To say that a link with the past has been broken is commonplace. Yet, with the death of Sir Frank Benson the phrase is inevitable, To almost all playgoers of middle-age and over he was their introduction to the serious theatre, to almost all well-known players of the same perla ne was their light, their tutor and their friend, in the Arts those who get things done are not always rose who do them pest. Benson's merits as an actor and ne vale of his various swiss Wil an ways be disputed. But this at least will be universally accepted, that for him action was a part or acting; ne employed his whole body and his whole superb muscular equipment, and he brought to his profession a noble profile, me tlexiple, the sensiuve, the peautuul tragedian's mask, At Winchester and Oxford Benson, the scholar-athlete, found the will and the way to be the actor. It was not easy then, There was no O.U.D.S, to be his swift escort to the West End, He had, then and later, to beat down powerful Puritanical distrust of the stage and a firm academic belief that the drama could be decently kept in textbooks and that "the limes" were no illumination for a gentleman.
The famous Benson Company rescued the classics from the classroom. It visited the chier educational centres and, breaking through the prejudice of pedagogues, linked up the stage with the schoolroom. If it had not been for Sir Frank thousands of schoolboys and schoolgirls would never have.realized that Shakespeare wrote for their enjoyment and not for their affliction, and that his plays were uiving, pulsing, realmes as well as raw material 10r "Eng. Lit," examinations, That may seem obvious now, but it was not so plain when Benson set out upon his half-century of travel and travail,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.