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For Mr.Shakespeare, one cannot deny, has talent. He has a certain pleasing gift of words. Every now and then a neat line catches the ear, as when Polonius (well played by Mr.Macready Jones) warns his son that “borrowing often loses a man his friends,” or when Hamlet himself refers to death as “a shuffling off of this mortal toil.” But a succession of neat lines does not make a play. We require something more. ssss1Our interest must be held throughout: not by such well-worn stage devices as the appearance of a ghostly apparition, who strikes terror into the hearts only of his fellow-actors; not by comic clowning business at a grave-side; but by the spiritual development of the characters. Mr.Shakespeare’s characters are no more than mouthpieces for his rhythmic musings. We can forgive a Prince of Denmark for soliloquising in blank verse to the extent of fifty lines, recognising this as a legitimate method of giving dignity to a royal pronouncement; but what are we to say of a Captain of Infantry who patly finishes off a broken line with the exact number of syllables necessary to complete the iambus? Have such people any semblance to life at all? Indeed, the whole play gives us the impression of having been written to the order of a manager as a means of displaying this or that “line” which, in the language of the day, he can “do just now.” Soliloquies (unhampered by the presence of rivals) for the popular star, a mad scene for the leading lady (in white), a ghost for the electrician, a duel for the Academy-trained fencers, a scene in dumb-show for the cinema-trained rank-and-file—our author has provided for them all. No doubt there is money in it, and a man must live. But frankly we prefer Mr.Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets.