The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1916-06-06
WONDER OF SHAKESPEARE"

Essay by Miss Ruby Fausett at the
Closing Exercises of the Ocala
High School
On the twenty-third of last April,
there was celebrated throughout the
United States and probably the en-
tire world, the three hundredth ami
versary of William Shakespeare. He
died April %, 1916 on the fifty-ninth
anniversary of his birth. It has been
well said by DIR. Claxton, the United
States Commissioner of Education,
that the most valuable possession of
any people is its great literature,
which interprets its life, expresses its
ideals, and fosters its objects and
aspirations. The greatest literary
genius yet produced by the English
speaking peoples is Shakespeare His
dramas constitute our richest literary
heritage.
Shakespeare holds an unique place
in literature. He was the most versa
tile of English writer's, and also the
most expressive. Where he obtained
the fund of information necessary to
compose his plays and poems, it is
impossible to form an idea. Here is
an unknown country boy, poor and
poorly educated according to the
standards of his age, who arrives at
the great city of London and goes to
work at add jobs in a theater. In
year or two he is associated with
scholars and dramatists, the masters
of their age, writing plays of kings
land clowns, of gentlemen and heroes
and noble women, all of whose lives
he seems to know by intimate associ-
alton. In a few years more he leads
lall of those brilliant poets and dra-
matists who have given undying glory
to the age of Elizabeth. Play after
play runs from his pen, mighty dra-
mas of human life and character fol-
lowing one another so rapidly that
lgood work seems impossible; yet they
stand the test of time, and their
poetry is still unrivaled in any la
lguage.
| Nothing has ever so depicted the
sorrows of neglected age, the ingrati-
ltude of some children, the devotion of
others, as King Lear. No love story
ever more beautiful than Romeo and
Juliet" No where else has the hol-
lowness of ambition and the evils it
breeds been so clearly depicted as in
Macbeth" In number of his plays
Shakespeare seems to have done, with
little notice at the time, what the
public later paid Charles Read in
money and fame for: namely, scoring
|. some of the evils of his day.
i It is impossible to read many lines
in any of Shakespeare's plays with
out coming to some thought worth
treasuring. Forty years ago, a knowl-
edge of Shakespeare and knowledge
of the scriptures formed common
understanding for the reading public.
Shakespeare was of the people, and
there are few phases in every day life
that he has not described. He was
also historian as well as dramatist.
His historical plays were the prede-
cessors of the historical novels of later
years. 1t is to one of his historical
plays and to midsummer Nights
Dream" that Shakespeare owed the
moderate fortune that enabled him to
pass his latter days in comparative
comfort. A fiattering allusion to
4 Queen Elizabeth in the latter play
brought him into favorable notice at
the court, and his last historical play
"Henry VIII" was a most artistic de-
fence of the queens father and moth
er, King Henry and Anna Boleyn, for
J their marriage, following the divorce
j of Queen Catherine.
Il Shakespeare's plays, as rendered
on the stage, had their greatest pop
ularity in the nineteenth century, in
the day when the education of the
people had progressed far enough to
understand them. The presentation
Inow in comparison with the number
of other plays is meager. The careful
observer does not like to see Shakes
stpeare rendered by an inferior actor or
actress, and only the good ones can
do the subject justice. There seems
; no prospect that Shakespeare will
be more largely presented on the
stage than at present, but his place in
literature is secure for all time.