The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-04-22

VIII,
of fate, ambition and revenge; upon
which fell the gloom and darkness of
emotional life of either sex, of every
temperament, of all classes, condi-
tions, ages and races. Because of this
superhuman gift, in all that makes
truth and character real, palpitating,
alive.
Shakespeare was historian. Pro-
jecting himself into the half-historic
days of blind Homer, repathing per
ton of the tenth year of the Trojan
siege, he is now the green-goose
Troilus stammering Through the A B
C of life and love, betrayed by his mis-
placed confidence in an unworthy
woman, the false Cressida; and now.
the worldly-wise Ulysses craftily
coming the X Y 2 of aged experience,
concluding with his admonition to
self-proud Achilles,
THE fool slides DER the ice that you
should break"
Shakespeare is a Greek of the Greeks.
From scanty material he fashioned
Coriolanus and NOlumnia of the older
age, the noble Brutus and his nobler
wife, Portia of the oVer-ripe republic,
near-hero Antony and his courtesan
Cleopatra, both suited to the gan
grenous age of decadence, conspiring
with Cassius, covering with Casca, de-
claiming with Cicero-Shakespea
Building upon the mere name
"Cymbeline," he portrays the two
civilizations that flourished on Eng
lish soil before the Saxon-coming, that
of the Latin invaders, aid that of the
British jewellers. In those splendid
lines of Albion's youth, he was the
most impassioned of the Celts, the
haughtiest of the Latins
Almost out of vacancy he so re-
created Plantagenet England in the
persons of King John, gentle Arthur,
grandam Elinor and ambitious Con-
stance that his picture of the days of
Magma Carta forms an authentic chap
ter in English history
In phrase exactly suited to the
character he makes Richard II, last
Plantaganet, poetize his crown away to
Henry, fourth of that name, and first
of the House of Lancaster.
With roll of drum and squeak of
1l1e, ne transforms Prince Hal from a
madcap reveler into Henry V, the vir-
lie soldier of Agincourt. ideal king,
and winsome wooer of Sweet Kate of
France.
Out of the mists of misfortune
which enshroud the long reign of do
nothing Henry vi, he constructs from
the Pale ashes of the House of Ian
caster" not unlovely man, dupe of
his wicked wife, Margaret.
He breathed upon Richard III, and
] ~
the ablest and vilest of the English
kings limps his forever-detested,
never-dying way across the stage of
history.
Finally, in the play of Henry VIII.
he causes Cromwell, Wolsey, the de
fender of the Faith" and virtuous
Katherine of Arragon to make straight
the avenue through which the modern
age was ushered by great Queen Bess,
child OF Anne Boyelen, the age of
which ne, writer of verse and play,
was destined to become and for three
centuries to remain the foremost fig
ure of all this world in the worth OF
intellectual accomplishment.
The most English of all the English,
! it only remained that he should draw
his own time and class to complete the
setting of his historical gallery, and
that he did in Jack Falstaff's comic
valentine The Merry Wives of Wind
sor," which transports US back to the
| taVerns, the oaks, and the hedgerows
| of merry old England, the home Of
Raleigh, Drake, Sydney, Burleigh, Kit
Marlowe. rare Ben Jonson, and gentle
Will Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is the great teacher, a
philosopher not alone of the class
room and the study. but a practical
| philosopher of the laboratory method.
His material was human life and char
acter, his reagent that intuitive wis
dom which comes we know not
whence, and his crucible the glowing
universal heart of man.
| Thus he understands and makes us
to understand the wise Prospero and
the beast Caliban in their struggle
from barbarism to the culture (not
kultur) of organized society.
Thus he takes US to the inevitable
overthrow of pedantry and learning
without wisdom when they come into
conflict with sex and nature in Loves
Labor's Lost"
Thus he teaches that profligacy and
avarice will produce a 'Timon of
Athens; that there is a modicum of
truth, at least, in the homeopathic
dogma that Like cures like" to be
found in THE Tanning of the Shrew';
that technicality and, incidentally, JUS
tice may sometimes be defeated by
straining the quality of mercy
through the sieve of racial and natural
hate of The Merchant of Venice;
and that there is some good in all
mortals by conducting US through
the fetid purlieu of Measure for
Measure, and the sweet atmosphere
| of THE Winters Tale"
Thus he draws US to the verge of
| the internal fires that heat the crater
of welded jealousy in the massacre
of lion-hearted Othello and his tende.
victim, Desdemona-
| Thus he breatheS the calm Deace n