The Sword of Song

43 NOTES TO ASCENSION DAY AND PENTECOST “Blind Chesterton is sure to err, And scan my work in vain; I am my own interpreter, And I will make it plain.” NOTE TO INTRODUCTION 1 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AN APPRECIATION BY ALEISTER CROWLEY.* IT is a lamentable circumstance that so many colossal brains (W. H . Mallock, &c. ) have been hitherto thrown away in attacking what is after all a problem of mere academic interest, the authorship of the plays our fathers accepted as those of Shakespeare. To me it seems of immediate and vital importance to do for Shakespeare what Verrall has done so ably for Euripides. The third tabernacle must be filled; Shaw and “the Human” must have their Superhuman companion. (This is not a scale: pithecanthropoid innuendo is to be deprecated.) Till now—as I w rite the sun bursts forth suddenly from a cloud, as if heralding the literary somersault of the tw entieth century— we have been content to accept Shakespeare as orthodox, with common sense; moral to a fault, with certain R abelasian leanings: a healthy tone (we say) pervades his work. Never believe it! The sex problem is his Speciality; a morbid decadence (so-called) is hidden i’ th’ heart o’ th’ rose. In other words, the divine William is the morning star to Ibsen’s dawn and Bernard Shaw’s effulgence. The superficial, the cynical, the misanthropic will demand proof of such a statement. Let it be our contemptuous indulgence to afford them what they ask. May I premise that, ment ally o bsessed, mono-maniac indeed, as we must now consider Shakespeare to have been on these points, he was yet artful enough to have concealed his * The lamented decease of the above gentlem an forbids all hope (sa ve through the c ourtesy of Sir Oliver L odge) of the a ppearance of the c ompanion article.—A.C. advanced views—an imperative necessity, if we consider the political situation, and the virginal mask under which Queen Bess hid the grotesque and hideous features of a Messaline. Clearly so, since but for this concealment even our Shakespearian scholars would have dis- covered so patent a fact. In some plays, too, of course, the poet deals with less dangerous topics. These are truly conventional, no doubt; we may pass them by; they are foreign to our purpose; but we will take that stupendous example of literary subterfuge—King Lear. Let my digress to the history of my own conversion. Syllogistically,—all great men ( e.g. Shaw) are agnostics and subverters of morals. Shake- speare was a great man. Therefore Shakespeare was an agnostic and a subverter of morals. À priori this is then certain. But— Who killed Rousseau? I, said Huxley (Like Robinson Crusoe), With arguments true,—so I killed Rousseau! Beware of à priori! Let us find our facts, guided in the search by à priori methods, no doubt; but the result will this time justify us. Where would a man naturally hide his greatest treasure? In his most perfect treasure-house. Where shall we look for the truest thought of a great poet? In his greatest poem. What is Shakespeare’s greatest play? King Lear. In King Lear, then, we may expect the final statement of the poet’s mind. The passage that first put me on the track of the amazing discovery for which the world has to thank me is to be found in Act I. Sc. ii. ll. 132-149:— “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeit of our own behaviour,—we make guilty