If Shakespeare Had Known the Uses of Advertisement !

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 544, 22 December 1928, Page 24

If Shakespeare Had Known the Uses of Advertisement !

HAN might be described as an advertising animal. His constant efforts to draw the attention of other men to himself and his performances are forced upon him by the competitive nature of existence.

The ai t of advertisement is of modern growth, displaying the excessive and frequently overpowering vitality of all young things, and taking in its energetic stride ever new departments of industry. Formerly almost entirely devoted to the popularising of articles of practical utility, it started, owing doubtless to the spread of education, to invade the realm of culture. Publishers discovered in the coloured poster a means of advertising their respective forms of fiction. Newborn books were instantly clothed in illustrated paper jackets, proclaiming that “Life’s Sweetbread” was the most poignant work of its creator, Tanagra Spinks, and was instilled with that deep human sympathy and that indefinable charm of manner with which we (meaning they) always associate the work of the authoress; and similar romantic assertions. One of the latest fields for “catchy” i advertisement is the theatre. Public | interest in a play is arrested by a poster suggesting a "snappy” and apparently unanswerable question, as “Who Killed the Mayor of Puddlewick on Bank Holiday?” or by a crisp and epigrammatic sentence, as “All the world’s a stage, but the stage at the Pandora Theatre is attracting all the world,” or by a pictorial representation of some salient feature, such as the eyebrows or the nose or the moustache of the principal actor. One is tempted (writes Kathleen O’Brien, the Irish dramatist, in the “Daily Mail”) to speculate on what a “live” manager might have done with Shakespeare’s plays had the art of advertisement been developed in the days of our second greatest playwright. (Our first? G. 8.5., of course —Ganymede Bunter Smith.) “Macbeth,” for instance, that firstclass melodrama of the blood-and-blasted-health variety, might have been advertised in the modern manner by a single provocative question: “WHO KILLED KING DUNCAN?” or by an illustrated poster hearing the same question something like this: —-

VMO KILIED KING DUNCA/NI ? ? I

" Hamlet” might have been advertised in any number of ways. A

richer field for the ingenious “ad” writer can hardly be imagined. There might have been, for the thoughtful, the query type of advertisement, as follows: TO BE OR NOT TO BE? That is the question. The answer may be obtained by a personal visit to THE GLOBE THEATRE. BANKSIDE, S. Patronised by Royalty. Or, for thrill-hunters, the sensational type, such as—

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS? IF YOU DO. COME TO THE GLOBE THEATRE AND SEE ONE. IF YOU DON’T. COME TO THE GLOBE THEATRE ALL THE SAME AND SEE ONE. Anyone whose flesh has failed to creep may have his money returned on application at the box-office. REMEMBER THE BIG FOUR ! ! • PATRICIDE, MATRICIDE, FRATRICIDE, and BANKSIDE. Or, again, for problem-lovers, the problem type, such as: SHOULD A QUEEN WHO HAS MURDERED HER FIRST HUSBAND MARRY HER HUSBAND’S BROTHER? Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in gracious answer to our special courier, replies: “Nay, by’r Lady. For having ridded herself of one husband, methinks she were a foole to take unto herself another.” WHAT DO YOU SAY? There is no evidenec that Shakespeare, who was no highbrow, would have refused to make use of modern publicity methods had they existed in his day. There is even evidence that he might have practised them himself, sublimating them, as he sublimated his . own most ordinary plots to the plane of his extraordinary genius. Listen to the Chorus in “Henry V.” about to describe those warlike events that cannot be presented within the confines of the stage, yet the mental picture of which is necessary to the continuity of the play, and so invoking the interest of the audience on that which is to come:— _ Let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. .... The precise aim of the advertisement writer; but advertisement on a large, a magnificent scale.