Howard Griffin
A DIALOGUE WIT H W. H. AU DE N
I:
Do you think that the young man of the
Sonnets
was
an actor?
AUDEN: Yes, and since Shakespeare himself was one, you get a
great deal of dramatic psychology in the poems. You remember in
many of the poems Shakespeare urged W. H. to marry-
I: He was disturbed by a particular type of adolescent beauty that
ig very transitory and that represented for him a symbol of the
beauty of the moment-the thing that must be rescued from time.
A: Since that type of beauty is unrelated to function, a good-look–
ing man is a biologic luxury from a sexual point of view. Shake–
speare chides W. H. for his celibacy; he compares his single state
to an image in a mirror-
I: And to a self-fed flame, a sum of money spent upon itself, a
ruined roof-
A: But the mirror image has particular significance. To Shake–
speare W. H. stands for change.. . . Of course, in those days boys
assumed women's parts often to great effect for, since they were
able to do so for only a few years, this volatility added a kind of
pathos to the performance and compelled a healthy detachment on
the part of the audience. The spectator felt less temptation to identify
the actor with his role. Since 1700, the art of acting has declined
due to, first, the infiltration of un-aesthetic motives and second, the
unfashionableness of improvisation. Nothing could be more decadent
than a society like the present where actresses aspire to marry dukes
or counts. A strong effort should be put forth to make acting hered–
itary and to keep those who practise it apart, trained from childhood
like acrobats. The intactness of a strict convention such as that of
Classical Drama in France makes for good acting because the rules
are clear and the requirements rigid. Above all an actor should not
want to escape from his own world nor allow himself to be used as
