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A Note About Epics

Perhaps the most honored but probably the least read books in the great tradition of the Western World are the major epic poems, particularly the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Milton's Paradise Lost. This paradox requires some comment.

Judging by the very small number that have been completed successfully in the past 2,500 years, a long epic poem is apparently the most difficult thing a man can write. This is not for want of trying; hundreds of epics have been begun, and some-for example, Wordsworth's Prelude and Byron'3

Don Juan-have grown to extensive proportions without ever really being finished. So honor is due the poet who sticks to the task and completes it. Greater honor is due him if he produces a work that has the qualities of the five just mentioned.

But they are certainly not easy to read.

This is not only because they are written in verse-for in every case except that of Paradise Lost, prose translations are available to us. The difficulty seems rather to lie in their elevation, in their approach to their !>Ubject matter. Any of these major epics exerts enormous demands on the reader-demands of attention, of involvement, and of imagination. The effort required to read them is very great indeed.

Most of us are not aware of the loss we suffer by not Suggestions for Reading Stories, Plays, and Poems 223

making that effort. For the rewards to be gained from a good reading-an analytical reading, as we should say-of these epics are at least as great as those to be gained from the reading of any other books, certainly any other works of fiction.

Unfortunately, however, these rewards are not gained by readers who do less than a good job on these books.

We hope that you will take a stab at reading these five great epic poems, and that you will manage to get through all of them. We are certain you will not be disappointed if you do. And you will be able to enjoy a further satisfaction. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton-they are the authors that every good poet, to say nothing of other writers, has read. Along with the Bible, they constitute the backbone of any serious reading program.

How to Read Plays

A play is fiction, a story, and insofar as that is true, it should be read like a story. Perhaps the reader has to be more active in creating the background, the world in which the characters live and move, for there is no description in plays such as abounds in novels. But the problems are essentially similar.

However, there is one important difference. When you read a play, you are not reading a complete work. The complete play ( the work that the author intended you to apprehend ) is only apprehended when it is acted on a stage. Like music, which must be heard, a play lacks a physical dimension when we read it in a book. The reader must supply that dimension.

The only way to do that is to make a pretense of seeing it acted. Therefore, once you have discovered what the play is about, as a whole and in detail, and once you have answered the other questions you must ask about any story, then try directing the play. Imagine that you have half a dozen good 224 HOW TO READ A BOOK

actors before you, awaiting your commands. Tell them how to say this line, how to play that scene. Explain the importance of these few words, and how that action is the climax of the work. You will have a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the play.

An example will show what we mean. In Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii, Polonius announces to the king and queen that Hamlet is insane because of his love for Ophelia, who has spumed the prince's advances. The king and queen are doubtful, whereupon Polonius proposes that the king and he hide behind an arras, in order to overhear a conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia. This proposal occurs in Act II, Scene ii, at lines 160-170; immediately thereafter Hamlet enters, reading. His speeches to Polonius are enigmatic; as Polonius says, "though this be madness, yet there is method in'tl" Later on, early in Act