We learnt English in an unusual way at my school, the Perse. In a system devised by H. Caldwell Cook before the First World War, and described in his book, the Play Way, boys were divided into companies, such as the King's Men, for productions, at first of tableaux, for example, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and then of whole scenes from Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.
In these companies all boys had something to do. The director was the Master of the Revels. Those without Thespian skills or ambitions could be in charge of lights, or music or costumes, each being known as Master of the Lights, of the Music or of the Tiring House. I tended to be Master of the Music, searching the extensive library of 78 r.p.m records something fitting to the action on stage, and trying to drop the needle onto the spinning disk at just the right moment.
I mention all this as, for the first time since I was twelve years old, I am once more Master of something. I am delighted to say that I have been asked by the Frogmore Press, publishers of the Frogmore Papers and the online poetry magazine, Morphrog, to be the Master of the Tweets, with assistance from Rachel Playforth, aka @archelina. Do follow us: https://twitter.com/#!/FrogmorePress/ and read the blog at http://frogmore-jp.blogspot.com/
