From the Archives Shrewsbury High School’s Archives contain an extensive collection of photographs, documents and artefacts offering a wealth of history about our School, its students and staff and managed by Librarian Miss Hale. As proud stewards of such rich history since 1885, Scribble will be publishing poems, stories from this period to the present date.
Our first glimpse into the past, is taken from the School Magazine in 1941.
“Since I wrote the introduction to our last school magazine, we have lived through nearly two years of war, and the form which this issue takes is proof of some of the difficulties that have had to be faced. As there is need for great economy of paper, we decided to have one hand-made copy of the magazine instead of the usual printed issues. This decision has meant that there is a splendid opportunity of emphasizing the literary and artistic side of the contributions, and of including original photographs of school life, although the last mentioned effort has been hampered by the difficulty of getting films.” Miss Hudson (SHS Headmistress) 17th July 1941 This was Miss Hudson’s introduction to the School Magazine of 1941 which, due to the many difficulties faced during World War II, is the only hand-written and drawn school magazine in the High School’s history. As with the more traditional print editions of the school magazines from other years, the 1941 issue includes details of major school events throughout the year, results of sporting fixtures, examination successes, creative writing and a review complete with photographs and drawings of the 1941 school production of Hamlet, written by former Shrewsbury High School pupil Hazel Price. On 13th July 1940, a party of High School girls went to Oswestry to hear a Shakespeare Lecture Recital by John Gielgud. He is perhaps the actor of the twentieth century most closely associated with Hamlet and regarded by many as the finest Hamlet of his era, playing the role five times between 1930 and 1944. This must have been a hugely inspiring experience for the girls as later that the year the decision was made for Hamlet to be the school production in 1941, with Margaret Fairhurst taking on the lead role. “Like matrimony, a production of Hamlet is not a thing to be “lightly or unadvisedly” undertaken. On the other hand, we must remember that a great play calls forth the best in its actors. Nevertheless, I must confess that last winter when the Producer told me that the school was going to present Hamlet the following term, I trembled with apprehension; I asked myself how could schoolgirls capture anything of that spirit?” Seeing an all-female production of Hamlet, in terms of cast and behind the scenes, in 1941 would have been an extremely rare occurrence. The influential French actress, Sara Bernhardt, performed as Hamlet in 1899 and was the first ever Hamlet to appear on film in 1900. Danish actress Asta Nielsen played the lead role in her 1921 silent film Hamlet, in which she played the Prince as a girl who had been raised as a boy in order to preserve her family’s lineage. The film was a phenomenal box-office success but the gender-crossing possibilities that Nielsen’s Hamlet had awoken remained largely unexplored for decades, except perhaps in Shrewsbury. “The Hamlet of Margaret Fairhurst needed to be seen to be believed. It was quite remarkable. Physically and intellectually she had the part well in hand. This was not the result of accident. It was accomplished through unsparing and unremitting hard work done for the love of acting, love of the play itself, loyalty to the cast and loyalty to the Producer.”
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