GERMAN MINERS AND SHAKESPEARE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18009, 20 November 1926, Page 9

GERMAN MINERS AND SHAKESPEARE.

A REMARKABLE FESTIVAL. A typical industrial centre in Europe, the mining town of Bochum, in Westphalia, a place one might have supposed to be devoid of literary and spiritual culture, has arranged to give next spring a Shakespeare festival or. a scale that will appeal not only to scholars all over Germany, but also to visitors from England and America. All these may be assured (Dr Hans Hecht. professor of English at the University of Gottingen and a member of the German Shakespeare Society, told a representative of the "Ob server") of a hearty welcome and liberal hospitality. Bochum has a population of about 250.000. There is no university near it, and it contains only two classes of inhabitants, the workmen in the mines and factories and the proprietors. of the mines and works. “The interesting thing to me is,” Professor Hecht said, “that the festival is to be given in just this part of the country, in the midst of a population which is not. as a whole, literary in the academic sense of the word, and not in one of the university or metropolitan cities. Bochum has, however, in Dr S. Schmitt, a theatre manager, or * intendant,’ as we call him, who is considered one of the very best and most gifted producers in Germany. A very enterprising man, a 3 you see, very energetic, and full of enthusiam in his endeavours to get the great dramas continuously performed. “The whole cycle of the histories from ‘King John’ to ‘Henry VIII. is to be given in the Whitsuntide week next spring—and given on a scale I do not remember having seen any where in my lifetime. Four years of intensive preparations have been already devoted to the festival, and tha German Shakespeare Society has conned a committee to supplement Dr Schmitt’s work with lectures by wellknown authorities, which will be given every morning during the festival week. . . “The decoration and stage lighting of the plays will have a symbolic value, and it is the intention, I believe, to perform the plays continuously, with just one stage setting and very little alteration between the acts and scenes.” . “What does the mining population think about a festival that is going to appeal rather specially to the world of literature and the drama?” Professor Hecht was asked. “Their interest, Dr Schmitt tells me,” he said, “is tremendous, astonishing. And which of the plays do you think has interested them You will say, perhaps, ‘Henry IV,’ with Falstaff, or ‘Henry V.,' with its appeal to patriotism. But, no; the play that has made the greatest impression on the miners is ‘Richard 11.’ They like the Falstaff play less, because, perhaps, they see so much realistic life about them. It is just that remoteness of Richard 11..’ that unfortunate and rather weak King, who has impressed them, and the tinge of sentimentality in the play, as well as a certain superabundance of poetic diction.” ______________