Dramatic Comments
Here's Richness. An Anthology of and by James Agate, with a foreword by Osbert Sitwell. (Harrap. los. 6d.) Preludes and Studies. By Alan Dent, with a prefatory letter by Sir Max Beerbohm. (Macmillan. 12s. 6d.) FORMERLY a dramatic critic could collect his comments week by week, send them to the publisher year by year and so keep the theatre chronicled from generation to generation. The day for that it: past. Mr. Agate, who kept the system going as long as possible, now finds other reasons for putting journalism between covers.
Is "an anthology of and by" a reason or is it a dodge? No guidance is to be had from Mr. Osbert Sitwell's foreword. In this the praise is so solemn you have to remind yourself now and again that Mr. Agate is stilt alive. The untimely end of a promising career sometimes justifies an "anthology," but anyone who thought Mr. Agate must need such a memorial would sureli be contemplating murder. If all the samples had been taken from his notes on plays and players the volume might justify itself, but with the author's character alone to provide consistency, the feast (Mr. Sitwell's word) seems to have been eked out like other meals of these austere times.
How gladly playgoers would exchange all the beauties about golf and horses, extolled by. the foreword, for a few lines more about Ion Swinley. "There is a scale of values in which he was the most successful player of our time" is so well said that we hunger for more. What a pity that this is not the Lind of book which would have enabled the critic to say of Swinley the things which are outside newspaper limitations. The many who welcome Mr. Dent's first book will again be aware of a modern critic's problem when playhouse impressions are to be reprinted. There is lasting value in his dozen essays, each in- creasing our knowledge of a subject and also our interest in it, but the batch of "first-night notices" sandwiched between two lots of these, loses in value through not being published in the old " Theatrical Year" form. Sir Max Beerbolun's prefatory letter puts it neatly : As one who never was stage-struck, even in early youth, and was frightfully stage-sick long before I ceased to write dramatic criticism, but has always been keenly interested in life and all that kind of thing, I (can I never not thrust myself forward?) thank you most especially for your studies of men and women— Boswell and Paganini, Mrs. Norton and Miss Austen, Fuseli and the rest. I knew them pretty well already. Thanks to you I know them better now.
Anyone who is stage-struck will respond admiringly to Mr. Dent's unerring thrust at the heart of every performance. Few critics have established so steadfast a reputation for sound judgement in so short a time. There is a strong feeling of confidence in him. His chronicle of plays should be well worth preserving. His articles will also be worth republishing. They will, since consistency is a virtue to be prized in books, though not in the higgledy-piggledy of newspaper columns, be all the more appreciated if kept apart. In particular, he proves his worth by describing in Kean's Island 11 the house in Bute which none of Edmund Kean's biographers described in detail. How well it deserves close study Mr.
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