Yet it is no less a task than this that
the scholiasts have girt themselves to achieve: they will pluck out the
heart not of Hamlet's but of Shakespeare's mystery by the means of a
metrical test; and this test is to be applied by a purely arithmetical
process. It is useless to pretend or to protest that they work by any
rule but the rule of thumb and finger: that they have no ear to work by,
whatever outward show they may make of unmistakable ears, the very nature
of their project gives full and damning proof. Properly understood, this
that they call the metrical test is doubtless, as they say, the surest or
the sole sure key to one side of the secret of Shakespeare; but they will
never understand it properly who propose to secure it by the ingenious
device of numbering the syllables and tabulating the results of a
computation which shall attest in exact sequence the quantity, order, and
proportion of single and double endings, of rhyme and blank verse, of
regular lines and irregular, to be traced in each play by the horny eye
and the callous finger of a pedant. "I am ill at these numbers"; those
in which I have sought to become an expert are numbers of another sort;
but having, from wellnigh the first years I can remember, made of the
study of Shakespeare the chief intellectual business and found in it the
chief spiritual delight of my whole life, I can hardly think myself less
qualified than another to offer an opinion on the metrical points at
issue.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25