Birthday Party
BY CYRIL RAY IT was long before I reached Stratford—it was in the Chilterns, somewhere in the Rothschild country—that 1 saw a contractor's board outside a desirable villa residence. advertising the firm by name, in more or less Gothic lettering, as 'Tudor Builders.' 1 hadn't fully grasped before that Tudor building was a trade in itself, though Stratford, looking just as I remembered it, is a town that could have been run up, almost complete, by just such a firm in a matter of weeks.
A closer look, though, reveals some healthy developments. The shop labelled 'Kandy Korner' that I noticed at the last Shakespearean birthday celebrations I attended (the Soviet Ambassador took post there, to unfurl his country's flag) has now been joined by the Hey, Calypso ! Coffee Lounge, not a stone's throw from the theatre itself. You may find this revolting or, at least, inappropriate, but I count it an improve- ment on Ye Olde Filling Station, and half-timbered banks. And so, I am sure, would Shakespeare.
Which reminds me that while Marshal Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev were showing off about hydrogen bombs in the same county, in Birmingham, we were taking the opportunity offered by what is popularly supposed to be Shakespeare's birthday to show off at Stratford. 'They did say that those two would be coming here,' said one of the attendants at the Memorial Theatre, 'but we couldn't have done with them, it stands to reason—not all those bodyguards in the procession !
We couldn't have done with them even at the reception. As the theatre's long bar became crammed with mayors in chains, cultural attachds in striped trousers, the President of Rotary International, wearing a pearl-grey Stetson and a cina-camera, and dons in reach-me-downs, the early-comers were squeezed out at the far end like toothpaste out of a tube, on to the river- side terrace. There one could see that some jolly, and blessedly untidy, country-dancing by children was going on; and watch a boatload of Oriental ladies, in saris and fur-collared tweed coats, pulling their craft laboriously upstream. Bless me ! I saw the same boatload two years ago : how strong the current must be !
Lunbheon goes on a long time on these occasions : of a long line of speakers I recall that Lord Evershed spoke prosily and Mr. Cecil Day Lewis and Mr. Emlyn Williams wittily, and that Shakespeare seemed to be well thought of. 'Frontage du pays' on the menu turned out to be Cheddar, and very good too; the waitress apologised for there being no Danish Blue.
Those of us too mean or too forgetful to have brought wreaths or posies to carry to the church were thoughtfully equipped, free of charge, by the committee : the really know- ing ones had arrived each sporting what I took at first to be a bouquet garni in his buttonhole : but of course—how stupid of me!—it was rosemary for remembrance.
Into the birthplace and out again, and we unfurled some eighty-odd flags on the way—every flag you can think of, to say nothing of Costa Rica, Korea, the Yemen, and other Shakespeare-loving democracies. This time it was a mere First and Second Secretary who broke the Soviet ensign at their masthead—but I hope they noticed the honoured place filled, in the window of a chain-store, by a pile of tins boldly and proudly labelled 'Russian salmon, 6s. 9d.' Do you remember how shamefaced everyone used to be about Kamchatka crab? But to be Russian is the smart thing now. And so to church, along streets lined by officers and men of the Royal Pioneer Corps, dragged away from their Shake- speares to salute us; past a house in whose windows was the notice, 'Bed and Breakfast; Dressmaking; Budgerigars for sale'; and along the nave to the poet's tomb, past a guard of honour of schoolboy cadets of all sizes, wearing on their shoulders the name of the school that Shakespeare went to, and in their berets the badge of the regiment that Field-Marshal Montgomery first served in.
The evening performance was of Hamlet, the Stratford production of which has already been dealt with in these columns : indeed, I was a little shy of making it public in Stratford-on-Avon that I represented the Spectator. But my acquaintance the theatre-attendant said, 'Critics? Pooh! They only write the way they do to show they've seen the play before. Now I dare say that anyone that hadn't seen Hamlet before would find this one proper exciting.' Sucks, boo, to Strix.
Previous page
