Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Shakspere's Mission Office as the Dramatic Histrionic Poet of the English People
I must confess I have been present on various occasions, now long since passed, when similar tribute has been paid ofa worthier kind at the same season. I can recall, and do so with fond and grateful recollection, when in 1859 I heard George Dawson, with full and scholarly appreciation, with a colloquial eloquence and aptitude of phraseology granted to few, expound from the practical business - like Birmingham standpoint, but not without poetic admiration and a chastened love, the urbane many sided, commercial-traveller-and - bagman view of the worldly, successful, actor Manager of the Globe Theatre. The scholarly orator was full of admiration for the poor lad who had to fly his native town, then little more than a village (in our modern view), to start as a call boy, and become in turn, strolling vagabond and player, and yet who was able to return in less than twenty years, a landed proprietor and an Esquire bearing arms, high in respect and honour of all with whom he had been brought in contact, or by whom he was known. This was a genuine, commercial, and business-like success. It was practical and was much appreciated by the majority of his audience.
Homage, says Littleton, is the most honourable service of reverence that a free man may render to his Lord. His fealty IS the more sacred, for though it is incident to homage the tenant is sworn thereto.
I can recall in the year a dinner in the classic precincts of St. John's Gate in the very room in which Sam. Johnson once ate his meals behind a screen to hide his shabby clothes, and where more remotely the great Knight's Templars formerly held feast and sway, and where little Davy Garrick, the bankrupt trader, who had, according to one of his good-natured friends, three bottles of vinegar in a cellar, and called himself a wine merchant, first played in The Mock Doctor, and made his trembling and fearsome o'elnit in a career which finally landed him in West minster Abbey. Dr. Westland Marston. The suave and merciful critic, and the author of The Patrician's Daughter and other dramas, was in the chair, and Henry Marston (no relative), an old Pauline, one of the most accomplished actors who ever graced the British stage, proposed as a toast the theme of that and this evening's address, The Bard of Avon, The Divine Williams, as the French phrase it. He poured out a libation, as to one of the immortal Gods, with pure unstinted scholarly and appreciative praise; full of knowledge, as that of a man who had spent a lifetime in the study of his great author, eloquent and sympathetic as being offered by one who admired the Bard, in each respect, as poet and actor, and as manager, and honoured him in all. These are but incidental memories, but in what attitude shall I, a mere lawyer, approach him to-night. In what aspect of his omniscient presence first assail him. As Statesman, Historian, Author, Manager, Actor, Playwright, Sailor, Soldier, Lawyer, Orator, Philosopher, Patriot, Catholic or Protestant. As Naturalist or Traveller, as Scotch or Welsh, as Mad Doctor or first Master Mariner, or on which of his many other sides, first attack him. To-night, I prefer my assault on his memory as an Englishman; as the incarnation of the noblest qualities and best attributes of his race; as the embodiment of its loftiest ideals and noblest characteristics.
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