Thing of Beauty

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23429, 19 August 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

Thing of Beauty

THE Castle in Helsingor (Elsinore, as Shakespeare called it), is one of Denmark's most pre-, cious historical monuments, guarded as the apple of the nation's eye. It is a thing of « beauty quite apart from the' associations Shakespeare wove round it when he made it the scene of Ilamlet. As everyone knows, there was no connection between Hninlet and Helsingor, for the Hamlet legend goes back to days long before Shakespeare; but there

j Gems of Thought

| An evil at its birth is easily j crushed, but it grows and strengthens j by endurance.—Cicero. | To be innocent is to be not guilty; j but to be virtuous is to overcome our j evil feelings and intentions.—Penn. 5 Virtue is a state of War, and to j live in it We have always to combat j With ourselves.—Rousseau, : Better is the frugal intellectual re- ! past with contentment and virtue, f than the luxury of learning with ? egotism and vice. Mary Baker j Eddy. • Every virtue gives a man a degree : of felicity in some kind: honesty | gives a man a good report • justice estimation; prudence re- : sped; courtesy arid liberality—affccj tion; temperance gives health; forti- : tude a quiet mind, not to be moved : by any adversity.— Washington. j Add to your faith virtue.—(2nd [ Peter, 5.)

is a mystic power in literary association which far transcends the logic of cold facts, and the thousands of sightseers who visit Helsingor Castle each year people it in their fancy with - the figures which Shakespeare's fancy has placed there. For some years past, there has been a general feeling that there should be

Denmark Thanks

some visible sign of the"spiritual Jink between Denmark's fairest castle and England's greatest poet, and it was decided to insert in one of the walls a memorial tablet with Shakespeare's portrait. This tablet" was unveiled; the other day at an open-air performance given in tile castle grounds by tho English actor, John Gielgud. The tablet shows Shakespeare's figure as he is represented in the first folio, of his plays, and has an inscription in .Danish, which runs as follows: • Legend tells of a king's son named Amleth, who lived in Jutland before the days of the Viking*; Saxo wroto down his story In the Middle Ages. Shakespeare retold the tale and linked it with this castle, securing thereby everlasting fame 'for the Danish prince and carrying tho name of Helsingor over . the' entire globe. —Arthur Mce.