Shakespeare's Birthplace

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE AN ADDRESS BY His WORSHIP, ARCHIBALD FLOWER, EX-MAYOR OF STARTFORD-ON-AVON ENGLAND. (Links of Empire Series) 13th October, 1927

COLONEL ERASER, President of the Club, introduced the speaker. MR. FLOWER was received with applause the audience rising. He said: Mr. President, I will first of all clear up one little remark, for although on six different occasions-shall I say for my sins-I have been mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. I no longer occupy that position, which I feel is an honour in this country, though while in Chicago, when they attached the title of "mayor" to me I did not feel in that particular town at that particular moment that it was a very great honour. (Laughter.) But, as Chairman of the Trustees and Guardians of Shakespeare's Memorial, I feel it is a great honour for me to have an opportunity of chatting to you-I will not say speaking-for I am no orator, and no great scholar, but I hope that by sincerity I will make up what I lack in other respects.

Some of you will understand if I tell you that my chief pleasure in life is fox-hunting (laughter) and instead of following the hounds in Warwickshire, as I have done for the last fifty years, I am out here trying to give a message. to ordinary sport-loving business men, trying to tell people like you what Shakespeare means, and what a lot of help the knowledge and love of Shakespeare will give to us, no matter what our job in life may be. (Hear, hear.)

I was lucky enough in England to get the aid of a very distinguished advisory committee to assist the governors of the theatre in our big problem of re-building the theatre which was burned down last year. We got representatives of the arts, and the best men we could find at the time of every profession; we got a director of the National Gallery, the President of the Royal Institute of British Architects; we got Sir James Barrie, representing literature; Grenville Barker, representing the theatre, and I was fortunate in being able to secure Reginald McKenna. I got him because in 1896 I happened to be rowing for Cambridge, and he was the ninth man in that crew, and he got his blue the next year. (Applause.) I told my friend that when he addressed the Canadian Club here he would make his address a lot more interesting if he would fill in with Shakespeare. (Laughter.)*

Unfortunately, Shakespeare is often considered dull and uninteresting. When I was at school, we were forced to take the most difficult, passages of Shakespeare-and analyze them. I was always in trouble at school, and was often punished by having to write a hundred lines, and this occurred so often that my handwriting was injured, so that the method was changed, and instead of writing a hundred lines I was required to learn them. (Laughter.) The result was that in a very short space of time I had learned the whole of that wonderful piece of English, Richard II. Now, can you imagine any worse introduction to Shakespeare, or anything more calculated to make a boy hate him instead of love him, than to be given such a task ? Well, I took very great care that my children did not go through the same thing. They fortunately elected to be born at Stratford-on-Avon, where they had an opportunity of seeing his birthplace in that beautiful town, and they learned to love the beauty of the place, and this made them love their Shakespeare, and that has influenced their lives.

I have just been reading a long letter from my soldier son, from Nashmur, a vivid word-picture of having got 'three ibex and various other things up in an altitude of 16,000 or 17,000 feet. I attribute that boy's ability

Mr. Reginald McKenna gave an address to the Canadian Club, Toronto, the day before, to write interesting and picturesque letters almost entirely to the fact that his powers of observation and expression have been helped by his intimate knowledge of Shakespeare.

Now, originally Shakespeare did not write his plays to be read. Indeed, he carefully guarded them against publication. He wrote them to be played upon the stage. He was himself an actor and he was a wonderful play-writer, but he was anxious that the company in which he was financially interested and for whom he was writing those plays, should alone have the benefit of them. So they were not published at the time, but they were carefully kept locked up.. He wrote them for the stage, and the way to get the real life and the real gauge of Shakespeare is to see his plays acted. So we have put ourselves to the task, which has been continued now for forty-eight years, of presenting the plays at Stratford as well and as frequently as possible. We play practically all through the summer there, and we find people who come there and see the plays get the proper point of view, instead of the wrong point of view, as I did. Once you get that love, it will follow as the night the day that it is going to be a help and assistance 'to you.

In talking to your President we agreed that if we have our Shakespeare and our Bible we can practically solve all the great problems. They are having a bit of a rustle up at Winnipeg at the present time, and yet I feel that if you look to Shakespeare as a guide, even in politics, he can keep you extraordinarily straight; he has such a sane view. He was all for law and order. He was down, like a ton of bricks, on mob law. The same way in questions of religion. We do not know in the very least what particular sect Shakespeare belonged to, but the religion that runs through his plays, if we try to follow it, will keep every one of us on the right lines. May I give you just one example ? I was lunching yesterday with the Arts and Letters Club, and somebody came up from one of your newspapers and wanted an interview, and amongst other things he said to me, "What is your opinion on prohibition ?" (Laughter.) Well, I was not going to give him my opinion upon prohibition, but I said, "Look here, go back and learn your Shakespeare, you will get a very good point of view of it" (Laughter). "Go and read Othello. Read that wonderful scene with Cassius, where he has been given too much to drink. Read that most marvellous description of the evil, the disease of excess, and how bitterly at the end he speaks- 'Alas, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains,' and then turn to the other side of the picture and read Twelfth Night, and you will hear old Toby heartily saying, ' Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there should be no more cakes and ale ?' " (Laughter). So there you are; he holds the balance; he takes the obvious, the sane view.

I told you that I was a sportsman, drat I loved foxhunting, and I am foolish enough, although I am sixty-two this month, to want to play polo (Laughter). I want to tell you that Shakespeare is extraordinarily useful to me as a lover of horses, when I am buying a hunter or a pony (Laughter). When I am looking at an animal I just run through in my mind the most marvellous description that has ever been written of a horse in five lines, enumerating all the salient points, and not having a word too many, and naming everything that a horse has got to have if he is a good one. I hope I shall remember it all my life

(Applause.)

If there are any of you present who love horses, if you can tell me how that description can be improved, I shall be very grateful (Laughter). If I had the time I could talk to you for half an hour and prove to you conclusively that Shakespeare must have qualified as a veterinary surgeon, whatever else he did (Laughter). The simple fact is that he had a marvellous power of observation, an extraordinary memory, a vivid imagination, so that he could take all these things that he got stored up, and then give them back in those wonderful plays.

Now, I want to give one more instance of how he helps. Last year in May we had a general strike in England. We purposely put on Coriolanus, because it is a wonderful picture; if we had altered the names it was practically a picture of what was going on, and we felt sure that it was the right thing, but it was a very curious coincidence that the strike was declared to start at midnight, and on the evening before we happened to be playing Richard II. Now anybody who has British blood in his veins always feels his blood course a little bit more quickly when they hear our greatest national poet's description of the land he loved so well

-(Applause.)

Now, very often in the cut editions they stop there. It is rather good "curtain," as they say, but we gave practically the whole text, and I remember that listening to the last two lines of that speech absolutely hit us between the eyes, where old John o' Gaunt, just as he is dying, says

"This England, that was wont to conquer others, has made a shameful conquest of herself."

It set us all thinking-what was going to happen the next day ? We did not know what was going to happen; we had not been up against that fence before. But the spirit that Shakespeare has taught all of us came to the rescue, all right; the sense of humour that he accomplished came to the rescue; the grit that he inculcates came to the rescue. I went up to London the next day, and instead of taking an hour and a half by train it took us five hours. We all got out at every station and helped with the milk cans, everybody in good humour. When I got to London people were tramping away to their work, all smiling. My two boys had rushed off, of course; my soldier son, who was in the cavalry regiment, was driving. a motor bus. Everybody had got his little car, racing about, taking policemen here and there where there was a little trouble. You might see a great hole in a pane of glass, but instead of closing it up there you found a huge placard with the words : "Please throw all bricks through this hole" (Laughter). Then you would see another one-" This is Guy's hospital bus; this is Guy's hospital driver, and this is Guy's hospital conductor, and anybody who interferes with this bus will be a Guy's hospital patient" (Laughter). When you found that the strikers themselves were playing football with the police, that is a thing that beat the French; they could not understand it (Laughter). And when you found the spirit of grit and fun and good humour, that is what broke the strike (Applause). And I maintain that is what Shakespeare teaches us; the old man is right every time. Go back to the theatre, and when you get that in the back of your mind you are not at least surprised to hear the outpouring of King John "Naught shall make us rue, if England to herself do prove but true" (Applause).

Living at Stratford as I do, another thing that strikes one as very wonderful is the world-wide appeal that Shakespeare makes. He knows no barrier of race, creed or colour. Over sixty nations presented their flags, and the heads of the nations were represented. The King gave us the Union Jack, and it does one good when one is in this country wherever one goes to see the old Union Jack, and to hear the real fervour with which "God Save the King" is always sung (Applause). The Dominion flags are grouped around the Union Jack in a semicircle, and then in three large rows right down are the flags of all the nations, and on Shakespeare's birthday, at 12 o'clock on the 23rd of April, at the sound of the bugle, the representatives of all those nations unfurl the flag representing their own nation. I have seen it over and over again, and never have I seen it without a big lump in my throat. I see their flags fluttering out into the breeze and dipping in honour of Shakespeare (Applause). It is a very wonderful thing. It is the only thing that I can think of upon which the whole world is in agreement. We quarrel about religions, we quarrel about politics; but on that one subject the only place for argument at all amongst some people is whether he ever wrote the plays. (Laughter). That does not worry me (Hear, hear, and applause). Whoever wrote the plays must have been a Warwickshire man (Laughter). There are Warwickshire flowers and Warwickshire names, but the main thing is that whoever wrote them must have been an actor, because the stage-craft of Shakespeare is the most wonderful thing of all, and of course it would have been a physical impossibility for a learned man like Bacon to have accomplished it, because he failed to feel matters like Shakespeare himself. But personally I do like to come across Baconians, because it gives me an opportunity of rubbing something in on the question of finance. Finance is a subject which I do not touch, because I am here to get people interested in Shakespeare, not to ask for building funds, or anything of that sort; but one of the first communications I got after the fire was a very charming letter from an American lady who said : "You know what I think about the authorship of the plays, but I am enclosing you £100 towards the rebuilding of the theatre, because whatever happens we must have the plays, no matter who wrote them" (Laughter). So if I happen to come across a person who is benighted enough to still be a Baconian, I say, "Come on and be a Baconian, and do the same as this lady." (Laughter).

This universal love of Shakespeare was borne in upon one after the fire. I happened to be playing golf at the time, that afternoon when they told me that the old theatre was burning. It had been built forty-eight years, very largely of wood on the inside, and it just simply went up like a rocket. I went to the fire, and I felt as it was burning that there was good in that event, because I said, " We have outgrown the theatre, and although this building is being burned down, its past cannot be destroyed." We telegraphed off for our directorate, and we saw the directors of the movie house, which happens to be a good one in Stratford, and held rather more people than our own theatre, and arranged for occupying it the next morning, and we soon had workmen digging out foundations and building the stage at the back of it. We built the present rooms for about forty people; we remade all the scenery; and inside of five weeks we had got that building completely equipped, and reopened our festival on the date advertised-not a bad bit of hustling (Applause).

Well, we felt that it was essential to carry on, to keep up the continuity of the plays. As soon as the fire occurred I began to get messages from all over the world. I will give you just two or three examples, because they are extraordinarily interesting, and they show the worldwide feeling. One of the first was from Turkey, a most beautifully-worded message in most wonderful English. Then one from the King of England, not only a message, but- he enclosed a cheque for £500 (Applause). A little further on we heard from the Ameer of Afghanistan; Shakespeare had got there. I did not know that he was a lover of Shakespeare, but he loved him to this tune, that he sent not only a beautiful message, but a cheque for £150. One of the things that struck me more than anything else was when I got a letter from our British officer in Tokio sending £250 as a result of the performances of Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the National Theatre in Tokio (Applause).

Well, if all those nations feel that they want to come in in order to see that the memory of Shakespeare is kept green in the best possible way, is it not natural that those of us who speak English, of which he was the past master, ought also to feel that they want to become partners in this enterprise ? Up until the fire this job had been a one-town job. Little Stratford, with its less than ten thousand inhabitants, had put up over half a million dollars in order to keep the thing going and build a theatre, and continue the plays. Now we feel that the whole world wants to come in. Your next-door neighbour, the United States, are extraordinarily enthusiastic, and I felt that as I know so many in this country I wanted to come out here and have an opportunity of meeting some of the inhabitants of this great Dominion and telling them of the work that we are trying to do not to beg of them, but to let them know that there is a privilege of becoming partners, in however small a way, in doing honour to this great Englishman.

It is not only a question of building a wonderful theatre, although that is a very difficult problem. Those of you who happen to know Stratford will realize that putting up a building big enough for a theatre, high enough to fly your scenery, on the banks of that beautiful river Avon, close to an old-world town without a high building in it, is a terrific problem for an architect. We opened a competition, and the architect will be chosen in the first week in November. But what I am after is to see that what is done inside that theatre shall be worthy of the man whom we are trying to honour (Applause). Do you realize that when you go to almost any country speaking another language than English, fine drama is realized to be essential in the lives of the people ? You go to Germany, and you will see Shakespeare constantly put on, and at very low prices, so that an artisan can bring the whole of his family and see the plays. Why is that ? Because the state sees to it that it is lifted out of the ordinary commercial rut, and they make it possible.

Now, we in England, and probably you over here, do not believe in too much state control. I do not plead for state control in England, for if they subsidized the theatre there they would want to control the theatre. That is much too tricky a job for any government to entertain, for you would have not only all sorts of heavy financial problems, but you would come up against the artistic temperament of the people who play there. I am not pleading for that. What I am pleading for is that what the State will not do should be done by individuals who realize that it is something worth while, who realize the importance of making people love their Shakespeare by seeing the plays beautifully given, and by getting the people to get together and say, " Now, we are going to do for these particular districts what the state does in other countries; we are going to make it possible for you to have the finest theatre available, and not always to have to keep your eye on the box office; but you have to do this thing because it is fine, because it is beautiful, and because it is worth while." That means an endowment fund. I am hoping that as a result of this fire we shall find that we have a fine fund to invest, not only to carry on our summer programme when the world comes to Stratford, but as soon as our summer festival is over to have theatre companies ready to come out and bring that message to the world; and the very first place I want them to come to is Canada. (Applause).

Now, I hope, sir, I have said enough to help you to realize, at any rate, how this job has got hold of me, and why I am here today meeting all of you instead of foxhunting in England; and I hope that I have said enough to make all of you determined that if we are able next fall to bring our company, in which all the small parts are well represented, to this town, that everyone of you will have the privilege of putting your backs into it, and driving. I have no doubt that the people you have in Toronto will want to have their share in helping to do honour to that great dramatist, that great Englishman, William Shakespeare (Loud applause).

The thanks of the club were tendered to the speaker, amid applause.