New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-01-04
|Shakespeare's Ouija Board
Shows Bard Has Gone Back

long rest Shakespeare would come
trooping back to the business of
writing with renewed vigor. Such is
not the case. He has acquired
fiorid style OF. writing which we hope
IS not to be attributed to the infiu-
ence Of heaven. 1t may be that he
finds the sound of the harps distract
ing. There is no getting away from
! the fact that he has gone off tremen-
dously. It may very we'll be that no
vacation should be more than a CEN
tury long. After hundred years of
idleness the fingers grow stiff. The
Shakespeare Of to-day has become
rusty. And yet we should hesitate
to say that he has no future. Hard
work and application may do much
for the man. There are distinct
possibilities in him. If only he can
get away from the habit of initiating
Rudyard kipling, as SO many young
poets do, there is hope For him. If
Miss Sarah Taylor Stafford will be
kind enough to transmit to him a
suggestion we advise him earnestly
to look up Keats and take a few les
sons in verse forms. We are as
Stunning, of course, that he and Keats
are in the same bourne. But il
Keats is not available, surely there
must. be some reasonably good poet
at hand in one Of the many man.
sions, or pits, as the case may be.
who would be glad to give Shake
speare lift just for old times sake.
Nor can it be said that the prose
Of Shakespeare has profted during
his long years of inaction. His
style is now a curious mixture of
obsolete and modern words. He has
read, apparently, some of the novel;
lists of to-day, but not the best ones.
If heaven is the place of his abode
it may be, as many rebel artists have
asserted, that good taste is not
among the virtues. Here, for in
stance, is paragraph from Shakes
peare's foreword in which he extols
the medium who has made his work
possible:
ITO pettifoggers who declaim and
spume at length mess of balder-
, dash to befuddle the seeker of truth.
proclaiming no advance where worlds
divide, say, who spell through
her these lines, avaunt, dissembler
you who know the truth and lie to
shield your muggy brain cells under
cloak of science-you fool not any
but yourself. Your work must live
and you must live and see it's puer-
ility from spirit who evade the heart
wrung cries and pleadings of torn
world bereaved at loss which may be
gain were all facts known we could
make known had we the power to
shield, protect, find such wires as we
employ who write hereon through
ear in tune, applied as taught by
me, the shade of Shakespeare, whom
the world has never deridcd, but
loved and called poet up to now"
Wit Less Graceful
( His wit we find less graceful than
it was in the old days on earth be-
fore he wrote:
eve carry here the man we we're.
Our longings, likes, some hatreds.
as of yore. And / who wove my
my souls tears. To all who yearn
to know if still man lives without
his bones, l say, COMPLETE. He
dies never. His ashes are the rem
1 nants of his suit. have my whis-
kers still"
As for his verse, the evidences of
the influence of the modern maya
zines are all too numerous. Con-
slider, for instance, the poem called
Sex Attraction" which begins:
The flowers and the bees have their
own way to love,
And the whole of creation is full Of
the same;
So why should man be ashamed Of
his mode
OF supplying the thrill in loves
name?
He displays now a fondness for
garish titles, as in keep in Your
Heart Little Place" ooh, What
Is More Dear Than the Hands That
7 We Lover" 1--WE Have Come From
the Playhouse, Gods Woman and
l." 'Into-Out of-the Vast Be
yond," and "Oh-Oh-Oh"
He has also tried hard to re-
move the reproach that he is old
/ fashioned, and we find among his
poems such topical bits as "Hail,
Bernhardt! La Vie de France"
"Great Men: To His Countryman,
the Hon. Arthur j. Balfour, Brit