But however salutary we may consider the historical criticism of the skeptic to be, we know well enough that, even at its best, it cannot speak the final interpretative word. It is only the first step toward appreciation and judgment. It restrains the cunning of the merely dexterous, and clears the way for comprehension. It gives salience to Shakespeare's uniqueness; it helps to isolate his essential power. If it happens to dispel a delusion as to Shakespeare's art, it declares the mystery of his creative force. Into that mystery, however, historical criticism does not, in its own right, penetrate. For that final entering into the essence of Shakespeare, historical method must appeal to insight.

And what is it that is left to insight? How is the personage who lives aloof from the action to be known at all? If a man's actions do not reveal him, what does? One may answer briefly: We know the Shakespearean personage not essentially through his physical acts but through his speech: through his emotion, his images, his phrases, his cadences, his poetry, his thought. Mr. Shaw observes:

The Shakespearean delineation of character owes all its magic to the turn of the line which lets you into the secret of its utterer's mood and temperament, not by its commonplace meaning, but by some subtle exaltation, or stultification, or shyness, or delicacy, or hesitancy, or what not in the sound of it. In short, it is the score and not the libretto that keeps the work alive and fresh.

III

In taking leave of this matter, however, one is tempted to utter a final reminder. If historical criticism, upon which the skeptic depends, is to be useful, it must be employed with tact. Shakespeare's usual literary procedure undoubtedly exposed him to the danger of incongruity between mediocre stories and weighty personalities; but it does not follow that he was incapable of eluding the danger. A judicial survey of the plays will, I think, disclose almost every degree of fundamental artistic concord. In some the concord is complete. Of these plays I can mention only one, the mightiest of them all: King Lear. The hero of the older play on this subject, which Shakespeare had before him, was a mild soul, who, when Goneril spurned him from her door, could respond thus:

This punishment my heavy sins deserve,

And more than this ten thousand thousand times;
Else aged Leir them could never find

Cruel to him, to whom he hath been kind.

It seems all but incredible that this plain personage should be an antecedent of Shakespeare's terrifying pagan:

Hear, Nature! hear, dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purposes, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase.
If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt.

Anyone who can endure reading this superb and awful curse knows that Shakespeare spent himself relentlessly in the overpowering speech, rich mind, mad energy, and outrageous passion of Lear. Here, if ever, I infer, we might expect the violent new creation to burst through the limitations of the inherited fable, and to stand boldly apart from it. Iventure the observation, however, that in none of the other Shakespearean tragedies are character and plot so solidly united. And I suggest a reason. In the story of King Lear Shakespeare, for once at least, laid hands upon a great moral action. The subject is as grave, as deep, as ominous as existence itself. King Lear is the tragedy of old ageof the tyranny brought by years, inescapable and unconscious, of the ingratitude of youth, inevitable and unconfessed. This is a mighty theme, presenting a human predicament elemental and perilous beyond love, family, nation, or honor. Into the midst of this story Shakespeare launched an energy of creative passion not matched in all art; and yet even this thrust of imagination left the fabric of the story intact. Thus it was that King Lear became the greatest of all dramas.

KARL YOUNG.

GOPHER PRAIRIE

BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

GOPHER PRAIRIE is the little Western town in Main Street, the book that has set all America talking. Some people say that Main Street is a gross libel on the small American town; others say that it is a true indictment of its smallness. I am inclined to think that the truth lies somewhere between the two opinions, as the truth has a way of doing.

Perhaps if I had read Main Street after I had had some opportunity of forming my own judgment, instead of before, the picture it presents would have made a different impression on me. It is a depressing book, and I have no intention of reading it again, but the impression it did leave upon me was one of squalor, and the little towns I have seen in the West are far from being squalid.

The one I know best is situated in country of considerable natural charm, and might be expected to have acquired some charm of its own by this time; for it is not very new, as things go in the West, and though it has prospered it has not greatly increased. It is not entirely without charm. On the outskirts are the residences of its chief inhabitants, none of them large, but most of them attractive in the way of American homes, and surrounded by the open lawns and the beautiful trees which are America's special contribution to the residential idea. In general appearance this gives better results than England's rows of villas, with their little gardens in front, and their bigger gardens behind, of which you see little or nothing from the road. In the residential section of any small town in America, you can pass under the shade of tall trees, with a succession of well-kept lawns on either side of you, and the neat houses, mostly of wood painted white, with their verandas, and flowers about them, standing a little way back. There is more space than in English villa gardens, and nearly all of it is open space, so that when the trees have matured the effect is as if you were passing through a well-kept park. I

don't remember reading of any scene of this sort in the Gopher Prairie of Main Street, but it is a distinctive mark of all the little towns I have seen, and to leave it out is not to deal fairly by them. When you come to the town itself, the effect is far less agreeable, but there is at least one thing that goes to its credit. Main Street is usually very wide. There is a sense of space about it which in some degree takes off from the very poor quality of the buildings which line it on either side. I mean architectural quality. The newer buildings are usually of brick or stone. They are probably adequate in construction, but they are mean in appearance, and the more effort there has been to make them imposing the worse they are. That wonderful spirit in architecture which has put America first among the nations in the practice of this great humanizing art has not yet reached down to the needs of the small town. Here she is still at the bottom of the scale.

The small Western town began years ago with frame buildings of an unusually debased type. There would be a series of onestory wooden buildings with roofs running back from the street, but hidden and disguised by square fronts which made them appear to be of two stories. Everybody knows the pattern of these from pictures, even if they have never seen them. Sometimes an attic window would pierce the middle of this sham front, sometimes it would be used for advertisement purposes, sometimes it would just be left bare. I suppose the idea was to give a more imposing town-like effect, and such early monstrosities might be forgiven if they had been discontinued. But the type is persisted in. I have seen such buildings in course of construction, but instead of the wooden fronts, which may be considered as a kind of hoarding, they were using galvanized iron, shaped and colored to imitate stone. I have seen one that was actually built of stone. It was a bank building, of rough granite blocks, with a pretentious sort of castellated air about it. There was just room for a door and a window, and the upper front was pierced in such a way as to call attention to the fact that there was nothing behind it; so that the sham, which in this instance one might not have suspected, seemed to have been gloried in.

The brick-built stores are usually quite plain, which is something to be thankful for; but they are nothing but great boxes,

with no roof-ridge to be seen, or anything to break their monotony; and sometimes, at a corner, you may see the long upper line sloping a little from the front, so that even the natural squareness of such construction is denied you.

In the town I was in and out of during some days, there was only one commercial building upon which the eye could rest with any pleasure. This belonged to a lumber-yard, and was an honest wooden shed, well-proportioned, with a good roof. I have been told since that this was probably built to the standardized design of one of the big lumber companies, who take a pride in turning out such buildings well. It was probably designed by a good architect, and its lesson, combined with the poor conceptions of building all around it, is that the ordinary sense of right building, which continued well on into the nineteenth century, as can be seen in the small towns of New England, has been lost; and the only way to get it back is through the taste and knowledge of those who have made a study of it. In Gopher Prairie it has never existed, because it died out before that town came into existence, and other ideas took its place. The only thing to hope for is that the taste and knowledge which is so abundantly at work in the centres of American civilization will presently extend over the country. Then the inhabitants of Gopher Prairie, quick to catch new ideas—because they are Americans—will regret the deplorable mistakes they have been making for so long, and will soon arrive at something quite different.

It is a matter of considerable importance. Civic pride is very strong in America. Every little town is in some sort of rivalry with its neighbors. But they leave out almost entirely this question of beauty; or else they do not know in what the beauty of a town consists. I suppose, in the early days, every little town hoped to grow into a big one, which would account for the shams to which they still cling. At the best, you may see a few buildings suitable to a city perking themselves up among the poor little buildings. And it is seldom in a town as much as fifty years old that you will not see some untidy weed-grown "lots" in the very middle of it, that have never been built on. Nothing looks finished. You cannot imagine people who take a pride in their town settling down to it with satisfaction. Yet they do, and point out