Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1962-08-05
Cities
end People
A Swing to
Shakespeare?
BY ROBERT LEWIS

ouI G4lcLC 10 dlSO u pOlDI
to recognizing, on the other
hand, that the exception
proves the rule and that,
therefore, bigness cannot be
bad in every case.
Take Texas, for example.
It's a big State and it's by no
means bad just because it's
big.
Or take the Texas Quar-
terly, as another example.
It's the country's biggest
magazine - an inch thick
and hundreds of pages
and its editorial content is
not bad at all.
The fact that this Uni
verSity of Texas magazine is
big gives it enormous space
to deal with a lot of sub
jects that would be excluded
otherwise.
One such recent subject
was the increasing popular
ity of Shakespeare's plays
and the reason behind it, as
perceived by j. B. PrieStley.
Mr.. Priestley is a noted
English writer who thinks
that anything big is usually
bad, and who believes that
most people share his opin-
ion. He says this clearly in
the mammoth magazine pub
lished in our next-to-biggest
State.
Writing in the New York
Times Book Review, Book
ColumniSt J. Donald Adams
explains that Mr.. Priestley's
essay says Shakespeare is
becoming more popular,
these days, because his plays
offer an escape from the in
human bigness of our mod
ern world.
MIR. PRIESTLEY opens
his case" says Mr.. Adams,
with a reminder of the
numbing sameness by which
we are assaulted wherever
we 60, of the omnipresent
concrete, steel, and glass ris-
ing everywhere. "
East and West, North and
South, we turn with relief
from our ant-hill cities to
the richly variegated phys
ical world we enter n the
plays Of Shakespeare.
Moreover, he points out,
the basic scale Of that world
is always human. Terrible
things may and do happen
in it, yet that scale remains.
mo victory is granted to
something anti-human.
Shakespeare" he observes
''is on our side. And in this
important respect he is in
sharp contrast to many of
the representative artists of
the modern world, men who
do not appear to be on our
side, who appear to have
contempt for our common
humanity, as if they be-
longed to a fifth column of
some new species preparing
to destroy us.
Daring the last 30 or 40
years, we have almost ceased
to lock for breadth, vitality,
a balanced attitude. 4. g.. :"
SINCE THE WORLD of
art Includes the men who
designed the so-called ant
hill cities, it is quite evil
dent Mr.. Priestley is being
critical Of architects with an
impersonal vision.
He apparently believes
they do not have the in
dividual person sufficiently
in mind when they design
their buildings, and that
thus they are helping to de-
Stroy the ancient Greek idea
that all things should be
measured for individual
man, not man in the mass.
Shakespeare says Mr..
Priestley, clearly dislikes
the crowd, the mob, the
mass, in which individuality
is lost in some collective i'm
becility. And in the modern
world we seem to be revers-
ing all this
Maybe Mr.. PrieStley is
right. Maybe we're all like
Shakespeare, at heart. May
be we want to be considered
human beings, not Just
anonymous elements of a
faceless crowd.
If that is true-and Mr..
Priestley seems to think it
is-then the swing to Shake
speare in the modern world
is a trend that deserves to
be studied more closely.
If cities and buildings are
to be made more human,
more understandable, more
welcoming to human beings,
the architects will have to
take the lead to make them
so.