Stratford Itself Again
Shakespeare as actor and manager would surely have approved of Miss Scott's original and practical new Memorial Theatre which was opened at Stratford on Saturday by the Prince of Wales. Her building repre- sents our own generation, which has been sufficiently interested in the dramatist to subscribe over £250,000 in a few months so that the old theatre which was burnt in 1926 might be replaced. The meaning of that spon- taneous modern tribute to the greatest English poet would have been obscured if the architect had put up an old-fashioned and conventional structure. In the new theatre Shakespeare's plays can be produced under better conditions than anywhere else, and that, after all, is the true function of a Shakespeare memorial. Mr. Baldwin, representing the Government and welcoming the many. distinguished American and foreign visitors, was at his best in his speech on the essential Englishness of Shakespeare. That, of course, is not the whole story. Like other great authors, he wrote for mankind. But, like Dante or Victor Hugo, Cervantes, or Goethe, he-appealed and still appeals specially to his own people; in an English-speaking world.
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