BAD LAW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 892, 8 February 1930, Page 24

BAD LAW

Lord Darling Talks of Portia’s Errors

SHAKESPEARE NOT A LAWYER

Was Shakespeare a lawyer? Lord Darling-, speaking at the annual dinner of the Shakespeare Reading Society, London, recently, remarked that some people said so, because he used so many legal terms. On the same argument some came to the conclusion that Shakespeare was Bacon.

He did not think so, because Portia’s law was so bad. Portia, said Lord Darling, was the only woman lawyer of her time, and the point she took concerning the contract in “The Merchant of Venice”—that they should not shed a drop of blood—was absurd.

Portia said the whole thing was written In the laws of Venice. If she had read the laws of Venice she would have had nothing to say. but then the play would have been spoilt. “MARRY THEM” ADVICE Lord Darling said that not long before he retired from the Bench he was holding an assize not far from London, when there were in court three Portias. Three prisoners on trial had no counsel, and he asked the three Portias to defend them. They did so, he personally taking care that nothing particular happened to the prisoners. He invited the women barristers to lunch with him, and when they retired to smoke a young barrister said to him: “It is all very well, judge, to ask those girls to defend prisoners, but why did you do it?” Lord Darling said he replied that he was born during the reign of Queen Victoria, and it was oldfashioned politeness. The young barrister rejoined, “If you go on like that, what is to become of us?” Lord Darling retorted, “You must marry them and live on what they make.” “Jew Suss” in New York PRAISE FOR MOSCOVITCH J. C. Williamson, Ltd., entered the New York theatrical field last Monday, when they produced “Josef Suss,” the dramatisation of Lion Leuchtwanger s novel “Jew Suss,” known as “Power” in America.

Maurice Moscovitch, in the title

role, surpassed himself in a trv-out Press re ' V superlative Praise from the

Mr. Harold Bowden, Williamson’s representative, said that Moscovitch 55“,, t“ e entire cast, including Bvrl Walkly, the Australian singer, would go to Australia after their American engagement.

The Australian colony, including Australian Commissioner-General n'iglit FS Brookes ’ attended the first