her death moves him to fierce
disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he
discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets
her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal
of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr
Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so
penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself
again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing;
and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespear
never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In
Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic
tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among
a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not
Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the
Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespear is no longer
Shakespear: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight
in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle,
is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all
things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a
grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all
Shakespear's loves: his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the
first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of
mockery. "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again." "Divine air! Now
is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale
the souls out of men's bodies?" "An he had been a dog that should
have howled thus, they would have hanged him." There is just as much
Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south
and the bank of violets.

I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in
pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men,
not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which
we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in
Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately,
it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment)
it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out
of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and
with an unconquerable style which is the man.

The Idol of the Bardol