No Comment from Cicero
O you know what Cicero said when the radio reporter asked his opinion of the murder of Caesar? He said, "No comment." Did you know that Queen Elizabeth’s Armada speech ("I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman") was relayed to the crowd over loudspeakers? And that a traitor named Sir William Stanley broadcast from Spain in a voice like Lord Haw-Haw’'s? Do not miss, I beg you, You Are There (ZBs, Monday night). It’s the funniest show on the air. There’s an argument going on in our house as to whether it’s meant to be funny, whether Australia houses a budding Brahms-and-Simon; or whether, as appears on the surface, it’s meant to be dramatic, even
educational. I incline, reluctantly, to the latter view, and must therefore be severe. It isn’t merely that events in the distant past would scarcely have been what they were if radio had been known then. It’s that once you _ start being anachronistic it’s hard to stop, so that here we have people with 20th-century minds acting in events which in their real setting 20th-century people could scarcely imagine. We are given a few facts, but no 4inderstanding. Still, maybe there’s a prea: Simon after all.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19561019.2.34.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 16
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209No Comment from Cicero New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 16
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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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