s of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes to
us as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive of
life's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by the
Ilissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to her
as were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of the
house of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance to
Christ Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feet
have stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in the
river-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dulness of the
lecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not to
define virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on the
swift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in the
young Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedy
bank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurel to her poets, and rue to
those who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to all
who dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;
and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she has
welcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they have
sought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caught
with much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardour
and this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxford
performance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any fine
dramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation of
life the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what is
not conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all to
others.

I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for the
study than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree.
Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alter
the form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work.
Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed to
us only through the actor's art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford the
other night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me to
gain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and the
ideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators by
the chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and