Note * — Chapter XXXI · Art, Play, and Civilisation

Again the educational aspect of the arts is constantly being stressed, sometimes in a manner which does them disservice. ‘Message’ hunting—the type of interest which discovers in Macbeth the moral that ‘Honesty is the best policy’; in Othello a recommendation to ‘Look before you leap’, in Hamlet perhaps a proof that ‘Procrastination is the Thief of Time’, or in King Lear an indication that ‘Your sins will find you out*’, in Shelley an exhortation to Idealism, in Browning comfort for the discouraged and assurances as to a future life; but in Donne or Keats no ‘message’—this mode of interpreting the phrase ‘a criticism of life’, though to a minute degree on the right lines, is probably more damaging than those entirely erratic theories, of which ‘Art for Art’s sake’ is an example, with which we have been more concerned.