SHAKESPEARE IN SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 October 1929, Page 8

SHAKESPEARE IN SCHOOLS.

Few will cavil at the decision of th© Government to subsidise a theatrical company of high repute in its efforts to popularise • Shakespearean plays throughout New Zealand. Competent judges throughout the country and in Australia have borne testimony to th© skill and thoroughness of the company’s interpretations of the greatest plays in English literature, and the wonder Is that public support has proved insufficient to justify .its efforts. When all that is archaic, all that was but the mannerism of the age in which it was written, has been eliminated, Shakespeare remains next to the English Bible as the most magnificent collection of Anglo-Saxon literature. It is only fair to the boys and girls of New Zealand that they should be given the opportunity of learning to appreciate their mother tongue. Yet probably no author has Buffered more than Shakespeare from well-meant effort in this direction. When masterpieces such as Hamlet or Macbeth become simply so many “lines” to be comittcd to memory by school pupils they lose the grandeur of their setting and inculcate a dislike of the dramatist’s work that is curiously tenacious even when school days ar© past. To correct this there is no better method than by allowing scholars to hear th© words they find so dry and wearisome vivified and made part of the action they were written to interpret. They will learn, too, how interwoven with the common talk of everyday life are the aphorisms and wit, sympathy and scorn that are found so abundantly in almost any Shakespearen play. Words and reasoning that have seemed utterly out of touch with modern life are given point and perspective, they become real, and in many cases th© commencement of appreciative enjoyment of literature has dated from a visit to' a theatre. It must have been gratifying to the Minister of Education to find that his efforts t-o broaden the teaching of English literature met with the general approval of Parliament. Ab a member of the Labour Party (Mr. P. Fraser) stated, “it would have been a calamity if the children of New Zealand had been denied the opportunity of seeing the the greatest works.”