The Nonsense of Shakespeare

The Weekly Machen

Through the lens of Shakespeare, Arthur Machen gives us another fine look at his philosophy of finding the mystical in the material. All we need is to explore the woods or hills near us and we are closer to fairyland. Or perhaps, we should simply speak to a child. There is wonder to be found around us and in one another, and even in good old-fashioned nonsense.

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The Nonsense of Shakespeare:
Thoughts on the Madness of Great Wits
by
Arthur Machen
December 22, 1915

The best piece of Shakespeare criticism that I have ever read, I read the other day. It was by Mr. G. K. Chesterton; it pointed out the difference between the German spirit and the spirit of Shakespeare. The Germans, said Mr. Chesterton, are like the ladies of Mr. Sparkler’s fancy; they have “no bigod nonsense about them.” Shakespeare, on the other hand, is full of nonsense.

The wise critic then took the famous instance of the hawk and the handsaw. One school of commentators, he pointed out, have discovered that a hawk was an Elizabethan name for some sort of tool; another party of the learned incline to the belief that a handsaw—heronshaw, as they declare the word should be spelt—is some sort of bird. That is, they will have it that Shakespeare was talking dull sense. Whereas, as Mr. Chesterton shows, Shakespeare was talking delightful nonsense; “the difference between a hawk and a handsaw,” as one might say, “the difference between a baby and a bumble-bee.”

So far, good; but I think we may go farther, and declare that Shakespeare could only utter supreme sense—that is, the highest poetry, because he had this faculty of uttering supreme nonsense. The two faculties are, in fact, complimentary. And again we may go farther, and declare that this principle runs through all of life and all of letters. Great wits to madness nearly are allied; not so, but men of great wits take delight in what seems madness to the unilluminated. Mr. Dodgson was a profound logician and mathematician; therefore he wrote “Alice in Wonderland.” “Alice” is great nonsense, with a singular air throughout it of hovering on the edge of great wisdom.

Therefore again: Let all the wise people—with whom, of course, all children are included—make haste and go to the Court Theatre and see Mr. F. R. Benson and his company in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It is, no doubt, supreme nonsense, all this play of a classic Duke of Athens, of his Amazon bride, of transmuted loves, of Oberon and Titania and Puck and all fairyland ranging the woods of night, of Bottom the weaver changed into an ass. It is all a tissue of impossibilities; but the tissue is well-nigh divine, adorned with stars and flowers and figures of magic speech.

Speaking in an allegory, we may say that, for our sins we are compelled, most of us, to live in Gower-street, or Peckham or Crouch End, and to behave accordingly, in the matter of catching trains and earning a living and keeping in the right. But it is our privilege now and again to leave these estimable ways and habitations and to escape into strange and wonderful and delightful regions—into “a Wood near Athens” for example, a place very far removed from Bloomsbury and the suburban. I went into the wood yesterday, and was glad. It is a forest of solemn pines, of green far distances, of purple hazes; it is luminous with magic light; it is the wood of our dreams and desires, echoing with Shakespeare’s enchanted speech. I spoke of dreams. It has been argued, without much reason, I think, that all dreams at night fulfill those hopes and longings that we cherish by daylight, that this daylight of ours never can fulfill or satisfy. This is not the faculty of dreams; it is the faculty of literature. It is in the great books and on the great stage, that everything comes right in the end, that all enigmas are solved, and all troubles ended.

So it is in the Wood near Athens that we realise the wood that we have always desired to visit. We have come across hints and figures and anticipations of it in the common woods of earth; but here is the perfect wood. And it is a magic wood, and full of fairies in robes woven of sunset lights and pale fires of dawn and silver moonlight and starry beings dominate it and hold sway over it, and there rises out of the earth a little earth-spirit, all earthy coloured, and lovers come into the wood, and the Clowns enter into fairyland.

This is the age of gold; a wonderful refreshment for us who live in an age of iron and of blood, more terrible and dolorous than any in the history of the world. I know of no better medicine for unquiet spirits than Shakespeare’s dream, presented as it is by Mr. Benson and his company. For the grown-ups the best medicine, for the children sheer delight, something that will be a happy and golden memory for long years. They will be enchanted by the fairyland of the wood and all its glimmering mysteries; they will rock with laughter over the antics of the Clowns, particularly over the humours of one nasty, cantankerous little old man who will say in the wrong place, “this lanthorn doth the hornèd moon present,” and will call the moon the “mewn.”

As for Puck; the little earthy creature, both the children and their parents will recognise that there is a mistake in the programme. It reads:

Puck …….. Leah Hanman.

This is wrong; it should be:

Puck …….. By Himself.

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