Evening star., 1938-10-09

the graciousness of their cooperation
as speakers at its meetings.
Today the Shakespeare Society's
growing membership ranges from the
youthful who are new recruits to
such octeeenarain Shakespearean
scholars as Mrs. Ahram English Brown,
who attends every meeting at 80. and
her slightly junior compatriot, Henry
d. Fruit, 86 years young, who has
just completed volume on Shake
speare that the Folger Shakespeare
Library considers a contribution to
Shakespearean literature
Interest Only Qualification.
An interest in Shakespeare is the
only requisite for membership to this
group whose roster has long included
the Capital City's most distinguished
men and women of letters and the
arts. The dues are $3.50 for the
season from october to May with meet
ings dates on the second Monday of
each month.
To Mrs. Wilcox. the Shakespeare
Society is indebted for series Of
fascinating scrap books, containing
collection Of its annual and monthly
programs, social and literary, as we'll
newspaper notices, accounts of i'm.
portant Shakespearean events through
out the world and of the plays and
scenes from plays in which its men,
bers participated throughout the years
Of its existence.
DR.. Wilcox's interest in Shakespeare.
which has really become the hobby
of his life. as he frankly admits.
began back in his student days at
Harvard Here he found himself
more by accident than by design in
one Of the English classes of Kittredge.
the famous Shakespearean scholar
who was so intolerant of the students
who did not share his enthusiasm for
the finer pionts of Shakespeare s
phraseology, that upon his detection
of the slightest inattention upon the
part of even solitary student, he
would take up his hat and walk out
on the entire group with something
of the melancholy dignity of Hamlet
weary of his academic world.
The emphasis Of his college and
university life, however. was upon
general science, in which he won his
Phi D. from Harvard following his
A. B. and M. A. degrees from this in
stitution. But the slant to his life
given by the brilliant Kittredge was to
endure as an absorbing avocation. side
by side with his contribution to the
economics of agriculture in the United
States Department Of Agriculture, and
his nine-year survey of agricultural
and political conditions in every CIV
ilized country in the world for the
Country Gentleman.
Photography Enlisted. {"
DIR. Wilcox personally has photo
graphed every monument to- Shakes
peare which he has encountered in
has. travels around, the world One 'oi
the most interesting he said, lis in
Sidney. Australia. Another is in Wei
mar, Germany, home OF Schiller and
Goethe"
From his background and many
years study of languages, too. he
stresses that Shakespeare helped
turn the tide in England toward Eng
lish as a literary as we'll as virile
language not dependent in any wise
upon the more courtly French phrases
currently the fashion in his time
Asked for his favorite lines from
Shakespeare the president of the
Shakespeare Society of Washington
unhesitatingly quoted from Act II of
LAS You Like It," where in Scene l.
the Forest of Arden-the duke says:
And this our life exempt from public
haun.
Finds tongues in trees. books in running
brooks
Sermons in stones, and good in every
thing.
would not change it,
These, he said In conclusion, Il be-
lieve represent the text of the Eng
disappearing world of today toward
wars ana rlmors of war"