fourfold; the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of
the engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for
special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it may
deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb instrument,
while English is positively poorer than it was in the time of
Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle class.
Divorced from reality, with its activities all fettered in baby-linen,
our literature has atrophied and dwindled into a babble of nursery
rhymes, tragedies of Little Marys, tales of Babes in a Wood. The example
of Shakespeare may yet teach us the value of free speech; he could say
what he liked as he liked: he was not afraid of the naked truth and the
naked word, and through his greatness a Low Dutch dialect has become the
chiefest instrument of civilization, the world-speech of humanity at
large.
FRANK HARRIS.
LONDON, 1909.
BOOK I
SHAKESPEARE PAINTED BY HIMSELF
CHAPTER I
HAMLET: ROMEO--JAQUES
"As I passed by ... I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE
UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto
you." This work of Paul--the discovery and proclaiming of an unknown
god--is in every age the main function of the critic.
An unknown god this Shakespeare of ours, whom all are agreed it would be
well to know, if in any way possible. As to the possibility, however,
the authorities are at loggerheads. Hallam, "the judicious," declared
that it was impossible to learn anything certain about "the man,
Shakespeare." Wordsworth, on the other hand (without a nickname to show
a close connection with the common), held that Shakespeare unlocked his
heart with the sonnets for key. Browning jeered at this belief, to be in
turn contradicted by Swinburne. Matthew Arnold gave us in a sonnet "the
best opinion of his time":
"Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask--Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge."
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