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

56
Our firot question with regard to an Elizabethan
iss what grasp and grip does he possess upon
the common stuff of art? Our firot question with
regard to a Victorian is: how doer the man envisage
things, from what point of view does he
start, by what scientific spirit is he controlled?
(p.79)
hilst Wilde accomodated Shakespeare to his own ideas by
setting him firmly among "the common stuff of art", and Pater
described him as a dramatist who was not so much irresponsible
as impartial, both:owed something to Arnold's vision of a sage
who keeps his freedom while others abide our question - withholding
not only moral commitment but biographical information.
But the stage had to accomodate Shakespeare according to its
own specie! limitations and licences. It partook of the painter's
skill, and, in a time when painting was liable to censure if
it dealt excessively in anecdote and "moaning", the pictorial
representation of a play wac an artistically hazardous business.
Rival theories of graphic and plastic art, as well as of
literary and dramatic skill, v/ould be called into question,
wilde, in The Critic as Artist, v/rote slightingly of illustrative
painting, v.liich, he argued, did not "r..tir tho imagination",
but "cot bound to it":
The painter is so far limited that it ic only
throU;3h the mr.sk of the body that he can rdiov/ us
the mystery of the r.oul; only through conventional
images that he can ha .ale ideas; only throufji its
physical equivalents that he can handle psychology.
And how inadequately doec he (J.o it then, askirr us
to accept the torn turban of the : ".oor for the noble
r"a ( jc of Othello; or a dotard in a storm for the vild
nadnccs of LoarKo
It is no are it distance from ouch a view of painting, to the
Romantic impatience ./ith the stage, and Lear revealed as an
old man in a nightshirt - perhaps the older criticism waa in
.-ilde's mind, vVhen painting was bein; freed from narrative,
was iu roa&onable to join the tv:o in theatrical performances?