The Bard Again
ECENTLY on the air I heard four famous passages from four famous plays-Mark Antony’s Oration, The Potion Speech, Portia’s Mercy Speech, and the Seven Ages of ‘Man-all delivered in irreproachable style by Otis Skinner and Cornelia Otis Skinner. It is not the place here to comment on _ the merits of these particular speeches; it would be blasphemous even to suggest that Shakespeare drools a little in the Mercy Speech: but their popularity is beyond question. They are so wellknown, in fact, that they really require a well-known name or two-apart from Shakespeare’s — to assure them of a hearing. There are very few who want to hear "just anybody" speaking a pas- , Sage they feel they know by heart themselves, but one listens to the Skinners just in case they’ve thought of a different way of delivering them. They haven’t, of course-nobody could. But listening to Cornelia Otis Skinner, I found myself thinking (most irreverently) not of Portia nor of Juliet, but of the irrepressible heroine of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay — condemned by an unfeeling parent to wear an embarrassing safety pocket tied round her waist ‘beneath her skirts. And for all their misadventures, the Shakespearean ladies in question never had to suffer any such indignity quite so hard to bear.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470530.2.18.8
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 414, 30 May 1947, Page 9
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215The Bard Again New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 414, 30 May 1947, Page 9
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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