Very Much So

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 490, 12 November 1948, Page 18

Very Much So

"IS Shakespeare Alive To-day?" was the title of the Monday night discussion I heard from 2YA recently, and the three speakers (A. R. D. Fairburn, Professor Musgrove, Maurice Lee) were far too sprightly for it to be supposed that this was an inquest or a wake. "Definitely" was the verdict, and I was in full agreement with them, though possibly if this discussion had taken place before the Old Vic tour I might not have been. The discussion wasremarkable for the fact that all speakers seemed positively to enjoy looking the facts in the face (this was good staffwork by the Chairman, who "kept producing facts for them to look at). It is, for example, a regrettable fact that .perhaps one person in a hundreg has, since leaving school, sat down to read through a play of Shakespeare, On the other hand, there is a lot of unlabelled Shakespeare drifting round in’ the cultural air of the community which even the uncultured absorb. Then there is of course the Film. (All speakers. accepted the Sinclairism that it was good fun but not Shakespeare, and agreed with Hamlet that the play’s the thing and the cinema defihitely Paddy.) The discussion ended on a note of almost uncautious optimism, the Big Three generally agreeing that even if modern audiences couldn’t take the longer length, the Elizabethan idiom, the blank verse, the hackneyed plot, the elongated pun, the time-obscured bawdry, even, that is to say,/if Shakespeare had, in some respects lost touch with modern

audiences there would in the fullness of time come other ages and other audiences. Vita brevis, ars longa... .