PARTISAN REVIEW
this point that the most important kind of distortion takes place. For,
first, there is a slot which explains to the youthful reader the purpose
of the scene: "In his palace, Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta,
Queen of the Amazons, discuss their coming wedding ... ," an explana–
tion which interferes with the natural dramatic unfolding, although the
intention, I suppose, is to help the reader as much as possible and
keep him from being in the least perplexed or from feeling that he has
to make any serious exertion beyond keeping his eyes open.
Second, and more important by far, the opening speeches, which are
in blank verse, are printed as if they were prose. This occurs from
beginning to end. There is no conceivable way in which the juvenile
reader can find out from the illustrated edition itself that he is reading
poetry and not prose, although one would guess that some sense of
the movement of language in blank verse rhythms certainly must impinge
upon every reader. This failure to make it clear that the speeches are
often poetry and not prose may not seem as serious, at first glance, as
in actuality it is. For the speeches are bound to be read incorrectly; and
worse still, when the juvenile reader does at some later date encounter
poetry printed as poetry he is likely to be annoyed, if not irritated to
the point where he refuses to read whatever is printed as poetry at
all. His illustrated edition will have given him an easy and pleasant ex–
perience which becomes an obstacle to the more laborious and un–
familiar effort involved in reading poetry straight, that is to say, as
it was written and as it was meant to be read.
Perhaps it is not as important as I think it is that there should be a
certain number of readers of poetry. But the fear that disturbs me can
be exemplified by what occurred in a class of freshmen at one of the
best universities in the world. The instructor, who was teaching English
composition, asked the students to define blank verse. No student
volunteered an answer. The instructor expressed his dismay and asked
his class if they had not studied Shakespeare and other poets in high
school. The students admitted that they had, and finally one student,
perhaps feeling sympathy for the clearly distressed teacher, raised his
hand and attempted a definition of blank verse: "Sir," he said, hesitant–
ly, tentatively, and unsurely, "isn't blank verse something which looks like
poetry, but is not poetry?"
It
turned out that the well-meaning student
supposed that unless there were rhymes at the end of each line, he
was not reading poetry. Now this class of students represented what was
probably the most intensively and expensively educated young men in
America. And as I have said, the incident and others like it occurred at
one of the best schools in the world.
If
such a systematic misunderstand-
