Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 661
All of this is contrary to the very first principles of human thought or progress. Literature thus treated is killed. Better to have our own opinion, good or bad, than a mechanical acceptance of the opinions of other men or, worse still, a pedantic affectation of appreciation, for superiority’s sake, where no reality is. It is told that King George III once said, ‘Was there ever such stuff as Shakespeare?’ I have often thought that the good old king at least had the root of the matter in him. He said what he thought and made no attempt at flight on other wings than his own. He was of course wrong in his judgment. There is lots of stuff far worse than Shakespeare. But he was right in his sincerity.
As for Shakespeare, I must admit that he is all spoiled for me. I cannot profess to judge. I often realize now the wonder of his phrase and the long reach of his thought.
Out, out, brief candle; life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is seen no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.
Pretty hard to beat that! But for me, I repeat, Shakespeare was spoiled at college. I was sentenced to two years of him, and carried out the sentence and was duly parolled. But I could not then and cannot now accept the silliness of the Shakespearean manuals, the reconstruction of his life based on nothing, and the critique of his dramatic work, based on ideas or ideals of the drama of which he never thought. In his day the drama was heroic action and declamation, grand speeches in a grand manner, so that the Prince of Morocco, a coloured man (I mustn’t say a coon) from Africa, talked like Sandy Macbeth from the Highlands. Our modern drama, as the intimate picture of life as it is, had not yet come into existence.
Here let me read off to you some of the stuff that I had to suffer from. I have written it down as closely as I remember it, from the books we used:
1. LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE. We do not know when Shaksper was born nor where he was born. But he is dead.
From internal evidence taken off his works after his death we know that he followed for a time the profession of a lawyer, a sailor and a scrivener, and he was also an actor, a bartender, and an ostler. His wide experience of men and manners was probably gained while a bartender. (Compare Henry V, Act V, Scene 2, ‘Say now, gentlemen, what shall yours be?’)
But the technical knowledge which is evident upon every page shows also the intellectual training of a lawyer. (Compare Macbeth, Act VI, Scene 4, ‘What is there in it for me?’) At the same time we are reminded by many passages of Shaksper’s intimate knowledge of the sea. (Romeo and Juliet, Act VIII, Scene 14, ‘How is her head now, nurse?’)
We know, from his use of English, that Shagsper had no college education.
HIS PROBABLE PROBABILITIES. As an actor Shicksper, according to the current legend, was of no great talent. He is said to have acted the part of the ghost and he also probably took such parts as Enter a citizen, a Tucket sounds, a Dog barks, or a Bell is heard within, [Note — We ourselves also have been a Tucket, a Bell, a Dog and so forth in our college dramatic days. — Ed.]
In regard to the personality of Shakespere, or what we might call in the language of the day, Shakespere the Man, we cannot do better than to quote the following excellent analysis done, we think by Professor Gilbert Murray, though we believe that Brander Matthews helped him a little on the side:
‘Shakespere was probably a genial man who probably liked his friends and probably spent a good deal of time in probable social intercourse. He was probably good tempered and easy-going with very likely a bad temper. We know that he drank (Compare Titus Andronicus, Act I, Scene 1, ‘What is there to drink?’), but most likely not to excess. (Compare King Lear, Act II, Scene 1, ‘Stop!’ and see also Macbeth, Act X, Scene 20, ‘Hold, enough!’) Shakespere was probably fond of children and most likely dogs, but we don’t know how he stood on porcupines.
‘We imagine Shakespeare sitting among his cronies in the Mitre Tavern, joining in the chorus of their probable songs, and draining a probable glass of ale, or at times falling into reverie in which the majestic pageant of Julius Caesar passes across his brooding mind.’
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. In person Shakespears is generally represented as having a pointed beard and bobbed hair, with a bald forehead, large wild eyes, a salient nose, a retreating chin and a general expression of vacuity, verging on imbecility.
SUMMARY. The following characteristics of Shakespeare’s work should be memorized — majesty, sublimity, grace, harmony, altitude, also scope, range, reach, together with grasp, comprehension, force and light, heat and power.
Conclusion: Shakespeare was a very good writer.
But by all this I do not mean to imply that courses in English and books and teachers are not necessary. The worst lecture ever given in this University — and that is saying a great deal — is better than no lecture at all. We cannot learn and think and enjoy in solitude. All art and literature implies a recipient mind, and intercourse. The more you share and divide it, the greater it is, and the more for all. An inspiring teacher is a marvel of light, and even a dull teacher is at least a window on the world. I regard courses in English literature as the very highest reach of our studies in the humanities; to remove them, and rely upon a student’s spontaneous desire to read, would lead nowhere. It would but turn the fresh springs of curiosity and interest to wander and perish in the sands.
Yet we must remember that however much we may help and stimulate and advise a student in reading literature, the basis of appreciation must be there in the student himself. You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink. You can take a student to a textbook, but you can’t make him think. In the long run his mind is his own. I remember, years ago, when I was acting as an examiner in literature in a University, I set an examination paper in the usual affected and pedantic way, containing an extract of some very high-class and incomprehensible poetry, and put as a question: ‘Give your personal estimate of this poem.’ Among a litter of answering conceit came one truthful response: ‘I think it’s rotten.’ I gave that man full marks.
Poetry of course is the most unteachable thing of all, and the field most open to affectation, pedantry, and academic snobbishism. For which reason for many plain people the word ‘poet’ and the word ‘nut’ are fairly synonymous. I remember that in my youth, in the country, local poets were classed as a sort of village idiot. Don’t misunderstand me. I am all for poetry. In its highest reach it can do in a few lines what prose cannot convey in a volume. . . . How convey in plain prose the sunlight shadow, the infinite pathos . . . of such lines as
Tears idle tears. And yet I know not why. Tears from the depth of some divine despair. . . . In looking at the happy autumn fields, and thinking of the days that are no more ——
But of the poetry actually written, at least nine-tenths is utter trash and nine-tenths of what is left hardly worth bothering about. The little bit that remains is like the grain of gold left in the river bed. But all the more difficult is it to teach poetry; all the more impossible to cut it and dry it, label it with notes, and sentence students to be examined on it. I have just quoted Tennyson. He wrote better poetry and worse poetry than any man of his age. But for me some of his best was spoiled by academic use. Let me recall to you the last of his remembered verses, written in old age, written when the pedantry and pose of earlier years had passed, when, as an old man, nearing the end, he walked along the sand and shingle of the Isle of Wight and looked out over the darkening waters of the English Channel, moving out with the ebb tide, and saw a new and infinite horizon beyond the shadow of the falling night:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep,
Turns again home.
In those wonderful lines is carried all the silent sweep of the moving water, all the mystery of life and of that which is beyond. But for me it is all spoiled because we did the poem in class — did it, or had it, or took it, or swallowed it — I forget the college phrase. At any rate I made my notes on it, and though I haven’t the text of them I remember that they ran something like this:
1. Twilight. At what time does the sun set at the summer solstice in the Isle of Wight?
2. Evening Star. Explain the phenomenon involved and show that there is nothing in it.
3. Moaning of the Bar. How is foam connected with the bar? What is meant by ‘too full’?
So much for literature and poetry and the reality of study. How on earth can poor Willie Nut, the student, preserve his soul against such pressure? And more than that. Pressing on him all the time is the brutal economic fact that presently he’s got to earn his living, and if he doesn’t learn what he’s told, and pass on it, he won’t get a degree and he can’t be a horse doctor. So he mustn’t dare to get really interested, to read for reading’s sake — or not till he has committed to memory the six beauties of Keats, and the fact that Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. To wander from the path would mean to fall over the cliff. The student, in other words, has not come to college for the sake of being at college. What he wants is to get out. His interest in the temple of learning is in getting out of it. So he takes what is coming to him, gets inured to it, and accepts a sentence to six months’ algebra, a half course in religion, three months’ geology, or four months’ morality like a man in the dock of a police court.
But as you never can kill out human nature, it manages to restore and heal itself in a way of its own. Willie Nut, since he can’t be a real student, a student of the Middle Ages bent on the search for truth and expecting wistfully to find it — since he can’t be that, he takes it out in ‘college life’ and ‘college activity.’ Willie Nut lives in a tumult of college societies, class elections, journalism, sports, rah-rahs and meetings. And across the campus are his co-eds, gay and bright in the autumn sunshine, as contemptuous of knowledge as Eve in the garden of Eden.
Enter any of Willie Nut’s buildings. He has bunches of them, halls and dormitories, given by wealthy magnates as the penalty for sin. On the walls are the notices that indicate his life.
All up, Boys, for the big basket-ball game to-night. We want to see every man turn out and root and shout for Alma Mater. Remember, this is the first big game there has been for ten days, and there will be no other for over a week. Every man up!
All student voters are invited at 11.30 to come into Hoot-It-Up Hall and see a free exhibition of conjuring given for the benefit of the students by Signor Ninni, the distinguished Italian conjurer now appearing at the Star Theatre. What we need at Alma Mater is all-around culture. Conjuring is just as much a part of the student’s work as mathematics or football. All up!
Fellow students! To-night is the big night — the one night in the year. Leave aside all books for this one evening and turn out for the alma mater follies. The performance is staged for 8.00 P.M. in the Alma Mater Theatre and runs till 1.00 A.M. Tickets $5.00 a seat and up.
All reports say that the Follies this year will be bigger, brighter, and brainier than in any year before. Special features this year include a buck and wing clog dance by the Trustees of Alma Mater, champion mouth organ solo by the Dean of Research, and a huge ensemble chorus composed of all the girls worth looking at in Alma Mater. All up!
Here and there perhaps a slightly different note is struck by the notices. Life cannot be all noise and sunshine. Here is one that is not without a touch of pathos. It is a note cut from one of Willie Nut’s college Dailies and put up on the board.
The Daily is under the melancholy duty of chronicling the death of one of our fellow-students, Mr. J. Smith, under very distressing and baffling circumstances. The doctors who attended our deceased fellow-student declare that he died from over-study. This seems inexplicable, but apparently the medical facts warrant no other conclusion.
That any student at Alma Mater College could be exposed to a danger of this sort is extremely difficult to believe. It may have been that the mistaken young man was purveying books to his room and making surreptitious use of his room as a place of study. This, of course, would be extremely difficult to prevent.
But no, we needn’t be afraid that student Smith died of over-study. The days of that disease are past. A couple of generations ago the idea of a student was that of a pale, cloistered creature, living on midnight oil. No doubt he looked unhealthy. I remember, from my early school days, a poem in some American text-book of half a century ago, called The Student, or something of the sort. It invoked him in the words, ‘Why is your face so pale?’ or words to that effect, and he answered, in rhyme, which of course came easily to a well-oiled student: ‘It is bleached thus white, in the mind’s clear light, which is deepening day by day!’ He should have answered, ‘It is bleached because the membraneous tissue of my stomach is worn out by living indoors and feeding on oil and pickles.’
But to-day the student no longer burns the midnight oil! No fear — make it gasoline, 2 A.M. and a couple of Co-eds, Rah! Rah! The new poem will have to be labelled The Stewed Student, and somewhere round the campus a monument will have to be put up, as a commemoration of a type now vanished, To the Unknown Student.
And beside it a monument, To the Unknown Professor; for that type, too, is vanishing. Or, no, perhaps, not a monument but a stuffed specimen in a museum with a Latin label:
PROFESSORIUS HIRSUTUS CAMPESTIS (HAIRY PROFESSOR OF THE CAMPUS). JAWBONE OF SPECIMEN WORN THIN. OIL AND STEEL AGE.
For the old-time professor is gone just as completely as the student. But many of us can still recall him — dreamy and woolly in appearance, a snow-white beard that he had never had time to trim, ignorant of the world, his classroom his kingdom. There he lectured in his own peculiar way, an easy mark for the jests and the tricks of his students, carried away with his subject, always a little over-excited, a little silly, with little touches of vanity over his own scholarship and acuteness that kept alive the fire of life. But notice — he was the real thing; the very students who jibed at him felt somehow that this was learning, this the world of thought outside and beyond the sordid world of life, and from the professor’s egotism and enthusiasm at times caught fire themselves and hurried to the library to read. Gone! And you can’t get him back. You can’t advertise, ‘Wanted, a professor, a little excited, a little silly, must have whiskers — salary no object to him.’
Gone, all gone! The professor of to-day is a hustler. He has to be, or they’ll fire him. He’s an advertiser. He’s got to be, or they’ll let him go. He’s a mixer. He must be, or they’ll drop him. They’ve enough words and enough ways of firing a professor to keep him frightened and efficient all day long: busy with departmental correspondence from anybody to everybody, with meetings and committees — in fact he’s just like Willie Nut.
The last of the real ones are passing out. I recall, and have described elsewhere, how a colleague of mine just before I left McGill, rumpling his hands through the fluff that thirty-five years before had been hair, and speaking in the rising bleat that the voice acquires by thirty-five years in the classroom, said to me: ‘My, my! Things change! Thirty-five years ago, when you and I first came, there were a lot of queer old characters among the professors! There are none now! They’re all gone.’
I answered gently, ‘Not yet, not all,’ and he went shambling off down the corridor, his head wobbling like a mantelpiece ornament.
WHICH WAS IT?
I once had occasion to send a cable to a student whose name was Bye and who had gone with a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge. I called up one of our Canadian Companies by telephone and I said, ‘I want to send a cable.’ An even, polite voice said, ‘Yes, will you please dictate it?’ I began very clearly and firmly, ‘Bye, Jesus.’ A voice came back short and indignant, ‘What’s that?’ I repeated, ‘Bye, Jesus.’ There was silence for a time and then a man’s voice said: ‘What’s this message you’re proposing to send? How does it begin?’ I said a little angrily, ‘It begins, “Bye, Jesus.” ’ ‘Does it?’ he said. ‘Well, profanity doesn’t go over these wires.’
So I called up the other company, and a voice even softer and more melodious than the first one answered. ‘I want to send a cable,’ I said. ‘Yes, will you please dictate it.’ I began, ‘Bye, Jesus,’ then I paused. ‘Yes,’ said the soft voice encouragingly, ‘By Jesus’ — and waited for me to go on. ‘You don’t mind taking that as a message?’ I asked. ‘Oh, no,’ she answered. ‘We get lots of that round our head office.’
But I’m not saying which company it was. Anyway it was years and years ago.
III. WHAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE DRAMA
(WITH GRATEFUL RECOGNITION of the indulgence of the various Dramatic Clubs who have heard me explain it.)
I am to talk to-night on the subject: What I Don’t Know About the Drama. The Chairman has just wittily described this as a very wide subject. I had intended to use this joke myself if the Chairman hadn’t got so smart about it. As a matter of fact he had a look at my notes before we came to the platform and I explained this one to him, and when he got it as best he could, he said it was quite funny and said he must remember it. He did.
