AIR-CUSHIONED SEATS

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 6

AIR-CUSHIONED SEATS

IN SHAKESPEARE'S THEATRE

From a letter published in the London Times it appears that the seats in the new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon are to have air cushions. The gentle Shakespeare himself would probably be delighted to think of his audience sitting, like Expectation, on (if not in) the air. But what, asks the Times in a leading article, would the groundlings of the Globe have thought ? They had no softer cushion than the flint; and they would share Mercutio's scorn for those who cannot even sit at ease on the old bench. O, their bones, their bones ! And even in the " rooms" or galleries iof the Globe there must have been conjunctions of hard lodging and thin weeds which nipped the gaudy blossoms of delight in the plays. But, like King Pandion and Hecuba and many another, those old players are dead, and what are they to us, or we to themi ? It is we and those who come after who will go to the playhouse now where we must sit, and cry: Give us some seats! and O for a chair; to bear me easily ! It is we whom the officials will invite to sit and rest upon the cushions, as soft as air. These great chairs of ease will certainly tempt inr}:> the theatre on the bank of the Avon many who are inclined to look on Shakespeare's plays as Polonius looked on the First Player's speech. One of Hamlet's rude suggestions was that Polonius was asleep; and, indeed, it may well be that some even amlong the most ardent Shakespeareans will thus debase the nature of their seats, if these pneumatic things are made too comfortable.