Royal54-02-1320Bartleby

The National Broadcasting Company presents Transcribe Sir Lawrence Olivier in Theatre Royal. This is Lawrence Olivier. Once again it is my pleasure to introduce to you another in this series of programs. And this week my choice of subject is for the first time the work of an American author, and a mighty American author too, Herman Melville.

It's a favorite story, but unexpected, both in mood and setting, or most impossible to associate with the author of Moby Dick, written in a comedy vein, but a strange tenderness adheres to it, a haunting melancholy just under the surface of its light-hearted exterior.

I hope it will interest you as it does me. I'm to play the part of the Master in Chancery who tells the story. The setting is New York many years ago, and the title is Barsobi, by profession I am a lawyer.

By disposition I am a man who has always believed that the easiest way of life is the best. The result is that though I belonged to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace.

As lawyers go, you might even say that I was unenvisioned. I aspire to nothing more than a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and titled in. With submission, sir, that business has won us quite a respectable reputation in Wall Street at quite so Turkey.

That was Turkey, one of my copying Turks. At least Turkey was his nickname because of his bright red face. He is hardworking and reliable, at least in the morning. Oddly enough, as the day wears on, Turkey's face becomes redder and redder, and the afternoon is quite a bad time for him.