W. SHAKESPEARE, 400 NOT OUT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 12

W. SHAKESPEARE, 400 NOT OUT

[Bp WHIM WHAM) For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee. When thou thyself dost give Invention light? Shakespeare. Sonnet 38. Sir, I hope I am permitted Here some humble, cursory Animadversion to Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary— That is, of the Bard’s Birth—which occurs this Year. To the Genius of the Author of Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing. Henry the Fourth (Parts One and Two), Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Pericles, the Taming of the Shrew, Coriolanus, etc., etc., etc., I presume to pay The Tribute of a Fellow Bard in these few worthless Rhymes Of One whose inferior Genius worries him, sometimes. The Miracle of It, Sir', To have outfaced Bad Printing, Bad Editing, Bad Acting and Bad Taste, Bowdlers, Bardolaters and Bibliographers, Fellows, failed Ph.Ds, Philistines, Film Photographers, Occupational Therapists, Psycho-analysts, Elocutionists, Radio Panel-ists— All THIS, and Bacon too! Four Hundred Years, And still the living Words “assail our Ears,” Clarence’s Terror, Juliet’s Love, Lear’s Rage, More real than our Reality cram the Stage So full of Them (and US!) that while We stare Or read the Page, those human Bodies there Like Cleopatra’s change to “Fire, and Air" . . . I’m sorry, Sir, This is really beginning to get A little out of Hand, I just couldn’t let The Occasion pass without Something of the Sort, But at this Point, Prudence prompts Me to cut it short, Remembering Julius Caesar, Act Three, Scene Three— What happened to Cinna the Poet might happen to Me. The Crowd didn’t tear up his Poems for being so shoddily Written, they tore up the POET —not verbally bodily.