Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe

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      My Shakespeare, rise! He rose. The bard rose throughout the length and breadth of his brave new world. He was not for an age, but for all time. Then, too, his tercentenary happened only once — at the end of three hundred years. It was observed piously from Maryland to Oregon. Eighty-one members of the House of Representatives, when asked by literate journalists for their favorite lines, replied instantly with a quotation from Polonius: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” The Swan was played, and pageanted, and essayed in every schoolhouse in the land.

      Eugene tore the Chandos portrait from the pages of the Independent and nailed it to the calcimined wall of the backroom. Then, still full of the great echoing paean of Ben Jonson’s, he scrawled below it in large trembling letters: “My Shakespeare, rise!” The large plump face —“as damned silly a head as ever I looked at”— stared baldly at him with goggle eyes, the goatee pointed ripe with hayseed vanity. But, lit by the presence, Eugene plunged back into the essay littered across his table.

      He was discovered. In an unwise absence, he left the Bard upon the wall. When he returned, Ben and Helen had read his scrawl. Thereafter, he was called poetically to table, to the telephone, to go an errand.

      “My Shakespeare, rise!”

      With red resentful face, he rose.

      “Will My Shakespeare pass the biscuit?” or, “Could I trouble My Shakespeare for the butter?” said Ben, scowling at him.

      “My Shakespeare! My Shakespeare! Do you want another piece of pie?” said Helen. Then, full of penitent laughter, she added: “That’s a shame! We oughtn’t to treat the poor kid like that.” Laughing, she plucked at her large straight chin, gazing out the window, and laughing absently — penitently, laughing.

      But —“his art was universal. He saw life clearly and he saw it whole. He was an intellectual ocean whose waves touched every shore of thought. He was all things in one: lawyer, merchant, soldier, doctor, statesman. Men of science have been amazed by the depth of his learning. In The Merchant of Venice, he deals with the most technical questions of law with the skill of an attorney. In King Lear, he boldly prescribes sleep as a remedy for Lear’s insanity. ‘Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.’ Thus, he has foreseen the latest researches of modern science by almost three centuries. In his sympathetic and well-rounded sense of characterization, he laughs with, not at, his characters.”

      Eugene won the medal — bronze or of some other material even more enduring. The Bard’s profile murkily indented. W. S. 1616–1916. A long and useful life.

      The machinery of the pageant was beautiful and simple. Its author — Dr. George B. Rockham, at one time, it was whispered, a trouper with the Ben Greet players — had seen to that. All the words had been written by Dr. George B. Rockham, and all the words, accordingly, had been written for Dr. George B. Rockham. Dr. George B. Rockham was the Voice of History. The innocent children of Altamont’s schools were the mute illustrations of that voice.

      Eugene was Prince Hal. The day before the pageant his costume arrived from Philadelphia. At John Dorsey Leonard’s direction he put it on. Then he came out sheepishly before John Dorsey on the school veranda, fingering his tin sword and looking somewhat doubtfully at his pink silk hose which came three quarters up his skinny shanks, and left exposed, below his doublet, a six-inch hiatus of raw thigh.

      John Dorsey Leonard looked gravely.

      “Here, boy,” he said. “Let me see!”

      He pulled strongly at the top of the deficient hose, with no result save to open up large runs in them. Then John Dorsey Leonard began to laugh. He slid helplessly down upon the porch rail, and bent over, palsied with silent laughter, from which a high whine, full of spittle, presently emerged.

      “O-oh my Lord!” he gasped. “Egscuse me!” he panted, seeing the boy’s angry face. “It’s the funniest thing I ever —” at this moment his voice died of paralysis.

      “I’ll fix you,” said Miss Amy. “I’ve got just the thing for you.”

      She gave him a full baggy clown’s suit, of green linen. It was a relic of a Hallowe’en party; its wide folds were gartered about his ankles.

      He turned a distressed, puzzled face toward Miss Amy.

      “That’s not right, is it?” he asked. “He never wore anything like this, did he?”

      Miss Amy looked. Her deep bosom heaved with full contralto laughter.

      “Yes, that’s right! That’s fine!” she yelled. “He was like that, anyway. No one will ever notice, boy.” She collapsed heavily into a wicker chair which widened with a protesting creak.

      “Oh, Lord!” she groaned, wet-cheeked. “I don’t believe I ever saw —”

      The pageant was performed on the embowered lawns of the Manor House. Dr. George B. Rockham stood in a green hollow — a natural amphitheatre. His audience sat on the turf of the encircling banks. As the phantom cavalcade of poetry and the drama wound down to him, Dr. George B. Rockham disposed of each character neatly in descriptive pentameter verse. He was dressed in the fashion of the Restoration — a period he coveted because it understood the charms of muscular calves. His heavy legs bulged knottily below a coy fringe of drawer-ruffles.

      Eugene stood waiting on the road above, behind an obscuring wall of trees. It was rich young May. “Doc” Hines (Falstaff) waited beside him. His small tough face grinned apishly over garments stuffed with yards of wadding. Grinning, he smote himself upon his swollen paunch: the blow left a dropsical depression.

      He turned, with a comical squint, on Eugene:

      “Hal,” said he, “you’re a hell of a looking prince.”

      “You’re no beauty, Jack,” said Eugene.

      Behind him, Julius Arthur (Macbeth), drew his sword with a flourish.

      “I challenge you, Hal,” said he.

      In the young shimmering light their tin swords clashed rapidly. Twittered with young bird-laughter, on bank and saddle sprawled, all of the Bard’s personæ. Julius Arthur thrust swiftly, was warded, then, with loose grin, buried his brand suddenly in “Doc” Hines’ receiving paunch. The company of the immortal shrieked happily.

      Miss Ida Nelson, the assistant director, rushed angrily among them.

      “Sh!” she hissed loudly. “Sh-h!” СКАЧАТЬ