William Spakeshaw

Mr. Shaw, who is always up to miss chief in some theatre or other, is being played again by Victoria's Own Drama Club. G.B.S., as we of the inner circle are wont to name him, had a theory, or at least a verdict, on most things, and one which he argues most eloquently is that Shakespeare was a man (a very worthy one) who had many of the finer parts that had made Shaw the greatest of all English dramatists.

"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" is his last word on Shakespear's encounter with that woman; it appears to him that far from being the hopeless flouted victim of a frail woman, Shakespeare, because of his manly qualities and Shavian opinions, was very much the questing poet in search of Gloriana and one who had no illusions about the handy surrogate. Lady Mary Fitton. Why Lady Mary Fitton? That is another story upon which Shaw wastes a great deal of his preface.

Briefly, Shakespeare, while waiting for an encounter with his dark lady, who is no better than she should be, becomes entangled with Elizabeth the First whom he discovers sleepwalking on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall. Before the dust clears Elizabeth (read by Elizabeth Keraley) is made aware that her Beefeaters (David Vere-Jones) are not above permitting the occasional poet (John Gamby) to meddle with the ladies-in-waiting) (Junne England).

Strangely enough this forms only one tenth of the entertainments in the Little Theatre on the night of Wednesday the 20th, when the Drama Club is hoping to find some new talent among the Freshers when they get down to discussing the new year's programme.—J.G.