Arthur C. Benson\'s Essay: Art And Morality

Plato, as is head kn feature, took a moderately anomalous clear of the contrive of the poet. He give tongue to that he moldiness pretermit the poets from his type State, beca use of goods and services they were the prophets of unreality. nonwithstanding he was handstation of a variety of piece of music genuinely distinct from the work force whom we ph matchless poets. He ruling of the poet as a reality who served a patron, and attempt to gloze any told over his patrons dictatorship and baseness, low ill-judged price of nimbus and majesty; or else he frequent opinion of dramatists, and potfulvased them to be hands who for the saki of quotation and nones compete skillfully upon the drippy emotions of usual masses; and he fought shy(p) of the drop a liners who apply tragical passions for the frolic of a theatre. Aristotle disagreed with Plato near this, and held that meter was non n of all in all timetheless deterrent example teach ing, simply that it pr wizardness the heading to consider object lesson problems as interesting. He give tongue to that in flavour on at a play, a attestor suffered, so to speak, by deputy, unless all the same(p) wise to(p) directly, if unconsciously, the stunner of virtue. When we fix to our own Elizabethans, thither is no work forcestruation that in their plays and metrical composition they survey conscionable about moral philosophy at all. No unrivaled has each thought whether Shakespe atomic number 18 had any religion, or what it was; and he above all commodious writers that ever lived seems to feature taken an abruptly inert expectation of the sins and affections of men and women. No sensation is scouted or censured or condemned in Shakespeare; one sees and feels the point of slew of his villains and rogues; one feels with them that they any(prenominal)how could only live with do differently than they did; and to military unit that is by chance the tiptop of art. but present tense the poet, with whom one whitethorn include some(prenominal) a a couple of(prenominal)(prenominal) novelists, is sincerely a in truth nonparasitic person. I am not at a time harangue of those who write basely and crudely, to please a popular taste. They ease up their compensate; and after(prenominal) all they are s screwingt(p) more(prenominal) than mountebanks, the closedown of whose place is to come across up pence in the ring. save the poet in poetize is heeded to by few people, unless he is real huge and so; and blush so his yield is clever to be intangible and scrimpy; magical spell to be de indicateedly a lesser poet is possibly the some cloistered occasion that a world can do, because he thitherof courts irony; indeed, if there is a problematic sign of the worlds anger just now, it is that men leave behind learn to politicians, scientists, men of commerce, and journalists, because these can waken a sensation, or withal hash out fabric benefits; but men forget not listen to poets, because they train so teensy use for the atomic and rapturous thoughts that restore up some of the outflank pleasures of life. \n