PAGE SIX THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY, DECEMBER. 2, 19
THE STAGE Someone very keenly remarked that plains why King Lear's elder daugh-
(Continued from ae wo if his "King Lear's Wife" had appear ters treated their father so harshly in
known you were interviewing me I ed under the name of a German or
wouldn't have let you in his "Gruach" as the work of an un- Thus we have a siuation
BENEVOLENTLYhpronouncable Russian the numerous of thorough basic passion: King Lear
E MIcWhich, according to the fable, is t groups which profess to . -cruel, domineering, grossly sensual
y sor better drama would have imme- -openly prefers a waiting maid to his
BURIED CAESARS, by Viacent Star- A MR. BOTTOMLEY diately snatched them up. .The idea wife, and even in her dying moments
ret Covl-iNeGree, 192. In speaking of Gordon Bottomley, it should also be supplemented by point deserts his queen for the mistress . .
Mr. Vincent Starrett after divers may be best to dirst assume the role that if we had a progressive stage, "Gruach," one of his later works,
hectic years of contributing to Vanity of a barker, for with the possible ex- even a stage managed by astute busi- takes another Shakespearean charac-
Fair and its ilk makes his formal bow ception of a professor or two and an ness men, his plays would have been ter, Lady Macbeth. As the play opens
on our little stage with his first book, odd theatre maniac like myself, no- professionally presented long ago as she is about to be married against her
one Buried Caesars, miserably pub- body seems to have even heard of the good theatre politics, will to a lowland lord, a sluggish..
lished by Covci-McGee who apparent- man. You'should know, .then, that he It is all so inconceivable-this lack man who loves soft winds and clear
ly have come to the point where they is a contemporary Englishman who of recognition: it almost seems that wine. Somehow there is something
will print anything, writes poetic tragedies of the most un- Gordon Bottomley is writing dramas within her that yearns for a sterner
Mr. Starrett, let us say, is by this usual merit, and. whose works have that are too beautiful, too artistic, life, so that when the envoy of the
time quite an elderly gentleman with been printed in two volumes, "King And by this, do not misunderstand king, Macbeth, spends the evening in
mittens on his hands and a lovely pur- Lear's Wife" and "Gruach and Brit-'me; he has none of the hopeless mys- the castle, it is only natural that she
ple scarf to keep his neck limber. ains Daughter" by the Chiswick Press tery of Claudel or the gooey sentiment should give herself to him, Together
Once upon a time he was of the les of London, which of itself insures an of the latter-day Maeterlinck. Rath- Ithey go out into the fierce wintry
jeunes, the enfants terribles of the exquisite format. er, his work is virile and ruggedI night, her strange will already begin-
naughty nineties, and drank coffee, In this gentleman we probably have primitive if you will, and surcharged ning to dominate her master's charac-
and read "Dorian Grey" with the best one of the few striking literary phe- with the powerful strength that ter.
of them. nomena of the day. Here is an author makes for great art. Such bare outlines, of course, rob
His mission on earth evidently has who writes poetic plays which as "King Lear's Wife," which is gen- the themes of their remarkable over-
been to celebrate and polish the bones poetry are breath-taking in their beau- erally conceded to - be his greatest tones, the weird horrific manner in
of the illustrious Unknowns that ty and as plays tremendous in their work, is an excellent example of this. which simple incidents conspire to
swept across the country as a resultobvious worth, but which, neverthe- The story takes the Shakespeare char-I form a fated net about the heroes
of the American imitation of the Eng- less, have been financial failures as acters about thirty years before that people them. They fail so piti-
lish imitation of the French decad- books and practically unproduced on Shakespeare presents them, and with fully to show the persistent philoso-
ence. Morrow, Crackenthorpe, Middle- the stage. Ilthe utmost keenness and subtlety ex- phy of the superman that motivates-
ton, Harte (Walter Blackburn, that
is), Macfall-you have heard of them?
. . well, neither have I, but it must
be laid to Mr. Starrett's credit that in
a fortnight I will have read them all
or die ignobly in the attempt
And what more, after all, can you
ask of a book of literary apprecia-
tions?
However, it is rather amusing to
consider the author's eternal enthus-
iasm-and for the moment, your en-
thusiasm too-about his subjects, an / k, ( -,
almost childish delight, an unholy
and frightfully unsophisticated atti-
tude. "Come play wif me," he coos,
"pitty! pitty!" and then drags out an-
other obituary and fondles its sym-
bol.
"Romance," he giggles, "Ah me, for
the good old days of romance!" Bierce,
he would have you know, died in a
Mexican revolution, Crackenthorpe
jumped in the Seine, Middleton turn- "
ed on the gas, Read passed to the'7
greater light reviewing The Shepherd',
of the Hills.
One can laugh at the picture in this
day of terribly modern freedom whereB I,
a dozen visits to a brothel will make
any anthor famous, yet with it allACTUA
there is a certain undeniable satisfac-P E Ne sise
tion, While the scene is hardly Vic-
torIan, tea is still in fashion and sex
bas hardly been discovered. Despiteu
its affectations, its artist's ties, its!
silhouettes and brackish oaths, it is
calm and respectfully indecent,
charming perhaps, infinitely restful.
On the other hand, the man has the
awful reminiscence craze to be for- o rw g h
ever writ against him. Memories are u r3e.'
permissable to grandmas, but very This is a great pen for college The everlasting nib is a wonder.
bad form for any one below sixty. It men and women1 It 'is made by Experts say it is the ultimate in
is, in truth, a sign of degeneration - the makers of Eversharp pencil. nib-making. It suits itself to any
and should be kept out of sight at all It has a huge ink capacity! And hand-to any style. It is extra
tests, the Wahl filling device fills it plumb heavy. The 14-karat gold is tipped
To balance this, the author is de-
lightfully inconsequentialtand incon full every time. It's a big pen. with the hardest and finest grade
sistent, and better yet, he carefully But it is so nicely balanced and pro- of iridium that money can buy.
declines to cast himself on either side) portioned that it fits into the fist most The patented construction of the
of the literary fence: he admires his comfortably. cap makes it impossible for the pen to
various masters, but he refuses to be /The Wahl Signature Pen writes the leak in the pocket. The cap cannot
dogmatic-or insistent about it. He re- ! instant the point touches paper. The split, for it is strengthened by the plain
fuses to quarrel, in other words, a ink begins to flow evenly - always gold band.- There are two sizes of the
most singular virtue in these days of enough, never too much. The pat- Wahl Signature Pen-one at $5 for
causes, ented comb feed makes shaking un- women, and one at $7 for men! Other
And now that I am done, it might necessary. Wahl Pens, $2.50 up!
be fitting to tell you in a line what
the book -is really all about. It is, in Made in the U. S. A. by THE WAHL CO., Chicago
short, a sheaf of biographies mixed
with a taint of criticism about various
passing lights of the last decade and f
in particular about Marion Reedy's
Mirror school. Briefly, he passionate-
ly worships them all and on bended )j Copyright 1923.
knee begs you to re-read their dusty ;/The Wahl Co.
volumes. If you truly mean to tare
the gentleman seriously-why not do Ipbe
so!
-Robert Bartron Henderson.