AT IT AGAIN.
The Board of Education of Syracuse, New York, is consider- ing the removal of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice from their pupils' reading lists, on the grounds that the character of Shylock has been responsible for " an unfair and malicious conception of Jews." This is only a step in the right direction. Eventually, in view of the extent to which the theatre business in America is controlled and patronized by Jews, the play will presumably be suppressed altogether. The only possible alternative would be to make Shylock a Ruritanian. It is better that the scansion should suffer than that national sentiment should be outraged. Some of the other plays, too, need revision on these lines. American critics have written themselves almost to a standstill in attempts to prove that, in the case of Othello, black was really white. " Shakespeare," says one of them, " was too correct a delineator of human nature to have coloured Othello black, if he had personally acquainted himself with the idiosyncrasies of the African race. Othello was a white man. . . ." London, at a time when popular feeling about the Scots was exaggerated rather than misrepre- sented by Dr. Johnson's prejudice, declined to accept Macbeth in a kilt, even from Garrick. It is high time the League of Nations set up a commission to Bowdlerize these inflammatory dramas into something approaching world-mindedness.
Morn.
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