There was an exceptionally good attendance at the Philharmonic Hall on Thursday night (Feb. 26) when several members of the Shanghai Literary and Debating Society read selections from As You Like It. The chair was taken at nine o'clock punctually by the President, Mr. R. E. Bredon, who briefly announced that Mr. Murray Stewart would open the proceedings by reading an introductory paper on the subject. matter great nation, But now she assumes that tole at once. She becomes a power abroad. of the evening. Time did not allow of this Raleigh and Drake and their like prepare address being'an exhaustive one, but it was the way for her maritime supremacy. Bacon interesting and clever from beginning to founds her future fame in philosophy. Her end, and reflects great credit on the influence in the religious world is felt ab author. Fortunately we are able to publish Rome. The strings of her tongue are it im extense, so that those who were un- loosed and a great national literature able to attend on Thursday can have the springs up as if by magic. In such a time pleasure of reading it in our columns. meu's hearts beat high, their pulses throb-The selections read from 4s You Like It! bed with the energy born of hope and of were from Act 1, scene 3; Act 2, scenes desire. It was the dawn of the day of Land 5: Act 3, part of scene 2, and Act 4, England's greatness and the sky was filled scene I. Dr.' Milles read the part of with glory.
Duke Senior, Dr. Jamieson that of the} All the characteristics of the period are melancholy Jaques, Mr. H. J. Sharp of course reflected in the glass which our that of Orlando, and Mr.
Wedemeyer great poet held up to nature, We see men was not only Duke Frederick, the First passionate, impulsive, Imaginative, roman-Lord and Amiens, but diversified the pro- tic, credulous, enthusiastic. Shakespeare's ceedings by singing very successfully two! plays could not have been written except Shakespearean igh no more ladies,' to such an audience. We, in this critical and Blow, blow, thou winter wind, though time, have been cultured into uniformity. the former is not to be found in' As You Impulse, enthusiasm, passion, we havelearné Like It, AM the above-named gentlemen to control and to hide. Therefore we Sud proved that they had well studied the! it dificult, sometimes, tofullow Shakespeare. play they read; they made, all the points People nowadays don't full auddeuly into and enunciated clearly, but it is no dis- mad passions of jealousy, or fathoms deep paragement to any of them to say that the in love. When we find a character in audience were best pleased with the patts Shakespeare behaving in that way, og for of Rosalind and Celia read by Mrs, Marshall instance when Duke Frederick banishes and Miss Marshall, who showed by a Rosalind without a moment's warning, we charming rendering of the lives that fell are upt to consider our souse of probability to their share an intelligent acquaintance outraged. But, to the passionate people with this work of the great bard. The of Shakespeare's time, I doubt if it would Society is greatly indebted to all those who have seemed the least strange. Our dif-assisted on Thursday, and it is to be hoped erence in manners must be held to that this will not by any means be the last Shakespearean reading given, Mr. Murray Stewart's paper was follows My duty to-night is merely to endeavour to fulfil the function of the old-fashioned chorus. Ata time when the stage was in state of almost absolute nudity, the chorus often fulfilled a very useful, function in liv of scenery. In the chorus to Henry Shakespeare makes an apology and appeal to his audience. He apologises for being unable to represent upon. the stage the scones in which the events of the play are supposed to take place, and be appeals to them to let Ivose their imaginstions and ta endeavour to see with the of the mind. Such an appeal I would make to you.
Io is certain that Sh"kespeare did nut appeal to his audience in vain, He muar have felt quite safe in throwing hiuselt upon the support of their imaginations, The men of his time were nothing if not i Their whole life was lit up and coloured by imagination. and indeed under the circumstances of th i could hardly have been othervwis 4 supreme moment in the life of the natio Upon a people filled with the stuff of li mighty influences had been at work, The Reformation lad fostered a new spirit, of religious and political liberty. The Renascence had opened men's eyes and minds to "the wonder and blood of the world." In the glowing stanzas of the Faerie Queen (the first great tangible result of the Renascence in England) there is a wealth of imagery, a flow and play of fancy, a pride of life, a passion for beauty, a richness of rhythm, a lavish luxuriance of description, which has never been equalled in our literature and which can never be surpassed. It could only have been conceived in an age when imagination ran riot. The discovery of the New World had opened a vista of new possibilities to the adventurous spirits of the time. They were haunted by the wildest El Dorado dreams. On the head of this turmoil of men's minds" as Green puts it, comes the fight with Spain. England emerges triumphant out of what was, for her, a life and death struggle. At once she takes her place among the nations. Less than half a century before the death of Elizabeth, England was without philosophy, without art, without a literature, She had no claim to the title of account for much that we rebel ut while reading him again, find the most contradictory characteristics cropping up in the same people. Our sense of probability resents it. Well, the same argument applies. The people of the time possessed, often, the most remarkably contradictory characteristics. Glance at the great naios, Elizabeth in one view is prehaps the most striking figure in. our histmy, ayreat ruler ina turbulent time, But looked at from the point of view of manners, she certainly was what Hartley Coleridge called her, an "indecent old. baggage." Or, take Bacon, the groutest intellect of the ago a bribe'taker! ' Wisest, weakest, a." Or der that Marlowe, the John the Baptist of English y, the spiritual father of Paradise 1 was killed in a tavern brawl, These {considerations should never be lost sight of in reading Shakespeare. They require to be kept in mind in studying the play frame which we are about to read.
'As You Like It is an interesting play to study, because it is one of those of whicl we have the direct source. It was modelled, -as you are all aware, on a novel entitled 'Rosalynde' by Thomas Lodge, published in 1890, some 10 years before the play. A comparison of this novel with the play enables us to get, as it were, a glimpse of the great artist at work. His method, as regards plot, when writing froma novel, (he generally of course wrote from another play) appears to have been very simple. Hefollows his model almost exactly. In this case he takes the story, creates and adele three new characters, re-creating, and for the most part re-christening, all the axiating ones; only altering the plot when some necessity Of his original characters requires it, and now and again changing a motive.
the whole he shows very little inclination to depart from the lines laid down by his predecessor. As You Like It is so familiar to every one that it would be mere waste of time for me to describe in detail the plot. The scene is laid in France in the province of Bordeaux in the days of the old Dukedoms. The forest of Arden is supposed to be in French Flanders, but the Forest of Arden described is the Forest of Arden in the pur-Tions of which tradition asserts that Shakes-peace was caught deer-stealing as a youth. However, the Arden to be thought of is in France. There is little incident and scarcely any action in the play. The only people with.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.