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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 17, No. 6. April 22, 1953

Mr. Quayle Speaks . .

Mr. Quayle Speaks . . .

Mr. Anthony Quayle's address last Tuesday to a crowded audience in the Training College Assembly Hall was at once a pleasure and a disappointment A pleasure because one could enjoy hearing Mr. Quayle recite the multiplication table; and a disappointment because he branched out into the field of philosophy, in which he is, alas, an amateur.

Instead of discussing the subject which his audience expected—Shakespeare and Stratford Players—Mr Quayle entitled his address, "Living." Shakespeare, however, was as ubiquitous as King Charles' head, and when he would persist in creeping in the talk was completely interesting.

Shakespeare embodies Mr. Quayle's theory of the need for living adventurously, and with a conviction of the essential mystery of the world. The early Elizabethans were too busied with adventure to worry about convention; life for them was not bounded by a set of arbitrary rules for correct behaviour, and they were free to pursue the secret of living fully. The actor urged his audience not to fetter by observance of convention their capacity for savouring life to the full.

Mr. Quayle, however, carries this theory over into the intellectual life, and seems to think that when a person has found a coherent philosophy and is prepared to live in accordance with it stagnation will set in: he was particularly earnest that one should not be bound by acceptance of any dogma.

King Charles body crept in without the head when Mr. Quayle said, "Live adventurously." without any hint why one should live at all The reason of life and its purpose were not even implicit; and to discuss with such eloquence and charm the scene, without any reference to the end, was a breach of which no Elizabethan.

Nor did Mr. Quayle tolerate in an actor a physical comparable with this mental indiscipline. He described the elements of which an actor is made: a resonant voice, a strong and supple body, an enormous arrogance ("it dare go before an audience") and an enormous humility (to accept and profit by criticism); a feeling for history, and a sense of discipline, which preserves and harmonises these qualities and teaches the actor subdues the part (his desire to make an impression on the audience) to the good of the whole (the play as an entirety). With practice one can become a golfer—of sorts—but Mr. Quayle assured us that actors are born, not made, and no amount of rehearsing can make one.

The account of his life as told by Mr. Quayle was extremely interesting and amusing. For the benefit of collectors of vital statistics, he was born 39½ years ago, was at school at Rugby, and at the age of 17 was gratified to find that it would be difficult for him to go up to a university. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (reason for choosing the stage: the same as A. E. Matthews: "The attraction of easy money and beautiful women") and by 1939 had been acting for several years and toured an impressive number of countries.

He had the audience roaring with a brief pantomime of two incidents of his army career. One was an account of the diplomatic deflation by the British staff in Gibraltar of General Giraud's passionate belief that only he could direct the entire Allied invation of North Africa; and the other was a delightful scene of Mr. Quayle one night on a mountain in Albania posed with a dilemma. Enemy troops were catching up at any moment, and they were jeopardising their equipment and preparing to run. Mr. Quayle could fit in his pack either his volume of Shakespeare or 4 k-rations. What a problem! His art or his stomach. What actor could hesitate? The Shakespeare was thrown out and Mr. Quayle started to run with the rest. One of the facts he learned from the war: that man can run incredibly fast over very high mountains when pursued by other men.

Other convictions he gained from his war experiences, said Mr. Quayle were the importance of the British Commonwealth, and the necessity for and practicability of world government; and in 1945 he wanted to take up work which would assist those ends. He described the period when he had the choice of two Jobs, to go to Hollywood or to Stratford, both at fabulous salaries, one being at the top, and the other at the bottom of the wage scale. Mr. Quayle was inclined to hanker after Hollywood, and his wife, who sounds a remarkably wise woman, concurred. "It would be lovely at Hollywood, she said. "You won't have time to feel lost or lonely, working hard until you got peptic ulcers, and I won't be lonely either, with a big house and a swimming pool, and lots of beautiful young men." And that, Mr. Quayle said, was one of the reasons why he became director of the Stratford Players.

It was an entertaining address. Mr. Quayle could invoke an indolent cigar-smoking American major, and his audience laughing, in two sentences, and he had them enthralled with his final quotation. "There is a tide in the affairs of men . . ."