William the Good Read Online Free Page A

wasn’t her fault that they hadn’t answered. She’d enclosed a stamped addressed envelope in
each case. More than once they’d tried reading Shakespeare aloud, but it only seemed to send the members to sleep and then they woke up cross.
    But the suggestion of the cinematograph had put fresh life into the Society. There had been nearly six new members (the sixth hadn’t quite made up her mind) since the idea was first
mooted. The more earnest ones had dreams of watching improving films, such as those depicting Sunrise on the Alps or the Life of a Kidney Bean from the cradle to the grave, while the less earnest
ones considered that such films as the Three Musketeers and Monsieur Beaucaire were quite sufficiently improving. So far they had had a little Bring and Buy Sale in aid of it, and had
raised five and elevenpence three farthings, but as Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce had said that was not nearly enough because they wanted a really good one.
    The play was the suggestion of one of the new members, a Miss Gwladwyn. ‘That ought,’ she said optimistically, ‘to bring us in another pound or two.’
    The tradition of the Christmas Eve plays in the village included a silver collection at the door, but did not include tickets. It was rightly felt that if the village had to pay for its tickets,
it would not come at all. The silver collection at the door, too, was not as lucrative as one would think because the village had no compunction at all about walking past the plate as if it did not
see it even if it was held out right under its nose. It was felt generally that ‘a pound or two’ was a rather too hopeful estimate. But still a pound, as Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce so
unanswerably pointed out, was a pound, and anyway it would be good for the Literary Society to get up a play. It would, she said, with her incurable optimism, ‘draw them together.’ As a
matter of fact, experience had frequently proved the acting of a play to have precisely the opposite effect. . . . They held a meeting to discuss the nature of the play. There was an uneasy feeling
that they ought to do one of Shakespeare’s or Sheridan’s, or, as Miss Formester put it, vaguely, ‘something of Shelley’s or Keats’,’ but the more modest ones
thought that though literary, they were not quite as literary as that, and the less modest ones, as represented by Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce, said quite boldly and openly that though those authors
had doubtless suited their own generations, things had progressed since then. She added that she’d once tried to read She Stoops to Conquer , and hadn’t been able to see what
people saw in it.
    ‘Of course,’ admitted Miss Georgine Hemmersley, ‘the men characters will be the difficulty.’ (The membership of the Literary Society was entirely feminine.) ‘I have
often thought that perhaps it would be a good thing to try to interest the men of the neighbourhood in our little society.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Featherstone doubtfully, thinking of those pleasant little meetings of the Literary Society, which were devoted to strong tea, iced cakes, and
interchanges of local scandal. ‘I don’t know. Look at it how you will as soon as you begin to have men in a thing, it complicates it at once. I’ve often noticed it. There’s
something restless about men. And they aren’t literary. It’s no good pretending they are.’
    The Society sighed and agreed.
    ‘Of course it has its disavantages at a time like this,’ went on Miss Featherstone, ‘not having any men, I mean, because, of course, it means that we can’t act any modern
plays. It means we have to fall back on plays of historical times. I mean wigs and things.’
    ‘I know,’ said Miss Gwladwyn demurely, ‘a perfectly sweet little historical play.’
    ‘What period is it, dear?’ said Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce.
    ‘It’s the costume period,’ said Miss Gwladwyn simply. ‘You know. Wigs and ruffles and swords. Tudor. Or is it