ts, like pieces of branches
picked up in a woodland path; but is this what the poet would have
desired? He takes lexicons and changes them into literatures, begins
with words, ends with poems. His art was synthetic. He was not a
crab, to move backward, but a man, to move forward; and his poetry is
not debris, like the broken branch, but is exquisite grace and moving
music. Tears come to us naturally, like rain to summer clouds, when we
have read his words. Much criticism is dry as desiccated foods, though
we can not believe this is the nobler criticism, since God's growing
fruit is his best fruit. A tree with climbing saps and tossing
branches, fertile in shade and sweet with music, is surely fairer and
truer than a dead, uprooted, prostrate, decaying trunk. This, then,
would I aspire humbly to do with Shakespeare or another, to help men to
his secret; for to admit men to any poet's provinces is nothing other
than to introduce them

"To the island valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail nor rain nor any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns,
And bowery hollows crowned with summer seas."

There is no trace of exaggeration in saying: Many people frequent
theaters ostensibly for the purpose of understanding the great
dramatists, and, leading thereto, seeing noted tragedians act Lear,
Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and at the end of years of
attendance have no conception of these dramas as a whole. They had
heard one voice among the many; but when the many voices blended, what
all meant they can not begin to guess. What playgoer will give a valid
analysis of King Lear? Ask him, and his ideas will be chaotic as
clouds on a stormy night. Not even the elder Kean is the best
interpreter of Shakespeare; for the dramatist reserves that function to
himself--Shakespeare is his own best interpreter. Dream over his plays
by moonlit nights; pore over his pages till chilly skies grow gray with
dawn; read a play without rising from the ingratiating task, and you,
not a tragedian, will have a conception of the play. I will rather
risk getting at an understanding of beautiful, bewitching Rosalind by
reading and rereading "As You Like It," than by all theaters and
stage-scenes and players. A dramatist is his own best interpreter.
The most discerning critics of the great dramas are not theater-goers.
The theater runs to eyes; study runs to thought. In a