"DOCTOR KNOCK" [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have
been greatly interested in your recent review and subsequent correspondence on Mr. Granville-Barker's translation of Dr. Knock. I read this French play in the original when it appeared as a supplement to your excellent French contemporary L'Illustration, dated January 24th, 1925. I thought at the time that it was an unusually clever satire. It is not a funny play, that is to say, you do not want to laugh loudly over it, there is complete absence of any Jove element, and it ends rather abruptly, but it is full of pure wit from start to finish. Only an author with a keen sense of humour could have thought of a man qualifying for the medical profession by reading all the quack advertisements which are wrapped round patent medicines, only a wit could have visualized the big Swiss hotel converted into a sanatorium and filled with Dr. Knock's patients, all of whom had been persuaded that they were very ill while really they were only the victims of their own delusions.
When I was a boy I sometimes read the wrappers round patent concoctions for which senior members of the family had a weakness. I used to get quite upset by imagining what I might have the matter with me. Punch often reminds us of this very common failing, but it has been left to M. Jules Romains to make a very perfect satire of the subject. I congratulate Mr. Granville-Barker on his spirited defence of Dr. Knock, and to those of your readers who love Gallic wit let me recommend them not to be guided by your reviewer's idea of fun, but to get the play in the original and read it for themselves. To those who suffer from confusion wrought at Babel Mr. Granville-Barker's translation should prove the next best thing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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