Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1907 — FINE LECTURE AT COMMENCEMENT. [ARTICLE]

FINE LECTURE AT COMMENCEMENT.

Rensselaer’s large graduating class continues to occupy the center of the stage as applied to the city, and practically the entire stage as applied to the Christian church, and refuses to vacate its first place in the public mind for so unusual an event as a cyclone. The church was again crowded Monday night when the commencement exercises took place, and prob ably a more generally pleased audience never assembled. The principal attraction was the discourse by Dr. William A. Quayle, pastor of a Chicago M. E. Church. His subject was "Shakespeare's Tragedy of Greatoess” The lesson he taught was that of guard ing against envy. He took the important characters in the tragedy of Julius Caesar, and pictured them with such exactness in his word painting that every auditor was brought almost face to face with Cassius aud Brutus and Mark Antony. No on of his hearers had ever before recognized the humorous possibilities of this greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies, but the audience was kept in con tinual laughter, at the same time gathering the important lesson taught by the destructive result to Cassius and his followers whose envy of the great Caesar had led them to his murder. He made much of Caesar’s lines about Cassius "Let me have men about me that are fat sleek headed men and such as sleep o’ nights; yon Cassius has a lean and hungry, look, he thinks too much; such men are dangerous." In these quotations he evinced the most remarkable tragical talent, rivaling Booth and McCullough. [illegible] use to popular phrases, that, used by the school boy would be termed slang, but they were so cleverly made a part of his humor and logic that there was at no time a thought of term ing them such. Dr. Quayle has been a great and life long student of fiction in general and of Shakespeare in particular. When only 28 years of age he was made the president of Baker Uni versity following his occupancy forsome time of the chair of literature. It was certainly a great lecture, pleasing, instructive, elevating, and calculated to have beneficial bearing on the lives of the graduates.