SHAKESPEARE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 64, 13 February 1936, Page 8

SHAKESPEARE.

Do children like being “taught” Shakespeare? In England, at all events, the answer must be explosively in the negative (writes a commentator). And the .reason is, of course, that most teachers themselves regard “the Bard” as an intolerable bore. Having no love for his sublime works, or any intelligent conception of his poetic power and romantic glory, they instruct their unfortunate pupils accordingly—as though they were imposing a penance. Mr Sydney Carroll, the famous producer, made this discovery the other day, and in indignant tones told a conference of the Educational Associations in London exactly what .lie thought about it. The conference, needless to say, “listened in silence,” even when Mr Carroll went on to criticise the accent of the modern English school child. “Recently,” lie complained, “1 organised a children’s performance at a London theatre. I was horrified to noe the effect the cinema is having on the growing generation. Quito 80 per cent of the children I listened to spoke with an American accent. By their visits to the films they are acquiring not merely an American method of speaking, but are adopting an American point of view, and becoming saturated with American ethics—or rather lack of them. I was never more convinced of the necessity of interesting our children in Shakespeare than when 1 was confronted by this terrible army of Shirley Temples, endeavouring to persuade me that life on the ‘Good Ship Lollipop” was a substitute for a ‘Life on the Ocean Wave!’ ”