It is the old story. Superstition comes easier to the human mind than artistic appreciation. But superstition has played an odd freak in the case of Shakespeare. It is actually found side by side with artistic appreciation, of which it presents itself as the superlative, or ecstatic, degree. There is, for instance, an Oxford professor to whom the world is indebted for the most delicate, the most sympathetic, as well as the most scholarly appreciation of Shakespeare in existence. Yet this professor is so affronted by the flesh-and-blood domination of the actresses who play Shakespeare’s heroines, the dangerous competition of their personal charm with the glamour of the text, that he has committed himself to the startling proposition that poetic drama perished with Shakespeare’s boy actors! Jealousy for Shakespeare’s individual supremacy in artistic creation, which must “brook no rival near the throne,” has turned the professor into a misogynist. This I venture to call Shakespearian superstition. And there is another Oxford professor (oh, home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs!) who assures us that we can unravel all Shakespearian problems by a careful study of the text alone. Don’t trouble your minds about the actual facts in view of which the text had been written and in which it was to be spoken. Don’t ask where Shakespeare’s theatres were and what the audiences were like and what kind of shows they were used to and continued to expect. Don’t bother about the shape of the stage or its position in regard to the public. Stick to the text, and nothing but the text, and all shall be made plain unto you. It is this same professor who occasionally treats Shakespeare’s imaginary characters as though they were real persons, with independent biographies of their own. He obliges us with conjectural fragments of their biographies. “Doubtless in happier days he (Hamlet) was a close and constant observer of men and manners.” “All his life he had believed in her (Gertrude), we may be sure, as such a son would.” Shakespearian superstition again, you see, not merely alongside but actually growing out of artistic appreciation.
Literary critics, as a rule, have suffered less than so-called literary “creators” from perverted reputations. The reason is plain. The man in the back street has never heard of criticism. But what, it will be asked, about the strange case of Aristotle? Well, I submit that in his case the perversion arose from the second cause I have indicated—not from the ignorance of the multitude but from the superstitious veneration of the few. Who was it who began the game by calling Aristotle “the master of those who know”? A poet who was also a scholar. Who declared Aristotle’s authority in philosophy to equal St. Paul’s in theology? Roger Bacon (they say; I have not myself asked for this author at Mudie’s or The Times Book Club). Who said there could be no possible contradiction between the Poetics and Holy Writ? Dacier, an eminent Hellenist. Who declared the rules of Aristotle to have the same certainty for him as the axioms of Euclid? Lessing, an esteemed “highbrow.” The gradual process, then, by which the real Aristotle, pure thinker, critic investigating and co-ordinating the facts of the actual drama of his time, was perverted into the spurious Aristotle, Mumbo Jumbo of criticism, mysteriarch, depositary of the Tables of the Law, was the same process that we have seen at work in the case of Shakespeare—enthusiastic appreciation toppling over into superstition.
But none of us can afford to put on airs about it. Mutato nomine de te. For, after all, what are these various cases but extreme instances of the “personal equation” that enters into every, even the sanest opinion? Can any one of us do anything else towards appreciating a work of art than remake it within himself? So, if we are to avoid these absurd extremes, let us look to ourselves, do our best to get ourselves into harmony with the artist, and “clear our minds of cant.”
THE SECRET OF GREEK ART
Mathematics may be great fun. Even simple arithmetic is not without its comic side, as when it enables you to find, with a little management, the Number of the Beast in the name of any one you dislike. Then there is “the low cunning of algebra.” It became low cunning indeed when Euler drove (so the anecdotist relates) Diderot out of Russia with a sham algebraical formula. “Monsieur,” said Euler gravely, “(a + bⁿ)/n = x, donc Dieu existe; répondez.” Diderot, no algebraist, could not answer, and left.
But geometry furnishes the best sport. Here is a learned American archæologist, Mr. Jay Hambidge, lecturing to that august body the Hellenic Society and revealing to them his discovery that the secret of classic Greek art (of the best period) is a matter of two magic rectangles. I understand that the learned gentleman himself did not make this extreme claim about the “secret” of “Art,” but it was at any rate so described in the report on which my remarks are based. Mr. Hambidge appears to have devoted years of labour and ingenuity to his researches. The result is in any case of curious interest. But how that result can be said to be “the secret of Greek art revealed” I wholly fail to see.
Let us look first at his rectangles. His first is 2 × √5. It is said that these figures represent the ratio of a man’s height to the full span of his outstretched fingers. But what man? Of what race and age? Well, let us say an average Greek of the best period, and pass on. Mr. Hambidge has found this rectangle over and over again in the design of the Parthenon. “Closely akin” to it, says the report, is another fundamental rectangle, of which the two dimensions are in the ratio of Leonardo’s famous “golden section.” That ratio is obtained by dividing a straight line so that its greater is to its lesser part as the whole is to the greater. Let us give a mathematical meaning to the “closely akin.” Calling the lesser part 1 and the greater x, then—
x/1 = (x + 1)/x or x² - x - 1 = 0
which gives you