The Phœnix and The Turtle.—This strange, very beautiful poem was published in 1601 in an appendix to Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint, to which several famous poets contributed. In dark and noble verse it describes a spiritual marriage, suddenly ended by death. It is too strange to be the fruit of a human sorrow. It is the work of a great mind trying to express in unusual symbols a thought too subtle and too intense to be expressed in any other way. Spiritual ecstasy is the only key to work of this kind. To the reader without that key it can only be so many strange words set in a noble rhythm for no apparent cause.
Poetry moves in many ways. It may glorify and make spiritual some action of man, or it may give to thoughts such life as thoughts can have, an intenser and stranger life than man knows, with forms that are not human and a speech unintelligible to normal human moods. This poem gives to a flock of thoughts about the passing of truth and beauty the mystery and vitality of birds, who come from a far country, to fill the mind with their crying.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Shakespeare's plays were printed carelessly, often from imperfect, torn, ill-written or stolen copies. When printed, they were seldom corrected. When reprinted, the original errors were often made much worse. Thus, "he met the night-mare," or "a met the night-mare," in the original manuscript, was printed "a nellthu night more," and reprinted "anelthu night Moore." Those who lightly read the modern editions seldom know that years of mental toil went to the preparation of the texts so easily read to-day.
Many English minds have paid tribute to Shakespeare. Few of them deserve more praise than the Cambridge Editors, whose six years of labour cleared the text of countless errors and corruptions. The correction of a corrupt text by collation and conjecture, is one of the most difficult and least amusing tasks that a fine mind can have. The Cambridge Shakespeare, the work of William George Clark and Dr. William Aldis Wright, gives a text not likely to be improved until the poet's corrected manuscripts are found.
The Life of William Shakespeare has been ably written by Dr. Sidney Lee, whose judgment equals his learning.
Some of the dramatic methods of Shakespeare have been nobly studied by Dr. A. C. Bradley in his Shakespearean Tragedy.
To these books and to the Shakespearean Essays in Mr. W. B. Yeats's Ideas of Good and Evil, I am deeply indebted, as all modern students of Shakespeare must be.
Our knowledge of Shakespeare is imperfect. It can only be increased by minute and patient study, by the rejection of surmise about him, and by the constant public playing of his plays, in the Shakespearean manner, by actors who will neither mutilate nor distort what the great mind strove to make just.