So it was that his company becan.e the university of acting. The young men and women who joined him were really put through the di cipline in rehearsal, as understudies, and in small parts. Consequently, to be an Old Bensonian was to have (more than a proud name: it meant genuine qualification, Benson went on supplying the provinces with Shakespeare and London with "stars."
He did not originate the Stratford-upon-Avon Festivals, but, with the Flower family, he established and sustained them, In the old days of horse-transport that festival could never be the enormous enterprise that it has now become with the aid of petrol. But the lustre was no less when the season was much smaller, and nowhere will the death of Sir Frank Benson be more sincerely mourned than in the town of which he was the first Freeman since Garrick, Another singular honour conferred on him was that of being knighted on the stage after a performance. This occurred at Drury-lane during the Shakespearean Tercentenary of 1916.
What was Benson's best part? Most would say his Richard IL But was there ever a failure in that role? A man's best part varies with his age, Elder counsel insists that there was nothing to equal the fire and beauty of his Henry V when he was young. He had infinite energy and his Hamlet suggested a sports Blue at Wittenberg as well as a mastermind at Elsinore. His Caliban among the island branches was almost a daring young man on the flying trapeze, But to mention these antics of the body is not to discredit the spirit behind them. He most acted for the playwright whom he most adored, and his life was homage.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.