Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19665, 8 July 1929, Page 8

Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

England's treatment of literary geniuses and literary tradition must sometimes puzzle the foreigner. On Friday we published a cable message stating that "in the presence of four thousand "members of the public and seven "hundred Freemasons Lord Ampthill, " with Masonic ritual, laid the founda- " tion stone of the new Shakespeare "Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on- " Avon with a maul used in Egypt four " thousand years ago." It must have seemed amazing to Paris and Berlin that Lord Ampthill was not supported by any of the present leaders of English literature —the Poet Laureate, say, or Mr John Galsworthy, or even Mr Bernard Shaw (whose regard for Shakespeare is real if not reverential). Then if Shakespeare had been a Frenchman the President and the Premier would have been present. The main thing of course is that the foundation stone of a memorial theatre has at last been laid, though the whole of the sum required has not yet been obtained, and most of what has been subscribed has come from America. It will be what the old theatre was not, a worthy memorial, adequate in every respect for paying Shakespeare the

best tribute—that of putting him on the stage. In time there may also be a National Theatre in London. A fund for such a project has been started, but the enterprise seems never to advance, though ilie late Government found more than £IOO.OOO for the purchase of two Old Masters for the nation. Whether it is more important to retain two pictures or to establish a National Theatre at which, free from all the worries of the commercial stage, the masterpieces of English and foreign drama could be shown is a question that it is better not to ask. The tradition that the drama is not art, that indeed it is not quite respectable, dies hard, and we must not complain when something that the nation does regard as art is handsomely paid for.