THE TIGER AND THE HORSE
SIR,—Your dramatic critic evidently finds The Tiger and the Horse an unsatisfactory play, but is at a loss to know just what is wrong with it. Perhaps it is easier for those familiar with the academic world to diagnose its basic weakness, which is that Mr. Bolt has tried to construct a nexus of human prob- lems out of two totally incompatible situations. The academic community, he imagines, is so narrowly conservative that it is thought likely to refuse nom- ination for the vice-chancellorship to an obvious candidate because his wife has signed a nuclear dis- armament petition. At the same time it is so ex- travagantly tolerant that it not only admits a cheap edition of Jimmy Porter to a fellowship, but allows him to retain this status after he has fathered a child by the unmarried daughter of his college head, instead
of Promptly and tactfully casing him into a post else- where. Since no society could be at once so archaic and so advanced, small wonder if the play rings false. I do not choose to dwell on the many impossibilities in Mr. Bolt's idea of a university, since these are of less dramatic importance than improbabilities: but the impression of superficiality in his earlier work is confirmed by his choosing, for this new play, a set- t Hilo of which he has neither knowledge nor under-
ROBERT I EVENS
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