Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) by Robert Graves Page A
Authors: Robert Graves
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little at a time. For example, the outside world boasted of their poet Shakespeare. On inquiry we found that two hundred and seventy-four thousand books had been written about him, two or three thousand of which were extant, besides I don’t know how many articles and pamphlets. We asked for only three books. They were a complete original text of the
Plays and Poems
, with concordance, glossary and variorum readings; a well-documented
Life
; and a
Digest of Shakespearean Criticism.
Later, the
Life
and
Digest
were reduced to three pages, and the
Plays and Poems
to thirty, apart from the New Cretan translation. We kept only what Shakespeare had written when inspired. Usually, as you know, he wrote as a talented theatrical hack.’
‘Then no complete plays of his survive?’
‘It would go against custom to stage them.’
‘But you could read them. They read wonderfully.’
‘A play, by its nature, has no existence except on the stage.’
‘You don’t seem to admire Shakespeare very much.’
‘We admire no poets. We say: “The Goddess alone is worthy of admiration.” But Shakespeare still figures at length in the
English Canon.
It is said of him there: “he climbed painfully by night up a broken stair lighted only by the Goddess’s cruel smile; he loved her, though against his will.”’
‘How does the
English Canon
begin?’
‘With Thomas the Rimer who wrote the early English Carols in the Goddess’s honour, and Robin Hood the archer, who wrote ballads in the same style, some of them about his own exploits. Next comes the witty court-poet Henry Tudor, who defied the Pope and died in sanctuary. Next…’
I did not bother to put him right. The post-Exilic Jews had shown an equal disregard for historical fact, in ascribing all ancient religious poetry to King David and all ancient amatory verse to King Solomon, and in rewriting their national annals for the purpose of moral edification. I found later that the New Cretans, who never gave dates for anything, telescoped history whenever they pleased. They had created such composite historical characters as the court-poet Henry Tudor, to whom they attributed, so far as I can remember, the best work of Wyatt, Skelton and Dunbar, as well as a couple of poems by Henry VIII, and for whom they wrote a plausibly dashing early-Tudor
Life.
Robin Hood was the English Homer – the Greeks had similarly fathered all early ballad-poetry on the semi-legendary Homer – and became the secret lover of Queen Berengaria, whose gallant husband, King Richard Lion-heart, was credited with the moralistic anecdotes of Alfred and the cakes, Bruce and the spider, Sidney and the drink of water, and with a great many more. Similar liberties were taken with the life of Shakespeare, which incorporated those of Sir Francis Drake, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe. I can’t say that I approved of all this. As the son of a Shakespearean scholar who spent four years and a lot of money on a book called
Broken Letters as a Help to Establishing the Date of Certain Eighteenth-Century Shakespearean Forgeries
, I felt that this was carrying simplification a little too far.
‘Tell me, what do your Golden Archives contain, more or less?’
‘A hundred volumes exactly.
The Myths of Crete. The Myths of the Ancient World. The Brief History of the World
in nine volumes.
The Canon of Poetry
in fifteen. Four books of ancient melodies: two of recent ones.
The Book of Sums and Numbers.
Twenty-eight
Registers –
of plants, birds, fishes, stars and so on. Thirteen
Manuals –
of surgery, dyeing, metallurgy, navigation, meteorology, apiculture and so on. Twelve dictionaries. Three
Books of Maps.
Five volumes of
The Book of Precedents.
Five volumes of
The Book of Secrets. The Book of Death.
And that’s all. It took a century or more for these records to be gathered, sorted, simplified and engraved on gold plates, but once this had been done the subsequent additions and
Plays and Poems
, with concordance, glossary and variorum readings; a well-documented
Life
; and a
Digest of Shakespearean Criticism.
Later, the
Life
and
Digest
were reduced to three pages, and the
Plays and Poems
to thirty, apart from the New Cretan translation. We kept only what Shakespeare had written when inspired. Usually, as you know, he wrote as a talented theatrical hack.’
‘Then no complete plays of his survive?’
‘It would go against custom to stage them.’
‘But you could read them. They read wonderfully.’
‘A play, by its nature, has no existence except on the stage.’
‘You don’t seem to admire Shakespeare very much.’
‘We admire no poets. We say: “The Goddess alone is worthy of admiration.” But Shakespeare still figures at length in the
English Canon.
It is said of him there: “he climbed painfully by night up a broken stair lighted only by the Goddess’s cruel smile; he loved her, though against his will.”’
‘How does the
English Canon
begin?’
‘With Thomas the Rimer who wrote the early English Carols in the Goddess’s honour, and Robin Hood the archer, who wrote ballads in the same style, some of them about his own exploits. Next comes the witty court-poet Henry Tudor, who defied the Pope and died in sanctuary. Next…’
I did not bother to put him right. The post-Exilic Jews had shown an equal disregard for historical fact, in ascribing all ancient religious poetry to King David and all ancient amatory verse to King Solomon, and in rewriting their national annals for the purpose of moral edification. I found later that the New Cretans, who never gave dates for anything, telescoped history whenever they pleased. They had created such composite historical characters as the court-poet Henry Tudor, to whom they attributed, so far as I can remember, the best work of Wyatt, Skelton and Dunbar, as well as a couple of poems by Henry VIII, and for whom they wrote a plausibly dashing early-Tudor
Life.
Robin Hood was the English Homer – the Greeks had similarly fathered all early ballad-poetry on the semi-legendary Homer – and became the secret lover of Queen Berengaria, whose gallant husband, King Richard Lion-heart, was credited with the moralistic anecdotes of Alfred and the cakes, Bruce and the spider, Sidney and the drink of water, and with a great many more. Similar liberties were taken with the life of Shakespeare, which incorporated those of Sir Francis Drake, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe. I can’t say that I approved of all this. As the son of a Shakespearean scholar who spent four years and a lot of money on a book called
Broken Letters as a Help to Establishing the Date of Certain Eighteenth-Century Shakespearean Forgeries
, I felt that this was carrying simplification a little too far.
‘Tell me, what do your Golden Archives contain, more or less?’
‘A hundred volumes exactly.
The Myths of Crete. The Myths of the Ancient World. The Brief History of the World
in nine volumes.
The Canon of Poetry
in fifteen. Four books of ancient melodies: two of recent ones.
The Book of Sums and Numbers.
Twenty-eight
Registers –
of plants, birds, fishes, stars and so on. Thirteen
Manuals –
of surgery, dyeing, metallurgy, navigation, meteorology, apiculture and so on. Twelve dictionaries. Three
Books of Maps.
Five volumes of
The Book of Precedents.
Five volumes of
The Book of Secrets. The Book of Death.
And that’s all. It took a century or more for these records to be gathered, sorted, simplified and engraved on gold plates, but once this had been done the subsequent additions and
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