Sixth Form Smuggled Beer To “Macbeth” Party

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 11

Sixth Form Smuggled Beer To “Macbeth” Party

(Rec. 10.30 p.m.) LONDON. Dec. 21. “Be large in mirth'’ —Anon.; “We’ll drink a measure . . —“Macbeth ” Hl, scene IV. Shakespeare wrote that. Macbeth said it, and 20 sixthformers at a public school drank it—--40 bottles of smuggled beer, after a school production of “Macbeth.’’ It happened at Brentwood School. Essex, founded nearly 400 years ago, according to the “Daily Mail’’ today. The classics master and the school chaplain had planned a celebration fnr the cast when the curtain went down in the school hall. They had ordered orange squash. Twenty sixth-formers had secretly ordered beer. After the first night the began. Some boys drank the orange squash

—but not the sixth-formers. They drank beer without being seen. The second night’s performance began. Someone back-stage realised that the beer store for that night’s aftershow party was running dangerously ■ low. So a 17-year-old sixth-former slipped out to a local pub for extra supplies. This was a bad mistake. He was spotted by two masters. The next day, empty beer bottles were found behind the stage. Fourteen prefects were questiond by the headmaster. Five were suspended from their duties. “They broke a school regulation by □ringing beer on to the premises and they must be punished,” said the headmaster.