Shakespeare: The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, still five months away, has already produced two biographies and a Carl Dolmetsch recording of ‘Music of Shakespeare’s Time’ for HMV. Best news so far is the Theatre Festival in London next spring: the Comédie Française (Molière); West Berlin’s Schiller Theatre (Max Frisch) ; Peppino de Filippo of Naples (in one of his own inimitable farces) ; Dublin’s Abbey Theatre (Sean O’Casey) ; the Polish Contemporary Theatre (Brecht) ; the Greek Arts Theatre (Aristophanes) ; and the Moscow Arts Theatre.
Teilhard de Chardin: The task of deciding whether he was a great genius or one who happened to reflect in acceptable form the manias of his age, requires civilized scepticism: the ability to delay decision until the evidence has been thoroughly examined and digested. Among those fitted to hold opinion there seems to be fairly general agreement that his theological views are capable of unorthodox interpretation and need to be treated with great caution. But outside this area there is wide variety of opinion, ranging from Prof. P. B. Medawar in the English philosophical journal Mind: “nonsense, tricked out by a variety of tedious metaphysical conceits”—to the Times Literary Supplement reviewer who claimed that Teilhard was a great pioneer: “The pioneers cut their way through the dense undergrowth; they grope, and must be allowed their freedom to err.”
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