Trumpets, Enter H. R. H.

An Englishman of robust John Bull type greeted fragile Ambassador Andrew William Mellon and other U. S. pilgrims to the opening of the new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon last week, booming with a throb in his deep bull voice, "From my heart welcome, welcome home!"

"I say again, a thousand times welcome home!" boomed the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin, British Conservative Party leader. Stratford's U. S. guests glowed visibly with the warmth of their English welcome. Presently the fact that some of them have contributed largely to building Stratford's vigorously modernistic Theatre* was poetically stated in an ode composed by the Empire's Poet Laureate, mild John Masefield, whose narrative verse is better than his odes. Second verse:

Now a new house has risen; it is given Not by one citizen or State; it stands, Given to ns by many hundred hands American and British; nay, each race Upon this earth has helped to build this place. Lovers of Shakespeare everywhere have striven. Every man gave it out of all earth's lands./-

To open the "ugly, big, heavy, bare,forbidding red brick factory," Edward of Wales arrived by plane, was announced by a Shakespearean blare of trumpets. He unlocked the doors with a golden key. Mr. Mellon unfurled the Stars & Stripes, H. R. H. the King's flag.

Said the Prince: "Nothing can more truly be called a memorial than what is here. . . . Shakespeare . . . would have rejoiced to know that for the production of his plays this theatre contains the most modern accommodations [1,000 seats, two restaurants] and equipment [a rolling and rising stage] of any erected in the English speaking world. . . .We are proud and grateful that the citizens of the great Nation across the sea should have taken such a prominent part in making it possible for a fine and beautifully equipped playhouse to be opened in his honor today. ... It is now my privilege, on behalf of his Majesty the King, to inaugurate the new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which is dedicated to the immortal memory of William Shakespeare."

Said Ambassador Mellon: "Shakespeare was great because he tried to do not what was easy but what was difficult in plumbing the depths of human experience and setting forth in his plays and sonnets a conception of life and nature that has impressed itself on all who have come after him. We do well to build a theatre here at Stratford, where all the world can come and, in the beautiful English countryside which brought Shakespeare into being, listen to words that must forever influence the thought and conscience of the world."

Present to glean what grains of publicity he could by declaring, "I am satisfied with the new theatre!" was George Bernard Shaw. Thoroughly enjoyed, spontaneously applauded by the Stratford Theatre's first audience last week were Parts I & II of Shakespeare's Henry IV, announced as "the most representative of the entire range of Shakespeare's genius."

*Described by a correspondent of Britain's leading Conservative paper, the London Morning Iost, as "just dreadful--an ugly, big. heavy, bare, forbidding red brick factory with the straight lines of featureless windows and a tower-like tank--utterly out of harmony with the lovely Avon reach that it does its best to monopolize" (being built on the river's brim).

/-Out of U. S. pockets came approximately two-thirds of the $1,400,000 raised for building and endowment after Stratford's old Shakespeare theatre burned in 1926.

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