ''honey.tongued
Shakespeare" and praised his honey
flowing vein" But the great success
of the poems seems clearly to have
been due to what the modern maya
zine editor calls sex appeal. This
popular impression of the poet seems
to have been intensified, not cor.
rected, by the tragedy of Romeo and