ON THE PRINCIPLES OF SHAKESPEAREAN INTERPRETATION

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ON THE PRINCIPLES OF SHAKESPEAREAN INTERPRETATION

            The following essays present an interpretation of Shakespeare’s work which may tend at first to confuse and perhaps even repel the reader: therefore I here try to clarify the points at issue. In this essay I outline what I believe to be the main hindrances to a proper understanding of Shakespeare; I also suggest the path which I think a sound interpretation should pursue. My remarks are, however, to be read as a counsel of perfection. Yet, though I cannot claim to follow them throughout in practice, this preliminary discussion, in showing what I have been at pains to do and to avoid, will serve to indicate the direction of my attempt.

THE SHAKESPEAREAN METAPHYSIC

       Two groups must be contrasted: first, plays of the hate-theme, that is: Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens; second, plays analysing evil in the human mind: the Brutus-theme in Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth. The division cannot be absolute: Hamlet’s mental agony has much of the abysmal and bottomless nightmare fear of Macbeth; Measure for Measure, being related to both sex and temptation, touches both groups. But I shall first notice the two kinds primarily in their difference, laying no emphasis on those points where they blend with each other and are seen to be ultimately two aspects of one reality: at the extremes it will be clear that the divergence is both rigid and important. I shall first make some general remarks to clarify the points at issue with reference to the Macbeth evil.

HAMLET RECONSIDERED

           This essay, a rough preliminary draft of which I have had by me for a number of years, is intended to supplement, though not to replace, those already written (including my ‘Rose of May’ in The Imperial Theme). I hope all the essays will be read in conjunction. It is not, however, supposed that they exhaust the latent meanings of Hamlet; and I would draw the attention of my readers to Mr. Roy Walker’s very important study in imaginative interpretation, The Time is Out of Joint, being published by Andrew Dakers (which I had the privilege of seeing in typescript). Though our approaches are basically similar, and our material in places overlaps, the clashes are, on the whole, comparatively few: an additional witness, if such be needed, of the play’s peculiar and inexhaustible wealth.

THE LEAR UNIVERSE

             There has been a remark that all the persons in King Lear are either very good or very bad. This is an overstatement, yet one which suggests a profound truth. This chapter illuminates many human and natural qualities in the Lear universe and tends to reveal its implicit philosophy. King Lear is a tragic vision of humanity, in its complexity, its interplay of purpose, its travailing evolution. The play is a microcosm of the human race—strange as that word ‘microcosm’ sounds for the vastness, the width and depth, the vague vistas which this play reveals. The chapter analyses certain strata in the play’s thought, thus making more clear the quality of the mysterious presence enveloping the action. The naturalism of King Lear is agnostic and sombre often, and often beautiful. Human life is shown as a painful, slow struggle, in which man travails to be born from animal-nature into his destined inheritance of human nature and supreme love.

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