Spectator competition winners: a bard’s-eye view of Leicester Square

In Competition No. 3337 you were invited to submit a soliloquy composed by Giovanni Fontana’s marble statue of Shakespeare, which has graced Leicester Square since 1874. Bill Greenwell, Alan Millard, Sylvia Fairley and Paul A. Freeman were star performers, but a standing ovation and £20 go to the winners below.

Here stand I, with Lord Leicester’s patronage,

Four-square, and can survey from every side,

The life of London, multiplied and squared,

Watching the things that change, yet do not change.

Young ladies, and the not so young, still ply

Love’s trade, but pliable young men now stir

Remembrance-echoes in my marble breast,

Aye, of the ale-house and theatre, too,

Though now, I hear, there are no heads displayed

On pikes, but that corrupt and wicked men,

Their heads intact, head businesses instead.

Of bear-pits, too, the city now is bare,

And baiting is reserved for Parliament.

The foul miasmas of my days are gone,

I could breathe safely now (were I not stone),

Safeguarded in my low emission zone.