THE EPILOGUE TO "ST. JOAN" [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,-If my complaint—to use Mr. Bernard Shaw's term— about his epilogue to " St. Joan " reached him late in
Madeira, his—what shall I say ?—graceful but unconvincing retort (Spectator, February 21st) was equally slow in taking flight into Egypt.
Though I have never before heard the term " foolometer," I now quite long to be an impolite person and to use it myself though perhaps not entirely, like Mr. Shaw, for the sake of brevity. It is hard to see why a serious objection to the Epilogue, as an inartistic, unworthy ending to a beautiful and moving drama, should be transformed into an attack upon the heroic soldier, or into a suggestion that it would be possible to tell Joan's story on the stage and leave that soldier " out." His heroism and importance cannot leaven the Epilogue as it now stands, I maintain ; but it is a far cry from that to suggesting his elimination.
My point of view may, of course, be due to the " utter illiteracy or hopeless degeneration of spirit" which Mr. Shaw finds so the amongst his critics ; but, after all, he should bethink himself that it was that same illiteracy, or degenera- tion, that found his play so great as to protest in its behalf.—
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