PURE SHAKESPEARE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 25, 29 July 1939, Page 6

PURE SHAKESPEARE

"REMOVING BLEMISHES"

Mr. John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, who opened the new building of the City Literary Institute in fStukeley Street, Drury"Lane, recently, said it was probably truesthat the citizens of today did not read as much as those of 30 years ago, but one could ncft wonder at the fact, because the -citizens of today" had so many other V amusements open to them, reports "The Times." It was idle to expect the people of today to abandon their new toys for the toys which delighted the last generation. Nevertheless, he was struck with how much less people Iwere reading now than they did when he was young. '( A woman friend told him that another woman went up, tocher afiid Baid, "I heard this quotation:' 'Blessed are the pure in heart.' It struck me as being rather beautiful. Can you tell me where I can find it?" (Laughter.) Another illustration, was provided by a letter from a friend in America who wrote that he had just been with a literary friend to see the complete third folio version of "Hamlet"v:acted: After the play his literary companion said: "There is one thing I cannot vu> derstand—you said it was the complete version of 'Hamlet,' yet I hays been listening the whole everilhg, and they never said, 'Out, damned spot."! i (Loud laughter.) "My -;friend," continued Mr. Masefleld, "thought this;'V very funny, and he. told it, thinking it might amuse them, to a "mixed audience. Nobody laughed at all, but a young girl student looked at him with an eager eye and said; 'I shall' try that on my literary professor tomorrow.' She did, and the professor said: 'All my life I have belonged to the: Purer Shakespeare Society, .^a^nd I- am, illdeed, thankful to find that, at the end of my long life. I have not worked in vain, and that some of the wanton blemishes in the works of that great poet have been removed.'" (Laughter.)