AMAZING MONUMENT By Ivor Brown and George Fearon
This entertaining book, subtitled "A Short History of the Shakespeare Industry," is a genial but ruthless survey of the process of commercially shrewd bardolatry which began relatively mildly in the century of Shakespeare's death and has, with brief intermissions, swollen ever since. Mr. Brown and Mr. Fearon are good-humoured writers ; they demolish a selection of • the familiar legends concerning Shakespeare's youth (such as that he poached Sir Thomas Lucy's deer, when "the Lucy family at the time had neither park nor herd "), describe the fatuities of the Garrick cele- brations and the ingenuities of the purveyors of relics, or catalogue the places of refreshment, shops and petrol-pumps which borrow Shakespeare's name, with consistent urbanity ; the only occasion on which they permit themselves a touch of bitterness is when they turn to consider the honours heaped in Shakespeare's name upon Miss Lilian Baylis. Amazing Monument (Heinemann, ios. 6d.) is a witty and comprehensive attack upon the mixture of hypocrisy and confused reverence from which these things and circumstances derive. It could be read with profit by many, and with pleasure by everyone.
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