He can pass from his synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole,to an analysis or exposition of the work itself,and in this lower sphere,as I hold it to be,there are many delightful things to be said and done.Yet his object will not always be to explain the work of art.He may seek rather to deepen its mystery,to raise round it,and round its maker,that mist of wonder which is dear to both gods and worshippers alike.Ordinary people are 'terribly at ease in Zion.'They propose to walk arm in arm with the poets,and have a glib ignorant way of saying,'Why should we read what is written about Shakespeare and Milton?We can read the plays and the poems.That is enough.'But an appreciation of Milton is,as the late Rector of Lincoln remarked once,the reward of consummate scholarship.And he who desires to understand Shakespeare truly must understand the relations in which Shakespeare stood to the Renaissance and the Reformation,to the age of Elizabeth and the age of James;he must be familiar with the history of the struggle for supremacy between the old classical forms and the new spirit of romance,between the school of Sidney,and Daniel,and Johnson,and the school of Marlowe and Marlowe's greater son;he must know the materials that were at Shakespeare's disposal,and the method in which he used them,and the conditions of theatric presentation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century,their limitations and their opportunities for *******,and the literary criticism of Shakespeare's day,its aims and modes and canons;he must study the English language in its progress,and blank or rhymed verse in its various developments;he must study the Greek drama,and the connection between the art of the creator of the Agamemnon and the art of the creator of Macbeth;in a word,he must be able to bind Elizabethan London to the Athens of Pericles,and to learn Shakespeare's true position in the history of European drama and the drama of the world.The critic will certainly be an interpreter,but he will not treat Art as a riddling Sphinx,whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name.Rather,he will look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province to intensify,and whose majesty his privilege to make more marvellous in the eyes of men.
And here,Ernest,this strange thing happens.The critic will indeed be an interpreter,but he will not be an interpreter in the sense of one who simply repeats in another form a message that has been put into his lips to say.For,just as it is only by contact with the art of foreign nations that the art of a country gains that individual and separate life that we call nationality,so,by curious inversion,it is only by intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the personality and work of others,and the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation the more real the interpretation becomes,the more satisfying,the more convincing,and the more true.
ERNEST.I would have said that personality would have been a disturbing element.
GILBERT.No;it is an element of revelation.If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism.
ERNEST.What,then,is the result?
GILBERT.I will tell you,and perhaps I can tell you best by definite example.It seems to me that,while the literary critic stands of course first,as having the wider range,and larger vision,and nobler material,each of the arts has a critic,as it were,assigned to it.The actor is a critic of the drama.He shows the poet's work under new conditions,and by a method special to himself.He takes the written word,and action,gesture and voice become the media of revelation.The singer or the player on lute and viol is the critic of music.The etcher of a picture robs the painting of its fair colours,but shows us by the use of a new material its true colour-quality,its tones and values,and the relations of its masses,and so is,in his way,a critic of it,for the critic is he who exhibits to us a work of art in a form different from that of the work itself,and the employment of a new material is a critical as well as a creative element.Sculpture,too,has its critic,who may be either the carver of a gem,as he was in Greek days,or some painter like Mantegna,who sought to reproduce on canvas the beauty of plastic line and the symphonic dignity of processional bas-relief.And in the case of all these creative critics of art it is evident that personality is an absolute essential for any real interpretation.When Rubinstein plays to us the SONATA APPASSIONATA of Beethoven,he gives us not merely Beethoven,but also himself,and so gives us Beethoven absolutely -Beethoven re-interpreted through a rich artistic nature,and made vivid and wonderful to us by a new and intense personality.When a great actor plays Shakespeare we have the same experience.His own individuality becomes a vital part of the interpretation.People sometimes say that actors give us their own Hamlets,and not Shakespeare's;and this fallacy -for it is a fallacy -is,I regret to say,repeated by that charming and graceful writer who has lately deserted the turmoil of literature for the peace of the House of Commons,I mean the author of OBITERDICTA.In point of fact,there is no such thing as Shakespeare's Hamlet.If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a work of art,he has also all the obscurity that belongs to life.There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.
ERNEST.As many Hamlets as there are melancholies?
GILBERT.Yes:and as art springs from personality,so it is only to personality that it can be revealed,and from the meeting of the two comes right interpretative criticism.
ERNEST.The critic,then,considered as the interpreter,will give no less than he receives,and lend as much as he borrows?
