THE THEATRE
A TEN-1NEEKS' season of English comedy has opened at the Arts Theatre with Farquhar's Restoration comedy The Constant Couple and Sheridan's The Rivals. These will be followed in due course by Pinero's The Magistrate, Munro and Maude's The Watched Pot and Shaw's Misalliance. So that the season, limited as it is in time and plays, will nevertheless give a view of English comedy over nearly three centuries. Both Farquhar and Sheridan were Irish- men, but, of the two, Farquhar is the least flamboyantly so, and the more interesting and lively playwright. I find The Constant Couple a more enjoyable and serious comedy than the later, more famous, and more artificial play of Sheridan's. Farquhar belonged to the seventeenth century, a robuster and more poetic age than the eighteenth, as anyone may see for himself who compares the two Clinchers of The Constant Couple with Sheridan's Bob Acres. I also prefer the carefree Sir Harry Wildair to the rather priggish Captain Absolute. As for plot, there is not much to choose between them. Sheridan is smoother and more polished, but also less real and convincing; if he has more verbal wit and flourish than Farquhar, he has far less fun and gusto. The two Clinchers give us more entertainment than Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Bob Acres. But it is time to turn to the actors. Sir parry Wildair is the best performance I have seen from Mr. Alec Clunes ; he kept the most admirable poise between Dutch courage and sensibility in the very amusing scene with Angelica (delightfully played by Dorothy Primrose)—a scene far more acceptable to the twentieth century than it ever could have been to the nineteenth. This scene quite eclipses the over-long-drawn-out rival scene between Absolute and Lydia Languish, to which Mr. Derek Birch as Absolute brought some of the tedium that is perhaps irremovable from the role of Standard. On the other hand, Billy Shine was fortunate in his two roles of the elder Clincher and Sir Lucius O'Trigger. Some of the best acting in both plays, however, came from Mr. Peter Jones, who was irresistibly engaging as Clincher, Junior, and marvellously insuffer-
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