SHAKESPEARE.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16749, 16 March 1926, Page 9

SHAKESPEARE.

MEMORIAL GROUP IN SYDNEY. VISIT BY SCULPTOR. A true artist who has failed to satisfy himself finds little pleasure in the contemplation of his completed work. in fact, his sensitive soul usually shuns it. A happy fulfilment of the conception, however, to Hie real artist mind is a joy for ever. Students of Shakespeare, and critics of sculpture, who have visited Sir Bertram Mackonnal’s Shakespearean group now adorning the Macquarie Street entrance to the Botanic Gardens, Sydney, have taken pleasure and delight at the lifelike posture of the figures selected by the artist for ttic emblematic group. Lovers of "Henry IV.” and "The Merry Wives” cannot hut calcti I lie infectious swaggering rascality that exudes from the bronze image of Sir .John Falstaff. Tlie donor of the statue (Hie late Henry Gullet!), in a memorable paper before the Shakespearean Society, reviewed lho worldly foibles of Ibis famous comic figure wilh a reserved suggestion that the old roue was not wholly irredeemable, and evoked some sharp criUyism by the Puritan element. Anyhow, the figure is there, with all the good or evil which it embodies. The sculptor himself inspected the work last week, and was met by Miss Winifred Gullctt and Dr. Lucy Gullet t. lie was accompanied by Mr W. 11. Ifould, of the Public Library. The statue and its environment were viewed from every angle, and there was no indication of dissatisfaction in Hie creator’s remarks. He expressed himself delighted wilh the surroundings, and predicted that, with the completion of Hie Mitchell Library, a thoroughly suitable background would be provided. The lines inscribed on the base of ihe statue are— Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air. into thin air; And, like Hie. baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped lowers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, ihe great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like Ibis insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams arc made of. and our little life is rounded with a sleep.