Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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Dr. Steiner: … it would depend a little upon what the teacher has already read and what the teacher likes,
and for that reason, I gave only the qualities. For the tenth grade, you should certainly consider older and
more recent lyric poetry.
A teacher says that he began with lyrics from Milton’s time.
Dr. Steiner: You should do it in the following way. In the tenth grade, read the lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s
time and then give a short review in the twelfth grade. We cannot completely ignore lyric poetry from
Shakespeare’s time because it gives a curiously deep indication of the period of European development
when the Germanic languages were much more similar to one another than they are only a few centuries
later. English lyric poetry is still unbelievably German. If you read Shakespeare’s lyrics, you will see they are
not at all un-German. We can show that in the twelfth grade, so that a feeling will arise that is very
important for humanity in general. Thus, for the tenth grade, Robert Burns, some things out of the period
of Thomas Percy. Some things from the Sea School, for example, Coleridge, and then Shelley and Keats.
You will, of course, need to be selective, but do what you prefer, since you will then do it better. You could
also present some particular points of view. There is, however, one thing in these lyrics that you will find
throughout almost all English lyric poetry, namely, that where it is good it has a sentimental element.
Sometimes that is very beautiful, but there is certainly a sentimental element throughout. Something else is
that when the English way of thinking becomes poetic, it is not at all appropriate for representing humor.
English then becomes trivial and has no humor in a higher sense. There is not even a word for it. How
could you say “humor” in English? The way Falstaff is handled would not represent humor today. We
would, of course, say there is much humor in it, but we would not refer to the way the whole thing is
presented as humor itself. What is apparent to us is how precise the characterizations are. We perceive what
is human, but in Shakespeare’s time it was not perceived in that way. The well-roundedness and exactness
of characterizations was unimportant for people in earlier times. What was important then was that the
humors be good for presentation on the stage. People thought much more as actors at that time.
[Throughout this paragraph and the next, Steiner merges the meanings of the word humor. On the one
hand he uses it to refer to what is commonly referred to as humor today—something comic or whimsical.
On the other hand, he reaches back into the much older meaning of the word (a cognate in German and
English), which refers to the medieval four basic “fluids” of the four temperaments. He is thus saying that
this form of presentation would no longer be a true characterization, nor would it be comic at a higher
level. — TRANS]
Today, we can no longer call Falstaff humorous. By the word humor, we mean someone who dissolves
in a kind of fog, that is, someone not so well defined in regard to his temperament. Humor is the
kind of temperament someone has. The four temperaments are humors. Today, you can no longer say that
someone has a melancholic humor. Thus, someone whom you cannot really quite grasp, who dissolves in
the fog of their temperaments, has humor. In drama, you should show that the development of the English
people resulted in the height of English drama being reached by Shakespeare, and that since then nothing
else has reached the same height. It is, of course, interesting, but you should draw the students’ attention to
how development proceeds only in the twelfth grade. You can mention how in Middle Europe, the German
Reformation kept its basic religious character through the great importance of church lyric. In France, the
Reformation does not have a religious character; it has a social character, and this can be shown in the
poetry. In England, it has a political/moral character, something we can see in Shakespeare. That is connected
with the fact that for a long time the English did not have an idealistic philosophy, so they lived it
out in poetry. That gives their poetry a sentimental tendency. That is what made the rise of Darwinism
possible. Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner (753-757, 764-769)