Before the museum and before the printing press, works of art were meant not to represent, but to perform, evoke, render something or someone mysteriously present—as if summoned from the beyond. Philosopher Owen Barfield and literary critic Northrop Frye both wondered whether all poetry has its deep roots in magic, and if rhymes, for our ancestors, were hard to distinguish from spells and enchantments. To confirm that insight, all you have to do is open up your Shakespeare and read until you come across rhyming verse: It’s almost inevitably recited by a witch, a mage, or a fairy: “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear.”
