June 29

1916, London

Basil [Blackwood] and I had been planning for a long time to continue his Shakespearean education by going to one of the plays, but unluckily there isn’t one on now. So we intended to go to Macbeth on the cinema. He called for me at 7.30, and we dined at the Pall Mall Restaurant. The cinema of Macbeth was very comic. One grew tired of Tree’s and Constance Collier’s stomach-ache faces. Shakespeare not really a good film author. Tiny, gloomy audience – the woman in front of us objected to our talking, surely rather far-fetched at a cinema...