NATIONAL THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 149, 27 June 1938, Page 4

NATIONAL THEATRE

A MASEFIELD LETTER

The Poet Laureate, Mr. John Masefield, has sent the following letter to Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, the honorary secretary of the executive committee of the National Theatre, say 3 "The Times":—

It is now forty years since I first read the suggestion that there should be a National Theatre in London. The suggestion was probably not then new; it may have been going on for half a century; but it was new to me. In every year of the forty since then, some man of genius has written or said that there should be one, or more than one, or even one in every city in England. In some years the newspapers have clamoured for one. There have been leading articles; there have been letters, and able appeals signed by the eminent.

These clamours have always died down after a time. We have continued to do without the National The* atre; but with a growing feeling that possibly something sometimes connected with beauty and wisdom might, conceivably, not bring utter moral de» gradation, nor business ruin, nor physical destruction to our Empire'# citizens. Forty years ago the lovers of literature hoped that a National Theatre might be founded, so that they might see, as a part of the general culture of mankind, not only the thirty or forty dramatic masterpieces v of the world, but the kindling works of tht changers of mental fashion, of the dynamic men of their own passing decade in any country of the world. NOT PERFORMED. The existing theatres could not or did not perform those masterpieces, nor yet those "Seventy disciples sent Against Religion and Government." having other game in hand. Thosa lovers of literature had to do without such things, or go abroad for them, or to wait till some school or amateur body performed one of them as well as it could under such direction as it. had. Forty years ago young writers and thinkers hoped that a National Theatre might be founded having within its walls, as a part of its equipment, one or two little experimental theatres in which young men with an interest ta the theatre might learn their craft with all its branches, and try out their crude plays with fellow students. The existing theatre could not grant these aids. How could it? The young men, there, fore, had to do as they could, with much waste of time and energy, and often with the stunted sense of design which comes from the want of noble models.

In these last few years England has woken from her sleep. The soul of the land, once so thrillingly alive to beauty, wisdom, and the arts of joy, Is alive once more. We are to have a National Theatre. Let me wish it all happy fortune. At the worst, it will rouse an excellence of opposition. .1 wish it the best. May it be a home of noble art while the nation endures!