‘Heaven’ to Shakespeare is the longing for a temperamental stability which at the same time he recognizes as false. ‘Hell’ is Marlowe’s hell, which hath no limits nor is circumscribed In one selfe place, for where we are is hell. The reader complaining of the obscurity of modernist poets must be reminded of the intimate Shakespearian background he needs to be familiar with before he can understand Shakespeare. The failure of imagination and knowledge in Shakespeare’s emendators has reduced Shakespeare to the indignity of being easy for everybody. Beddoes, an early nineteenth century imitator of Shakespeare, said: About Shakespeare. You might just as well attempt to remodel the seasons and the laws of life and death as to alter one “jot or tittle” of his eternal thoughts. ‘A Star’, you call him. If he was a star all the other stage-scribblers can hardly be considered a constellation of brass buttons. The modernist poets are not many of them Stars but they are most of them very highly polished brass buttons and are entitled to protect themselves from the sort of tarnishing from which Shakespeare, though a Star, has suffered. Shakespeare’s attitude toward the perversely stupid reorganizing of lines and regrouping of ideas is jocularly shown in the satire on repunctuation given in the prologue of _Pyramus and Thisbe_ in his _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. _Bottom._ If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, But with good will. To show our simple skill, That is the true beginning of our end. Consider, then, we come but in despite. We do not come, as minding to content you, Our true intent is. All for your delight, We are not here. That you should here repent you The actors are at hand; and by their show, You should know all, that you are like to know. _Theseus._--This fellow doth not stand upon points. His speech was like a tangled chain, nothing impaired but all disordered. CHAPTER IV THE UNPOPULARITY OF MODERNIST POETRY WITH THE PLAIN READER