SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 71, 23 March 1912, Page 12

SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY.

MORE LASTING THAN STONE. The English Shakespeare Memorial Fund has jnow collected .040,000 out of the £3,000,000 that it needs. Therefore new projects are on foot, including an exhibition of "Shakespeare's Engliind," illustrating the architecture, life, manners, jports, and mueic of tho Kliaabethan day.' With *U due reapocfc for the spirit animating the promoters of the fund (aays a writer in the Argonaut), this 1 drumming up of money for the memorial eeeme to do a little demeaning. And «o, needless. The object of v memorial m to keep alive a memory that might otherwise wane, and if these worthy people can suggest a memorial greate* than that already possessed bj Shakespeare- it would be interesting tc knov what it is t There are «ome few supremely gw&t men whose association with a memorial 6eotne to be incongruous. Slmkespeare is one of them. Plato is another. St. Paul is «ttl' another, and their immunity ehoulu be perpetuated. Memorial ehould be erected to soldim because thoy would not otherwise be remembered, their work being usually, or mainly, destructive. They need memorials. Statesmen should have memorial* because their gifts are ordinarily to their own age, and there are very few whose names will be mor© than names in a few hundrea ve&ie J'hoy, too, need them. " But th veni hero belongs to, no particular age. Wo remember him because his value to l he individual of to-day is a* grwt a« it was to the individuals among whom he lived. In such cases memorials V, ecomo absurd. i