What Shakespeare Has Meant to Me

Weekly Dispatch, 30 April 1916, page 4, 209 words

“What has Shakespeare meant to you?”

The question was put by the “Weekly Dispatch” to a large number of men and women who are famous on the stage, or as writers, and their replies from a wonderful tribute to Shakespeare, the celebration of whose tercentenary begins to-day.

Every one of the following messages, from Sir Edward Russell’s expressive one-word reply to Sir Herbert Tree’s eloquent cable from New York, is a striking refutation of the fallacy (mainly German in origin) that British people do not appreciate and know well the work of the greatest of all men of genius our race has produced.

Mr. George Moore

I have been asking myself all this morning what Shakespeare has meant to me, but my soul gives no answer.

It is true that I have listened to the plays for the sake of the language, which has often seemed to me as beautiful as the language used in Wagner’s “Ring.” But I do not answer your question, “What Shakespeare has meant to me?” by merely saying that I like listening to his English; even if I add that he seems to have possessed the English language in the same abundance as Lord Bacon, I am still no nearer to the answer that I would like to give to your question, “What Shakespeare has meant to me?” The oftener I repeat the enigmatic words the more puzzled I become.

But hope springs eternal, and one of these days I hope that Shakespeare will mean to me a little one-act comedy that I have had in mind this many a day. The characters are Queen Elizabeth, Sir Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, Burbage, some boy actors, and Shakespeare, and I hope to find time to write this trifle, and if you ask me then, , “What Shakespeare meant to me” I shall be able to answer. “The making of an immortal.”

Other contributors to the survey include:

Literature

1. Sir Sidney Lee
2. Mr. Israel Zangwell
3. Mr. Coulson Kernahan
4. “Rita” (Mrs. Desmond Humphreys)
5. Miss M. Bentham-Edwards
6. Mr. Bernard Gilbert
7. Sir Edward R. Russell
8. Sir Frederick Wedmore
9. Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole
10. M. Emile Cammaerts
11. Mr. Edward Hutton
12. Mr. Gilbert Cannan
13. Mr. Max Pemberton

The Stage

1. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
2. Miss Ellen Terry
3. Miss Mary Anderson (Mme. de Navarre)
4. Mr. Arthur Bourchier
5. Mr. Basil Gill
6. Mr. Owen Narks
7. Miss Mary Rorke
8. Mr. E. Sass
9. Mr. Fred Terry
10. Mr. John E. Vedrenne
11. Mr. Sydney Valentine
12. Miss A.E.F. Horniman
13. “The Walking Parson” (The Rev. A.N. Cooper)
14. Canon H.D. Rawnsley