Cleveland County herald., 1920-11-04
IS
 PLACE OF PEACE
Shakespeare's Old Home casls Softening Spell Over It's
 Throngs of Visitors.
USEFULNESS IS ITS LURE
Voices of Strangers Are Not Lifted in Hilarity-Villagers Enjoy and Appreciate hakespeare-Many
 Americans There.

ford-on-Avon. - The poet of
 Shropshire has given his high metrical authority to the statement that the quieteSt places under the sun are in
 that county; but he refers to places only, and obviously is not thinking of towns, of which the quietest under the sun is surely Stratford-on-Avon. It assimilates it's visitors without noise, much as Shakespeare himself compre- hends the heights and depths of human
 life easily as to the manner born.
 There are plenty of strangers here this summer, but they do not make crowd and their voices are not lifted in hilarity. Perhaps they are under the softening spell of genius. The nearest approach to merriment I have yet no- tfced, however, was in front of the birthplace. It was already full of sightseers, and a little throng awaited entrance on the pavement. Among them was not one Gin the learned way" as Boswell puts it, but the whole com pany bore the plain, sturdy, bucolic stamp. Dressed in their customary Sunday suits of solemn black they re vered the immortal memory with i eontrasted cheerfuIness.
 In the train from London a French man on holiday asked me for advice on motor travelling between Stratford and bennington. Having just four hours to spend in Stratford he was pro- 1 posing to see all the sights, to attend i the summer festival matinee of As 1 You Like It' in the Memorial theater ] and to catch a glimpse of Warwick on i his way back to the railway. Evidently Americans are not the only folk Whe can hustle. He might have been reas- sured on the motor question Such is the enterprise in tiiis direction that it is calculated that s.4ty char-a-banes and the like stay in Stratford every ] day. They take their passengers to the many delightful towns aHa TiI- lages. in the neighborhood and bring in the inhabitants of spots which would otherwise be remote.
 Villagers Enjoy Shakespeare.
 A large proportion of the audiences of the summer festival are villagers, who have learned to rely on the motor as a means of conveyance, and they do, I am assured, really appreciate Shakespeare. Not only that, but they i possess an inborn aptitude for Old English dances and pageantry. The stories one hears of Maypole and Morris dancing in some of the villages suggest either that Shakespeare's England has never died, or has been revived by the agencies that aim at reSus:.tating the drama in the coun tr5 de. But it should not be eonclud that these village festivals are manufactured by artistic labor. On the contrary, they are described SIS the spontaneous sports of the young in which the old are not afraid to join. Stratford itself has more than one open place to which Maypole would | seem no alien addition. From time to time much has been said and written of it's commercialization. With some, the memory of Shakespeare may have become a trade, like aluminium or any thing else Others have shown how little they fear the intrusion of fac tory. Yet the town remains very passable vestige of that in which | Shakespeare was born. The spirit of | the Elizabethan village still broods over it's timbered houses and spacious streets, and the business in mementoes has not succeeded n destroying their meaning. No town can get peace for l the asking and it is peace which l Stratford has secured by some semi divine right and retains in spite of every provocation to barter the posses sion.
 Many Americans There, Too.
 The Warwickshire meadows are as smooth and green as ever. There the river glides at it's own sweet will with the placidity of other streams but none of their dullness. One wonders Wheth- CT it is only for Shakespeare that the whole world comes to Stratford, or whether some part of the compulsion is not that desire for retreat which he has expressed in many remembered passage.
 Be the attraction what it may, the visitors this very year form a kind of conspectus of Stratford's universal at- traction. It need hardly be said that there have been many small parties of Americans. From various registers may be gathered an idea of their rep resentatiye character, for Denver fol- lows Boston and New York is next door to Colorado in those undeniable pages. South America is there, too. Australia stands high in the list of Dominion visitors, and after Australia comes South Africa.
 In Death They Are Not Divided.