The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-02-05
MEN WOMEN
 AND THINGS

Birmingham is in the midst of a Shake spearean revival. In these wartimes the Birmingham playgoers will have a chance to put in a week with the Bard of Avon.
 This is not just now to be an appre- citation of Robert Mantell, although he is we'll worth it, but merely to call atten- ton to the fact that Birmingham is not entirely given over to vaudeville and the movies, but is to be treated to the le- gitimate drama
 I have been lover of Shakespeare from boyhood. I can hardly remember the time when I first began to read his immortal plays. In my fathers library found a set of Shakespeare. I think there were about as large as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, illustrated and printed in ex- tra large type I do not remember the name of the edition but I have never seen d similar set in any private or pub lie library.
 I began to read Shakespeare long be- yet I understood enough to enjoy them. I learned the truth of the saying of child. who. when asked by his mother if he understood a poem which she was reading, saiG: "Yes. when you don't stop to explain it" I have found out that tt pays to let children read books which seem to be far i'll advance of their child ish minds. for they get more out of them than we give them credit for being able to do. M
 I attribute my love for Shakespeare which has been kept fresh through life to the fact that I literally devoured his plays as a lad. learned to love him long before I had to go through the wearisome study of his plays at college under critical professors who analysed and tried to classify and interpret them in the light of scholarship I look back to the years that I put in trying to fol- low the various Shakespearean commen- tators with feeling of repulsion.
 
 It may be terribly unorthodox and against all the rules of the schools. but wish it was an indictable offense to clog the pages of the Shakespearen text with footnotes or load them with glos- saries and other learned paraphernalia to take one's time from the original. am confident that if the same time was given to committing the words to tion with the riches of Shakespeare in stead of overlooking the mind with ex- traneous matter that the crop of true lovers of the myriad minded would in crease from year to year.
 Sure this is heresy, but I glory in 1t and will be satisfied if can get some refuse to stock their minds with the opinion of second rate scholars at the expense of familiarizing themselves with the plays themselves of the master. There arc so-called Shakespeareian experts who have become adept in the matter of texts who have never let the beauty of the thoughts grip their souls
 I also know some devout men and women who know absolutely nothing of Hebrew or Greek and are totally ignorant when it comes to a critical study of the Bible, yet their lives are saturated with it's teachings and they give forth the aroma of saints who have walked and talked with the Master.
 Now I know there are exceptions to the dry as dust school of Shakespearean teachers who becloud the genius of the great dramatist with their eternal quib- blings about whether certain words or lines belong to the original text. There are scholars like Dr. Stockton Axson, who was recently in our midst, who, whi,e familiar with all of the scholar ship which has been expended on the master, yet takes his plays and makes them live and breathe and brings them in close touch with our modern world
 
 l No one who heard the conclusion of his 1 address at the Tutwiler when he was giv- | ing accounting of what the Red Cross was doing with the money given to it and graphically picturing the lands in which i work was being done; he began to search beneath the outward evidences whcf brought on the conflict, and taken witt srrpassing skill, brought into play his knowledge of Shakespeare to clinch the thought that beneath diplomacy, business and racial causes were the eternal ideas of right and wrong battling for suprem acy. can ever forget it.
 With Dr. Axon, Shakespeare is not z dead but a living dramatist, whose thoughts are not embalmed in lifeless plays. but today are fighting for expres sion in the lives of individuals and na wrights of Europe, and for more than 2 score of years have sat at Goethes fec as one of his admirers. but in the ligh 1 of modern German kultur he is but . waning moon in comparison with the splendor of the sun of England's master dramatist I haven's the time but only suggest that you study the difference be tween the two typical representatives o the countries whose ideas are pitted ir a death struggle and you will find tha it's for the world happiness and peace that the land of Shakespeare shall b' victorious.