LECTURES – Professor Morley, London University

 Accreditation The Redcar and Saltburn-by-the-Sea Gazette 23/01/1874.

LECTURES BY PROFESSOR MORLEY of LONDON UNIVERSITY.

This paper has pleasure in calling the special attention of our readers to the interesting and instructive series of lectures about to be given in Redcar by Professor Morley, of London University. A few gentleman have expressed their belief “that amongst the resident populations of Redcar, Coatham, and Saltburn. There are now to be found a sufficient number of persons of cultivated tastes to justify an attempt to organise periodical Lectures on Literary and scientific subjects,” and have acted upon their conviction by engaging Professor Morley for a course of nine lectures on the literature of the Elizabethan era. The first lecture will be given on Thursday evening next 29^th inst, commencing punctually at 6:30 PM. This early has been fixed upon by the promoters to enable such inhabitants of Saltburn, mask, Eston, and Middlesbrough as desire to avail themselves of these lectures to return home by 8 and 8.5 trains from Redcar. The subject of the first lecture is “The origin of our Drama – the first players.” For the sake of those who desire to read up the subject a little beforehand, by which means they will more thoroughly enjoyed the lectures, part 2 of which refers more especially to the period which his lectures are designed to illustrate, viz., from the death of Henry VIII. to the Commonwealth (A.D. 1547 to 1649), which is one of the most deeply interesting periods of English History as well as English Literature, comprehending as it does Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and Spenser , whose names are household words, besides a host of lesser luminaries whose light is some degree paled beside the greater lights of that most brilliant period of English letters. The design of Prof Morley in the present instance is to illustrate more particularly the dramatic literature of that age. After the first lecture, which may be termed introductory, the learner to Professor will proceed to the earlier dramatists, Peele, Lodge, Greene, Marlowe, and others to whom two lectures will be devoted. The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh lectures will be studies of Shakespeare, and eighth the later Elizabethan dramatists, and the ninth, and concluding lecture, Ben Jonson. Many people profess to admire Shakespeare, and still more process a copy of his writings, but we take leave to doubt that many have made themselves thoroughly acquainted with the thoughts of that marvellous mind which seems to have comprehended all human knowledge, and much even to Divine knowledge. To illustrate this latter fact Bishop Wordsworth (nephew of the illustrious poet Wordsworth) wrote a book entitled “Shakespeare’s knowledge and use of the Bible;” and the Archbishop of Dublin, one of the most able and learning divines of our day, in his sermon preached at Stratford-on-Avon, on the tercentenary festival of Shakespeare’s birth has the following remarkable passage: “If we would recognise the said footsteps of God in the world of Nemesis of life, which he (Shakespeare) is so careful to trace, we must watch his slightest hints, for in them lies often times the key to the explanation of, all. In this, if I may say it with reference, he often reminds us of the Scripture, and will indeed repay almost any amount of patient and accurate study which we may bestow upon him.” The Archbishop goes on to illustrate his statement by quotations from the Poet’s writing – acting “we have a right to number him with Dante, with Spenser, with Milton, that august company of Poets.

‘Who, seeing and singing in their glory move.’