Homage to Shakespeare

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20675, 13 March 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

Homage to Shakespeare

IMPORTANT MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND

Under the joint presidency of Lord Derby and Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, an AngloAmerican movement has been started to establish a “Shakespeare Centre” in London. To this end the Globe-Mer-maid Association has been formed with the threefold object of rebuilding the old Globe Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1613, of rebuilding with it the old Mermaid Tavern, which originally stood in Bread-street. Cheapside, and founding an Elizabethan library and museum for the use of students from all parts of the world. It is proposed to erect the buildings on the south (Surrey) embankment of the Thames, the estimated cost being about £250.000. The names of all subscribers of five shillings and upward are to be recorded in a permanent book of remembrance, whilst donors of £2OO will have their names inscribed on the roll of founders, and donors of £2OOO will be made life governors and will each have two of the principal seats in the theatre allotted to them for life. Looking Forward In his preface to the monumental “Book of Homage to Shakeespeare,’ published by the Oxford University Press in 1916, Dr Israel Gollancz, who edited it, wrote: “For years past—as far back as 1904 —many of us had been looking forward to the Shakespeare Tercentenary as the occasion for some fitting memorial to symbolise the intellectual fraternity of mankind in the universal homage accorded to the genius of the greatest Englishman. We had hoped that, on a site which has already been acquired, a stately building, to be associated with his august name, equipped and adequately endowed for the furtherance of Shakespearian drama and dramatic art generally, would have made the year 1916 memorable in the annals of the English stage.” The present movement is a revival of the project which the war rudely shattered. At a great meeting held in July 1914 —the very month in which the World War began—and attended by delegates nominated by many universities and other institutions, with Lord Bryce as president of the British Academy presiding, it was resolved, on the motion of Mr W. H. Page, the American Ambassador, that the tercentenary of the death of Shakespeare should be commemorated “in a manner worthy of the veneration In which his memory is held by the English-speak-ing- peoples and by the World at large,” More than twenty years have passed, and now the proposal is to be revived. One hopes that representative Citizens of the British Dominions will be added t<s the general committee—men like Sir Mungo MacCallum, of Sydney, whose book bn “Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and Their Background” is acknowledged as a work of outstanding Importance—and that local organising committees will be formed to assist in the great project. Probably other countries besides those of the Englishspeaking peoples will wish to be associated with the scheme, for just as Shakespeare wrote not for an age but for all time, so also did he write not for one people but for all mankind. It is his universality that makes him so great and overpowering—the very mountain-peak of literature. Well has It been said (says the “Sydney Morning Herald”), that as in the Middle Ages all roads led to Rome, so in the study of world literature all lines of thought lead to or from Shakespeare. Reconstructing; Old Theatre To reconstruct something of the old Elizabethan London which Shakespeare knew is to bring the man and his times nearer to us. The old, small city has grown out of all recognition, but even in modern London there is something to remind us of him. The actual buildings of Gray’s Inn Hall and Middle Temple Hall, where two of the plays were acted—“ Comedy of

Errors” in 1594 at the former’ “Twelfth Night” in 1602 at the latter—still stand. His earliest residence in London was in the parish of St. Helen’s, Bishopgate, and the church of St. Helen’s still survives. Though Bankside, where he lived for many years in the vicinity of the Globe Theatre, has changed greatly, we can picture It as it was in Shakespeare’s day. His shadow haunts the windings of Blackfriars. But most sacred spot of all is the Cheapside site of the old “Mermaid,” where the wit-combats of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson took place. All this we know about “the man Shakespeare”; yet how little do we know! He is almost a legendary figure. Even In his own day he was known to few. so that Thomas Hardy has written that “with mindless note the borough clocks as usual tongued the hour” of his last breath, and the Avon idled past and men went about their ways as usual— And at the strokes some townsman (met maybe, And thereon queried by some squire's good dame Driving in shopward) may have given thy name, With, “Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do; Though, as tor me, I knew him but by just a neighbour’s nod, 'tis true." And even dear and rare Ben Jonson declared that Shakespeare was a somewhat ordinary citizen, lacking in “arte!” Strange how the years have changed that verdict! But no, it is not strange; the strange thing is that Jonson should have ever uttered it.