The members of the League of Scottish Veterans of the World War met
recently in New York, and after "due deliberation" (_Query_, Can Scotchmen
deliberate "duly" in New York now?) passed a resolution demanding that
SHAKSPEARE'S tragedy, _Macbeth_, be removed from the curriculum of English
literature studies in American schools.
Apparently this was an example of "dry" Scotch humour. A neighbouring city
had previously banned _The Merchant of Venice_ from its schools on the
ground that the character of _Shylock_ was a libel on the Jewish race. If
Jewish children no longer had to pay for school editions of _The Merchant
of Venice_ should Scottish infants still have to squander their bawbees on
a play that insulted their forbears? Perish the thought! "We consider,"
they declared, "that if a Jewish gabardine is to be cleaned by American
Boards of Education the stain should likewise be removed from the Scottish
kilt." And if there are no reliable cleaners in the U.S.A. it should be
sent to Perth.
The example thus nobly set is being widely followed. The members of the
Southern Jazz-band Union met yesterday way down in Tennessee, and passed a
resolution demanding the elimination of _Othello_ from the educational
curriculum. The proposer declared with some heat that "no coloured
gentleman would spifflicate his missus wid a bolster on de word of a mean
white thief like dat _Iago_." The mere suggestion was dam foolishness and
an insult to the most prominent section of the freeborn citizens of the
U.S.A. "If dey gwine whitewash de Scotchman, why not de man ob colour too?"
At a representative meeting of Welshmen Mr. Jones ap Jones moved that, as a
protest against SHAKSPEARE'S treatment of _Fluellen_ and the Cymric
vegetable symbol, _Henry V._ "be no longer taught in Welsh schools or read
at Jesus College, Oxford, whateffer."
At a recent meeting of the S.P.R. it was proposed by Sir A. CONAN DOYLE, of
Oliver Lodge, Ether, Surrey, "that the Board of Education be asked, in the
interests of scientific truth, to suspend the teaching of _Hamlet_ until
the scenes in which the _Ghost_ appears shall have been emended in the
light of modern research by a committee of psychical experts appointed for
the purpose. The proposer quoted the line spoken by _Hamlet_ to the
apparition:--
"Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,"
and said he would like to substitute for it, "Be thou a subjective
hallucination arising from an uprush of inhibited emotional disturbance
from the subliminal consciousness, or the objectivisation of a telepathic
communication from the extra-corporeal sphere of being, or, finally, a
manifestation to sensory perception of some supra-normal undulatory
movement of the ether."
He had always deprecated, he said, the meddling of untrained amateurs with
the details of psychic phenomena, and felt that the rule should be made
retrospective. An amendment was carried to add _Julius Cæsar_ and _Richard
III._ to the motion for similar reasons.
The Labour Party have decided to ask Mr. FISHER to ban _Coriolanus_ on the
ground that many of the speeches of the chief character betray an
anti-democratic bias, out of keeping with the ideals that should be set
before the rising generation. Phrases like "The mutable rank-scented many,"
applied to the proletariat, could only foster the bourgeois prejudices of
jaundiced reactionaries and teach the young scions of the capitalist
classes to look down upon the manual worker.
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"For Sale Black Ebony Gentleman's Shaving Outfit."--_Local Paper._
We gather that our coloured brother is about to grow a beard.
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[Illustration: _Lady_ (_buying music_). "OH, AND HAVE YOU GOT 'A LOVER IN
DAMASCUS'?"
_New Girl._ "WELL, MA'AM, MY FIANCÉ WAS IN MESPOT, BUT HE'S BACK IN BRIXTON
NOW."]
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