In 1906, John Cowper Powys give a series of six lectures at Sherborne School on the plays of William Shakespeare. The lectures took place in the Big Schoolroom on the following dates:
29 September 1906 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
13 October 1906 – As You Like It.
27 October 1906 – The Merchant of Venice.
10 November 1906 – Hamlet.
24 November 1906 – Macbeth.
8 December 1906 – Julius Caesar.
This was John’s first public appearance in the Big Schoolroom since 23 June 1891 when, having fled the School before the end of term, he had returned to read his prizewinning poem ‘Corinth’ at the School’s Commemoration Day. The reviews in the School magazine, The Shirburnian, give more detail of John’s triumphant return to Sherborne School:
The Shirburnian, November 1906
On Saturday, the 29th of September, Mr J.C. Powys delivered to a crowded audience, in the Big Schoolroom, the first of six lectures on Shakespeare which promise to be extremely interesting. He introduced himself to his bearers in a few amusing sentences, in which he said that he wished especially to repay a debt which he owed to the masters; he had often been forced to listen to them, now it was his turn, and they should listen to him for an hour. He then began his lecture by showing how vain it was to attempt to form an idea of Shakespeare’s life from the scanty details known to be reliable; the only way in which to gather any knowledge concerning this immortal genius was by a study of his plays. Mr Powys next said that he intended to begin by taking the Midsummer Night’s Dream as the subject of his first lecture. This play, he here told, was written when Shakespeare was still young, and in it we see his scorn for love and all its attending follies; he even goes further and ridicules his own art, in fact he states that lovers, poets and mailmen are all one class. He does not exert his great talent to draw the characters of the two young lovers, Demetrius and Lysander, with care; nor does he treat the maidens, Hernia and Helena, with much skill. They were just common people rather jealous and stupid. The Duke Theseus, on the contrary, is a strong character, brought in rather as a contrast to the foolishness of the various lovers. He has no sickly sentiment about him; he is a man of the world, one whose life and times is taken up with governing Athens and fighting her enemies. He is married, it is true, but even in this his diplomacy is shown, in that he marries a powerful ally, Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons, and thus strengthens his political position.
In reality the Midsummer Night’s Dream contains four plays; the Love Stories of Lysander, Demetrius, Hernia and Helena, the Mock Play performed by Quince’s Company, the Diplomacy of Duke Theseus and Antics of the Fairies.
But perhaps the chief point of interest in this and almost all his plays was that instead of most of his characters being classic people, as their names seem to point, that indeed was often the only classical hint about them. They were the common Warwickshire country-folk to whom Shakespeare gave classic names. The Ecclesia was far too solemn a place to have ever contained such people as Bottom.
But perhaps the most ingenious part of the play was that in which the Fairies are introduced. These were the sprites that figured in the old legends which Shakespeare had been told when a child, and like a true genius he did not invent them but adapted them to suit his own ends.
In conclusion, Mr Powys said that Shakespeare’s talent lay chiefly in the fact that he was able to describe far more perfectly and yet more simply than any other poet the beauties of nature that he saw around him.
On Saturday, the 13th October, Mr J.C. Powys gave his second lecture on Shakespeare; this time, as he had announced at the last meeting, he took ‘As You Like It.’ He did not delay a moment, but as soon as he had reached the platform, began to explain the Play in hand.
It was, he said, necessary to know something about Shakespeare’s life at the time he wrote this Play, in order to understand what were his real feelings towards his own creation. The Characters naturally divided themselves into two parties, those who thought existence a very pleasant thing and were almost convinced that the world was the best place one could be in, and those who saw all the horror of life, its cruelty, bitterness and gall; who were ever asking inconvenient questions, and consequently always mournful. These are the two great classes into which the play is divided: the former are optimists, the latter pessimists. Now Shakespeare was at this time very unhappy: he had had two great friends, a young man and a young lady, it is not known who the young man was, the young lady was his sweetheart; but what happened to ruin his joy was that the young man eloped with his sweetheart, and thus Shakespeare lost two friends at the same time; it was scarcely surprising if he felt bitterly disposed towards the human race.
It was a short time after these events that Shakespeare wrote ‘As You Like It’, in which he introduces some very bitter characters; Touchstone the clown is a very caustic fool, who enjoys passing sarcastic remarks and complaining at the world; but Jaques is the real pessimist, said to have been a model for the great Hamlet, he is by far the most cleverly drawn character in the play. On the other hand, Rosalind, Celia and Orlando are all optimists, people who know what it is to be in love and who find great pleasure in this world, even if it is not quite the most perfect place imaginable.
These two sets of characters are strongly contrasted; with which did Shakespeare side? Many critics had said that the great Poet’s sympathies were entirely on the side of the optimists, but he (Mr Powys) did not think so, and he thought no one could who gave a thought to Shakespeare’s life at the time of the play’s production.
Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s pictures were always true to life, and so, when Jaques meets these young people in the woods out in the open, they are more than a match for him and he is beaten by them in the discussions they have. Even the unpleasant character of the pessimist is not glossed over; for we see Jaques philosophising on a dying deer; he draws a certain deep cruel pleasure from the appropriate melancholy of the scene, and instead of thrusting his sword through it and thus putting it out of its pain, he watches it slowly die.
The seven ages, the greatest speech in the play, should not be, he thought, included among the beauties of Shakespeare, as a prominent author had done; for was it not a bitter, railing, almost untrue picture of human existence? But Shakespeare, by making such a speech the principal one in the play, must have surely sided with the pessimists. In conclusion, Mr Powys mentioned that it was known as a point of great interest that Shakespeare used to play the part of Old Adam, the faithful servant of Orlando. Mr Powys also touched on Shakespeare’s faith, and stated that the Poet appears to have been a Roman Catholic or at least very favourably disposed toward them, in that he ridicules the unhappy Anglican Clergyman, Sir Oliver Martext, and supports the Friars and Monks.
But reverting to the question as to which side Shakespeare took in the play, perhaps the best answer was the name which the Great Dramatist had given it; ‘As You Like It’ was the title; and he may have intended us to take it and form opinions about it just as we like it; not try to discover what was his own opinion on the matter.
The Shirburnian, December 1906
On Saturday, the 27th of October, Mr Powys delivered his third lecture, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was the play chosen for that evening. Mr Powys began by telling us that he had come that night to enlist our sympathies for the character that is usually considered the worst in the Play, he meant Shylock. The Elizabethan audience, for whom Shakespeare wrote this and many other of his plays, were at best somewhat lacking in our notions of humanity, and to them Shakespeare presented a play full of incident and excitement, with a villain, a hero, a heroine and all the other characters that go to make up a popular play. As was proper, he made the villain succeed in his wicked plans up to a certain point, then justice steps in, the villain receives the due punishment for his deeds, and what might have been a tragedy become a comedy. But was this play really to be counted amongst the Shakespearian comedies; at first sight it might seem so, for it fulfils the condition that a comedy should be a play ending happily, and the audiences who first saw it acted, undoubtedly thought it was an excellent one. But in the light of twentieth century ideas of humanity, could we still call it comedy? He thought not. Of course, Shylock was drawn very repulsively, a man entirely devoid of mercy. These facts together with the knowledge that Shylock was played by Elizabethan actors in a red wig and a long nose, which must have made the character almost ridiculous, seem sufficient causes for the first audience of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ failing to show any pity towards the unhappy Jew. Shakespeare seems to have looked over the heads of his audience, far over the ages until he saw this generation, perhaps the first that has really understood this Play. Let us now consider some traits in Shylock’s character that make him worthy of our pity. There are many, any one of which would have constituted a great man; he loved his race, he was brave, he was strong enough in will to have a great passion, a passion for gold; any man is worthy of admiration who can follow an inclination until it becomes a desire which dominates every other feeling. His hate even commands our respect, it is so strong, so undying. There also seems to be a very good point in his favour and one which critics have often overlooked, it may be said that it is only an artistic touch, nevertheless it gives us an insight into Shylock’s character; for one moment we see the Jew soften when he gazes on the turquoise given to him by his Rachel, for a moment he recalls the time when he was young and in love with a beautiful young Jewess.
But perhaps the best way to gauge this strange character is to try to see the world from his standpoint. He was a Jew, an exile and an outcast, but possessed nevertheless a lineage beside which these Venetians were but upstarts. And being a Jew there were inborn in him two great tenets; the one, a strict observance of the Mosaical Law which said, he must not forget, love thy friend and hate they enemy; the other, a fury against the Gentile to whom he attributed all his misery. Shylock, in fact, represented the Old Dispensation; thus we see a fine contrast, when he and Portia as judge, are brought face to face. Justice is his plea, he demands nothing but justice. Portia implores him to temper justice with mercy. He as a Jew cannot and will not withdraw his claim. The law showed no mercy, the law demanded justice. Then it is that Portia defeats him, telling him he may take the flesh but must not spill one drop of Christian blood, or his goods are forfeit to the State of Venice. Thus she beats him at his own game, and Shylock goes out from the court a broken man.
In conclusion, Mr Powys touched upon the other leading characters in the Play, speaking about Antonio, he said the real cause of his depression at the opening of the Play is one fact, a fact that can be seen written large across his features, one word expresses it, Millionaire.
He is a man who has to think of his wealth, his large circle of friends and his immense influence. He has to walk to the Rialto surrounded by a crowd of youths of the best blood in Venice, who look up to him and listen to his words with respect. He sweeps along, a proud figure through the throng of smaller merchants until he reaches Shylock. What a contrast! On the one side the haughty Venetian Merchant surrounded by a crowd of admirers, on the other the bowed form of Shylock, whom all shun, despised and hated, and yet in the greatness of his spirit despising them all.
Dressed in his gaberdine, the sign that he belonged to an accursed race, and yet standing unashamed, nay, even conscious of superiority, alone amongst the hated gentiles. The remaining characters sink almost into insignificance beside so strongly marked personalities; Bassanio is a young man who is good-hearted but not very wise, Portia will have him as an ornament at Belmont. She is not one of the beautiful lady characters in Shakespeare’s plays. In his opinion, Rosalind and Celia far surpass her in womanly beauty of character, even the poor meek Ophelia was preferable to the somewhat too practical lady. Jessica is the exact opposite of her father; she throws about the money she has stolen from him in treating her lover with whom she has eloped. There is perhaps a little careless cruelty about her, she forgets her poor old father and leaves him to die in Venice. She relinquishes without a pang the religion of her nation. She indeed is an unworthy daughter of the unhappy yet great character Shylock the Jew.
The lecture was extremely interesting throughout and was delivered splendidly, Mr Powys holding his audience the whole evening, and everyone was sorry when it was finished.
On Saturday, November 10th, Mr Powys gave his fourth lecture on Shakespeare. On this occasion he spoke of ‘Hamlet’, Mr Powys said he was going to speak of the great universal play; the play which applied to everyone. We all know the phrase ‘So-and-so had a bit of the Old Adam in him’; so we might equally well say ‘He has a bit of Hamlet in him’ of a person who is always asking himself questions. We must notice that Hamlet is a Teutonic play; a ‘race’ play of which we see Shakespeare was very fond, as we get Old English, Roman and other plays. The local colour in this play was to be much admired. It is impossible to picture a more effective opening scene than the terrace of the castle. The sound of revelry rises and falls on the breeze. Horatio with other young men are walking up and down and talking of the ghost which had been seen. They decide to tell Hamlet. At this moment Hamlet appears soliloquising. Then comes a touch worthy of Sophocles. Hamlet, thinking of his father and ignorant of the appearance of a ghost, says ‘I think I see my father.’ Horatio at once breaks in ‘Where?’ We thus find the hero making a remark of the significance of which he himself is ignorant, but which is appreciated by the audience and the other characters. In speaking of the acting of Hamlet Mr Powys said he preferred to have Hamlet acted by a German. He was inclined to think the ordinary thin young man was unsuitable. A large slow, dreamy German was much better suited to the part. He also said he was disappointed, with the acting of the ‘Ghost’, which part Shakespeare himself probably took: the ‘Ghost’ always came up so obviously by a ‘trap’. We must understand that in Hamlet we have the character of a philosopher, a dreamer, who suddenly has to be practical. Like all other dreamers he is unequal to the task. He hesitates. He asks himself questions: ‘Did the King really kill my father?’ When he is satisfied as to this he is uncertain when to kill him. At only one point in the play does he show any decision; this is when he declares his intention of meeting the Ghost.
Dealing with the question as to whether Hamlet’s madness was real or feigned, Mr Powys said he was very anxious to convince us of his opinion. Hamlet after seeing the ghost was hysterical; but sufficiently master of himself to use his hysteria for his own ends. We all know a child when it has stopped crying at the command of its nurse, will immediately begin howling when its mother appears. He thought the case of Hamlet was much the same. He would come to the great scene in the play, the scene in which Hamlet has the King at his mercy. Here we see the dreamer hesitating again. He was inclined to think that the reason which Hamlet gives for not slaying the King was not the real one, but one by which he tried to persuade himself that he was right in not committing the murder.
Speaking of Ophelia, Mr Powys said he thought critics treated the girl too harshly. He always pictures her as the heroine of some early legend. He thought nothing was more sad than her madness, which, however, should not be overdone on the stage. Probably Hamlet’s roughness in the scene in which Ophelia tries to trap him was caused by his seeing the curtain move. And his anger was great because of his great love.
Polonius was only a type of the wickedness to high places of which Shakespeare had great experience in England.
Returning to Hamlet, we see in his last remark, utter hopelessness such as we should expect. We cannot find anything more ironical than the fact that Hamlet should be buried with military honours. What could be more bitter than that Hamlet the dreamer should have a grand funeral?
The Shirburnian, March 1907
On the 24th of November Mr Powys gave his fifth Shakespearian lecture. Macbeth was the play he had chosen for that evening, but before beginning to discuss the play he said he must congratulate the School on their victory over Tonbridge. After the applause, which this remark produced, had subsided, the lecturer remarked that football and Shakespeare were very far apart, so that we had better turn to Shakespeare at once.
He wishes to inform us that there as a certain German Professor, by name Bleibtreus, who had just brought forward the theory that the Plays were not written by Shakespeare or Bacon, but by Roger, Earl of Rutland. What did it matter if the immortal genius was known on earth as Roger, Bacon or Shakespeare? When we speak of Shakespeare we mean the mind that wrote such undying words. But, putting aside the question of authorship, let us consider the Play Macbeth.
In this tragedy Shakespeare attempts a very difficult task. He feeds the natural craving for horror. However much people may say that that taste should be suppressed, and that literature which contains it is not true literature, he thought that the craving had a right to be appeased. Certainly, Macbeth is a Play that teems with awful incidents: not only do we see the worst and most terrible side of the human mind, but even the malignity of nature, and finally the supernatural are introduced, to increase the horror. There is also another point to be noted about the masterly handling of the Play. Shakespeare knew that the whole effect is more ghastly, if trivial, and even comic incidents are placed next to the most revolting scenes. It is for this cause that the porter scene was written. Some critics had stated that it was impossible for Shakespeare to have composed it, so coarse was its composition and so utterly out of keeping with the rest; but it was by the contrast that Shakespeare was able to produce an even more terrible effect.
There was another obvious mistake made when they stated that Macbeth would have done the murder without any instigation by his wife or the witches. No one who ever read the Play could think that the witches and Lady Macbeth had no influence on this man. What was the use of bringing Lady Macbeth and the three weird sisters into the play if they were not to persuade Macbeth? This man was a great Highland hero, strong, fierce in battle, splendid in form, and very superstitious. So superstitious that he who could fight a battle without turning a hair breaks down utterly when he has murdered Duncan. It is in that scene that Lady Macbeth shows what kind of woman she is. She was, in his opinion, six feet high, with flowing black hair, dark face and flashing eyes. No, she is a small, fair, delicate woman. Does she not speak of her little hand? She has all the feelings of an ordinary woman, together with their strength of will and tenacity of purpose; for instance, she speaks of the mother’s love towards her child, but she says she would dash the babe to the ground rather than relinquish her cause. Again, she has to appeal to the fiends to unsex her, so conscious is she of her womanliness.
This Play, perhaps of all written by Shakespeare, depends most of all on the stage directions and on the actors themselves. Great care must also be paid to the punctuations; Mr Powys quoted the sentence where Macbeth says, ‘What if we fail’, and Lady Macbeth replies, ‘We fail.’ This might be expressed in many ways, each of which would entirely change the meaning of her answer.
In conclusion, Mr Powys described very graphically some scenes, almost acting some parts of them. At the end he said: ‘Look at Macbeth’; at the close of the Play we must pity him, when he has been forsaken by the evil powers that urged him on to all his wickedness, his wife dead, deserted and hated by all; he turns then, one man against an army, once more he is courageous, once more the great chieftain, when he cries, ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damned be he who first cries, hold, enough.’
On Saturday, December 8th, Mr Powys gave his sixth and last lecture on Shakespeare. This time he took as his subject ‘Julius Caesar’. He had many misgivings, he confessed, in choosing this play: every schoolboy knew the play, if not by heart, at any rate very well, and was full of theories concerning it. But any misdoubts he may have had before reading the play for this lecture were quickly dispelled when he had read the play. He was so struck with its originality. He thought it was a remarkable play in many ways: and perhaps in no other play which Shakespeare ever wrote did he so drop his mannerisms of style and technique. It was in ‘Julius Caesar’ that Shakespeare seemed to catch the real Roman spirit, their incisiveness in speech, briskness of manner and dislike for periphrasis. Perhaps the most striking peculiarity is the absence of a villain, and consequently the large number of heroes or semi-heroes. Mr Powys said that the weakness which is ascribed to Caesar, as Cassius mentions slightingly to Brutus, was introduced not to detract from the glory of the immortal Caesar, but because, if he had shewn Caesar as he knew him to be, great, generous, noble-hearted and majestic, none of his audiences could have borne the sight of his cowardly murder. As it was, it was difficult to watch calmly and unmoved the acting of perhaps the second most tragic scene the world has ever witnessed. On the other hand, Brutus was an entirely different man. Yet no one could call him a villain. He is one of that large class whose feelings of right cripple their powers of action. Hamlet on the other hand represents the man who is ruined by indecision. He, the lecturer, could see many Hamlets, many Brutus’, before him. Cassius was a man, an old republican, one who could not bear to see another citizen, even though he was his friend, more highly honoured than himself. He disagreed with the many commentators, who regarded Antony as a fool. He was a type of the athletic man. Vain he was; but he was also a genius – perhaps the only genius in the play. His devotion to Caesar was great. And it was not till his friend’s guardian hand was removed that he blindly, even madly, threw away his chance of being supreme-lord over the known world for the sake of the most fascinating, perhaps also the most wicked, woman ever known to man. Shakespeare makes him generous throughout. He can forgive the murder of his friend, and pronounce over the dead body of Brutus the noble lines:
‘This was the noblest Roman of them all,
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of Great Caesar.
He only in a genuine honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man!” ‘
See also:
John Cowper Powys (1872-1963)
The Powys Family and Sherborne School
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