NOTES TO
ASCENSION
DAY AND PENTECOST
‘‘ Blind Chesterton is sure to err,
And scan my work in vain;
I am my own interpreter,
And I will make it plain.”
NOTE TO INTRODUCTION
1 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
AN APPRECIATION.
BY ALEISTER CROWLEY.*
Ir isa lamentable circumstance that so many
colossal brains (W. H. Mallock, &c.) have
been hitherto thrown away in attacking what is
after alla problem of mere academic interest,
the authorship of the plays our fathers accepted
as those of Shakespeare. Ta me it seems of
immediate and vital importance to do for
Shakespeare what Verrall has done so ably
for Euripides. The third tabernacle must be
filled ; Shaw and ‘‘ the Human" must have their
Superhuman companion. (This is not a scale:
pithecanthropoid innuendo is to deprecated.)
Till now—as I write the sun bursts forth
suddenly from a cloud, as if heralding the
literary somersault of the twentieth century—
we have been content to accept Shakespeare as
orthodox, with common sense; moral toa fault,
with certain Rabelaisian leanings: a healthy
tone (we say) pervades his work. Never believe
it! The sex problem is his Speciality; a
morbid decadence (so-called) is hidden?’ th’
heart o’ th’ rose. In other words, the divine
William is the morning star to Ibsen’s dawn,
and Bernard Shaw's effulgence.
The superficial, the cynical, the misanthropic
will demand proof of sucha statement. Let it
be our contemptuous indulgence to afford them
what they ask.
May I premise that, mentally obsessed, mono-
maniac indeed, as we must now consider
Shakespeare to have been on these points, he
was yet artful enough to have concealed his
* The lamented decease of the above gentleman
forbids all hope (save through the courtesy of Sir
Oliver Lodge) of the appearance of the companion
article.—A. C.
advanced views—an imperative necessity, if
we consider the political situation, and the
virginal mask under which Queen Bess hid the
grotesque and hideous features of a Messaline.
Clearly so, since but for this concealment even
our Shakespearian scholars would have dis-
covered so patent a fact. Insome plays, too, of
course, the poet deals with less dangerous topics.
These are truly conventional, no doubt; we
may pass them by; they are foreign to our
purpose; but we will take that stupendous
example of literary subterfuge—Azny Lear.
Let me digress to the history of my own
conversion.
Syllogistically,—All great men (e.g. Shaw)
are agnostics and subverters of morals. Shake-
speare was a great man. Therefore Shakespeare
was an agnostic and a subverter of morals.
prtort this is then certain, But—
Who killed Rousseau?
I, said Huxley
(Like Robinson Crusoe),
With arguments true,—so
I killed Rousseau!
Beware of a priori / Let us find our facts,
guided in the search. by a priori methods, no
doubt; but the result will this time justify us.
Where would a man naturally hide his greatest
treasure? In his most perfect treasure-house.
Where shall we look for the truest thought
of a great poet? In his greatest poem.
What is Shakespeare's greatest play? King
Lear.
In King Lear, then, we may expect the final
statement of the poet's mind. The passage
that first put me on the track of the amazing
discovery for which the world has to thank me
is to be found in Act I. Se. ii. Ul. 132-149 :-—
‘* This is the excellent foppery of the world,
that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the
surfeit of our own behaviour,—we make guilty
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