Hi 
 
TEACHING THE DRAMA 
 AND THE ESSAY 
 
 BROTHER LEO 
 
TEACHING THE DRAMA 
 AND THE ESSAY 
 
 BY 
 
 BROTHER LEO 
 
 OF THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 SCHWARTZ, KIRWIN & FAUSS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 SCHWARTZ, KIRWIN & FAUSS 
 
NOTE 
 
 THIS little book is made up of talks to teachers 
 and of papers that originally saw the light in the 
 hospitable pages of The Catholic School Journal. 
 It has no pretensions whatever and makes no at- 
 tempt to offer a complete and articulated "phi- 
 losophy" of teaching literature. But it seeks to be 
 of service to the young teacher who in perplexity 
 remarks: "I must teach a Shakespearean play and 
 a book of selected essays next term. How am I to 
 go about it?" 
 
 No intrinsic originality inheres in the view of 
 vital appreciation set forth in these pages. 
 Aristotle's conception of the emotionally cathartic 
 function of tragedy, Shakespeare's ideal of hold- 
 ing the mirror up to nature, Milton's plea for the 
 great book as the precious life blood of a master 
 spirit, and, in our own day, Mr. J. B. Ker foot's 
 definition of reading as a form of living all these 
 opinions agree in the recognition of the essentially 
 vital character of literary study. But old truths 
 sometimes need new renderings, however partial 
 and inadequate. 
 
 Behind every book, even the slightest and slen- 
 
 Cf f\ *"" O "" **t 
 
 50o857 
 
VI NOTE 
 
 derest book, lies something akin to hope. And so, 
 behind this book is the wish that somewhere or 
 other there may be a jaded teacher of English who 
 will find in these pages the seeds of a fresh outlook 
 and a new incentive, or a novice in the profession 
 who will gather from them an idea or two to help 
 him on his way. 
 
 L. 
 St. Mary's College, 
 
 Oakland, California. 
 May 15, 1921. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. MATTER, MANNER AND MOOD . . I 
 
 II. THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERA- 
 TURE 9 
 
 III. MATTER IN THE DRAMA .... 18 
 
 IV. MATTER IN THE ESSAY 27 
 
 V. MANNER IN THE DRAMA .... 34 
 
 VI. MANNER IN THE ESSAY .... 43 
 
 VII. MOOD IN THE DRAMA 53 
 
 VIII. MOOD IN THE ESSAY 62 
 
 IX. SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE TEACHING 
 
 OF LITERATURE 71 
 
2 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 Said the second : "I noticed that any place in the 
 mountains will not do for a mine. The prospectors 
 have certain rules for discovering a good place, and 
 they take samples of ore and send it to experts 
 to be analyzed. Then there is a certain way in which 
 the miners must start operations, and they con- 
 struct the mine by digging along a ledge and prop- 
 ping up the tunnel with wooden beams." 
 
 Said the third: "One of the men gave me these 
 nuggets and this little bag of gold dust. These parts 
 of the nugget aren't of much use, but I had to take 
 them, of course, because otherwise I couldn't have 
 these parts, the real gold. One of the nuggets I 
 am going to keep as a souvenir, just as it is; the 
 other I am going to bring to the jeweler to have 
 him make a pair of earrings for my mother; and 
 the gold dust I am going to bring down to the mint 
 to see how much money I can get for it." 
 
 The fourth pupil was silent for a little while ; but, 
 when urged by the teacher to tell what he had 
 learned, he answered simply: "I had a long talk 
 with the jolly miner who has been all over the 
 world; and I think I understand just how they mine 
 gold; and I have two nuggets and a bag of gold 
 dust, too." 
 
 Let us substitute a literary mine any one of the 
 world's immortal books for the gold mine of our 
 allegory, and then we shall see clearly enough that 
 the first boy was interested in the mood, the second 
 in the manner, the third in the matter; and that the 
 
MATTER, MANNER AND MOOD 3 
 
 fourth, who was unquestionably the finest type of 
 student, was interested in all three. 
 
 From the point of view of matter, the study of 
 literature is a dubious success unless the student has 
 something tangible to show for his work, unless, so 
 to say, he has brought away with him some of the 
 gold dust of inspiration and a nugget or two of 
 information. We are to gain from our study of 
 books something besides impressions of the author's 
 mood and personality, something besides a percep- 
 tion of how he works and what tools he uses. We 
 must likewise gain knowledge, knowledge in the 
 nugget form of fact, and knowledge in the dust form 
 of truth. 
 
 Some of the information that we get from litera- 
 ture we may profitably use to adorn our minds as 
 the third boy purposed to employ the souvenir nug- 
 get. A knowledge of certain facts, we cheerfully 
 grant, is largely ornamental ; yet the ornamental has 
 its place in art and in life, and some of us would be 
 appreciably better off if we had sooner learned the 
 wisdom of devoting a measure of time and effort 
 to the acquisition of what very erudite gentlemen 
 tolerantly designate as the minor arts and graces. 
 It is perfectly true that a man may live in a house 
 utterly destitute of pictures, tapestries, marbles and 
 bric-a-brac, just as the Puritans may have said 
 their prayers in bare and whitewashed churches, 
 but he will be happier in his leisure hours and richer 
 in his manner of life if he gathers about him me- 
 
4 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 mentoes of his travels and souvenirs of the joys 
 and sorrows of his early years. God has blessed 
 youth with a memory quick and retentive that youth 
 may garner from books and life ornaments of 
 thought destined to prove sources of solace and re- 
 freshment in the years to come. 
 
 "I don't read books," said a vigorous business 
 man one day. "I don't need books; and, anyhow, 
 I haven't time." "Poor fellow!" murmured a 
 philosopher who chanced to overhear the remark. 
 "What a dismal old age you are going to have !" 
 
 And I think the philosopher was right. For there 
 will come a time in the life of the vigorous business 
 man when he will be no longer vigorous, when the 
 cares and delights of his active career will have been 
 taken up by younger hands ; and then, if he delight 
 not in books, if his mind be like a room uncarpeted 
 and unadorned God pity him! 
 
 But the information we get from literature is not 
 all ornamental ; much of it, perhaps the better part 
 of it, resembles the nugget which the boy was going 
 to have wrought into jewelry. We are all jewelers 
 in this little human life of ours; and if we are 
 honest men and discriminating we prefer to work 
 on real gold rather than on pinchbeck. Now the 
 real gold of life and art we can find in abundance 
 in the works of the great poets and story-tellers, 
 dramatists and essayists. We must dig for it, as 
 Ruskin wisely warns us, but it is there. But it does 
 not come out in finished form. What we can get 
 
MATTER, MANNER AND MOOD 5 
 
 from even the greatest writer is but the ore, a hand- 
 ful of nuggets now and then; and we must labor 
 over it in the smelter of our meditation and fashion 
 it to our liking with the file of our common sense 
 and the hammer of our enlightened will. Then, 
 truly, like the boy who wanted to give a pair of ear- 
 rings to his mother, may we minister soundly and 
 fruitfully to the follow creatures who come within 
 the sphere of our influence. 
 
 Not only information constitutes the matter of 
 literary study. A yet more important yield of the 
 literary mine is inspiration. We cannot get far, in 
 letters or in life, without it ; for if information is the 
 steam engine, inspiration is the steam. Inspiration, 
 though tangent on mood and manner, is more ex- 
 tensive than either ; it implies more than the pleasure 
 of sharing a writer's mood, more than the aesthetic 
 satisfaction of seeing how a work of art is put to- 
 gether. Inspiration is based on knowledge, vital 
 knowledge ; and it furnishes us with refreshment 
 and encouragement and light. It is the greatest 
 thing, the finest thing, that books real books can 
 give us. 
 
 Years ago I knew a teacher who from many points 
 of view might be regarded as a burdened, a disap- 
 pointed, a disillusioned man. Humanly speaking, 
 he was a failure. His health was shattered, his re- 
 lations with his superiors were strained, his in- 
 fluence in his classroom was nugatory. Had he 
 been unconscious of all this his case would not have 
 
6 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 been in the least tragical, for he could then have 
 done what many unconscious failures do live in a 
 fool's paradise of unwitting delusion and self-satis- 
 fied pretense. But he knew he was a failure; a 
 failure more complete than the little world about 
 him could perceive, for during many months even 
 the heavens were as brass to his prayers and the 
 consolations of the spiritual life were denied him. 
 He rose ultimately from his mound of sorrow and, 
 like holy Job, enjoyed presently the fruits natural 
 and supernatural of his patient efforts. But what 
 was it that had aided him to pass through that 
 somber valley and mount the steep ascent that led 
 him to sunshine and to peace? 
 
 It was the inspiration he discovered in great 
 books. Nerve-wracked in body and inexpressibly 
 weary in soul, he would drag himself from his ardu- 
 ous and apparently futile classroom duties, fling him- 
 self into a chair by the open window and spend an 
 hour in exalted communion with one of the royal 
 aristocracy of letters. He was no linguist and dis- 
 liked translations, so many world masterpieces were 
 closed books to him; but in English he covered a 
 wide range, reading with little system but with great 
 absorption Newman, Carlyle, Coleridge, Goldsmith, 
 Tennyson, Keats ; breasting the bitter but purifying 
 current of Shakespeare's tragedies, unravelling the 
 skein of life so dexterously fashioned by Dickens 
 and Thackeray. And every day, when the com- 
 munity bell called him to community duties, he arose 
 
MATTER, MANNER AND MOOD 7 
 
 renewed, refreshed, reinvigorated in body and in 
 mind. For every day his hour of reading had fur- 
 nished the armory of his spirit with a new set of 
 weapons for his grilling warfare; every day from 
 the exhaustless mine of literature he came forth 
 holding tightly in his hands a bag of gold dust of 
 inspiration. And day by day was his spirit chas- 
 tened and his outlook widened and his heart en- 
 larged ; and he saw God and himself and his fellow 
 men in an altered and a clearer light ; and when the 
 hour of his trial was over and the shadows lifted 
 and his liberation was at hand, he stepped forth to 
 meet the old vexations with the insight and courage 
 of a new man. 
 
 That man was no scholar and no genius; yet he 
 learned the secret of fruitful literary study. He 
 fell a willing victim to the witchery of artistic struc- 
 ture, and from the contemplation of the formal 
 excellence of the books he read he developed in 
 his own mental processes and in his own view of 
 life a sense of clearness and variety, symmetry and 
 proportion. He lost his own troubles and discord- 
 ances for the moment to share the varying moods 
 of the authors he read and thus learned some of the 
 secrets of what is called style. And, most important 
 of all, he accepted the books before him as vital 
 things, as portraits of life, commentaries on life, 
 interpretations of life; and hence came to him the 
 fine fruits of understanding and sympathy, wisdom 
 
8 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 and realization, enlightenment of mind and libera- 
 tion of spirit. 
 
 Yes, he learned the secret of literary study. For 
 literary study concerns itself with those three 
 things : The relation of books to life, which is the 
 matter of literature and the basis of vital literary 
 study; the structure, the technique, of books, which 
 is the manner of literature and the basis of formal 
 literary study; and the personality of books, which 
 is the mood of literature and the basis of (esthetic 
 literary study. For the appreciation of literature 
 is aesthetic, formal and vital, these three; and the 
 greatest of these is the vital. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 
 
 THE right teaching of a literary masterpiece is 
 fundamentally and essentially a process of appre- 
 ciation. The book we are teaching has some ex- 
 cellence and we want our pupils to realize that 
 excellence. We may tell them interesting facts 
 about the author, we may read them comments by 
 distinguished critics, we may have them study the 
 historical and social background of the book. But 
 all these things, and many other such things, are 
 secondary; were we to stop here, we should fall 
 into the error of the old-fashioned manual of litera- 
 ture and let the pupils know everything about a 
 writer except the things he wrote. Our conscious 
 and directing purpose is to lead our pupils to appre- 
 ciate the book. 
 
 We distinguish three kinds of appreciation 
 formal, aesthetic and vital. Formal appreciation 
 concerns itself with the make-up of the masterpiece, 
 with the materials used, the workmanship of the 
 author. It covers all the ground of grammar and 
 much of the field of rhetoric. Are the sentences 
 long or short, declarative or interrogative, periodic, 
 loose or balanced? Are the words in national, re- 
 
 9 
 
IO TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 putable and present use? Has the book structure 
 a beginning, a middle and an end? Such ques- 
 tions deal with details of formal appreciation. 
 
 .^Esthetic appreciation pertains to style. It formu- 
 lates the generally accepted qualities of style 
 such as conciseness, ornateness, vigor, clearness, 
 urbanity and studies the book from that point of 
 view. Is the author graceful in thought and ex- 
 pression? Is he suggestive in his narrative and 
 descriptive passages? Does he manifest sublimity, 
 humor, pathos? Is his work mainly dramatic or 
 mainly pictorial? And how, in these things, does 
 this book compare with books previously read? 
 Such questions deal with details of aesthetic appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 Vital appreciation, as the adjective indicates, 
 dwells upon the book in its relation to human life. 
 It considers the characters in the book as live 
 human beings, the settings of the book as a real 
 human background, the plot of the book as the 
 crossing and re-crossing of human motives and 
 human plans. It is on the lookout for commentaries 
 on life and on living, and such commentaries it in- 
 vestigates in the light of ethical teaching and per- 
 sonal experience. Do men and women say such 
 things and do such things in actual life? Do the 
 characters in the book remind me of any of my 
 acquaintances? Do some of the comments of the 
 author apply especially to my life and my problems? 
 What has the reading of this book taught me con- 
 
THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE II 
 
 cerning God and my fellow man and myself ? Such 
 questions deal with details of vital appreciation. 
 
 When we consider how literature is generally 
 taught and how teachers' handbooks maintain that 
 it ought to be taught, we find that the value of 
 aesthetic appreciation is recognized, that the value 
 of formal appreciation is over-emphasized, that the 
 value of vital appreciation is either inadequately per- 
 ceived or absolutely ignored. The children are en- 
 couraged to study the meaning and derivation of 
 words, to point out figures of speech, to analyze 
 the structure of episodes; but, generally speaking, 
 it would seem to be true that they are not encouraged 
 to regard literature as a portrait and interpretation 
 of life. "Even the best editions of our day," writes 
 the late George Gissing in "The Private Papers of 
 Henry Ryecroft," "have so much of the mere school- 
 book ; you feel so often that the man does not re- 
 gard his author as literature, but simply as a text." 
 This is surely a mistaken notion of the function 
 and aims of literary study. 
 
 Another mistake into which some pedagogical' 
 theorists fall is the assumption that these three sorts 
 of appreciation are arranged in a terrace ; that there 
 can be no aesthetic appreciation until the formal 
 appreciation has been completed, and that there can 
 be no vital appreciation until the pupils have mas- 
 tered the aesthetic aspects of the work studied. It 
 has even been said that the study of literature should 
 be exclusively formal in the grades, exclusively 
 
12 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 aesthetic in the high school and exclusively vital 
 in the college; that first should come the "drill" 
 period, next the "syntax" period and finally the 
 period of appreciation of the book as a contribution 
 to one's philosophy of life. 
 
 It cannot be too vigorously pointed out that such 
 a conception of pedagogical procedure possesses 
 but one merit and that a dubious one, namely, 
 mechanical symmetry. As a matter of fact, there 
 is room for all three kinds of appreciation in every 
 school grade; all three of them should come into 
 play in the teaching of every piece of literature ; and, 
 alike in the primary class and in the senior year of 
 college, most stress should be placed on vital appre- 
 ciation, less stress on aesthetic appreciation and 
 least stress on formal appreciation. The great, the 
 tragic error of much college teaching today a 
 heritage in part derived from the study of the 
 ancient languages and in part from the methods in 
 vogue in the German universities is to make true 
 appreciation of literature as an art degenerate into 
 the study of philology as a science. "How could 
 it be otherwise/' asks Dr. O'Hagan, in his essay 
 on "The Degradation of Scholarship," "when pe- 
 dantry with all its assumption and presumption 
 usurps the throne of scholarship, and true culture 
 often finds but little welcome in the classrooms and 
 academic halls of our land?" 
 
 The over-emphasis on the formal and aesthetic 
 aspects of literary study to the exclusion of essential 
 
THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 13 
 
 vital appreciation is happily indicated by the Rev- 
 erend Edward F. Garesche, S. J., in his Catholic 
 School Journal article on "The Training of 
 Writers": "It is rather amusing in the retrospect 
 to see how in the lives of successful authors their 
 school work in English has sometimes played a neg- 
 ligible part in their training for writing because 
 they detested grammar and hated rhetoric and be- 
 cause sometimes the models presented for them for 
 study in the classroom were so dissected and 
 anatomized that they lost every semblance of the 
 fair and living form of literature." 
 
 The study of literature will be- a fair and living 
 thing only when it consists mainly of vital appre- 
 ciation. And vital appreciation can exist only when 
 both teacher and pupils possess the feelings for 
 literature, when they realize that books are human 
 documents, filled with wisdom human and divine, 
 abounding with portraits of men and movements, 
 embodiments of human thought and human passion, 
 things palpitating and athrill with human strivings 
 and human speech. 
 
 The right attitude toward the great books of the 
 world is suggested to the teacher by the Catholic 
 poet, Aubrey de Vere, in his introduction to "Selec- 
 tions from the Poets." He quotes Bacon's sig- 
 nificant saying that "it is the office of poetry to 
 submit the shows of things to the desires of the 
 mind" ; and he amplifies the thought as follows : __J 
 
 "Meaning by the mind, the aspirations of that 
 
14 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 mens melior, or noble mind, which is the part of 
 man that retains the image of God and thirsts for 
 immortality. The world of sense, since the fall, 
 has lost the glory of that light which dwelt upon 
 its countenance as it was first created. In poetry 
 a portion of that light is restored ; for poetry is an 
 ideal art, which invests objects with a grandeur, 
 a freedom, and a purity not their own. When we 
 speak of 'poetic Justice/ we refer to the fact that 
 in poetry we require a justice more palpable and 
 swift than that which the eye discerns in the course 
 of actual events. When we speak of poetic Truth, 
 we refer to a truth essential and universal, and free 
 from the accidents to which the detail of common 
 things is, in appearance at least, subjected. Not less 
 sacred is that Beauty of which the poets in every 
 age have sung. It is nothing merely material, al- 
 though it manifests itself in material things. From 
 them it looks forth, as the soul looks forth from the 
 face." 
 
 What de Vere says specifically of poetry applies 
 equally to all great literature, to dramas and novels 
 and essays. All great books are transcripts of 
 human life. They purge life of its superfluities 
 and non-essentials, they compress it in point of time 
 and focus interest on its significant conditions and 
 qualities. To read Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur," 
 for example, is to concentrate upon certain phases 
 of human experience, actual or potential ; to under- 
 stand the feeling of emptiness and impotence that 
 
THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 1$ 
 
 comes after even mighty achievements, to feel the 
 weariness that follows defeat, to realize that faith 
 and faith alone can sustain a man in the great crises 
 of life. 
 
 And so it comes to pass that great books impart 
 a knowledge of human nature general and par- 
 ticular. They teach us to know man and to know 
 men. How one grows in spiritual and intellectual 
 stature as he reads Macaulay's essay on Milton ! 
 He discovers that Cavalier and Puritan are not 
 merely two figures in English history but that they 
 are two eternal human types, and that he himself 
 approximates to one or the other -and possesses cor- 
 responding advantages and defects. He sees now 
 as never before that loyalty is sometimes unright- 
 eous and that righteousness is sometimes disloyal; 
 that the good man finds it hard to be a tolerant 
 man, and that the man who puts not virtue in the 
 first place will be ultimately overcome. And the 
 great blind poet, hitherto an abstraction, becomes 
 real to him, and like himself a child of Heaven and 
 a child of sin, like himself the victim of pain and 
 penury and circumstance, like himself tormented 
 by unrealized ideals and the agony of unrest. And 
 all this and ever so much more, be it remarked in 
 passing, one may secure from the essay without so 
 much as suspecting that Macaulay wrote balanced 
 sentences. 
 
 The vital study of literature appreciates great 
 books as veritable treasure hoards of wisdom. In 
 
l6 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 Shakespeare's "As You Like It" even Touchstone's 
 foolish fancies are singularly wise. "Ay," cries 
 the philosophic man of motley, "now am I in Arden ; 
 the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a 
 better place : but travellers must be content." What 
 a world of suffering might not we all be spared 
 suffering, too, that hath no relish of salvation in it 
 if we could only realize that we have not here 
 a lasting city, that no matter whither we go or 
 what we undertake we are bound to find annoy- 
 ances and inconveniences, suspicion and ingratitude ! 
 Verily, travellers must be content ! Content to take 
 fair days and foul even as they come, to see the 
 best there is to see in forest flirts and banished 
 dukes, to read complacently both the leaves of the 
 forest and the leaves of the Book of Life "whose 
 pages," says Jeffery Farnol, "are forever a-turning, 
 wherein are marvels and wonders undreamed; 
 things to weep over, and some few to laugh at, if one 
 has but eyes in one's head to see withal." 
 
 And great books somehow seem to grow with our 
 growth. Dante means more to us today than he 
 did ten years ago, and ten years hence he will be 
 more potent still. Our reading acts upon our living 
 and our living reacts upon the books we love; and 
 age cannot wither them nor custom stale their in- 
 finite variety. It is as though every year another 
 candle were lighted, an added illumination thrown 
 upon the familiar printed page ; and as we read, lo, 
 new visions of life arise before us, new insights 
 
THE VITAL APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 17 
 
 come to caution and to guide, new moods give zest 
 to living and to labor and we lay us down anew to 
 pleasant dreams. 
 
 Vital appreciation means religious appreciation; 
 for God speaks to us in the world's great books. If 
 we study them exclusively as grammarians or 
 philologists or rhetoricians, I fail to understand 
 how we can hear in them His voice ; but once we 
 take them up as fragrant human documents the 
 heavens truly lie about us for we begin to perceive 
 somewhat of the ways of God with men. The old 
 belief that poets were possessed of wise and friendly 
 spirits who spoke in them and through them is not 
 an idle fancy, for in our best moments and in our 
 best work it is God's artistry that is wrought. Re- 
 flections of His Infinite Goodness and Truth and 
 Beauty are caught in literature and garnered for 
 the children of today and tomorrow; and surely, 
 if the Catholic school is to live up to its mission and 
 its ideal, it is right and necessary that its pupils 
 learn to read those books with open minds and 
 hearts. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MATTER IN THE DRAMA 
 
 THE objective of the vital study of literature is 
 to realize the truth of the definition of art as a 
 picture and an interpretation of human life; to 
 secure increased knowledge of and sympathy with 
 our fellow men ; to learn more about ourselves, 
 our tendencies, our prospects, our environment, our 
 potentialities ; to grasp a little better some concep- 
 tion of God's plan in dealing with man and with 
 men. 
 
 So much for theory. Now, let us apply the 
 theory of vital appreciation to Shakespeare's "J u lru s 
 Caesar," select certain aspects of the drama sus- 
 ceptible of correlation with human life as we see 
 it and know it, and frame a few suggestions regard- 
 ing the study of the play from the point of view of 
 matter. 
 
 Like unto Us. Despite the fact that this play 
 was written more than three hundred years ago 
 about people who lived more than two thousand 
 years ago, it is distinctly up-to-date. Fashions in 
 clothes have changed, and social customs may 
 have varied somewhat, and methods of warfare 
 have grown more death-dealing and intensive, but 
 
MATTER IN THE DRAMA IQ 
 
 in every essential and in very many non-essentials 
 life is much the same in the play as in our own 
 day and place and generation. Then as now the 
 game of politics consisted largely in plotting to 
 overthrow a ruler on the pretext that he had taken 
 too much power unto himself. Then as now con- 
 spiracy thrived best in the dark, and yet news of it 
 managed to leak out. Then as now mobs were 
 swung hither and yon by means of appeals to their 
 emotions then by orations, now by newspapers. 
 Then as now grave misunderstandings arose be- 
 tween friends and brothers-in-arms. Then as now 
 great men like Caesar and Brutus were most appre- 
 ciated after they were dead. 
 
 Idealist and Politician. Dozens of men like 
 Brutus and Cassius walk our streets today. The 
 Brutus sort are idealists ; the Cassius sort are politi- 
 cians. Brutus has exalted motives in joining the 
 conspiracy; he is a philosopher and a patriot and 
 is remarkably disinterested. Cassius organizes the 
 cabal against Caesar mainly because of his personal 
 antipathy for Caesar; he is plainly an opportunist, 
 intent ever on the main chance. Brutus loves Rome 
 more; Cassius loves Cassius more. Of the two 
 Brutus is by far the nobler man. 
 
 And yet, in the practical affairs of life, in the de- 
 tails of daily conduct, it is Cassius who possesses 
 the greater share of pragmatic wisdom. Every time 
 there is a difference of opinion between Brutus and 
 Cassius, Brutus is noble and Cassius is right. Thus 
 
2O TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 Cassius wants to do away with Antony on the ides 
 of March, while Brutus opposes such a course as 
 ruthless and sanguinary; yet allowing Antony to 
 live proves the ultimate undoing of the conspirators. 
 Again, when Brutus consents, most cordially and 
 generously, to allow Antony to deliver Caesar's 
 funeral oration, Cassius foresees the results and 
 vigorously expostulates. As usual, he is overruled; 
 and, as usual, he is right. Being a practical politi- 
 cian, Cassius has a salutary distrust of his own 
 powers; being an idealist, Brutus takes it for 
 granted that once he, Brutus, has addressed the mul- 
 titude, no harm can be done by Antony. He is like 
 the teacher who had occasion to leave his class and 
 was told that his youthful charges were playing 
 riotously. "Impossible," he said calmly "Before 
 leaving, I told them to remain perfectly quiet." 
 
 The intimacy between these two men brings out 
 another important truth : If the bad affects the 
 good, the good also affects the bad. Cassius leads 
 Brutus into the conspiracy and to eventual ruin; 
 but Brutus makes Cassius a bigger and a nobler 
 man. If we compare the Cassius of the first act 
 the unscrupulous, time-serving, sneering, scheming 
 politician with the Cassius of the last act who 
 speaks not unworthily of life and duty and goes to 
 his death with something akin to grandeur, we shall 
 perceive how contact with a noble mind begets 
 nobility. 
 
 The fact that Brutus and Cassius, defeated in 
 
MATTER IN THE DRAMA 21 
 
 their aspirations, seek surcease in self-destruction is 
 a striking example of whither leads the ambition 
 that is not based on spiritual motives. They were 
 not Christians, they knew naught of Our Lord's 
 teaching and example; and so on the field of 
 Philippi they did that which, from their pagan view- 
 point, was really the only consistent thing to do. 
 Theoretical ethics may prove to us very conclusively 
 that suicide is cowardly and illogical ; but in a prac- 
 tical issue when he faces a situation that seems 
 hopeless the man who acts from purely natural 
 motives takes refuge in self-destruction. Brutus 
 can theorize about the evil of suicide as well as any 
 one: 
 
 "I do find it cowardly and vile, 
 For fear of what might fall, so to prevent 
 The time of life." 
 
 But almost in the same breath, when facing the 
 prospect of being dragged in disgraceful chains 
 through the streets of Rome, Brutus announces his 
 determination to fall by his own hand rather than 
 suffer so great an indignity: 
 
 "No, Cassius, no; think not, thou noble Roman, 
 That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome; 
 He bears too great a mind." 
 
 In literature as in life the man who kills himself 
 is the man who has not known God or who has 
 turned away from God ; to lean upon human motives 
 merely is to lean upon a supple reed. 
 
22 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 Arrested Development. Were we to know 
 nothing of Julius Caesar save what we learn about 
 him in this play we should be loath to consider him 
 a great man. We find him here insufferably vain 
 and pompous and opinionated, extremely stubborn 
 in little things, changing his mind over and over 
 again and then prating about his polar star con- 
 stancy. Can this be the man who in point of fact 
 won so many victories on the field and in the forum 
 and who left the impress of his personality on the 
 greatest empire the world has seen? Is Shake- 
 speare attempting to caricature an immortal? If 
 this be Caesar, what is the matter with him? 
 
 Caesar, as Shakespeare conceives him, is a most 
 fascinating study in arrested development. He has 
 achieved supreme power in the Roman state; he 
 has defeated his formidable rival, Pompey; he is 
 in fact, if not in name, a king. And he rests on 
 his laurels; he stops growing. His victories have 
 made him over-confident, over-secure; his place in 
 the sun has turned his head. And so we find him 
 uttering such nonsense as, 
 
 "danger knows full well 
 That Caesar is more dangerous than he: 
 We are two lions litter'd in one day, 
 And I the elder and more terrible." 
 
 "Caesar shall forth: the things that threatened me 
 Ne'er look'd but on my back; when they shall see 
 The face of Caesar, they are vanished." 
 
 "I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd 
 Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar." 
 
MATTER IN THE DRAMA 23 
 
 Do we not recognize a Caesar or two in actual 
 life? Are there not men, risen to high place in 
 civic, in academic or ecclesiastical life, who have a 
 strikingly similar good conceit of themselves? 
 Earlier in their careers they were sane and steady 
 and humble; they then recognized the necessity of 
 walking in the ways of prudence, of not trusting 
 unduly to their powers and intuitions ; and so they 
 were successful, and so they climbed high. And 
 now, having reached the goal of their endeavors, 
 they become vain and childish and self-sufficient ; 
 they hunger after fawning and flattery; they de- 
 velop numerous pettish whims and eccentricities; 
 and their guiding principle is not, "Non nobis 
 Domine, non nobis," but "always I am Caesar !" 
 
 The Secret of Oratory. It is not without in- 
 terest to draw a few comparisons between the 
 speech of Brutus and the oration of Antony. 
 Brutus makes absolutely no appeal to the emotions 
 of his auditors; Antony appeals to nothing else, 
 though in places he makes an elaborate pretense of 
 "reasoning with" the citizens. As Le Bon has ad- 
 mirably pointed out in his "Psychology of the 
 Crowd," real men in a real mob are never influenced 
 by argument pure and simple. "Logic," says Car- 
 dinal Newman in his "Grammar of Assent," "makes 
 but a sorry rhetoric with the multitude; first shoot 
 round corners; and you may not despair of con- 
 verting by syllogism." This Brutus did not know, 
 
24 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 and he failed; this Antony did know, and he suc- 
 ceeded. 
 
 Furthermore, Antony suits his speech to the com- 
 prehension of his auditors. Realizing that he is 
 not talking to trained thinkers, he is far from being 
 logical, cold and formal. As he himself says, he 
 only speaks right on. His is the art that conceals 
 art. Brutus makes use of abstract terms "love," 
 'Valor," "ambition," "honor," "bondman," "free- 
 man." But Antony revels in the concrete, the 
 specific; he leaps down from the pulpit, holds aloft 
 Caesar's blood-stained cloak, fingers the rents made 
 by the conspirators' daggers and exhibits the gashed 
 and gory corpse itself. 
 
 Nor is this all. Besides drawing the sympathy 
 and compassion of his hearers to the dead Caesar, 
 he skillfully plays upon their self-interest and their 
 self-love; he pauses at times, seemingly overcome 
 with grief, that his words may the better sink into 
 their hearts; he makes the ostensibly courteous ex- 
 pression, "honorable man," the vehicle of a subtle 
 and ever deepening irony ; to whet the curiosity and 
 sustain the interest of his auditors, he delays the 
 reading of Caesar's will. Despite his own studi- 
 ously modest disavowal of the fact, Antony is an 
 accomplished and resourceful orator. He has the 
 art of talking down to his audience, of observing 
 the effects of his speaking, of reading the expres- 
 sions that flit over the faces massed before him. 
 And those men who, a few moments earlier, would 
 
MATTER IN THE DRAMA 2$ 
 
 scarce suffer him to mount the rostrum, who ground 
 their teeth and shook their fists and muttered, 
 " 'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here !" 
 these men are now to Antony as clay in the pot- 
 ter's hand. And presently the once "noble Brutus" 
 is a murderer and a villain, those "honorable men" 
 are detestable traitors; and Caesar, the tyrant, is 
 "royal Caesar" and "most noble Caesar." 
 
 The Art of Handling Men. Much practical 
 wisdom is to be found in the way Cassius who 
 pre-eminently knows human nature enlists friends 
 and adherents. When he seeks to win Brutus over 
 to the conspiracy he talks much of honor and 
 patriotism and eloquently laments the passing of 
 the good old times ; but the blunt and corpulent 
 Casca he merely invites to dinner and I am sure 
 that the food was excellent and that the feast was 
 not in all respects in harmony with prohibitionary 
 perfection. He foresees things, too ; note how he 
 arranges to have Antony drawn away from the 
 senate chamber before the assassination. He knows 
 when to apply the spur: "Casca, be sudden, for 
 we fear prevention." Later on he strengthens the 
 revolutionary army by spending money lavishly. 
 Most important of all, he knows when to yield to 
 Brutus, even though Brutus is less experienced 
 than he ; Cassius is much too skillful a leader of men 
 to act on the assumption that he is always in the 
 right he can on occasion give an inch and take a 
 mile. 
 
26 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 It would be an easy thing to dwell more fully on 
 other vital aspects of "Julius Caesar." Repeated 
 readings of the.play, frequent reconstructions of its 
 most striking scenes, familiar intercourse with its 
 leading characters, assiduous meditation on the 
 pearls of wisdom with which it abounds, and, more 
 than anything else, insistent comparison of the play 
 with the life in us and around us these things will 
 bring us close to the sources of its power. The 
 tragedy of "Julius Caesar" possesses that one touch 
 of nature which makes the whole world kin. This 
 it is which verifies the prophecy of Cassius when, 
 standing in the senate chamber over the prostrate 
 form of "the mightiest Julius/' he waved his bloody 
 sword and cried in words immortal: 
 
 "How many ages hence 
 Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er 
 In states unborn and accents yet unknown!" 
 
 /p*c**2t f^ 
 
 Q-f-t^ 1 ' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MATTER IN THE ESSAY 
 
 WE conveniently divide all literary productions 
 * nto four classes : The poem, the drama, the novel 
 and the essay. Of these the^ssay is at once the 
 most varied and the most inclusive; in its case 
 definition is all but impossible. Indeed, for prac- 
 tical purposes the friostacceptable definition of the 
 essay ^s a s tat emenFof what it is not, and we may 
 truly say that the essay is that literary form which 
 is not poetry, drama or fiction. Do we take up a 
 piece of literature which does not square with our 
 definition of the drama, the novel or the poem? 
 Then^we are justified in classifying it as an essay. 
 For of all literary forms the essay is the most-elastic 
 Essays are Cardinal Newman's "Apologia pro Vita 
 Sua" and Brother Azarias's "Philosophy of Litera- 
 ture"; essays are Francis Thompson's impassioned 
 delineation of Shelley and Charles Lamb's disquisi- 
 tion on "Poor Relations" ; essays are Milton's 
 "Tractate on Education" and Archbishop Spalding's 
 "Opportunity." 
 
 In the essay are contained some of the richest 
 treasures of English literature, treasures which are 
 part of the intellectual inheritance of our pupils; 
 
 27 
 
28 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 and it is the duty of the teacher of English to in- 
 troduce our children to this vast store of culture 
 and learning and delight. The task has special 
 difficulties, the chief of which is the impression 
 shared by most young people that the essay, even 
 at its best, makes dull and dry reading. The average 
 child, once his eyes are opened to the charm of 
 poetry, turns naturally and willingly to the treasure- 
 trove of verse; once his imagination is kindled, he 
 finds stimulating pleasure in studying the drama; 
 and as for the novel, it is merely a matter of 
 directing his taste toward the best, for he revels 
 in prose fiction. But the essay sounds forbidding 
 and looks austere ; and the first step in its teaching 
 is to convey the conviction that, rightly understood 
 and rightly approached, the essay is a source of 
 information and of joy. 
 
 How can this be done? Mainly by contagion 
 and by example. Here, as in everything else, the 
 teacher will succeed in proportion as he himself 
 is fond of essay reading, in proportion as he himself 
 knows the value of communing with the great 
 English essayists, in proportion as he himself turns 
 to the essay for enjoyment and refreshment. Then 
 let him take one of his favorite essays into class 
 and read a portion of it to his pupils, stopping now 
 and then for a brief comment of explanation and 
 appreciation. The method is simple, almost ridicu- 
 lously simple; but it is pedagogically sound and 
 wonderfully potent. The work of the teacher is 
 
MATTER IN THE ESSAY 2Q 
 
 more than half done when he has brought his pupils 
 to see that wise men and good men and charming 
 men have enshrined some of their finest thoughts 
 and moods in the essay form. 
 
 "After all/' wrote Mr. Joseph Francis Wickham 
 in America a few years ago, "the essayist is very 
 akin to the poet, especially the writer of the familiar, 
 personal essay. For he can put the whole of this 
 little work into his philosophy, weaving the long 
 stretches of centuries into a tapestry full of color 
 and glow and imagery. He can distil the memory 
 of absent friends, the echoes of once-heard voices, 
 the gladness of youth, the joy of sunlight, the dis- 
 may of vain desires, the triumph of realized dreams, 
 the glory of a moonlit sea, the grandeur of a snow- 
 storm, the sweetness of a child's smile, the majesty 
 of a Roman ruin, the thousand, thousand realities 
 and recollections and visions that round out our 
 lives ; from all this he can win the essence, and give 
 it to us in an abiding fragrance that can comfort 
 and content and charm. We all seek comfort; we 
 all seek content; but no less are we ever on the 
 quest for that elusive something known as charm. 
 We look for it in plays, in houses, in villages, in 
 people, in so many things under the sun; and we 
 find it in many things if we look long enough. If 
 we wish, and wish sincerely enough, we cannot 
 miss a very delightful, perennial charm in the gentle 
 art of reading essays." 
 
 To every striving teacher of English I urgently 
 
30 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 commend that paragraph for long and fruitful 
 meditation. It does not directly tell us how to teach 
 the essay, but it does something vastly more im- 
 portant; it indicates the spirit in which we should 
 do our teaching. 
 
 It is possible to elaborate a lengthy and complex 
 classification of essays, but for the present pur- 
 pose it should suffice to group all essays into a 
 threefold division: Essays of interest chiefly for 
 their matter; essays of interest chiefly for their 
 manner; and essays of interest chiefly for their 
 mood. And in the study of any particular essay 
 we have a sufficient basis for enlightened under- 
 standing when we examine it from those three view- 
 points of matter, manner and mood. 
 
 The study of matter in the essay is an applica- 
 tion of the principle of vital appreciation in litera- 
 ture. The essay gives us information, it adds 
 definitely to our stock of knowledge; it broadens 
 our view of life, it widens our range of sympathies ; 
 it modifies some of our crude opinions and impres- 
 sions, it puts familiar things in a somewhat unusual 
 light ; it impresses us with certain great truths which 
 heretofore we may have known but never realized; 
 it teaches us some consoling and some humiliating 
 things about ourselves and about other people. 
 
 A good example of the essay of matter is 
 Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies." It draws our atten- 
 tion to the importance of right reading, and it 
 awakens our interest in worthwhile books. Be- 
 
MATTER IN THE ESSAY 31 
 
 sides, it gives us hints as to the manner in which 
 a book is to be read and warns us against wrong 
 methods of reading and thinking. Under the spell 
 of the writer's knowledge and style, we almost for- 
 get that we are reading a printed page; rather it 
 seems that we are sitting by the fire beside a learned 
 and kindly and affable gentleman who is telling 
 us, out of the fulness of his mind and heart, some 
 of the things he has learned in the course of his 
 long experience with art and life and books. 
 
 How may we aid our pupils to secure a grasp 
 of the matter of the essay? How may we enable 
 them to draw from it both information and inspira- 
 tion? 
 
 Gaining information is like shooting rabbits ; you 
 may walk all day through woods and fields with 
 never a pull of the trigger, if you don't keep your 
 eyes open. Knowledge comes to the alert. Listless 
 readers generally learn little or nothing from books 
 because they are on the alert for little or nothing. 
 Hence, we must teach the pupils to expect informa- 
 tion. For this purpose, before they have read the 
 essay at all, it is well to have them make, either 
 orally or in tabular form, a brief statement of what 
 they know on the subject and of what they expect 
 to discover in the reading of the essay. It is like 
 teaching them before prayer to prepare their souls. 
 
 Again, encourage them to read with pencil in 
 hand. That means to encourage the practice of 
 note-taking not the formal, ready-made notes 
 
32 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 written on the blackboard by the teacher and 
 slavishly copied by the automatic class but those 
 spontaneous notes which represent the reader's reac- 
 tion to the essayist's stimulus. Let them list un- 
 familiar names, questionable opinions, statements 
 of facts which seem to be incorrect or misleading, 
 expressions of heretofore unrealized truth. Let 
 them look up references, run down allusions, even 
 now and then verify quotations; and let the note- 
 books if there be notebooks represent this indi- 
 vidual work. 
 
 And, provided it is not overdone, there is value 
 I in the practice of summarizing the essay by para- 
 l graphs and by topics. The value inheres in the 
 device if the work is done by pupils ; it disappears 
 if the teacher makes the summary and the students 
 merely play follow-the-leader. Then, of course, 
 class discussions, real discussions, will prove of 
 value. The pupils should do most of the talking, 
 and no one pupil should do too much of it. Out 
 of the class discussions will grow debates, formal 
 and informal, and from the debates the pupils will 
 be sent back to the text for proofs and texts and 
 similitudes. If, for example, Newman's essay on 
 the university at Athens is studied in this thorough 
 and individualistic way, every child in the class 
 will finish the work with a good general knowledge 
 of the content of essay, with a more minute knowl- 
 edge of many things than he would otherwise se- 
 
MATTER IN THE ESSAY 33 
 
 cure in ten years and with a definite understanding 
 of what the great cardinal was talking about. 
 
 And as for inspiration well, that is somewhat 
 like the grace of God; it is beyond price and be- 
 yond mere human effort. But its basis is interest 
 broad, sane, cumulative interest ; and that interest 
 will always be found in the class where the teacher 
 is a real lover of books. If the teacher is enthusi- 
 astic about Newman, if the teacher has learned from 
 Newman some of the most valuable lessons of 
 life, if the teacher is consciously striving to emu- 
 late Newman's gratifying clearness of thought and 
 Newman's virile and idiomatic diction, if the teacher 
 feels, in short, that Newman is called great in the 
 kingdom of letters in that class truly will the 
 kingdom of letters be at hand. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MANNER IN THE DRAMA 
 
 THIS is not going to be a specimen lesson in Eng- 
 lish. Our purpose is, not to dictate methods of 
 teaching Shakespeare's "Julius Csesar," but to in- 
 dicate the materials and the range of formal ap- 
 preciation, as distinguished from the appreciation 
 which we will call (esthetic and the appreciation 
 which we call vital. 
 
 By formal appreciation we mean a study of the 
 body of a literary masterpiece as distinguished from 
 its soul. We investigate what might be called its 
 physical, its mechanical elements. We observe of 
 what materials it is composed, we note how its parts 
 are put together, we discuss its external form and 
 stature. It is the least important kind of apprecia- 
 tion; but it is not intrinsically unimportant. The 
 principal phases of formal study may be summed 
 up under eight heads: i. Sources; 2. Whole Struc- 
 ture; 3. Part Structure; 4. Verse Form; 5. Figures 
 of Speech ; 6. Sentence Characteristics ; 7. Word 
 Characteristics ; 8. Allusions and References. 
 
 i. Sources. The direct source of Shakespeare's 
 "Julius Caesar" is Sir Thomas North's English 
 version of Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians 
 
 34 
 
MANNER IN THE DRAMA 35 
 
 and Romans"; the indirect source is, of course, 
 Plutarch's original of that famous work, especially 
 the lives of Caesar, Brutus and Antony. It is 
 to be noted that in his selection of incidents Shake- 
 speare follows Plutarch closely, and that some- 
 times he takes whole passages from the North 
 translation, changing only a few words here and 
 there. The student should make a detailed com- 
 parison of such parallel passages and endeavor to 
 formulate the principles that guided Shakespeare 
 in altering the prose version. Such principles are 
 the exigencies of the verse form, verbal form, 
 verbal economy, picturesqueness of presentation 
 and the requirements of dramatic structure. An- 
 swers should be found for such questions as, What 
 episodes in Plutarch did Shakespeare omit, and 
 why? What was Shakespeare's motive in com- 
 pressing the narrative in point of time? In his 
 deviations from the text of North has Shakespeare 
 invariably improved on his source, and in what way ? 
 2. Whole Structure. This part of the study 
 involves a consideration of the nature of the drama 
 as a literary form. What is a drama? How does 
 it differ from a novel and from a narrative poem? 
 Is the distinguishing characteristic of the dramatic 
 (a) dialogue; or (b) division into acts and scenes; 
 or (c) a series of climaxes; or (d) a conflict of 
 wills; or (e) an embodiment of contrast? Which 
 of these theories of dramatic workmanship most 
 successfully applies to "J u l ms Caesar"? How do 
 
36 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 you distinguish between physical action and 
 dramatic action? Apply to this play the precept 
 of Aristotle that a drama must have (a) a be- 
 ginning, (b) a middle, and (c) a conclusion. What 
 do you mean by the climax of a play? How does 
 it differ from the conclusion? To what extent are 
 the traditional "unities" of time, place and action 
 observed in "Julius Caesar" ? Answering these and 
 similar questions involves a comparison of "Julius 
 Caesar" with other dramas and with representative 
 novels and poems. 
 
 3. Structure of Parts. "Julius Caesar," though 
 essentially a drama, contains specimens of the 
 forms of discourse commonly classified as narra- 
 tion, description, exposition and argumentation. 
 Specimens of each of those forms should be dis- 
 cussed and analyzed and compared. For instance, 
 the play contains two passages that may roughly 
 be called orations. Which of them the speech of 
 Brutus, or the speech of Antony is a true oration, 
 and why? Which of them appeals mainly to the 
 intellect, and which mainly to the emotions? 
 Which of the two orators talks over the heads of 
 his auditors? Compare these speeches with other 
 speeches in Shakespeare such as Portia's plea for 
 mercy and Richard Ill's address to his troops be- 
 fore the Battle of Bosworth. Compare them with 
 representative orations such as Webster's Bunker 
 Hill address and Robert Emmet's vindication. As 
 a result of such comparisons attempt to formulate 
 
MANNER IN THE DRAMA 37 
 
 the essential qualities of a good oration. Follow a 
 similar method of procedure with passages that are 
 mainly narrative and descriptive. 
 
 4. Verse Form. What do you suppose was 
 Shakespeare's motive in writing some portions of 
 the play in verse and others in prose? Strengthen 
 your opinion by comparing the prose and the verse 
 portions of "Julius Caesar" with the corresponding 
 portions of other Shakespearean plays. Most of 
 the metrical portions of "Julius Caesar" are written 
 in blank verse, but occasional rhymes are intro- 
 duced; what is the purpose of the rhyming lines? 
 Apply your knowledge of English prosody (meter, 
 rhyme, rhythm, stress, etc.) to the verse portions 
 of the play. Why is scansion in English verse of 
 less moment than in Latin verse? Quote passages 
 from the verse portions of this play which would 
 lose much of their effect if written in prose. Is 
 it easier to write blank verse than to write rhyming 
 verse? Try it, and see. Compare a bit of Shake- 
 speare's blank verse with passages from Milton's 
 "Paradise Lost" and Tennyson's "Idyls of the 
 King." In which of the three poets do you find 
 the highest degree of (a) smoothness, (b) majesty, 
 (c) vigor, (d) variety? Which is easiest to mem- 
 orize? Why? Note how the correct reading of 
 Shakespeare's blank verse shows that certain words 
 were pronounced differently in his day, that, for 
 instance, interred is a trisyllable in the line, 
 
 "The good is oft interred with their bones" ; 
 
38 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 that, generally, the terminal syllable tion approxi- 
 mates more closely to she-on than to our present- 
 day shun. 
 
 5. Figures of Speech. This phase of the study 
 involves nothing more than an application to "Julius 
 Caesar" of the classification of figurative language 
 set forth in the ordinary school rhetoric. For some 
 reason or other, the dissection of figures of speech 
 receives far too much attention in some classes; 
 indeed, we have known of instances where it con- 
 stituted the sum total of literary study. That is 
 an abuse; but tha abuse of a pedagogical aid is 
 no argument against its judicious and rightly pro- 
 portioned use. 
 
 6. Sentence Characteristics. We have here an 
 opportunity of peeping into Shakespeare's workshop 
 and seeing just how he put his words together. Let 
 us take such a sentence as the following: 
 
 "The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks; 
 They are all fire and every one doth shine; 
 But there's but one in all doth hold his place : 
 So in the world; 'tis furnish'd well with men, 
 And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; 
 Yet in the number I do know but one 
 That unassailable holds on his rank, 
 Unshaked of motion : and that I am he, 
 Let me a little show it, even in this ; 
 That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd, 
 And constant do remain to keep him so." 
 
 Here we have three general divisions: a com- 
 parison, an assertion and a proof. The comparison, 
 as all comparisons must have, has two members: 
 The skies painted with unnumber'd sparks, and 
 
MANNER IN THE DRAMA 39 
 
 the world furnished well with men. The element 
 of dissimilarity on which the simile is based is the 
 distinction, in the skies and in the world, between 
 the many and the one: The stars are all fire and 
 they all shine, the men are flesh and blood and 
 apprehensive; the one star doth hold his place, the 
 one man holds on his rank. Now comes, with the 
 tremendous emphasis of brevity, the assertion: I 
 am he; and here we have the backbone, the apex, 
 the climax of the sentence, which flows gracefully 
 and impressively to its conclusion by means of the 
 proof of the assertion. The proof, preceded by 
 the transitional element, "Let me a little show it, 
 even in this/' consists of two parts : I was constant 
 and I am constant. 
 
 The foregoing is an example of the sort of 
 sentence analysis that best serves to bring out the 
 meaning of the text studied, to develop the ob- 
 servation and critical judgment of the student and 
 to reveal the proper manner of using words, the 
 material of spoken and written speech. There is 
 considerably less pedagogical worth in the old 
 method of breaking up the sentence into its com- 
 ponent clauses and resting satisfied with a percep- 
 tion of the purely grammatical relations of their 
 parts. A sentence must be regarded primarily and 
 essentially as the expression of a thought; to in- 
 terject mention of correlative phrases and subor- 
 dinate clauses is merely to confuse the issue. The 
 student who learns to analyze a sentence with 
 
4O TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 reference to the correspondence of thought to ex- 
 pression will absorb correct usage instead of learn- 
 ing it out of a book; and when it is secured by 
 means of absorption it stands a much better chance 
 of becoming an integral part of his thought process 
 and his expression process. 
 
 For the rest, the ordinary classification of sen- 
 tences into declarative, imperative, interrogative and 
 exclamatory; into simple, complex and compound; 
 into periodic, loose, balanced and mixed, may be 
 applied to suitable passages of the play. The text 
 will furnish material for illustrations of the teach- 
 ings of the student's manual of rhetoric. The one 
 caution to be kept in mind is that classification and 
 analysis are means, not ends. 
 
 7. Word Characteristics. The possibilities of 
 study from this point of view are almost infinite. 
 For example, in the sentence already used for an- 
 other purpose, let us take his in the third line. 
 Why not its? An alert pupil might offer the ex- 
 planation that Shakespeare is personifying the 
 north star; but such is far from the fact. Rather, 
 the poet, for the purpose of his comparison, holds 
 in his mind a distinction between the inanimate 
 stars and the living men of flesh and blood. The 
 explanation is found in the simple but illuminating 
 historical fact that the word its was not in use 
 in Shakespeare's day; the possessive singular of 
 it was his, even as at present the possessive plural, 
 their or theirs, is applied indiscriminately to things 
 
MANNER IN THE DRAMA 4! 
 
 as well as to persons. Again, there is the word 
 apprehensive, in the fifth line of our excerpt. In 
 modern usage the word means something very 
 different from what was in Shakespeare's mind. 
 A man is apprehensive when he fears an impend- 
 ing disaster, when he is vaguely conscious of an 
 approaching calamity. In that sense, in the modern 
 sense, it could be said that in this play Calpurnia 
 was apprehensive when she begged Caesar not to 
 leave his house on the morning of the fatal day. 
 But in the line, 
 
 "And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive," 
 
 the word means, capable of reasoning, of under- 
 standing; endowed with intelligence. And then 
 we look to the derivation of the word and find that 
 it came into English through the French from a 
 Latin verb meaning, literally (ad-prehendo), to 
 grasp, to lay hold of something. In the modern 
 sense, we lay hold of an unpleasant likelihood; in 
 the Shakespearean sense, we are able to lay hold 
 of intellectual entities. 
 
 8. Allusions and References. A reference is 
 direct, an allusion is indirect. I allude when I 
 speak of "a distinguished citizen of Oyster Bay/' 
 and I refer when I speak of "the late Theodore 
 Roosevelt." A very important part of our study 
 of "Julius Caesar" is to understand the allusions 
 and references with which the play abounds : Lu- 
 percalia, Pompey's statue, the ides of March, rascal 
 
42 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 counters, Anchises; and this not least in impor- 
 tance the cobbler's shower of puns in the opening 
 scene of the play. It is here that school editions 
 with notes are really helpful. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MANNER IN THE ESSAY 
 
 IN every piece of good writing matter, manner 
 and mood are agreeably fused, just as in every good 
 orchestra brass and wood and string instruments 
 are agreeably harmonized. The literary master- 
 piece is like the fair valley in Dante's "Purgatorio" 
 where nature wrought "of the sweetness of a thou- 
 sand odors one rare and blended fragrance." In 
 art as in life the finished product is a synthesis. 
 But when we study a masterpiece of living, of 
 orchestration or of writing we necessarily proceed 
 to analysis, to taking to pieces. We isolate the com- 
 ponent parts and examine them separately. 
 
 We are intent on matter when we answer the 
 question, What does this author teach us ? We are 
 intent on mood when we answer the question, What 
 does this author make me feel? We are intent on 
 manner when we answer the question, How does 
 this author impart the lesson and how does he con- 
 vey his emotional mood ? 
 
 The study of manner in the essay is an applica- 
 tion of the principle of formal appreciation in the 
 study of literature. From this point of view we 
 consider the essay in its technical aspects, as a 
 
 43 
 
y| /| TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 work of art. It is a piece of good writing; and, 
 interested as we are in the process of learning how 
 to write, we take the masterpiece to pieces to find 
 out how it has been constructed. We consider the 
 general plan of the work what the author pro- 
 posed to himself as the scope and method of the 
 essay. We examine the order and arrangement of 
 his ideas, and the devices he employed to secure 
 emphasis, ease and variety. We study his para- 
 graph structure, noting in several instances how he 
 expanded and developed the germ of thought con- 
 tained in his topic sentence; and we observe where 
 the topic sentence comes at the beginning of the 
 paragraph, where it comes at the end, where it 
 comes in the middle, where it is divided and where 
 it is only implied. We make a study of his sentence 
 structure, noting the variety in sentence length and 
 sentence formation. We discuss the author's choice 
 of words and list those words which are new to us 
 or which are used in an unfamiliar sense. In gen- 
 eral, we apply all we know of grammar and rhetoric 
 to the essay under consideration. 
 
 Manner is the how of the essay. We are asking 
 about the author's manner or style when we put 
 such questions as these: Are the sentences gen- 
 erally long or short, relatively simple or highly com- 
 plex, prevailingly loose or prevailingly periodic? Is 
 the essay easy to follow? Is it possible to make a 
 plan of the essay? Is the language familiar and 
 idiomatic, or is it bookish and learned? 
 
MANNER IN THE ESSAY 4$ 
 
 The study of manner, therefore, is the study of 
 technique. It involves a classification of the tools 
 of writing and an investigation of the ways those 
 tools are used. Such study has a twofold purpose : 
 First, by means of it we seek to know the author 
 better, to secure a more definite knowledge of what 
 he has to say and of what he thinks and feels ; and, 
 secondly, we seek to learn how to express our own 
 thoughts and feelings. The study of style or man- 
 ner is the connecting link between reading and 
 writing. Without reading, we should have no mate- 
 rial to analyze; and without writing, we should be 
 unable to carry our findings into fruitful practice. 
 
 Some notion of the importance of giving due at- 
 tention to manner in literary study may be gained 
 from De Quincey's famous essay on style, in the 
 course of which he speaks of "that general prin- 
 ciple in England which tends in all things to set 
 the matter above the manner, the substance above 
 the external show a principle noble in itself, but 
 inevitably wrong wherever [as is the case with every 
 genuine literary masterpiece] the manner blends 
 inseparably with the substance." The study of 
 style enables us to evaluate an author and to ad- 
 mire his ability, not blindly or impressionably, but 
 with poise and discrimination. As De Quincey well 
 puts it, "to feel is not to feel consciously. Many 
 a man is fascinated by the artifices of composition 
 who fancies that it is the subject which has operated 
 
46 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 so potently. . . . That is good rhetoric for the 
 hustings which is bad for a book." 
 
 Every worthwhile writer is susceptible of study 
 from the viewpoints of matter, manner and mood, 
 for in every piece of good writing all three elements 
 find place. But every writer is, consciously or 
 otherwise, mainly concerned with one of the three. 
 In Charles Lamb it is the mood which chiefly 
 matters; we do get some information from the 
 gentle Elia and we do learn something of the art 
 of writing; but for the most part we read him 
 because of the lure and variety of his moods. In 
 Coleridge's prose, notably the "Biographia Liter- 
 aria" and the "Lectures on Shakespeare," while 
 we observe the mood of the scholar and the prac- 
 ticed art of the literary man, we are mainly intent 
 on the substance, the matter, the thought; Cole- 
 ridge's prose is deserving of our best efforts be- 
 cause of the information and stimulation it im- 
 parts, because it embodies the utterances of a man 
 of keen and ripened intellect who has much to tell 
 us that we might profitably learn. Lamb is like a 
 whimsical acquaintance who sits by the fire chatting 
 about this, that and the other, coloring books and 
 men and life, teacups, chimney sweeps and card 
 games, with the glow of his fancy; Coleridge is 
 like a dignified and erudite teacher, enshrined be- 
 hind a thickly littered desk, who points out to us 
 the significant things in Milton and Shakespeare 
 and who discusses his friend Wordsworth less as 
 
MANNER IN THE ESSAY 47 
 
 a man than as a literary craftsman. In Lamb it 
 is the mood that chiefly concerns us; in Coleridge 
 it is the matter. 
 
 In the most representative work of De Quincey, 
 however, it is neither matter nor mood. Neither 
 mood nor matter is notably deficient in De Quincey, 
 as may be verified by a glance at his description of 
 his little sister's death and at the essay on style 
 from which we have just quoted; but in his most 
 characteristic passages in "Joan of Arc," for in- 
 stance, and in "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" 
 our attention is predominantly attracted some- 
 times, indeed, virtually distracted to the manner, 
 to the style. The "poetic prose" of this "great 
 soul in a frail body," as Francis Thompson de- 
 scribes him, has been lavishly praised and as un- 
 sparingly condemned; but if we were to indicate 
 any appreciable flaw in the rare and startling music 
 he evokes from his torrentuous flow of golden 
 words it would be the fact that often in reading 
 him we forget what he is saying because of the 
 splendor and sheer dexterity of the way he says 
 it. He is a prestidigitator. He twirls spirals of 
 parti-colored phrases, balances towering structures 
 of tropes and flashes fleet-footed sentences out of a 
 receptacle which in other hands would remain 
 neither more nor less than a painfully commonplace 
 top hat. 
 
 But De Quincey, despite the splendor of his 
 manner, will prove less suitable for a class study 
 
48 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 in style than one of his less brilliant but more 
 dependable contemporaries, Thomas Babington 
 Macaulay. It is not difficult to say disparaging 
 things about Macaulay's style and it is not easy to 
 justify some of his more irritating mannerisms; 
 but taken at his most representative which, in his 
 case, is at his best he offers a fine subject for 
 helpful analysis. How refreshingly clear he is! 
 His essays are veritable structures, architectural 
 creations, part sustaining part, varied in detail and 
 unified as a whole. There is nothing cloudy, noth- 
 ing uncertain in Macaulay's style; we may not 
 always agree with his opinions, but we certainly 
 cannot fail to understand them. His transitions 
 from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to 
 paragraph are at once graceful and lucid. His 
 paragraph structure is strikingly consistent: If he 
 starts with a general statement, he never fails to 
 explain or prove or amplify it by means of several 
 specific statements, and those specific statements are 
 arranged with a view to their cumulative effect. 
 
 Let the class read his essay on Johnson or his 
 deservedly popular tribute to the Catholic Church 
 (the third paragraph in his review of Von Ranke's 
 "History of the Popes") and then discuss his way 
 of saying things, the how of his literary art. Some 
 valuable suggestions for such a discussion will be 
 found in an old but excellent textbook, William 
 Minto's "Manual of English Prose Literature." 
 Then let the class formulate what it considers the 
 
MANNER IN THE ESSAY 49 
 
 leading traits of Macaulay's manner. The result 
 would include findings on his choice of words, on 
 the length and kind of his sentences, on his para- 
 graph structure, on his use of such devices as 
 antithesis, repetition and climax, on his fondness 
 for specific rather than generic ideas, on his em- 
 ployment of means to secure and maintain clearness, 
 order and interest. 
 
 From Macaulay the pupils will learn much re- 
 garding the art of writing. They will realize the 
 importance of vivid, picturesque images. Macaulay 
 does not say, "Dr. Johnson at one period of his 
 life was noted for acting in a very strange man- 
 ner" ; he states directly and crisply the things John- 
 son did ; he pictures the portly lexicographer touch- 
 ing the posts in the street as he passed and even 
 going back to touch one he had overlooked, and 
 startling a drawing room by twitching off a young 
 lady's shoe or ejaculating a phrase from the Lord's 
 Prayer. He does not say, "The Catholic Church 
 comes down from the days when the pagans adored 
 false gods and held their cruel games"; instead he 
 makes the idea vivid and forceful in the lines : 
 
 "No other institution is left standing which car- 
 ries the mind back to the times when the smoke of 
 sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when 
 camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian 
 amphitheatre/' 
 
 From Macaulay the pupils will learn the art, 
 not merely of telling things, but of, making the 
 
5O TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 reader see things. Observe how tHe author makes 
 a living figure of young Johnson at Oxford with 
 his tattered gown and broken shoes ; how he draws 
 in a few bold strokes the elderly widow "painted 
 half an inch thick" whom Johnson happily mar- 
 ried ; how he reconstructs two periods in history by 
 his reference to "the Pope who crowned Napoleon 
 in the nineteenth century" and "the Pope who 
 crowned Pepin in the eighth" ; how he compels a 
 realization of the indefectibility of the Church, not 
 by simply saying with the Baltimore Cathechism 
 that "the Church as Christ founded it will last till 
 the end of time," but by appealing to memory and 
 imagination in the words: "The Catholic Church 
 is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the 
 world missionaries as zealous as those who landed 
 in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile 
 kings with the same spirit with which she confronted 
 Attila." 
 
 In the study of style there must be room for ad- 
 verse as well as favorable criticism, for censure as 
 well as appreciation. Every writer has the defects 
 of his virtues, and the pupils learn something from 
 observing the shortcomings of the author. In the 
 case of Macaulay, though there is lack of dis- 
 crimination in the oft-repeated saying that he would 
 tell a lie to turn a period, instances can be found 
 where his desire to be picturesque in description 
 or balanced in sentence structure leads him into 
 inaccuracy. Thus it is that in his review of Bos- 
 
MANNER IN THE ESSAY 51 
 
 well's "Life of Johnson" his effort to establish a 
 contrast between the greatness of the book and the 
 littleness of the man who wrote it makes him dis- 
 tinctly unfair to Boswell; the little Scotsman was 
 by no means the burr on Johnson's coattails that 
 Macaulay's picture makes of him. Nor was Mrs. 
 Porter, who became Johnson's wife, altogether the 
 impossible creature whom the doctor so ardently 
 admired; love may be blind, but even in Johnson's 
 case it could hardly be as blind as that. Similarly, 
 Macaulay sacrifices exactness of statement for 
 rhetorical effectiveness when he represents the long 
 line of the Popes extending into the past "till it is 
 lost in the twilight of fable." There was no twilight 
 and no fable whatever about the origin of the Pa- 
 pacy, as Macaulay himself very well knew, for he 
 was so familiar with the list of the august dynasty 
 that he was supposed to be able to recite it back- 
 wards. 
 
 In the class discussions concerning the effective- 
 ness of the stylistic methods and devices of an 
 author there will doubtless arise differences of 
 opinion. This is well, for the clash of thought will 
 induce new and deeper thought, and the pupils 
 will learn the salutary truth that much may be said 
 on both sides. Thus it is possible to find good 
 arguments both pro and con anent the traveller 
 from New Zealand who makes his appearance in the 
 last sentence of the paragraph from the essay on 
 Von Ranke. On the one hand it is said that 
 
52 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 Macaulay spoils his brilliant tribute by a reference 
 to a vague, remote and highly improbable occur- 
 rence, that the "broken arch of London bridge" and 
 "the ruins of St. Paul's" make no appeal to an 
 active, practical mind, and that the New Zealander 
 is literally and figuratively far-fetched. On the 
 other hand it is urged that the sentence forms a 
 fitting and climacteric conclusion to the paragraph, 
 that it points the moral and adorns the tale, that, 
 especially, it tells the truth ; for the Catholic Church 
 will exist, even were the islands of the sea to be- 
 come the center of civilization and London were to 
 take its silent place with Babylon and Tyre. In 
 fact, it would not be out of harmony with Macau- 
 lay's mood to suggest that under such circumstances 
 the traveller from the antipodes would probably be 
 a Catholic parish priest on his vacation ! 
 
 
 
 The essayist is a theatrical producer, a stage 
 director of insight, experience and artistic skill. 
 When we read his work uncritically we are merely 
 sitting in the auditorium observing the excellence 
 of his matter, the deftness of his manner, the 
 glory of his mood. But when we study the style 
 of his writings, we go behind the scenes and study 
 the mechanism of his mimic world. And we learn 
 to go forth and make worlds of our own. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MOOD IN THE DRAMA 
 
 THE obvious reply to the question, "How am I 
 to bring out the aesthetic element in teaching 
 Shakespeare's 'J u ^ us Caesar'?" would be: Simply 
 apply to the play the principles of the science of 
 aesthetics. Now, that answer is in a great measure 
 impressive, even reassuring, and to the professional 
 educationist who must be rigidly differentiated 
 from the professional educator it may even settle 
 the difficulty forever. The thing is so very, very 
 simple. Here you have the literary masterpiece 
 that is Exhibit A ; and here you have the principles 
 of aesthetics call them Exhibit B. Stir Exhibit 
 A and Exhibit B together for the space of one class 
 period adding the salt of wit and the pepper of 
 tact according to taste and let the decoction cool 
 gradually; that is all. 
 
 That were indeed all, but for one thing. It is 
 dangerous, and sometimes fatal, to make free use 
 of arbitrary, ready-made principles of aesthetics. 
 Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a science 
 of aesthetics; and there is no such personage as an 
 infallible aesthetic pope. Authorities on aesthetics 
 we certainly have; but they are not absolute and 
 
 53 
 
54 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 unquestioned authorities. Lessing, for example, 
 differs with Aristotle, and to become very modern 
 for a moment Mr. Willard Huntington Wright 
 differs with Lessing. We have no set of aesthetic 
 principles which we can apply to "Julius Caesar" 
 or to any other masterpiece with the assurance that 
 if the masterpiece conforms to them it is a work 
 of art and if it ignores them it is a monstrosity. 
 Let every teacher ponder the sad case of Tolstoy. 
 In his entertaining little book, "What Is Art?" 
 Tolstoy formulated a definition of art, and then, in 
 the light of his definition, proceeded to demon- 
 strate, to his own manifest satisfaction, that 
 Beethoven was no musician, that Michelangelo was 
 no sculptor, that Titian was no painter, that Shake- 
 speare was no dramatist. He assumed that his 
 definition was true, sound, conclusive and all-em- 
 bracing, and thence was forced to the conviction 
 that some of the world's supreme artists were really 
 not artists at all. 
 
 What, then, are we to do ? We are to begin, not 
 with principles of aesthetics, but with the master- 
 piece; we are to proceed not deductively, but in- 
 ductively. We must not start out by formulating 
 or adopting certain principles of aesthetics and ask- 
 ing ourselves, "Does *J U ^ US Caesar' conform to 
 these principles?" But we must study the play 
 and formulate our principles of aesthetics in the 
 light of that study. The remainder of these sug- 
 
MOOD IN THE DRAMA 55 
 
 gestions are practical hints as to how such a study 
 may be carried on. 
 
 i. A cursory reading of "J u ^ us Caesar" makes 
 plain to us that in the play we have a diversity of 
 scenes street scenes, domestic scenes ; day scenes, 
 night scenes; council scenes, battle scenes. And 
 we have a diversity of events secret plotting, 
 public speaking, thunder and lightning, a tender 
 colloquy between a husband and his wife, the as- 
 sassination of a monarch, the visitation of a ghost. 
 And we have a diversity of characters Brutus, 
 the idealist; Cassius, the wily politician; an ex- 
 tremely witty shoemaker; an extremely stupid 
 senator (Casca) ; Portia, the faithful wife; Antony, 
 the incomparable orator. From all this we are 
 justified in concluding that one essential char- 
 acteristic of the play is variety or diversity. And, 
 when we reflect a little, we perceive that in other 
 works of art some sort of diversity is recognizable 
 in great novels and great paintings and great 
 musical scores. Variety, therefore, we may assume, 
 is one element of aesthetic excellence. 
 
 But second thought will speedily convince us that 
 not all variety makes for art. A list of fifty words 
 culled at random from a dictionary, twenty daubs 
 of assorted colors on a canvas, would manifest 
 diversity, but certainly not artistic diversity. How 
 can we distinguish between the variety which is 
 artistic and the variety which is not? We turn 
 again to "J u ^ us Caesar" for light. And now we 
 
56 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 make the important discovery that running through 
 the diversity of scenes, events and characters, there 
 is a thread of unity which coordinates them and 
 binds them together and welds them into a concen- 
 trated appeal to our intellects and our emotions. 
 That thread of unity is indicated in the title of the 
 play, Julius Ccesar. Caesar living and, more espe- 
 cially, Caesar dead, dominates all the scenes, all 
 the events, all the characters. The streets are 
 thronged in the first act because Caesar is coming 
 back to Rome; the field of Philippi is corpse-strewn 
 in the last act because Caesar's death must be 
 avenged; the storm breaks upon the city as an 
 omen of Caesar's assassination; the pathetic con- 
 versation between Brutus and Portia takes place 
 because the husband has thoughts concerning Caesar 
 that he dare not reveal to his wife; and all the 
 varied characters patricians and plebeians, men of 
 thought and men of action, men good and men bad, 
 men wise and men otherwise, are united and 
 brought together by one thing that they have in 
 common their attitude toward Caesar; they are 
 with him or against him. Now we see that our 
 fifty words from the dictionary may become a 
 work of art if a master hand forges them into 
 literary unity, that our twenty daubs of color, ar- 
 ranged and blended into artistic unity by a Rem- 
 brandt or a Velasquez, may become a masterpiece. 
 From all this we formulate our first principle of 
 
MOOD IN THE DRAMA 57 
 
 aesthetics: Beauty in literature is a combination 
 of unity and diversity. 
 
 2. We now take a step further. Again reading 
 the play, we observe that, from one point of view, 
 it deals with relatively simple things, things that 
 are taking place around us every day, things that 
 even the youngest of us can understand. One man 
 has achieved great power, and some other men 
 don't like him on that account and some other men 
 do. The men who don't like him plot his death 
 and succeed in killing him. The men who do like 
 him fight with the men who don't like him and 
 defeat them in battle. This note of simplicity, 
 characteristic of the play as a whole, is equally 
 characteristic of the play in detail. The commoner 
 in the first act enjoys "talking back" to the tribune; 
 Portia surmises that her husband has something 
 on his mind ; Brutus, in addressing the mob, makes 
 the very common mistake of talking over their 
 heads, while Antony tells them that which they 
 themselves do know; Brutus and Cassius say un- 
 pleasant things to each other and then shake hands ; 
 overcome by defeat, the leading conspirators com- 
 mit suicide ; Antony fights vigorously against Brutus 
 living and generously praises Brutus dead. Such 
 things are happening around us every day; if we 
 demand proof let us simply open our eyes and our 
 ears, examine our conscience and scan the morning 
 newspaper. So we are warranted in setting down 
 simplicity as a trait of a good play; and more 
 
58 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 thought and analysis will show us that simplicity 
 is likewise a characteristic of a good novel, a good 
 statue, a good piece of architecture, a good sym- 
 phony. 
 
 But, on the other hand, not all simplicity is 
 artistic. We remember some of those bald pas- 
 sages in Wordsworth, we read some of Walt Whit- 
 man's silly catalogues, we investigate some speci- 
 mens of our present day vers libre; and we are at 
 once quite sure that some simplicity is sheer silli- 
 ness. We know well that the line, 
 
 "Much have I traveled in the realms of gold/' 
 is simple, and yet poetry ; and that the line, 
 "I put my hat upon my head and walked into the Strand," 
 
 is simple, and yet not poetry. Will "Julius Caesar" 
 enable us to discover the secret of artistic simplicity? 
 Let us see. A group of men want to do away 
 with Caesar. That is simple. But they are ani- 
 mated by a complexity of motives. Casca is against 
 Caesar because he is vexed by Caesar's great popu- 
 larity; Cassius is against Caesar because he knows 
 that Caesar is against him; Brutus is against Caesar 
 and here is complexity within complexity be- 
 cause, though he loves Caesar much, yet he loves 
 Rome more. Again, the fact that Caesar is killed 
 by the conspirators is simple; but the assassination 
 is accomplished only after a complexity of events. 
 Brutus must be won over to the conspirators; un- 
 
MOOD IN THE DRAMA 59 
 
 certainty and differences of opinion characterize 
 the meeting in Brutus's garden; on the morning 
 of the fatal day Caesar is going to the capitol ; then, 
 at his wife's urging, he determines to remain at 
 home; after that, he decides to go; and a few 
 minutes later he tells everybody that he is constant 
 as the northern star; before the conspirators carry 
 out their purpose, Antony must be taken away from 
 the scene; Brutus and Cassius get certain warning 
 that news of their design has leaked out; Caesar is 
 warned of the plot against him will he take pre- 
 cautions ? 
 
 Hence we formulate our second principle of 
 aesthetics: Beauty in literature is a combination 
 of simplicity and complexity. 
 
 3. Another reading of the play brings out a not 
 less interesting fact. Shakespeare does wonderful 
 things with words. For instance, he constructs in 
 Antony's oration a masterpiece of oratory. As we 
 read the lines, the words fall easily and naturally, 
 almost inevitably, into their places. The speech is 
 smooth, graceful, sonorous. It is suggestive, in- 
 spiring. Take the lines, 
 
 " 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, 
 The day he overcame the Nervii." 
 
 Even the dullest mind can understand what those 
 lines mean ; even the feeblest fancy can construct 
 a picture of the conqueror, after the perils and 
 heat of the battle, wrapping his mantle about him 
 
60 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 and gazing through the half-open door of his tent 
 at the summer fields glowing in the sunset. Yes, 
 it gives the impression of infinite ease in writing. 
 
 Well, suppose we try to write something like it. 
 Since it seems so facile a thing to do, suppose we 
 forthwith write an oration of our own. Will the 
 fruits of our pen approach the artistic excellence 
 of our model ? Probably not ! But why ? We lack 
 Shakespeare's vocabulary ? But he uses very simple 
 words. The proper noun excepted, there is no 
 word in the two lines just quoted but may be found 
 in the vocabulary of the average child of ten. What 
 is the secret of his style, of the force, the vigor, 
 the impressiveness of his diction? 
 
 Let us read those two lines again, let us read the 
 speech of Antony again, let us read the entire play 
 again, and perhaps we shall discover something 
 like this : Beneath the ease, the grace, the smooth- 
 ness of Shakespeare's flowing words, we perceive 
 the incessant palpitation of a tremendous force, a 
 vigorous effort, a vitalizing energy; the throbbing 
 workings of a high-powered mind, the vivid striv- 
 ings of a richly equipped imagination, the searchless 
 depths and glowing splendor of an emotional nature 
 exceptionally varied and sympathetic. It is the 
 art that conceals art which is another way of 
 saying, the work that conceals work. Then we 
 think of great musicians we have heard, of fine 
 orators at whose words we thrilled, of masterpieces 
 of painting that in imagination we see again, of 
 
MOOD IN THE DRAMA 6l 
 
 statuary that at the touch of memory's wand breaks 
 into warm and vibrant life; and in the light of it 
 all we formulate our third aesthetic principle: 
 
 Beauty in literature is a combination of energy 
 and ease, of ruggedness and grace. 
 
 This brief presentation of aesthetic principles 
 evolved from an inductive study of "J u ^ us Caesar" 
 lays itself open to numerous and multiform attacks 
 from hidebound critics equipped with a stock of 
 ready-made aestheticism all canned and labeled and 
 with full directions for use printed neatly on the 
 cover. We have said never a word concerning 
 pathos or sublimity or humor; we have ignored 
 the weighty utterances of Horace and Vida and 
 Boileau; we have lent a deaf ear to Scaliger and 
 Castelvetro and Geraldi Cinthio. And this we have 
 done, not because we are indifferent to the theories 
 and suggestions of erudite makers of books about 
 books, but because these lines are written for 
 teachers. The teacher cannot afford to be hide- 
 bound. The teacher cannot afford to let his aesthetic 
 principles harden into molds. The teacher will do 
 well to lead each succeeding class of students to 
 formulate a few aesthetic principles for themselves 
 and to consider those principles as serviceable scaf- 
 folding which, when the fabric of aesthetic appre- 
 ciation is finished, are but so much old lumber to 
 be permanently cast aside. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MOOD IN THE ESSAY 
 
 THE study of mood in the essay is an applica- 
 tion of the principle of (Esthetic appreciation in 
 literature. Let it never be forgotten that literature 
 that all art, indeed is largely a matter of mood. 
 In this sense a mood means the fusing, the concen- 
 trating of the writer's personality and experience 
 upon a subject viewed in the light of a moment win- 
 some or reminiscent or whimsical or humorous or 
 what not. It is in mood that essays and essayists 
 differ so widely each from each; and it is in the 
 mood of the essay or the essayist that the reader 
 secures his keenest enjoyment. 
 
 Mood is defined as "a temporary or capricious 
 state or condition of the mind in regard to passion 
 or feeling; temper of mind; humor; disposition." 
 Less accurately but more suggestively, we might 
 describe our moods as the coloring of our lives. 
 Sometimes, in theatrical performances, vari-colored 
 lights are cast upon the stage and the performers, 
 and surprising and delightful effects are thus se- 
 cured. The scene and the costumes remain the 
 same, and yet they acquire a different appearance 
 with each light that falls upon them. So it is with 
 
 62 
 
MOOD IN THE ESSAY 63 
 
 our lives. The facts of life, the realities of life, 
 remain ever the same ; but the moods casting upon 
 them various colors now yellow, now crimson, now 
 pink, now blue change their aspect and lend them 
 various degrees of attractiveness and charm. 
 
 Writers such as Charles Lamb, who are especially 
 gifted in the facility for conveying and stimulating 
 moods, are like the manipulators of the colored 
 lights in the theater. Ordinarily they tell us nothing 
 new; but they enable us to see old things and 
 familiar things in novel and fascinating lights. This 
 is not the least of the consolations we are able to 
 derive from the study of literature, and it should 
 be given due prominence in the teaching of both 
 poetry and prose. Let us learn to enjoy the witchery 
 of the colored lights by sitting in the auditorium 
 while familiar persons and things occupy the stage 
 and the gentle Elia manipulates the calcium. 
 
 First of all, a lady walks upon the stage. She is 
 our aunt. Now there are all sorts and conditions 
 of aunts; and there are all sorts of ways of con- 
 sidering aunts. There are indulgent aunts, and 
 sinister aunts; aunts with the demeanor of a mar- 
 tinet, and aunts with the disposition of an angel; 
 aunts tall and angular, and aunts plump and rosy; 
 aunts who give us cakes and apples, and aunts who 
 give us lectures. And the same aunt may assume 
 several distinct aspects according to -the quality 
 of our moods and hers. In his essay on "My Re- 
 lations," Lamb throws a pale green light upon his 
 
64 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 aunt, and presently we see her as "one whom 
 single blessedness had soured to the world," "from 
 morning till night poring over good books," "a 
 fine old Christian" "with some little asperities in 
 her constitution." It does not take much reading 
 between the lines to discover that the shorn lamb 
 must have suffered somewhat at the hands of this 
 painfully pious old lady, but his mood will not 
 suffer him to dwell on the tears of his youth. The 
 passing years are great softeners of hardships, and 
 in the pale green light the lady seems a bit odd 
 but fairly lovable. 
 
 In several of the essays Lamb chats about old 
 players whom he had admired and loved. He 
 reveled in the theater because he reveled in life, 
 and his heart was filled with keen and not unspoken 
 gratitude to the men who had strutted and fretted 
 their hour upon the stage. Let us read "My First 
 Play," "On Some of the Old Actors," "On the 
 Acting of Munden," "Munden's Farewell" and 
 "The Death of Munden." In these beautiful papers 
 the author casts upon the stage and the players a 
 soft orange glow in which all the harsher outlines 
 are subdued and everything about the theater worthy 
 of praise and honor is heightened and improved. 
 How different is this mood from that which char- 
 acterizes Gossen's "School of Abuse" or that which 
 animates some present-day editorial writers who 
 seem intent on finding in the drama only that which 
 may be censured and abused ! And how delicately 
 
MOOD IN THE ESSAY 6$ 
 
 does the soft orange light enable us to draw the 
 distinction between the man and the actor: 
 
 "The regular playgoers ought to put on mourning, 
 for the king of broad comedy is dead to the drama ! 
 Alas ! Munden is no more ! give sorrow vent. 
 He may yet walk the town, pace the pavement in 
 a seeming existence eat, drink, and nod to his 
 friends in all the affectation of life but Munden, 
 the Munden ! Munden, who with the bunch of 
 countenances, the bouquet of faces, is gone forever 
 from the lamps, and, as far as comedy is con- 
 cerned, is as dead as Garrick! When an actor 
 retires (we will put the suicide as mildly as possible) 
 how many worthy persons perish with him !" 
 
 Wonderful, truly wonderful, is that soft orange 
 light of a mood. It warms our hearts and it brings 
 the ready tears to our eyes ; and to our memory it 
 recalls the old days and the plays and the transitory 
 character of human fame. And it leads us gently 
 to face the truth that we are all actors in what 
 Calderon called the Great Theater of the World, 
 and that the green curtain called Death is ever 
 pendant, waiting for the Prompter's bell. 
 
 Yes, we are all actors ; and there are times when 
 we all love to play to play in the spacious Garden 
 of What Might Have Been and to cull the fanciful 
 and fragrant flowers known as Won't-Come-Trues. 
 Our smiling magician of the calcium lamp now 
 floods the stage with rosy lights, and we all de- 
 lightedly join in the joyous game of "Let's Pre- 
 
66 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 tend." Read "Oxford in the Vacation" and you 
 will find out what I mean. Lamb shows us the 
 sorely tried and very tired little clerk in the South 
 Sea House reaching out in imagination for the 
 scholastic honors which were destined never to be 
 his. Like the little boy in one of Thomas Hardy's 
 unpleasant novels, he yearns for the light and 
 learning of the university town; and in fancy he 
 finds more recompense there than Jude the Obscure 
 found in the reality. He goes to Oxford in the 
 vacation and pretends he is a student and a don: 
 
 "I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. 
 . . . Here I can take my walks unmolested, and 
 fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I 
 seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past oppor- 
 tunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream 
 that it rings for me. In n*f|pds^mta|^^ I can ^ e 
 a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock~vein rises, 
 I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver mo- 
 ments I proceed Master of Arts. . . . Only in 
 Christ Church reverend quadrangle, ^t-ean, be con- 
 tent to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic 
 Doctor." 
 
 But life is not all roses nor rose colored lights. 
 Too long we may^ot linger in the Garden of What 
 Might Have Been. We who read these lines are 
 by profession teachers, pedagogues, educators or 
 schoolmasters, as Lamb would say. Can the whim- 
 sical Elia throw one of his colored lights upon our 
 life and work, can he make us forget the chalkdust 
 
MOOD IN THE ESSAY 67 
 
 and the exercise books and the scraping feet and 
 the three o'clock fatigue? Can he smooth the fur- 
 rows from our disciplinary brow and make us smile 
 at ourselves? Can he give us help and inspiration 
 for the days to come ? 
 
 The answer may be found in "The Old and the 
 New Schoolmaster" and "Christ's Hospital Five- 
 and-Thirty Years Ago." From the point of view 
 of modern "scientific" pedagogy, Lamb is doubtless 
 very deficient both in wisdom and grace; he is 
 not "up-to-date" at all. But and this is a vastly 
 more important matter he is human, glowingly, 
 irrepressibly human. Much of the little play at 
 Christ's Hospital is enacted while Elia floods the 
 stage with a light sad and dully blue; but ever and 
 anon there flashes the gold of his quaint and dainty 
 humor. All of us will find in this pensive reminis- 
 cence material for reflection and for resolution. 
 And all of us may fittingly apply to ourselves some 
 part of the description of the temperamental Boyer : 
 
 "He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different 
 omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, 
 betokening a mild day. The other, an old dis- 
 colored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent 
 and bloody execution. Woe t* the school, when 
 he made his morning appearance in his passy, or 
 passionate wig. No comet expounded surer." 
 
 All the glory of his golden pink rays Lamb now 
 pours on what the modern world would consider 
 the most useless and cumbersome of all our heri- 
 
68 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 tage from the past the sun dial. In his "Old 
 Benchers of the Inner Temple" he thus glorifies 
 the dial and with mock indignation castigates the 
 moon- faced and officious clock: 
 
 "What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponder- 
 ous embowelments of lead and brass, its t pert or 
 solemn dullness of communication, compared with 
 the simple altar-like structure, and silent heart- 
 language of the old dial! It stood as the garden 
 god of Christian virtues. Why is it almost every- 
 where vanished? If its business use be super- 
 seded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
 its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. 
 It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not pro- 
 tracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. 
 It was the primitive, the horologe of the first world. 
 Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise." 
 
 This mood a fullness of the golden light of love 
 for things old-fashioned and for songs long sung 
 is the prevailing, the distinctive, the characteristic 
 mood of Charles Lamb. And that is why, it seems 
 to me, he should be assiduously read by young men 
 and women, especially by young teachers. For the 
 ordinary trait of youth is impatience of the old, 
 and Elia, so shrewd and good-humored and ob- 
 servant and ready of phrase, will act as a salutary 
 corrective. He merits the attention and the love 
 of children, too, for he, more than most English 
 writers, will teach them the much disprized virtue 
 of reverence; he, more than the flashy and super- 
 
MOOD IN THE ESSAY 69 
 
 ficial idols of their untutored hearts, will develop 
 their bump of veneration. 
 
 Lamb and in his case we may profitably study 
 the man in order to love the writer had a number 
 of delightful perversities. Warned by a friend that 
 he should write more for the age in which he lived, 
 Elia contemptuously replied, "Hang the Age!" 
 And expressed his determination to write for pos- 
 terity or for antiquity it didn't matter which. He 
 was an urban soul, and had little sympathy with 
 the poet's puling verses about the "bruising city." 
 When Wordsworth dilated on the natural glories 
 of the lake region, Lamb retorted that not all the 
 rural scents of Windermere were as savory in his 
 nostrils as the smell of a bakeshop in the Strand. 
 
 A genuine humorist is Charles Lamb; and like 
 every true humorist, he knew the meaning of suf- 
 fering and of sorrow. We have no space here to 
 dilate on the great shadow that lengthened itself 
 through most of his years, of the happy hopes which 
 at the call of duty he manfully put aside, of the 
 anguish which might have driven a lesser soul into 
 pessimistic bitterness but which in his case was but 
 the steel on which he sharpened the edge of his 
 genial wit. Those of us who would know him at 
 his finest and truest and noblest and best, those of 
 us who seek his mastery of the moods at its high- 
 est manifestation would do well to read several 
 times his little essay, "Dream Children: A Rev- 
 erie." Permit me to stress that "several times." 
 
7O TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 First impressions may be misleading; but final im- 
 pressions will bring us verily to the heart of life. 
 In this life of ours there are different days for 
 different moods, and different moods for different 
 days. And there are writers to suit every day and 
 every mood. There are moods for Browning and 
 days for Shelley, days for Carlyle and moods for 
 Belloc, days and moods which blend harmoniously 
 with Francis Thompson and Crashaw, with Kipling 
 and old Robert Herrick. But Charles Lamb and 
 of how many writers may this thing be said ? has 
 a page for every day and for every mood. Happy 
 are we and happy are our pupils when we have 
 learned that on days gray or gold, in moods wail- 
 ful or serene, we may find congenial company in the 
 pages of Elia. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE 
 
 I. Literature Is Chiefly Concerned with 
 Authentic Human Emotions. History records 
 what man has done; philosophy, what he has 
 thought; literature, what he has felt. Literature 
 has something to say, in an incidental way, about 
 man's accomplishments and about his theories of 
 existence; but its essential field is the domain of 
 human emotion. We turn to Herodotus for Greek 
 history; to Aristotle for Greek philosophy; to 
 Sophocles for Greek literature. Hence, the teacher 
 of literature acts wisely when he stresses, not the 
 purely intellectual nor the purely scientific phases 
 of his subject, but its emotional content. Great 
 literature plays upon our emotions of love and fear 
 and admiration and gratitude and reverence and 
 pity and joy; it moves us and it thrills. 
 
 By authentic emotions we mean the feelings that 
 pertain to our common humanity, that ring true to 
 universal human experience. The classics that is, 
 the great books of past ages present emotions that 
 stir us even across the chasm of the years, because 
 we find in them echoes of what we ourselves have 
 felt and understood. The sisterly devotion of 
 Antigone, the fine spirit of comradeship of the 
 
72 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 faithful Achates, Dante's reverence for his old 
 master even in the depths of hell, the remorse of 
 Macbeth, the pretentiousness of Monsieur Jourdain, 
 the unsated yearning of Faust these are repre- 
 sentative human feelings, and are therefore authen- 
 tic. In its essentials, human emotion does not 
 change throughout the ages. 
 
 Wise is the teacher who strives to bring young 
 minds to realize that in this respect there is verily 
 nothing new under the sun; that, because they are 
 true to universal human life, the great books can 
 never die. 
 
 II. In the Firmament of Literature, Star Dif- 
 fereth from Star in Glory. "Resolved, that Shake- 
 speare is a greater writer than Longfellow." Tra- 
 dition has it I devoutly hope that tradition herein 
 errs that such was the topic once set for children 
 to debate. Such misconceptions of literary values 
 sometimes result from the textbook study of litera- 
 ture in which a writer's relative importance is 
 measured by the number of pages devoted to a dis- 
 cussion of his life and works. 
 
 Our pupils must be brought to recognize that 
 both Shakespeare and Longfellow are worth while, 
 that both have given us valuable interpretations of 
 human life; yet that "Evangeline" compared with 
 "Macbeth" is as a penny whistle compared with a 
 typhoon. 
 
 Some of them will need to be warned against a 
 condescending attitude toward penny whistles. 
 
PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING OF LITERATURE 73 
 
 They must be taught to appreciate the lesser lights 
 as well as first magnitude stars. A right sense of 
 proportion in literary matters seeks to appraise 
 every sincere record of authentic human emotion 
 precisely for what it is worth. And the most salu- 
 tary attitude of the pupil should be: What has 
 Shakespeare to teach me; what has Longfellow to 
 teach me? It is well that we be stirred to the depths 
 of our soul by the spectacle of ambition and unwise 
 love and unavailing remorse staged for us in the 
 drama of the Thane of Cawdor; and it is likewise 
 well that the surface of our soul be ruffled and puri- 
 fied by the contemplation of the Acadian maiden's 
 tried and beautiful life. 
 
 The study of literature is not a competitive exer- 
 cise. Hence, class discussions involving the ques- 
 tion whether or not Cardinal Newman is a greater 
 writer than Aristophanes are idle and even harmful. 
 To what extent, rather we should ask, did each of 
 those two widely different writers reveal and inter- 
 pret our common human life ? That question voices 
 a basic principle of literary study. 
 
 III. Right Reading Broadens Our Sympathies. 
 Our outlook on the world of books must be catholic 
 with the small "c" as well as with the capital. 
 The great books lead us out of the walled garden 
 of our individual environment and offer us the 
 alluring possibility of living vicariously in other 
 times and alien lands. The fine fruitage of literary 
 culture includes a comprehensive understanding of 
 
74 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 many phases of human emotion that we can never, 
 in the nature of things, expect to learn from per- 
 sonal experience. 
 
 Observe how narrow is the range of the boy's 
 interests. He doesn't like "sissy books," that is, 
 books that deal mainly with the life and experiences 
 of girls; he characterizes stories that stress the 
 description of natural scenery as offensively "dry" ; 
 he is very suspicious of Dickens, because the pic- 
 tures show people in old-fashioned clothes; 
 "Fabiola" is "too pious," "Cranford" lacking in the 
 indispensable element of "fighting"; Scott is too 
 slow in starting, Thackeray altogether too long. 
 Now, one of the reasons why the teacher exists is 
 to show that boy that folks who have narrow likes 
 miss much of the fun and much of the opportunity 
 and much of the consolation of life. And this the 
 teacher accomplishes, not by scolding, not by exhort- 
 ing, not by command or entreaty, but by the tactful 
 process of arousing interest in some phase or other 
 of the too hastily condemned book. 
 
 As the boy reads and grows and lives all three 
 processes being subject to adequate though not 
 obtrusive direction he comes to perceive that even 
 "sissies" have their uses in life as in books, that 
 there is so much natural scenery in the world 
 around us that its importance in literature is great, 
 that under antiquated garments there often beat sur- 
 prisingly modern hearts, that some of the greatest 
 men and books have been frankly devotional, that 
 
PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING OF LITERATURE 75 
 
 manifestations of the combative instinct are in 
 inverse ratio to our advance in civilization, that 
 it is worth while waiting for some good things to 
 start and that excellence in books as in life cannot 
 be measured with a yardstick or a stopwatch. 
 
 IV. Poetry Should Be Read Aloud. Nobody 
 in his sober senses would content himself with 
 studying a masterpiece of painting by means of the 
 sense of touch or absorbing a musical composition 
 by thumbing the score. Yet there are persons who 
 seem satisfied by merely looking at a poem. 
 
 The appeal of poetry is fundamentally to the ear. 
 It has a musical element, and that musical element is 
 its distinguishing formal characteristic. It demands 
 vocal interpretation. 
 
 "Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 
 
 In some untrodden region of my mind, 
 Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, 
 
 Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind." 
 
 Here are four lines from the "Ode to Psyche"; 
 but until they are read aloud they are not repre- 
 sentative of John Keats. So much depends upon 
 the vocal interpreter! He must decide the degree 
 of resoluteness to be suggested by "Yes," and deter- 
 mine whether "I will be thy priest" is an assurance 
 or a threat. His imagination must turn architect 
 at "build a fane" and construct a cathedral of the 
 frozen music of angelic songs. He must convey 
 the stillness and the sanctity of the forest primeval 
 at mention of "some untrodden region," the word 
 
76 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 "some" being so rendered as to charm by its very 
 indefiniteness. He must make contagious his own 
 expansive realization of "branched thoughts," the 
 tenderness and novelty of "new-grown," the emo- 
 tional antithesis of "pleasant pain"; and the last 
 line must have an echo of the wind that blows 
 around the world. 
 
 So only can "the breath and finer spirit" of poetry 
 be imparted. Mere analysis can never do it; neither 
 can edifying stories of the poet's pensive life. The 
 teacher of poetry \wust know the technique of vocal 
 expression quite as much, indeed, as the teacher 
 of singing must know the technique of music. And 
 the children must be taught, little by little, to master 
 a poem from the inside, and to render it by means of 
 the speaking voice. 
 
 V. Great Books Should Be Re-read Indefinitely. 
 The man of one book is not a worthy exemplar. 
 He is to be dreaded rather than feared, for he is 
 liable to be an intolerable bore. But the man who 
 reads a few great books several times is likely to be 
 a bigger man in every respect save possibly in 
 self-esteem than the man who is ever seeking 
 some new thing. 
 
 Some men read masterpieces as they suck 
 oranges, and they can be traced through a library 
 by the pulp and rind of the discarded classics which 
 they have exhausted. Great books are not globes 
 of fruit juice, but fountains of living water ever 
 fresh and inexhaustible. 
 
PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING OF LITERATURE 77 
 
 Formalism in education has its place and its bene- 
 fits, but it has its baleful consequences as well ; and 
 not the least of these is the attitude of mind found 
 in many pupils who assume that once a book is read 
 it should remain a closed book forever more. 
 Teachers who never refer back to books studied 
 or discussed last month or last year do much to 
 fortify the unfortunate conviction. 
 
 Children, naturally seekers after novelty, should 
 be brought to realize that there are several books 
 which the human race has been reading for centu- 
 ries and has not quite exhausted even today. The 
 New Testament, for instance, yields more and yet 
 more nourishment every time it is approached; we 
 read the same gospel on the same Sunday year after 
 year and never fail to find in it something hitherto 
 unsuspected. 
 
 The best way to re-read is to take a fresh view- 
 point to look for something new in the old book. 
 Now we read it for the plot, now for the characters, 
 now for the scenic colorings, now for its truth to 
 the life about us, now for its truth to the life 
 depicted in other books, now for its truth to the 
 life of a given period of history, now for its 
 embodiment of a truth of faith or a gospel maxim, 
 now for the charm of its literary style. And by that 
 time we are old enough to begin all over again. 
 
 VI. The Highest Art Is the Art that Conceals 
 Art. Let us gaze upon that world wonder, the 
 Cathedral of Notre Dame. It is a symphony in 
 
78 TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 stone, complex in its simplicity, unitary in its va- 
 riety. It conveys the impression of being finished, 
 adequate, complete. And we feel that we might well 
 believe it were we told that it was not wrought by 
 human hands through hot and toiling years, but 
 that an angel floated down one day from highest 
 Heaven and waved a silver wand, and lo, the 
 Cathedral was. 
 
 That is the art that conceals art. We have no 
 suggestion of the excavations made for the founda- 
 tions, of the carefully pondered plans, of the strain- 
 ing derricks and swaying stones, of the angry shouts 
 of the master builders, of the swarming workmen 
 with sweating faces and corded muscles and aching 
 backs. These are no more suggested by the grand 
 Cathedral than is the caterpillar's crawling life in 
 the careening existence of the emancipated butterfly. 
 
 And so it is in literature. The most perfect style' 
 is the style that seemingly came by magic, uncon- 
 sciously and spontaneously. The great drama has 
 no deus ex machina let down to the stage on creak- 
 ing pulleys; the great novel has a plot that rises 
 and falls, not with the exactitude of a Freytagian 
 pyramidal diagram, but with the seeming capricious- 
 ness of the contour of the distant hills; the great 
 poem has no suggestion of beats, of measures, of 
 feet, of accented and unaccented syllables, of the 
 toil and anguish of satisfying sound and sense, but 
 just the clear, full melody of the lark's morning 
 song, the majestic music of the waterfall, the 
 
PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING OF LITERATURE 79 
 
 mystery and magic and infinite ease of the wailing 
 of the wind. 
 
 The carpenter, when he is finished with his job, 
 sweeps up the chips and sawdust and boxes his 
 tools; and the worker in words removes from his 
 masterpiece the very last indication of his labor 
 before he draws the curtain and bids us enter and 
 do homage. 
 
 VII. True Criticism Is Mainly Appreciative. 
 "I am nothing if not critical," said lago, meaning 
 that he was mainly interested in finding fault; and 
 later on, 
 
 "I confess, it is my nature's plague 
 To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy 
 Shapes faults that are not", 
 
 Is it any wonder that lago was a mischief maker 
 and a thoroughly bad egg? "To spy into abuses" 
 is the favorite diversion of numerous literary 
 lagos self-constituted critics whose prevailing atti- 
 tude toward literary masterpieces resembles that 
 of the ingenuous gentleman who, standing for the 
 first time before the Sistine Madonna, impressively 
 inquired, "What is the fault with that painting?" 
 
 lago criticism is pseudo criticism. The true critic 
 and remember, please, that every reader is a critic 
 is less an arbiter than an appreciator ; at all events, 
 he need never be a hangman. From reading the 
 best and thinking the best he has formed or rather, 
 is constantly forming his literary taste, and when 
 he encounters a book which offends that taste seri- 
 
8O TEACHING THE DRAMA AND THE ESSAY 
 
 ously and persistently, he simply dismisses it and 
 turns to another book. But he rarely meets a book 
 that is thoroughly bad. In every book he reads he 
 finds much to admire and something that offends, 
 and the offensive elements he speedily, almost auto- 
 matically, forgets. He knows that nuts are sweet 
 and highly nutritious though their shells are neither 
 edible nor pleasant to crack. And he can partake 
 profitably of the apples on yonder tree without 
 once remarking that it is a great pity that one can't 
 eat leaves and trunk and that the roots are so very 
 dirty. 
 
 Remember how Matthew Arnold put it : "A dis- 
 interested endeavor to learn and to propagate the 
 best that is known and thought in the world." That 
 is criticism; that is appreciation. That is a con- 
 structive force, not a destructive inutility. 
 
 VIII. "The Supreme Excellency Is Sim- 
 plicity." The teaching of literature is an art sec- 
 ond in importance only to the making of literature. 
 They have much in common. Many of the things 
 the teacher learns from the great books of the 
 world he can apply in a practical way to his daily 
 work. Not the least of these is the lesson that the 
 highest art is the art that conceals art, that as 
 Longfellow, who was both a maker and a teacher, 
 exquisitely phrased it "the supreme excellency is 
 simplicity." 
 
 Therefore, whatever be his panoply of learning, 
 the teacher will wear it lightly and gracefully. 
 
PRINCIPLES iN TEACHING OF' Ll'tfEkA^URE 8l 
 
 (Strange as it may seem, the scantier his equipment, 
 the harder the task!) He will never make quota- 
 tions in a language which his pupils do not under- 
 stand. He will not drag in facts that he has 
 acquired at great cost but which have no bearing 
 on the lesson. He will not assume toward his stu- 
 dents who have not had his advantages a holier- 
 than-thou attitude in literary affairs. 
 
 He will not be dogmatic ; literary "laws" are laws 
 not even in the scientific sense, and not one of them 
 had its origin amid the thunders of Sinai; there is 
 no literary pope, and even in its palmiest days the 
 French Academy was not an ecumenical council. 
 He will never forget that the same book may be 
 the strong man's food and the weak babe's poison ; 
 and he will remember always a beautiful literary 
 allusion concerning the tempered wind and the 
 shorn lamb. 
 
 He will be conscious of course, in a humble, 
 chastened way of the dignity of his office. He is 
 an inspirer, an initiator ; a head usher in the House 
 of Fame. His business is to introduce young people 
 to the greatest minds the world has known ; and it 
 is very bad form to make fun of celebrities, even 
 though they be venerable and eccentric. 
 
 Above all, he will keep in mind that literature 
 can be made a ladder mounting upward unto God.