Poet's Hamlet
Sir:
My gratitude and appreciation to the man who wrote the cover story on Hamlet [TIME, June 28]. He is a poet, lyrical, sensitive, a man of delicate perception . . .
VONA O. WEST
Xenia, Ohio
Sir:
The review was perhaps the best example of criticism I have ever read and enjoyed . . .
KATHLEEN E. EVERETT
Oklahoma City, Okla.
Sir:
. . . A real highlight in modern journalism . . .
A. H. BAKER
Georgetown, British Guiana
Sir:
... It is one of the most beautiful pieces of criticism that I have ever read. I only hope the picture can live up to your review.
MARTHA WOODHAM
Columbia, S.C.
Sir:
My sincere thanks . . .
MARY A. CONRAD
Galesburg, Ill.
Sir:
... A masterpiece.
H. E. ATTERBURY
Annapolis, Md.
Sir:
... In my opinion, the finest motion-picture criticism that has ever been published in the U.S. . . .
RICHARD GAINES
Hollywood, Calif.
Sir:
... It was . . . the most comprehensive and analytical criticism the film has yet had.
Having seen the film, I don't agree with everything you say, but thanks anyway for an excellent piece of writing. It was just another reason why TIME leads the world in news journalism.
T. MAXWELL BOYD
London, England
Artist's Ophelia
Sir:
Chaliapin's cover portrait of Jean Simmons as Ophelia is tremendous but improbable. No one could be so beautiful.
EDWARD FIGHTER
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Ophelia's Feet
Sir:
What is so damned comical about one of Jean Simmons' admirers asking her for a pic ture of her feet? . . . Du Maurier in his classic Trilby devoted page after page to descriptions of Trilby's beautiful feet. In the novels of such romantics as Theophile Gautier, Restif de la Bretonne, Pierre Louys, Sacher-Masoch and Emile Zola, the heroine's feet are always lovely, frequently bare, and often kissed by the hero . . .
B. EDMONDS
Norfolk, Va.
Oxford's Shakespeare
Sir:
It is significant . . . that you have illustrated your entrancing and masterful article on Olivier's Hamlet with the Ashbourne portrait which hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library. This has lately been revealed by X-ray and infra-red pictures to be a portrait of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford . . . The Oxford crest on the signet ring is disclosed, and also, in the upper corner, Lady Oxford's coat of arms. A commoner's collar has been painted over the nobleman's ruff, and the forehead raised to the point of baldness.
Furthermore, research . . . and studies now being made of the plays and poems prove beyond doubt that the true author of these . . . was the 17th Earl of Oxford, using the pseudonym, "William Shakespeare." His noblest drama, Hamlet, was largely autobiographical.
CHARLTON OGBURN
New York City
P:I Says Dr. Giles E. Dawson, curator of books and manuscripts at the Folger Library: "There is not much use arguing with any of these people [Oxfordians, Baconians, etc.] because they just don't listen to reason." -- ED.
0 & 2
Sir:
One big error to TIME'S sport editor . . . for stating that Giants' Manager Mel Ott hung a $500 fine on Pitcher Bill Voiselle after the latter served up a home-run ball with a count of "two balls and no strikes" [TIME, June 28].
. . . The count was two strikes and no balls when Voiselle came in with the fat one.
ALBERT E. AMETRANO
Syracuse, N.Y.
P: TIME came in with a fat one, too. --ED.
Texas Windmill
Sir:
Texas, of course, has its fair share of demagogues, rabble rousers and just plain exhibitionists, many of whom are continually running for office. They thrive and prosper on just such free publicity as you have given Windmill Lyndon Johnson [TIME, June 28].
... I had hoped that TIME would ignore Lyndon Johnson's attention-seeking antics rather than dignify them by mention in its columns. I am comforted, however, by the realization that those Texans who read your columns are not exactly the type to be much impressed by the characteristics of a wind mill, whose activities depend on how the wind is blowing and which, although constantly in motion and usually screeching, never gets anywhere . . .
JENNY BRACE
Houston, Tex.
Ruffling, etc.
Sir:
Pursuing further your footnote relative to the bristle-thighed curlew [TIME, June 28], it might be well to note . . . that the red-eyed crosspatch is merely my husband the morning after the night before . .
The ruffled spouse, normally a quiet and gentle bird, is the mate of the red-eyed crosspatch and is usually unruffled. "Ruffling" means a great clucking and fussing and gen eral emotional upset which leads to nothing much, usually, for the spouse or her mate.
This period of female uncertainty can be shortened by a smoothing of the feathers . . .
Severe spells require the promise of a new hat ...
At the moment, the male is in Denver, trying desperately to acquire a nest for his family (all except the double-breasted dow ager). For six months he has tried to find an abandoned nest of some other bird, while his female has stayed a thousand miles behind in the old nest . . .
If Dr. Arthur A. Allen finds an extra nest of the curlew bird, perhaps he would be willing to move it to Denver and rent it to this discouraged family of homing pigeons.
DOROTHY MERKEL ALEXANDER
Fordyce, Ark.
Who's Who One-Two
Sir:
Hats off to TIME again. This time for successfully picking the Dewey-Warren ticket way back in April by giving us Dewey first, Warren second, in the series "Who's Who in the G.O.P." How do you do it ?
FRANKLIN B. BASCOM
Allentown, Pa.
P: I This time by hindsight, pure & simple. -- ED.
Unblushing Tolerance
Sir:
Informed Protestants realize that the Roman Church cannot tolerate religious under standings other than its own, save as a matter of temporary expediency [TIME, Jun? 28] ...
But those of us who are in the company of the doomed wish that average Romanists knew where their church stands ... If they did, we suspect that liberty-loving American Catholics would force a genuine revision of policy or turn Protestant in droves . . .
(REV.) GEORGE H. EASTER
Senior Canon
Christ Church Cathedral
St. Louis, Mo.
Sir:
As a member of the Catholic Church let me say that the public would be as justified in feeling that this article expresses the thinking of American Catholics as Europeans would be justified in feeling that Henry Wallace and his ilk speak the minds of Americans. Apparently every country and organization is entitled to, and has, its lunatic fringe.
The bodies of American Catholic boys are not buried all over the world to defend this sort of thinking, which we Catholics file in the same pigeonhole reserved for the views of Molotov, Gromyko, et al. I think our fellow Americans know us well enough to accept this statement as being factual and sincere.
NEILL O'D. BULTMAN
Columbia, S.C.
P: I In the Spanish surrey, the fringe seems to be on top. -- ED.
Sir:
I feel obligated to raise objections to such articles as "The Church Cannot Blush" . . .
Articles of this type are not instructive, but rather destructive ; they do not tend for bet ter religious understanding, but for lessening of it ...
ROBERT S. KELLY
Philadelphia, Pa.
Sir:
One cannot fail to be impressed by the dewy impudence of the Jesuit communique ... It comes as no surprise to anyone who has any historical acquaintance with the Ro man Catholic Church, but it may be illuminating to some of those who suppose that that church is no longer a threat to the free dom of the human conscience. Insofar as the Jesuit statement represents the settled policy of the church ... it is difficult to see that the church is any less subversive of the moral foundations of this country than any other totalitarian organization . . .
RAY L. ARMSTRONG
Nazareth, Pa.
Sir:
. . . Isn't this the same line the Communists use when they are the minority ? They plead for equal rights and tolerance for themselves, but when they become the rulers they grant neither equal rights nor tolerance for others' lines of thought . . .
(MRS.) WANDA ROCKEL
Philadelphia, Pa.
Sir:
May I express a logician's wonderment why "U.S. Protestants . . . so often boil with indignation" [TIME, June 28] because the Roman Catholic Church consistently claims that it, and only it, is the One, True Church. How could it, or any other religion, claim otherwise? . . .
I remain a Catholic because I am intellectually convinced that Christ is God and that He founded One Church which I believe to be the Catholic Church. I assume that my Protestant friends are equally sincere in believing their own faiths to be singularly true. We respect each other's intellectual honesty -- that is tolerance. But for either they or I to proclaim that religions teaching contradictory doctrines can be equally true would not be "tolerance" but sheer stupidity.
DOUGLAS J. MURPHEY
Garden City, N.Y.
* "Not to be confused with the tufted dowager, red-eyed crosspatch, all-night thrasher, ruffled spouse, great stench, lesser stench, or double-breasted seersucker."
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