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money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are - which is not saying much.

I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and skeptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or antiJapanese, or Christian, or devoted to

some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.

To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of Japanese, European, and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of perspective.

The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be preserved; it must perish at the touch of industrialism. But perhaps something may be preserved, something of the ethical qualities in which China is supreme, and which the modern world most desperately needs. Among these qualities I place first the pacific temper, which seeks to settle disputes on grounds of justice rather than by force. It remains to be seen whether the West will allow this temper to persist, or will force it to give place, in self-defense, to a frantic militarism like that to which Japan has been driven.

THE LETTERS IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

BY ELLEN TERRY

SOME years ago, when I was asked to lecture on Shakespeare's heroines in the light of the knowledge which I had gained of their character through impersonating them on the stage, I wondered if it were possible to find anything to say that had not been said before. 'If nothing is, that has not been before, how are our brains beguiled!' However, I found out, when I applied myself to the task, that even Shakespeare, about whom hundreds of books have been written, has a little of the unknown. For years it was my trade to find out, not what he had been to others, but what he was to me, and to make that visible in my acting. It was easier to describe what I saw through my own medium, than through one for which I have had no training; but I am glad that I tried, because it meant more study of the plays, and so, more delightful experiences.

In the course of this study for my lectures on the women in Shakespeare, I was struck by the fact that the letters in his plays have never had their due. Little volumes of the songs have been published; jewels of wit and wisdom have been taken out of their setting and reset in birthday books, calendars, and the rest; but, so far as I know, there is no separate collection of the letters. I found, when I read them aloud, that they were wonderful letters, and worth talking about on their merits. 'I should like to talk about them as well as the heroines,' I said. 'But there are so few,' the friend, to whom I suggested them as a subject for a causerie, ob

jected. 'I can't remember any myself beyond those in The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It.' "That's splendid!' I thought. 'If you, who are not at all ignorant, can't do better than that, there must be hundreds to whom it will be a surprise to learn that there are thirty letters, and all good ones!'

There is all the more reason for giving them our attention because they are the only letters written by Shakespeare that have survived. I doubt whether, as a man, he was a good correspondent. He crowded his great life's work, which has made England more honored throughout the world than the achievements of her great soldiers, sailors, and statesmen, into a score of years. He did not begin his career as a youthful prodigy, and he died when he was fifty-two. What with adapting plays, creating them, retouching them at rehearsal, writing sonnets, acting, managing companies of actors, and having a good time with his friends, he could not have had much leisure for pouring out his soul in letters. The man who does that is, as a rule, an idle man, and Shakespeare, I feel sure, was always busy.

People often say we have no authority for talking about Shakespeare as a man at all. What do we know for certain about his life? But I quite agree with Georg Brandes (my favorite 'I Shakespearean scholar) that, given the possession of forty-five important works by any man, it is entirely our own fault if we know nothing about him. But perhaps these works are not by Shake

speare, but by a syndicate, or by some fellow who took his name! Why should we pursue these tiresome theories? I wish we had just one authentic letter of Shakespeare's to put a stop to it. Otherwise, I should be glad that he left none behind for posterity to thumb. I don't like reading the private letters of a great man. Print is so merciless. Many things pass in hand-writing, which print 'shows up.' Print is so impertinent flinging open the door of a little room, where, perhaps, two lovers are communing, and saying to the public, 'Have a look at them these great people in love! You see they are just as silly as little people.' The Browning letters ought they ever to have been published? The Sonnets from the Portuguese gave us the picture of a great love. The letters were like an anatomical dissection of it.

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Now these letters in Shakespeare's plays were meant for the public ear invented to please it; so we can examine them with a clear conscience. Yet they are true to life. We can learn from them how the man of action writes a letter, and how the poet writes a letter. We can learn that, when people are in love, they all use the same language. Whether they are stupid or clever, they employ the same phrases. 'I love you,' writes the man of genius - and 'I love you,' writes the fool. Hamlet begins his letter to Ophelia in the conventional rhymes which were fashionable with Elizabethan gallants:

"To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia'-'In her excellent white bosom, these,' and so on.

'Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.'

So far he writes in his character of 'the glass of fashion.' But he does not like the artificial style and soon abandons it for simple, earnest prose:

O DEAR OPHELIA, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.

Thine evermore, most dear lady,
Whilst this machine is to him,

HAMLET.

Is this a sincere love-letter? Was Hamlet ever in love with Ophelia? I think he was, and found it hard to put her out of his life. At the very moment

when the revelation of his mother's in

fidelity had made him cynical about woman's virtue, this girl acts in a way that fills him with suspicion. She hands his letters to her father, allows herself to be made a tool. His conclusion is: 'You are like my mother; you could act as she did.' But he loved her all the same. I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.

Proteus, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is one of those professional lovers who are never in love and never

out of it. I can imagine him reeling off love-letters with consummate ease, not caring much to whom they were addressed so long as they contained enough beautiful epithets to satisfy him! Of his letter to Julia we hear only fragments: 'Kind Julia'; 'love-wounded Proteus'; 'poor forlorn Proteus'; 'passionate Proteus' more of Proteus than of Julia, you see! - for Julia, like many another woman, has, for the sake of her self-respect, torn up the letter that she is burning to read! She pieces the torn bits together, but these incoherent exclamations are all that her pride has left legible. Proteus's letter to Silvia we hear complete. It is in the fashionable rhyme, affected, insincere, but quite pretty.

My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly, And slaves they are to me that send them flying:

O, could their master come and go as lightly,

Himself would lodge where senseless they are lying!

My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them, While I, their King, that hither them impor

tune,

Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blessed them,

Because myself do want my servants' fortune. I curse myself, for they are sent by me, That they should harbour where their lord would be.

Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee.

How this letter-writer enjoyed playing with words! And how different this skill at pat-ball from the profound feeling in the letter from Antonio to Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice! Hear how a man, deeply moved, writes to the friend he loves.

SWEET BASSANIO, - My ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and since in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure. If your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.

To my mind, in this letter human love at its greatest finds expression. This love has all the tenderness of a woman's love: 'Sweet Bassanio!' the trustfulness of a child's 'I have only to tell him and he will help me'; the generosity and manliness of a true friend's 'Don't feel that you owe me anything. It's all right, but I would like to see you and grasp your hand'; the unselfishness with which wives and mothers love: 'You must n't think of coming all the same, if it puts you out.' Of all the letters in the plays, this one of Antonio's is my favorite.

Our manner of expression is determined by the age in which we live, but in this letter it is the thing expressed that seems to have changed. It is impossible to study Shakespeare's plays closely without noticing that to him friendship was perhaps the most sacred of all human relations. Valentine offers to sacrifice Silvia to Proteus. Bassanio

says that his wife matters less to him than the life of his friend. To an Elizabethan audience this exaltation of friendship did not seem strange. Two of Shakespeare's comrades, Beaumont and Fletcher, lived together 'on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse,' and had the same 'clothes and cloak between them'; and there were many such all-sufficing friendships. That attractive old sinner, John Falstaff, was cut to the heart when his friend Prince Hal publicly denounced him. His affection for young Harry is a lovable trait in his character; and who does not feel sorry for him, worthless old waster as he is, when the Prince answers his, 'God save thee my sweet boy,' with 'I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers'? But when Falstaff wrote the following letter, Harry was still unreformed and friendly:

Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the King nearest his father, HARRY PRINCE OF WALES, greeting:

I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayest; and so, farewell.

Thine by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him, JACK FALSTAFF with my familiars, JOHN with my brothers and sisters, and SIR JOHN with all Europe.

When we meet Sir John again in The Merry Wives of Windsor, — in which play Shakespeare had to bring him out of his grave, by request,' because he was so popular in the theatre that audiences wanted to see him in another play, - his wit is not quite so bright, but his epistolary style is much the same. You may remember that he writes two loveletters, word for word the same, to two women living in the same town, who, as he must have known, met often and exchanged confidences. This alone

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Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am I; go to then, there's sympathy. You are merry, so am I; ha, ha! then there's more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I; would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice, that I love thee. I will not say, pity me; 't is not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me,

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Thine own true knight,

By day or night,

Or any kind of light,

With all his might

For thee to fight,

JOHN FALSTAFF.

This letter may not be very funny in print; but when it is read aloud on the stage, it provokes much laughter. Sometimes one thinks that a joke is the thing most affected by the time-spirit. Remove it from its place in time, and it ceases to exist as a joke. Our sense of what is tragic remains the same through the centuries; but our sense of humor that changes. It is hard to believe that some Elizabethan comedies were ever amusing. In nothing does Shakespeare show himself 'above the law' more clearly than in his fun. It is not always 'nice,' but it is mirthprovoking, that is, if it is not treated academically. If a modern audience does not laugh at Shakespeare's jokes, blame the actors! The letter that Maria, in Twelfth Night, palms off on Malvolio as Olivia's has all the material for making us laugh; but I have seen Malvolios who so handled the material as to justify the opinion that Shakespeare's comedy is no longer comic. Here again it is the situation that makes the letter good fun on the stage. It begins in verse of rather poor quality:

Jove knows I love;

But who?

Lips, do not move;
No man must know.

I may command where I adore;

But silence, like a Lucrece knife,
With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore.
M, O, A, I, doth sway my life!

Maria was not much of a poet, but when she takes to prose, she shines.

If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands, let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. I say, remember. Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune's fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with thee,

THE FORTUNATE UNHAPPY.

Then follows the postscript; and Maria had reserved her great coup for the postscript (the only one, by the way, that is written in full in the plays): —

If thou entertainest my love, let it appear in thy smiling. Thy smiles become thee well; therefore in my presence still smile, dear my sweet, I prithee!

Shakespeare was no Puritan. He probably enjoyed bear-baiting, and yet, unlike many of his contemporaries, felt sorry for the bear. So after writing this scene, in which Malvolio is baited, and deluded, and made to look a fool, he is able to write another in which our sympathies are roused with the victim of Maria's 'sport royal.' Malvolio's letter to Olivia makes us see that the sport had its cruel side.

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