SHAKESPEARE

LAGS of more than 80 nations
were unfurled at Stratford-on-
Avon on April 23 when townspeople,
overseas visitors and representatives
of nearly every country in the world
celebrated the 392nd anniversary of
the birth of William Shakespeare,
The unfurling was followed by a
floral procession through the streets
from Shakespeare’s birthplace to the
parish church, where hundreds of
wreaths and posies were heaped upon
the poet’s tomb.
Earlier, a band played and school-
children danced in the public gardens.
At a commemorative luncheon dis-

tinguished speakers extolled Shakes- ©

peare and the drama.

The toast of the immortal memory
was proposed by Lord Evershed,
Master of the Rolls, who said Shake-
speare inspired his country for ever
after by holding a true mirror to
English character at its best.

The toast of the drama was pro-
posed by C. Day Lewis, the poet, who

Flags of 80 nations fly in tribute to Shakespeare

observed he found it strange that
people should pay lip-service to
Shakespeare when the living theatre
was being strangled by entertainment
tax. é

By contrast, an American seeking to
reduce the memory of Britain’s great-
est playwright to that of an itinerant
actor who lent his name to another’s
works, saw his own elaborate theories
dashed this week.

Calvin Hoffman, American drama
critic who contends that Christopher
Marlowe actually wrote the plays and
poems attribituted to Shakespeare,
watched stonemasons open a tomb in
an ancient Kentish church, confident
that he would find documentary proof
of his theories.

The tomb, which he had believed
to be that of Sir Thomas Walsingham,
Marlowe’s friend and patron, was
empty.

Hoffman had expected to find copies
of Shakespeare’s plays in Marlowe's
handwriting in the tomb.

ANNE HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE

* Trade unionists housewives, local Labor party secretaries and ordinary workers were among

the 1500 guests who crowded into Claridges, famous Mayfair hotel, last week to meet Soviet

Premier Nicolai Bulganin and Nikita Krushchev. Among the guests, smiling and buoyant, was
Charlie Chaplin, shown here being greeted by Bulganin, who publicly called him “the most popular
man in the Soviet Union.” Chaplin is now in London to begin shooting his new film, A King in
New York, in which he will play the part of a deposed king of a small country who goes to New
York to set up a fund for the peaceful development of atomic energy and is promptly labelled a
“Communist.” ;

F YOU want a really well-
| written and lively introduc-
tion to a subject today you are
well advised to search for it in
the children’s library, because
writers for children are never
too clever to begin at the be-
ginning of a subject.

I was well on my way through
The Story of Clothes, by Agnes
Allen before I could make up
my mind whether this delight-
ful book was written for adults
or children, but I was certain
that both would thoroughly en-
joy it.

This history of things we use
every day is always fascinat-
ing, making one look afresh at
things normally taken for grant-
ed and suddenly realize the long
line of inventions and discover-
ies that stretch out behind them.

Of all things clothes have
perhaps the most fascinating
history, combining as they do

so many arts and sciences and

reflecting the habits and out-
look of the ruling classes of the
world.

Most of us, I suppose, have
always assumed that primitive
men began to wear skins to
keep themselves warm, and
probably in the Ice Age they did.

But Miss Allen believes that,
although keeping warm became
a function of clothes, the first
clothes man made himself were
for decoration.

Dress, in fact, was one of the
arts practised by mankind al-
most from the beginning of its
existence, expressing that love
of color, pattern and rhythm
that is part and parcel of being
human.

From these speculative begin-
nings, Miss Allen leads us on
through the development of
clothes from the inventions of
spinning, weaving and felting

4

The fascinating story of

— probably, by women — to
the struggles of the dress re-
formers of Victorian times,

Until the Middle Ages, clothes,
however gorgeously decorated,
remained simply-shaped pieces
of woven cloth worn in various
ways.

The rectangle and the circle
were the basis of every style,
with the T-shirt, much as today,
usually lurking beneath, until
the idea of cutting to fit caught
on in the 12th century, about
the. same time as the button

“was invented.

xt xt tt
No modern story of capitalist
smash-and-grab is more excit-
ing than the story of the cen-
turies-long effort of rival em-
pires to discover the Chinese

secret of silk making.
It was some 3,000 years after
the Chinese began breeding
silkworms and weaving their

“RECORDS. |
Releases offer music
of China, India, USSR

A‘ GEL (North American label

‘of EMI, the giant British —

monopoly- has issued many im-
pressive recordings in its three
years of operation on this con-
tinent. Few are more striking,
however, than three releases of
the past six months: music from
China, India, and the Soviet
Union, which, although the three
largest countries in the world,
have been neglected by the ma-
jor record companies.

Chinese Opera — 12-inch
Angel 35229 49 minutes — $5.45
(with notes): Eight selections
by the official ensemble of the

. Chinese People’s Republic from

the Peking Opera, recorded in
France last June, following the
ensemble’s triumphant appear-
ances at the Theater National du
Palais de Chaillot in Paris. ,

The Return of The Fisherman
is an exquisite delicate duet for
Erh Hu (two stringed violin)
and Tseng (zither), while Moon-
light On The Springtime River
features China’s most beloved
classical instrument, the lute-
like P’i-p’a, with orchestral ac-
companiment.

The orchestral Dance to a
Drum illustrates the growing
fusion of classical Chinese tech-

nique with European diatonic

clothes

cocoons into the most wonderful
materials in the world that their
trade secret was discovered.
The secret only reached Eur-
ope in the 6th century, when
two Persian monks went to
China as missionaries, with in-
structions from the Emperor
Justinian to learn everything
about silk production.
. They returned triumphantly,
years later, with the know-how,
and some silkworms’ eggs hid-

den in a bamboo tube, and thus
the great silk industry of By-~

zantium was begun.

Clothes, as a class uniform,
as a part of religion and custom,
as a means. of oppressing women
by their physical construction. . .

Miss Allen gives us a glimpse
of them in all these aspects,
embroidering and illuminating
their history with those tiny
details, anecdotes and quota-
tions that bring history to life.

MAY 4, 1956 —

methods, as does the beautiful
love song from “Yunnan Pro-
vince, sung by soprano Chang
Chia-Ling. :

The Court of the Phoenix,
with hilarious orchestral effects
imitating bird calls, is an ex-
ample of the famous mischiev-
ous Chinese humor.

* x *

. Music of India — 12-ineh
Angel 35283 — 47 minutes —
$4.45 (without notes): Includes
two ragas: one for morning, ome
for evening, and a spoken in-
troduction by Yehudi Menuhin
with appropriate instrumental
illustrations in a separate band
at the beginning of each side.
The Hindu word “raga” means
“color” or “emotion,” and indi-
cates the character of the music
— traditional, semi-improvised
tone poems designed to set the
mood: for a particular time of
the year or day.

Virtually any instrumenta-
tion, or vocal application, seems
to be permissible in ragas, but
in this recording it is limited to
the sarod, a 25 stringed melody
instrument played by plucking
ten of the strings (the others are
for sympathetic resonance); the
tabla, bass and treble drums
capable of astonishing complex-
ity; and the tamboura, a string-
ed instrument for drone accom-
paniment, always well in the
background.

a> take * *

Yuri Kazakov Plays the Bayan.
— 12-inch Angel 65020 — 29
minutes — $4.45: The bayan is
the Russian equivalent of the
popular button key accordion.
Although used in concert style,
it is a small instrument com-
pared to the large 120 bass ac-
dions: usually associated with
serious accordion activity im
Canada. :

Kazakov displays a strikingly
powerful technique and musi-
cal understanding in this well-
recorded, but . unnecessarily
brief collection made during @
visit to Britain in December
1954.

Five of the nine selections are
arrangements of folk songs,
while the others are brief ex-
tracts from the Russian masters:
Tchaikovsky, Glinka, and Ippo-
litov-Ivanov (his Caucasian
Sketches is perennial source
material for accordionists every-
where, it seems). f ;

All these recordings are avail-
able at the Peovle’s Co-op
Bookstore, 337 West Pender
Street, Vancouver.

‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 8