Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/115

 "Shakspere's Macbeth," another literary hypocrite shouted waving his hand in the air. Not one of the boys told the truth; they were afraid to do so. Down in their hearts they were really enshrining Huckleberry Finn or one of the heroes of Nick Carter's exciting tales. They were saying what they thought they ought to say. They were following the example which many of us who are older set for them in our spoken estimate of the fine arts, especially of music and painting. It takes training and experience and education to enjoy the best things in these arts, and many of us have not brought ourselves to the point of really enjoying what is best. We yawn or sleep through a concert, or we stand bored before a great painting praising the artistic product with our lips but getting little enjoyment out of it in our souls, because we do not yet know enough to enjoy it. And that is the way many boys feel about the literature they are forced to read and to criticise in the high school.

There is little doubt in my mind that Mr. William Shakspere was a great writer of English poetry and of the English drama; he was, perhaps, the greatest writer that we have ever known, but he is not the most easily understood, nor is he ever likely to give the greatest enjoyment to young and immature minds. Even in college it is not common to find a young fellow of eighteen or twenty who picks up a volume of Shakspere to read for pleasure to fill in an hour of leisure. I confess I was not a little startled a few months ago when an eighteen-year-old