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PARTISAN REVIEW
as the blind instruments of adjustment to the heroes' instinctive and
inevitable
hubris.
It has, I believe, already been pointed out that what Shakespeare
acquired-or, I think, we should rather say, confirmed-from his read–
ing of North's Plutarch, was a 'Graecian' spirit: and this, among other
things, set him apart from all his contemporaries in their views on the
meaning of 'classicism' and, in particular, from the untragic violence
of their 'Senecan' revenge plays. Mr. Cruttwell's reminder of Shake–
speare's undue sensitivity about his "want of art," then associated with
lack of classical scholarship, is interesting. But it is consoling to remind
ourselves that the Elizabethan idea of classicism was predominantly
Latin-they learned about the Greeks in Latin. And over-Latinity, the
actual 'monumental' and static character of the Latin language, probably
did much to kill for them the fluid naturalistic spirit of the Greeks and
to deaden their approach to the truly tragic spirit. Shakespeare's intel–
lectual genius was what Robert Graves calls "proleptic." He knew in–
stinctively what learning he needed to body forth his poetic appercep–
tion. Moreover if he appears to be in favor of political law and order
that is because, with all true poets, he knew that "everything transitory
is only a symbol." He knew instinctively that societies do their labored
best to imitate natural law, to symbolize the natural creative and destruc–
tive processes which only the tragic artist truly
expresses.
The Elizabethan 'Senecan' idea was not much nearer to tragedy
than our newspaper use of the term. It is full of "accidental deaths."
Perhaps the reason that we have no genuine poetic tragedy in our sad
and violent age is not that we are no longer 'orthodox' or Christian-Tory.
It may be that the age is too Senecan and insufficiently Greek, full of
tyrants with a triumphant and immoral will to power who are secretly
half-envied by their bewildered victims craving for melodrama. The true
tragic sense
is
not rationalistic, but it may be an effect of rationality
trying to understand and absorb the irrational.
Kathleen Nott
the han
5
h
0
f
man
5C
h
001
of
fi
near
t
5
52 west 8th street
new york city
opening on october 25
phone gramercy 7-3491
winter session
personally conducted
by mr. hofmann
