The New York herald., 1922-06-11
Shakespeare More
'Alipe' Than When
He Was on Earth
Popularity of His Dramas as
Great Now as Any Time
i'm History.
. RANDER MATTHEW'S, profess

y RANDER MATTHEW'S profes-
* sor of dramatic literature at
- Columbia University and chan
cellor of the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. says that, so far
from being dead. Shakespeare has not
for the past three hundred years been
so much alive as he is to-day. The
purpose and result of this effort of
modern scholarship has been to re-
cover Shakespeare in his habit as he
lived, to give to the modern reader the
very form and presence of his time"
ing Shakespeare's dramas in the en-
vironment which called them forth has
been done, according to Prof. Mat
thews. who says:
1.-THE larger public has always been
supposed to beemore interested in the
question whether Ife ever lived; that
is, whether the StrattCrd player, the
SNUG, uIlettered propriete~ of New
Place, was really and truly the author
of thirty seven immortal plays. The
announcement that Shakespeare die
not write his own plays seems to at
tach to itself perennial value as news.
And since the public is apt to be in
terested in what ii sees in the papers
ii has come to believe that the possi-
bility of Bacons authorship of the
plays, or if not Bacon then some one
of the dozen best minds of the period,
is the one pregnant and important
problem connected with the name of
Shakespeare.
What Does 1t Matter.
"To this question the professors
seem singularly Indifferent. The un-
thinking may impute this indifference
to academic unwillingness to receive
new light. The real reason is the un-
willingness of the trained mind to give
hospitality to an hypothesis that is
needless. If ii is a fact that Bacon
or somebody else wrote the plays
under Shakespeare's name and the
fact can be proved then it is impor-
tant.
But since it can't be proved and
since the facts that are known tell a
perfectly coherent. if not altogether
complete, story, there seems little to
be gained by dscarding the facts in
favor of an hypothesis which. even as
an hypothesis, raises far more difficult
ties than it explains. What is said
about Shakespeare in the classroom
and published in the books of trained
scholars would virtually all of it re-
main true even if Tomorrow should
bring definite proof that the plays
sprang from the brain of some noble
man or other of Elizabeth's court.
Modern Shakespearean scholarship
has done vast and significant work
in placing Shakespeare dramas in the
environment which called them forth.
1t has taught us to know their au-
thor whoever he was. as a man who
by painful experiment in the theater
learned his job of playmaking. 1t has
recreated his theater and the audience
for which he wrote. 1t has made clear
the kind of thing that audience in that
theater expected to get, and it has
shown how Shakespeare gave them
what they expected, and something
more TO please himself
1T has followed Shakespeare in his
reading, not the reading of a scholar
but of a man of letters in search of
materials 1t has studied the subtle
differences between the language of
Elizabeth's day and our own and
shown something of the mastery dar-
ing of Shakespeare as a wielder Of
that language II has followed the
course of stage tradition through the
centuries to our own day. In short. 1t
has been busted. and successfully
busted with the task of tearing down
the barriers that keep the modern
reader from his full possession of that
priceless inheritance OF his which is
locked UP in the plays.
work Is Scholarly.
"In all this critical activity no uni
versity. British or American. has had
d, cbaro than Columbia In fbp