Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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This description might be of the autlior himself - it certainly
forms part of an ideal persona, and in the course of the book,
as Marius eventually becomes a Christian, it is only a short
step from Biron (or Marius, or Pater) to Christ, Again a
detached world view brings its rewards, in a newly spiritualised
apology for the pursuit of aesthetic pleasure:
oome transforming spirit was at work to harmonise
contrasts, to deepen expression - a spirit which
in its dealing with the elements of ancient life,
was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion,
juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect
of fijshness, a grave yet wholesome beauty, because
the world of sense, the whole outward world wos
understood to s«t forth the veritable unction and
royalty of the soul within, among the prerogatives
of which was a delightful sanse of freedom. ? ,
After the publication of Marius the Epicurean, with its reviewed
and moral individualism, Pater felt himself able to restore to
The Renaissance the Conclusion omitted in 1877 for fear of
imputations of advocating hedonism*
In the essay on Measure for Measure Pater treats Shakespeare
not only as an impartial creator but as an artist working in
a visual medium. Love * s Labour* s Lost possesses "not so much
the unity of a drama as that of a series of pictorial groups,
in which the same figures appear, in different combinations
but on the same background" - Pater compares t.>'.e play to an
ancient tapestry, in which the figures have been ;:iven voices
(p.89)» This kind of unity - "not GO much the unity of a drama"
- is the unity Pater seems to have striven for i.i his own
work: Marius the Epicurean is not oo much a novel as a series
of scenes, Imaginary Portraits v/ith a fully detailed background,
men and women seen not ii action but in rcnoce. The nrtists
Pater admired were praised in so far c.s they achieved ouch
effects. In "The School of Georgione", published in 1077 and
reprinted posthumously in .Miscellaneous otudieTS (1895), the
critic attempted to define the quality which Vasari had called
il fuoco Giorgioncsco;
Now it is no.rt of the ideality of the highest
sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents ue
v/ith a kind of profoundly significant and ;. nin-
, ted instant, a more gesture, a lo ;k, a :nale,
per "iaps - some brief and wholly concrete nozncnt -