I'm going to talk to you today about
Everything to Everybody which is a big
project I'm leading in Birmingham which
has two sort of twin objectives is that
they're on the screen one of which is
unlocking what is the world's first
great Shakespeare library for all that
is in Birmingham, it's part of Birmingham
City library's collection and they're
more broadly using Birmingham's forgotten
past to inspire future but there is a
big project that I can talk about which
will hope to to deliver on these grand
aims but this is a research seminar and
I'm going to talk a bit more to you
today about the pioneer of both the
Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library and
something much bigger really the the the
of the idea and realization of what does
have a real claim to be the world's
first modern city and that person is
called George Dawson and Birmingham
has you may be surprised to hear as I
was surprised to find out has a real
claim to being a Shakespearean city that
is George Dawson you'll see a better
picture of him later
you know who that is that's Shakespeare
so Dawson stood under a medallion of
Shakespeare's face in the right in the
Civic heart of Birmingham in what is now
Chamberlain Square it was then Ratcliffe
Square or place from 1881 his this
monument was erected at the same time as
the Chamberlain monument many of you
will know that monument it's not a very
personal monument actually there is a
medallion of Chamberlain's face on it
but you have to look quite hard to see
it this is a very personal monument has
a life-sized man speaking in a fairly
relaxed attitude by Victorian standards
to passes by so I say right in the heart
of Birmingham and it stood there
till 1951 so pretty much within living
memory not for many people here but
never
it's its it till fairly recent date it
stood there proclaiming something about
Birmingham and about the kind of
civilization it sought to embody as many
of you probably all of you know in
Shakespeare's lifetime Birmingham was about
the same size as Stratford so it's a
city a very recent vintage in fact it
wasn't a city in George Dawson's times
is later on in the nineteenth century
that it gets city status in mushrooms
with the Industrial Revolution into a
city into a town soon to be a city which
sees itself as the second city of Empire
and as I say you've got right at the
heart of you've got this strange
forgotten man George Dawson somehow
inspired by Shakespeare and others as I
will say so who was George Dawson one
contemporary pictures him as follows how
clearly how vividly he stands out in
memory the mass of iron gray hair
heavily streaked with white nearly
covering his ears quite covering his low
broad forehead bushy eyebrows nearly
straight and beneath them dark brown
eyes that twinkled and flashed and
blazed and melted the nose straight or
nearly so the mouth partly hidden by
straggling beard firm but not so firm
that it could not scorn or quiver with
emotion the face was lined and seamed
the face of a man who'd known many
sorrows who'd carried his own burden of
care and the burdens of others also his
voice when he spoke to you was full and
deep and rather husky the voice of a man
who'd struggled and suffered who'd known
disappointed and disappointment and
defeat in the service of great causes
and in the pursuit of noble ideas there
was a note of scorn in its times a note
of pity in it always the man himself was
of middle height broad and sturdy slow
in the movements of the body Swift in
the movements of the head and lastly one
of the little things almost always a
velvet coat or at least a velvet
waistcoat with a necktie that was any
colour but white
in short a man thoroughly unclerical
unprofessional
unusual altogether unlike ordinary men
if you saw him in a crowd you'd have
marked him out if you heard him speak
you'd have watched him and waited for
him to speak again
such was George Dawson in the later
years of his life but he was a young man
when he came to Birmingham and he came
in the fire and freshness of his use
Dawson was controversial
he never altogether lost that fire and
freshness but not long after he came to
Birmingham in the late 1840s he was
perhaps the most hated man in England
minister of a church which he himself
called the Church of the Doubters friend
to exiled European insurrectionists like
the Hungarian Kossuth and the Italian
Mazzini friend also to the memory of
Oliver Cromwell Dawson comprehensively
and courageously reinvented religion and
canonical culture for new times as a
vocation for radically insurgent
activism and solidarity both at home and
abroad he championed workers rights
recreation and education
he brought the latest art and ideas to
Birmingham and he really he'd spoke to
Birmingham audiences in front of
pre-raphaelites paintings almost as as
they were drying on the canvas and lost
my place now I got so excited he even
brought Kossuth to the city and hundreds
and thousands turned literally turned
out to see the Magyar revolutionary
and a city center that was
festooned with the Hungarian tricolor or
which is quite an amazing thing to think
of in the context of brexit he was
notorious in Australia a scion of the
Blythe family who'd come over from
Adelaide in around 1860 and quoting
expressed his surprise that there was
not more anti Dawson talk he said such
feeling was much stronger with them in
Adelaide in the mid 19th century and
Dawson still a young man still by the
time of his death Dawson had won over
Birmingham in seemingly the world at the
unveiling of the first statue what I
showed it was the second statue in
Dawson's a distinction of Dawson is that
they loved him so much they'd reject
the first statue the people of the city
as as insufficiently like him and so a
second one had to be erected but when
the first statue was unveiled it was
announced solemnly that the gathering
that day was not merely a town's
gathering not merely a Birmingham
meeting the name of George Dawson was
famous his friends are bounded far down
in the south beneath the bright beams of
the southern cross and far away amid the
golden homes of the setting sun on the
Pacific coast I want to think a little
bit more talk a little bit more about
the statue was the work of one F J
Williamson and the canopy is
the work of JH Chamberlain not a
relation of Joseph Chamberlain but the
great architect of Birmingham really he
built the board schools
he built Chamberlain's Highbury he built
he designed the shakespeare memorial
room which I'll go on to talk about so
I've said there's a picture of sorry the
medallion of Shakespeare on one face but
of course it has four faces and the
other faces literally faces are those of
Bunyan and of Carlisle Thomas Carlyle
Dawson's contemporary he knew cut Orson
knew Carlyle and accompany Carlyle on
his first trip to Germany and Oliver
Cromwell and let's remit this is right
in the heart of Birmingham the Civic
Square of Birmingham you've got the most
personal monument to a man who is
inspired by Shakespeare Bunyan
non-conformist religion Carlyle science
Scottish sign of something similar that
brought up and updated for it for a more
secular age and the man who faced up to
the challenges intellectual challenges
of the modern day mote perhaps most
squarely and then Oliver Cromwell so it
tilts Shakespeare's influence very much
in an anti-establishment direction
Bunyan representing reformed religion
Cromwell leading to revolution Carlyle
wrote about Cromwell was partly inspired
by him and then and then
Shakespeare somehow embodying as if the
plays embody a richly specific model for
that renovated new life that Dawson was
interested in but I I think this
monument also stands for something else
which is the unity of culture really it
runs together politics religion art and
civic life and Dawson absolutely spoke
for that life he said should be a
manifestation of one spirit and should
that should be the result of the highest
style of thinking they're going to
really intellectually ambitious position
to take but one that he seizes utterly
continuous with local government
he spoke vociferously against
departments and sequestered specialism
despising any division of experience
into religious life political life
academic life etc Shakespeare Carlyle
Bunyan Cromwell letters poetry religion
politics all but faces and facets for
Dawson of the one life in which they in
here and which we individuals live
together Dawson would fundamentally have
opposed the climate of splintering
specialism in our modern universities
and it became his conviction faith even
that everything connects in life and can
only be justified by that standard which
is what afforded art and literature is
inalienable vocation for politics and
since there's so much life in
Shakespeare Dawson thought Shakespeare
is an important agency for enlarging
Birmingham and wider culture now this
all had to be proclaimed directly to the
people because he there are no barriers
for Dawson between tribes or Creed's or
in fact last week I heard to me that
it's sort of amazing that Dawson and
John Henry Newman who wrote the idea of
the university was recently canonized by
the Catholic Church are in Birmingham at the
same time I'd seen no no no no
acknowledgement really of this I founded
letter from
from from Newman about a portrait that
had been commissioned of him and
praising and expressing his gratitude to
Dawson and Timins the other founders
of the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library are
coming to see it for coming to see it
played pay their respects but it's sort
of amazing because Dawson was such a
nonconformist
and a sort of revolutionary and but it
suggests a time where those sorts of
divisions could also be reached across
so Dawson wanted to speak across
divisions and I think you see that in
the what could be seen as a rather and
distinguished statue in a way but the
fact that he's there talking in a casual
attitude very typical of him he used to
lean on a lectern a bit like I'm doing
which might be perfectly conventional
now wasn't conventional in the Victorian
period at all and there the sculpt
Thomas Wallner the pre-raphaelite has
pictured him sorry yeah embodied him
just speaking to people as they walk
past and that's absolutely right for
Dawson because that's what he did he
believed that everything was shareable
quite literally with with everybody said
the highest truths that's his phrase of
course not mine everything so everybody
said the highest truths are cognizable
by all what he believed in a kind of
poor lying way that you could proclaim
all things to all men and women you just
had to get your address right and he
himself did do that he spoke to enormous
audiences and made a lot of money on the
most abtruse top topics and it's
amazing so he spoke about Goethe's Faust
Marlowe's Faust  two things quite early
to be talking about Marlowe's Faust
I'm looking at my distinguished
colleagues I know more about such things
to me and and Bailey's Festus in the in
the Mechanics Institute in Manchester
made an enormous amount of money made
nine hundred pounds on a lecture tour in
America on such abstruse there's a lot
of money in the 19th century he was he
he he spoke at the Birmingham Midlands
Institute which may be known to some of
you but was should be known better to
all of us it was founded in 1854 for the
advancement of higher learning
throughout all classes he called for a
people's college he spoke at the peoples
hall he was opposed to what we call
dumbing down not afflicted with what in
Birmingham Charles Dickens called the
coxcombical idea of writing down to
the popular intelligence his speaking
statue memorialized his absolute
conviction that anything can be said to
anyone this is it that's more real as
you know and I I wanted to bring that
because of course it's fairly you can
see the relationship can't you but but
how but sitting on his throne bit like a
god it's a rather wonderful memorial and
Albert has there's a lot to be said for
in Prince Albert but again any of you
who've looked at it I mean there's a
kind of infinite panoply of culture
around it it's all of culture whereas
the dorsum monument seems to say this is
a specific vision of what culture is a
bit more militant and insurgent so there
it is again as you say you see you can
see people walking past in that was the
sketch and Thomas Warner also wanted to
memorialize Dawson as a man speaking to
the city not a monarch not a mortal God
like Albert in his shrine not a priest
or a professor set apart I have never
been presented with an honorary degree
Dawson said and I have never been made a
knight honors in the common sense
I have not coveted and the world has
done me the credit of thinking I did not
want them forgettable through his I
think he made no pretensions to the
title reverend he was a preacher but of
a church which had no official doctrine
or dogma so whether it was a church or
not is another question there were some
things he thought could be said to men
and women useful to be said they thought
he was able to say them that was all he
was no priest no dignitary of the church
he was not reverend but reverent and he
said that actually incidentally at a
dramatic supper for John Toole who was
the comic actor in the first first actor to have
a theater named after him in London and
in the West End and Dawson said you know
even reverence actors you know I'm here
as a nonconformist Minister but I
represent a reverence and in
nonconformist Birmingham that was quite
a thing to to say finally I think what
that statue represents is the
collaborative improvisation of a culture
so you've got Dawson standing under
these great living luminaries of course
they're actually dead but they they're
part of his message and he's speaking it
directly to all of the people of the
city in the common square in Emma which
was first published in 1816 Jane Austen
put the following words into the mouth
of Mrs. Elton they came from Birmingham
which is not a place to promise much you
know Mr. Weston one has not great hopes
from Birmingham I always say there's
something direful in the very sound but
inside 50 years Dawson was able to speak
of Birmingham as quote the chief center
of civilization the chief town of
democracy the town from which liberty
radiates to all the world the minister of
Cars Lane Chapel the reforming
evangelical theologian and himself
something of a Shakespearean RW Dayal
whose life and ministry were inspired by
Dawson said in a more streetwise idiom
Birmingham was no mean city during the
1870s in the early 1880s he's acquired
the international reputation of being
quote the best governed city in the
world
quote municipal for reformers looked to
Birmingham as the eyes of the faithful
are turned to Mecca quote it was quote a
powerhouse of moral and material
energies quote nothing was impossible
Dale said if we're true to each other
and true to this town we may do deeds as
great as were done by Pisa by Florence
by Venice in their triumphant days and
they thought that Birmingham could be even
more hazard as it may sound to you even
more beautiful than those great Italian
cities because the beauty would acquire
would be a specific
morale you see the beauty of sharing
everything with everybody and making a
new and more equal and creative
civilization this newly invented new
minted city was quote an achievement of
the creative imagination it was also
regard regarded itself and was regarded
widely as the first modern metropolis
E. P. Henock says there was no
successful precedent to which to turn by
the 1880s we read in the words of the
dawn of Victorian Civic culture the
character bricks the characteristic
features of the Birmingham Doctrine had
become widely accepted in England and
that doctrine would come to influence
the world so far as you will recall as
Australia and the profit of this new
movement was it was largely agreed
though he's forgotten today was George
Dawson George Joseph Chamberlain
Birmingham's greatest reforming mayor he
was in office from 1873 to 1876 and he
since eclipsed Dawson in the historical
record and in Birmingham's memory
himself admitted it's a great thing to
say of a man that he's influenced the
life of a great town and it's true and
we know it that if this great town has
its special characteristics they are
due to the teachings of George Dawson
Carlyle called him Brumagen Dawson and
there was indeed a sense in which Dawson
was if he's remembered at all today it
was his for his so called Civic gospel
as a friend not a phrase he used but
it's a useful phrase and I think what
it's meant to suggest is Dawson is
somebody who transfused the passion and
mission of religion into civic politics
in a speech typically taken as the
touchstone of the civic gospel he said
at the opening of Birmingham's
corporation library that this new
library announced to the world quote a
conviction that a town like this exists
for moral and intellectual purposes so
it's not just a glommeration people
looking for work and a library like this
like the one Dawson was opening is a
proclamation that a great community like
this I'm quoting him is not to be looked
upon as a fortuitous
concourse of human atoms or as a
miserable knot of vipers struggling in a
pot each aiming to get his head above
the other in the fierce struggle of
competition not by bread alone with his
scriptural rubric a city I'm quoting
must have its parks as well as its
prisons its art gallery as well as its
asylum its books and its libraries as
well as its baths and watch houses its
schools as well as this sewers it must
think of beauty and of dignity no less
than of order and of health Dawson
you know who sat on every committee in
Birmingham as well as producing his
extraordinary lectures and was involved
in securing as extraordinary range of
actual political reforms also wanted a
beauty society for Birmingham and he
wanted Birmingham men to say I'm quoting
with the Passion of the Jews of old I
will go around Jerusalem and tell the
towers there off I will stand on the
bullock's and look at the beauty of the
city and it was this sort of it I could
go on it was this sort of attitude that
that helped to make Birmingham according
to Alfred St.Johnson in 1877
so 1887 perhaps the most artistic town
in England I mean not what we perhaps
think of Birmingham today literally
central to the life of this most
artistic city was Birmingham's
revolutionary Shakespeare library and in
fact Dawson stood under that medallion
of Shakespeare in the same square so the
Shakespeare library is more or less
behind behind him so you could you could
look at that but it wasn't gestural then
you could go into the Shakespeare
library which you yourself own as a
citizen of this this city when 1864 and
the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth
was up we're approaching Dawson and
Birmingham decided they didn't want a
statue Dawson actually growled let
Stratford endow its own boys instead he
they decided that if the gentle poet
could himself appear amongst them I'm
quoting again of course then he would
wish for no noble and monument than that
of being enshrined in the memories
and hearts of hard-working men in this
town and the feeling of the conceptions
of his mind of his noble expressions
were clearing and illuminating the path
of the hard-working artisan that the
leaves of his divine works were being
turned over by the hardy hands of our
own forge men would be greater pleasure
to him than any sculptured marble or
start pointing pyramid it's difficult to
overestimate I think the importance of
the now forgotten Birmingham Shakespeare
Memorial Library they found it instead
So Birmingham belongs the credit of having
reared the noblest monument to the
memory of England's greatest poet as one
local historian pities the largest and
most varied collection of Shakespeare's
works in the English and foreign
literature illustrating them which has
ever yet been made and the greatest
literary memorial which any author has
ever yet received confirmation of the
centrality of the Shakespeare library to
the civic gospel comes in the form of
architect and subscriber JH not Joseph
Jamie-Lynns arresting a vowel that he
should like the Shakespeare idea the
Shakespeare idea to grow in the same
proportion as the accumulation of their
Shakespeare property so it wasn't meant
just to be a kind of posh or broom which
kind of ornamented the city and dressed
it up as culture it was meant to
promulgate and further this that shaped
their idea whatever that was will return
to their the collection very quickly
outgrew the splendid shakespeare
memorial room which housed the library
according to a confirmed conviction on
the part of Chamberlain and others that
the shakespeare library ought to be
the very best room in town sorry I
messed up the syntax there it did
outgrow it but it but this wonderful
room is the fruit of an express is the
idea that this architect had that the
Shakespeare library ought to be the very
best room in town not excepting the
council chamber of the new Municipal
Building and that tells you a lot is as
well it is not just a you know a posh
antechamber there there's some
relationship between civic governments
the Shakespeare idea and the actual
government and
and culture of the city that they feel
it expresses that there was an attempt
to make a Shakespearean City in
Birmingham and if so the Birmingham Shakespeare
Memorial Library flung its
doors open it has to be said I think
from the perspective of democratic
inclusiveness that the foundation of
degree courses in English in Oxford in
1894 Cambridge in 1912 as well as the
endowments of chairs but later looks
like a regrettable narrowing one over
which which over the past hundreds of
years or so has had the effect of
withdrawing Shakespearean English into
the possession of an educated elite in
1849
Dawson offered evidence before the
parliamentary committee who were scoping
out the possibilities for public
libraries saying that quote the higher
class of poetry was very much read by
working clean people those of them who
could read had presume he means but
Shakespeare is known by heart almost and
Dickens concurred declaring I believe
they are in Birmingham at this moment
many working men infinitely better
versed in Shakespeare and Milton than
your average a fine gentleman when the
central lending library was opened Dawson
denounced the prejudice against working
men reading literature as quote old
patronizing twaddle of the last
generation that day was gone he said the
building this library would put an end
to all such twaddle for the future and
if that announcement seems regrettably
pre-merger off-shore consider these the
time of private ownership has nearly
come to an end
the death the day with the day would
come when a man would be ashamed to shut
up a picture by Raphael or any statue by
a great master in a private house the
gifts of genius should be like sunshine
open to all for all to be reached by all
ultimately to be understood and enjoyed
by all that great democratic dawn has
yet to arrive but Dawson and the
founders of the Birmingham Shakespeare
Memorial Library did all they could to
bring it on in an earlier lecture on the
collection Dawson's co-founder Samuel
Timmins emphasized just as much as the
world-class complement of early 
folios and cortos a quote series of keys
which open all the rest to general
readers to any ordinary intelligent
lexicons concordances and the Chief
Librarian Mr. Mullens groundbreaking
comprehensive catalogue of all
Shakespearean literature the list of
occupations of readers given in the
general annual reports for the
Birmingham reference library suggests
all sort of people did indeed use it the
record for 1872 includes hairdressers
electro-platers grocers japaners and
enamels gun makers steel toy makers
and one pearl worker it was natural that
Birmingham should quickly become the
birthplace of the National Education
League Dawson said at its first meeting
on the 12th of October 1869 we wish to
lay the foundation of a national
education system it must be laid with
great simplicity and great breadth so
what was the Shakespeare idea that they
they wanted to convey I mean I think the
movement for open education represented
by the foundation of the library
combined this commitment to breath with
an equally intense commitment to depth
it wasn't just that as  Dawson
said the highest truths are cognizable
by all even more importantly the lesson
of Shakespeare supreme characterization
is in Dawson's phrase that every man
woman is a great original fact such was
the great pearl which the solitary pearl
will work and might have discovered in
the reading room in 1872 and thereby
being inducted into the progressive
culture of a modern city for which it
was the first or generating principle so
what Dawson watt is once his depth for
everybody and he refuses to believe that
that can't be given away it can't be
found the people's individual power
can't be they can't be endowed with that
and therefore make a contribution to a
pluralistic city civic gospel one of his
great attributes I think is the honesty
and directness with which Dawson faces
up to the challenges of contemporary
culture not the least among which is the
question of what to do with the passion
and energy of religion in increasingly
rationalist and secular age Dawson was a
great preacher one contemporary cause
running into Robert
Martineau, Mayor of Birmingham in 1846
after hearing Dawson preach for the
first time I can hear him now exclaiming
I hope we'll this is the preaching I
have longed for all my life
literature was the road down which
Dawson brought religion into the world
and his unconventional hymn book he made
his own includes text by Schiller in
translation worthless in Carlyle as
well as bits from all over the spectrum
of the confessional spectrum bits of all
kinds of different liturgies and
political songs
Dawson wanted Shakespeare open on a
lectern in all places of worship and he
predicted that quote empty churches
would then begin to fill strong branch
benches would groan beneath the weight
of attentive hearers sleepers would be
unfrequent
and the clergyman would cease to be
looked upon as an anodyne Bardolatry
has long been a term of
intellectual abuse in Shakespeare
studies Ben Jonson professed of course
to admire Shakespeare this side idolatry
but such careful piety seems quaintly
outmoded in our own more secular age
George Bernard Shaw coined the term bardolatry - gasps castigate that
shameless evasion of the political
problems of contemporary life which
often dresses itself up as a love of
Shakespeare but as I will see for Dawson
Shakespeare offered a way of finding the
world which conventional religion too
often evaded Shakespeare also offered a
future he felt for religion in the
modern industrial world without which
Dawson was convinced we could not live
he closed Carlyle himself quoting the
German thinker Novalis if men have
lost belief in a God their only resource
against a blind no God of necessity and
mechanism that held them like a hideous
world steam engine they'd be with or
without hope revolt they could as
Novalis says by a simultaneous universal
act of suicide depart out of the world
steam engine and end if not in victory
yet in invincibility a nun subdue able
protest the such world steam engine was
a failure and a stupidity
now that is talking straight but how are
we to avoid such mass despairing suicide
in an age like this when
foundation of old faiths was shaken when
the works of their fathers tottered and
crumbled and fell when in politics the
fight became bitter when in theology the
ground which should be covered by
religion and binding man and man
together became too often the faith only
the field of conflict in these days when
in their social life many terrible
problems pressed for solution when even
in their own immediately and friendly
circles great difficulty sometimes
occurred Shakespeare according to Dawson
and his Birmingham friends was the way
forward as Emerson suggested he wrote
the text for modern life we know that
for humanity there is now a worldwide
religion Dawson announced the religion
not of the Greek or Jew the rich or the
poor the sage or the sage but the
religion for humankind the religion of
human nature and Shakespeare for Dawson
made this more than merely gestural
sentimentality showed what form this
might take for quote there was something
higher and nobler in William Shakespeare
then his dramatic merits in Birmingham
quote they claim for him a higher
morality than perhaps had ever been
claimed before a satirical poster from
the archive of the library of Birmingham
indicates how far should Dawson was
willing to go in this time directions
presumably this was pasted up to mock
Dawson in Birmingham but George Dawson
on the Bible and on Shakespeare and the
crew from here is on the Bible therefore
they did not believe anything just
because it was written in the scriptures
and on Shakespeare the final thing is
the first general Canon for the
interpretation of Shakespeare was that
he was always right so the make of this
poster is scorning a kind of disjunction
between the Shakespearean fundamentalism
and free thinking in relation to the
Bible but I think Dawson would have been
quite happy with that he sees a sort of
liberal fundamentalism in Shakespeare is
sort of fundamental pluralism that he
wishes to commit to he prefer prefers
that to dogmatic
biblical fundamentalism Dawson in his
church preached on Shakespeare preached
on Mohammed preached on every evolution
and it's extraordinary thing
first for Emerson Shakespeare was
insufficiently religious the world still
wants its poet priest that's Emerson
this was because as Dawson phrased it
there's nothing about the priest about
Shakespeare no conscious attempt to lift
man from where he is to where he ought
to be but for Dawson precisely that
Shakespeare's realism is what makes him
religiously serviceable for new times I
look upon him Dawson says as planned
with one great intention that in him
should be wrought out what in deference
to my clerical friends I will call the
lair duty of mankind so he Dawson thinks
that shaped it reveals a new way for
religion a new responsibility to life as
it actually is lived he might have been
taking a bearing from Carlyle here who
saw Shakespeare as quote a man justly
related to all things and men a good man
a prophet in his way of an insight
analogous to the prophetic though he
took it up in another strain Carlyle
even saw Shakespeare's the priest of a
true Catholicism the universal Church of
the future and of all times
this Universal Church of latter-day
Saint
Shakespeare becomes comprehensible I
think if we see in it the broad Church
of modern liberalism from which Carlisle
ultimately recoiled but to which Dawson
always remained actively devoted he
Dawson's interest in Shakespeare and
morality dates back to the philosophical
essays he penned as a young man between
eighteen and twenty in his last annual
lecture to the Birmingham our
Shakespeare Club of which he was live
president he presented reading
Shakespeare as a course in tolerance but
he said that if you read Shakespeare you
learn that the toleration is a temper
not a principle and I think he says that
because his toleration is politically
associated with the Liberal Party and
what Dawson wants is a toleration that
will extend beyond tribal party politics
so he thought that actually doing proper
literary criticism really responsive
stuff would induct you into a rather
different kind of politics here he say
responds
when he was very young as a young
radical daughter Eden spoke in
Manchester in 1846 and announced that
that Shakespeare music the drama
sculpture and poetry are objective forms
in which God exhibits some of his ideas
which sounds sort of man to us but in
its time thing is a break out beyond
dogma and Dawson suggests in his in the
art from his pulpit which is actually a
lectern that there is no infidelity of
the intellect another ringing phrase so
for him again close reading genuine
aesthetic responsiveness is itself a
form of religion it is the form of
religion beyond dogma in which Dawson is
really interested I want to say a little
bit more now to about a couple of
sermons that I found at the library she
gave in 1864 although I'm looking I'd be
going off-piste a bit so I'm going to
move around a little bit
Dawson preaches on Shakespeare and
suggests really to his audience that
they should see Shakespeare as a way
beyond as a scripture that will
supplement and change Scripture itself
so he sees the Bible has definitively
limited he says and he draws attention
to various things that aren't in it
including erotic love for instance said
you don't go there for there and
including the sort of populist mnestheus
ease in Shakespeare in which he sees as
a kind of blueprint an image of what a
modern city might be like and he starts
to imagine two worlds a heavenly world
I'm not gonna have time to do this on
doing it off there's both off the top of
my head and I'll get ins the next bit
and the real world and he starts to see
them a giving light and sharing light a
kind of reciprocity between them and
then the real world which he associates
with Shakespeare becomes more and more
glistening because he sees the heavenly
world lighting that world and it becomes
clear as he's talking what you're seeing
is a kind of modern
man in his own pulpit stepping into a
secular world which he sees as
expressive of some of the desire and
possibility of religion it absorbs the
heavenly world so he starts with a kind
of equal commitment to both but by the
end of the sermon you can tell that it's
sort of the city that phrase which he
didn't invent civic gospel is something
used to describe what he did in Burma
kelis ette up the model of local
government ambitious local government
that we inherit you see it happening
because you've got the gospel and it
becomes into the Civic world and Dawson
says at the end that the task for us is
to engage with this populous world of
men and women which William Shakespeare
has given us so I would have said a lot
more about that but I'm not going to
what I did want to a sort of new idea
that are beginning to entertain about
this which I would like to try out on
you is that I think what if looked at
anthropologically one of the things that
religion does I think is to infuse
social life duty with a kind of
religious with with idealism and to make
it potentially an object of desire and
then I think in a madly broad-brush but
then in in many philosophers will tell
you Hegel and others that with the onset
of modernity private life and
satisfaction and so forth becomes much
more intensely important I think
correspondingly you need a kind of a new
religious myth or something like it that
will invest idealism and the possibility
of desire in social work and duty with a
corresponding intensity does that does
that make sense and I think what Dawson
did and is doing with Shakespeare is
looking to find that see Shakespeare as
beyond dogma but as having a kind of
aesthetic radiance as exemplifying a
kind of shining pluralism and cumin
complexity that might invest social life
and duty with the kind of mad
it is indeed for us to go on living
responsible and socially ambitious lives
how to make personal freedom and
fulfillment general I mean that seems to
me to be one of the the fundamental and
most serious questions of modern liberal
culture and the answers of course are
very varied and there are some very
important practical answers to it what
one of them we don't often talk about
these English literature seminars is you
need an efficient bureaucracy and you
need credible institutions and George
Dawson is committed to those via his
civic gospel but I think he also sees
that you need to want it you need to
desire it you need you need a vision
without the vision the people will
perish
so to wind up and get a better perhaps
more richly specific idea of what this
might mean critically politically and in
religious terms I want to turn to
Dawson's treatment of one character a
failure Dawson at first found a failure
to be a misogynistic caricature a
bearing out a general anglo-saxon
prejudice whereby quote women are
interesting in proportion to their
neutrality whereas in the glorious days
of France wit and intellect with the
charm of the grand dam de salón
so he's he's first he
finds of philia rather blank and empty
and thinks she's a symptom of English
misogyny really and of course remember
this is before literary criticism is
before Shakespeare's taught in schools
and he cries out fancy Ophelia in middle
age I am sorry for her but I'm glad that
she died
we're obviously plainly in the days
before the establishment of English is a
respectable academic discipline although
that questionable directness is perhaps
a refreshing he then starts to
sympathize with her and to see her as
something more than just a raised by
patriarchy when anticipating Freud he
recognizes in the lewd rush of talk and
song that's released by her madness a
testimony to painful sexual repression
this is him as long as St George
the saddle the dragon is kept under but
suppose St Gorge out of the saddle then
the dragon may lead up leap up could be
clearer really then turning on his
audience he rushes to defend Ophelia
against any lurking disapproval
it is however said that it was highly
improper that she shouldn't know such
things but this is totally idly for he
must all know many more wicked things
than we do and a thousand and one
reasons might be given why Ophelia
should know the songs which she sang in
her madness how did she come to know
such songs ah how do people know such
things would everyone in this assembly
like me to know that you know the things
you know the poor girl by nature was
amorous I don't find anything unnatural
in it there are many things permissible
in secret only become shameful when
uttered there are indecencies that are
only indecencies in the year they may be
of the earth earthy but the earth is a
very good thing and not to be despised
so he's you know he's interested in
Ophelia's increasing his modeling a real
sort of personhood ambivalent and rich
and so forth but if he spoke up for her
repressed sexuality he also trembled
with her grief and what he called a
weekday sermon from Shakespeare he
preached on the theme of Ophelias flowers
in the city taking as his text as though
reversed from Scripture there's a daisy
I would give some violets but they
withered all when my father died and he
does treat Ophelia as we've all taught not
to do as a real person he treats Hamlet
perhaps the greatest play in Western
literature as though it were completely
analogous to my life or yours observing
that Ophelias  dad Polonius wasn't
anything exceptionally great beautiful
wise all good and yet he insists to this
bright and beautiful girl he was part of
the world's light and fragrance when he
died all the loveliest flowers wizard he
trembles with Ophelias grief and he calls
upon his listeners to do the same he
wants them to feel for her chase please
heroine because he believes it could
wake them up morally opening up a
channel of sympathy so the many real
women in nineteenth-century Birmingham
who were vulnerable but are being
suddenly devastated by grief and thrown
into a life
insecurity and hardship in a context
where men women were literally the
property of their husbands and fathers
Dawson's insists to his listeners that
were feel is all over contemporary
Birmingham and he explains all-out
Ophelias do not go insane when their
fathers die but nonetheless that their
violets wither and truly they stand
greatly in need of charities Tender is
sympathy who haven't been cared for all
their lives by a good father who planned
and strove that they might want for
nothing but live in the sunshine and be
beautiful unhappy suddenly find that
life means toil and strife and
forethought and the hope deferred and
makes the heart sick who have to pay the
world's price for daily bread which is
so difficult always for girls to win
summer friends who had known them when
the world was a garland of roses and
every day a holiday won't know them any
longer their eyes are red with work and
weeping the sweet fragrance of youth is
going the gay colors are gone alas alas
there are thousands of beautiful young
Ophelias not insane saying today he is
ruined prayer plenty and just one poor
daisy left
I'll give you violets as I used to were
they wizard when my father died this is
not a fate to be lightly spoken of its
natural to wish to be bright and winning
and free from care it's hard to forego
the sunshine that we may own wages and
see the face lose its beauty that the
hands may win it's bread its pleasant to
be sought and loved and admired it's
hard to mix only with masters bargain
makers and self seekers its pleasant to
have your hands filled with violets it's
hard to put down those flowers and take
up work farewell old home old pleasures
old friends there aren't any violets now
they whiz it when my father died so
Dawson sees Ophelias everywhere he sees
Ophelias flowers as a suitable theme for
a sermon because he recognizes that
Shakespeare's play actively addresses
contemporary life he imagines
Shakespeare's sad words in the mouths of
real working women he urges his hearers
to respond sympathetically to the
crushing bereavement suffered by
Shakespeare's heroine and then to open
their hearts to thousands his world of
real ones privileged women who lives
might be suddenly devastated by death
and the threat of poet poverty
and he does this I think this is the
last point want to make rather briefly
but in the name of solidarity as well as
in the name of diversity and I feel that
this 19th century story is a way of
recognizing as something we need in
contemporary theory solidarity is the
context in which diversity flourishes it
is what diversity enriches and I think
there's perhaps a need in some current
debates to bring those two things back
into a new conjunction this story anyway
of what George Dawson was doing in the
19th century might cast some lights on
that as I said I haven't spoken to you
at all really about the project but
about the man in the hinterland who
inspired it and did so much for
Birmingham and indeed us has been
forgotten for for Shakespeare thank you
