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timable Dublin clergyman, the Rev. Edward Dowden.

It was the irrepressible Frank Harris who finally overthrew Dowden. With his famous dyed moustachios bristling, he went into the fray, insisting that the creator of the character of Shakespeare's Cleopatra knew more about fornication than could possibly have been picked up in the course of his very occasional encounters with Ann Hathaway. Harris, it was clear, identified himself with Shakespeare, and, unlike the Rev. Edward, saw him as being as prone as he was to (in Othello's bitter phrase) "cry ho! and mount."

As for the Sonnets, has any composition in human history called forth such an outpouring of fantasy, folly, special pleading and extravagant invention as they have, down to, and including, our own time. Dr. A.L. Rowse's recent offering can hold its own with the choicest past efforts. It was à propos a discussion of the Sonnets at the Café Royal that Harris made his famous remark: "If Shakespeare had asked me I should perforce have yielded." Harris' charms, such as they were, were emphatically heterosexual. Max Beerbohm, who was present, could not forbear making a drawing of this inveterate womaniser feeling bound, out of love for English letters, to yield to the Bard's perverse importunings. There are those who have seen the drawing, but I fear it has now been destroyed. A pity.

There can be little doubt that Shakespeare brings out all that is worst in us English. The odious rhetoric of Henry V has provided a model for many a subsequent political big-mouth; Hamlet's spurious self-communings have given rise to much in a like vein on the part of pedagogues, preachers and miscellaneous pundits. It is not for nothing that these two plays have long
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been our favourites (though not, I may say, mine) on stage, screen, and now television. Bombast and moralising are our national vices, and Shakespeare, who judged as nicely as any Sam Goldwyn what the traffic would bear, provides for both abundantly.

I was fortunate enough when young to see many, if not most, of Shakespeare's plays at the Old Vic. There were special weekday matinees for elementary schoolchildren, the cost of admission being threepence. We went by tram at a reduced rate on an interminable swaying journey from Croydon, where I lived, to Blackfriars. Sybil Thorndyke was in the company, and I saw her play all the main Shakespearean roles. There have, as I now think, been greater actresses, but for me, because of those early wondrous performances, she has still a glamour and a glory possessed by no other.

At the end of the 1939-45 war I went to the Old Vic again, after an interval of many years to see As You Like It. It was a junior company; kids. I expect they are all famous stars now, but I never found out their names. The theatre had not been repaired from the Blitz; only patched up. One could distinctly see the sky and stars through the roof in one or two places. Some parts of the auditorium, as I recall, were out of action, and the stage bore evident signs of improvisation. I arrived late for some reason and saw my family in their seats before they saw me. The children gathered round their mother were quite rapt, as I had been in that same place in my time. The battered theatre, the youthful actors and actresses and the lines they were speaking, my own rapt children, all combined to give me a feeling of overwhelming pride and delight that I should have had the immeasurable good fortune to speak Shakespeare's language and be his countryman.

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Transcription Notes:
I reviewed this document, and I only came across one mistake, though I suspect that it was due to typing too fast, for future transcribers, perhaps a note on the website for transcribers to go at their own pace should be included.