... THE PROPOSITION that the fusion of comedy and tragedy used by Thomas Middleton helped in the shaping of a new method of drama is the basis of Dorothy M. Farr's Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism (Oliver and Boyd £2.25). Beginning his career as a hack writer with Henslowe, Middleton developed into one of our most important playwrights, now oddly neglected. His development is examined ...

... ALAN DENT, a lover of the nooks and crannies of theatre, literary and social history, as well as of its larger-ranging aspects, has written a richly filled tale of many a walk up and down memory lane in My Covent Garden (J. M. Dent, £3.50). Of course, theatre and theatre per sonalities abound, for the Garden has housed dramatists, players and managers by the score for more than three hundred ...

... ALLAN WINGATE have just launched the first four novels in a series based on the best-known Shakespeare plays. It is a bit of a book of the script notion aimed partly at an audience who knows the texts onlv as set-books. Leaving aside the magic plays and the histories, Carola Edmond, editor of the series, has set three established and one embryonic writer of historical fiction loose on Hamlet ...

... SPEAKING up for Chekhoy, as he terms it, is Harvey Pitcher, in The Chekhoy Play -- a New Interpretation (Chatto and Windus £3). And speak up he does, eloquently and Informatively. A lecturer in Russian at the University of St. Andrews. Harvey Pitcher tells us that Chekhov must be re garded as the dramatist of the emotional side of man's nature, and part of his book is concerned with ...

... AMONG the latest short plays in French's Acting Edition, all published at 20p, are Rumour, a play for women, by Sam Bate, another play for women, Hunt the Frenchman by Pamela Pope, The Devil's Limelight by Ella Adkins, A Very Special Occasion oy /\nan reacocK, KOiy-KOly Dy Barry L. Hillman. based on Maupassant's Boule de Suif, Trouble on Helicon by Bryan Stocks, and The Other Ark, ...

... IN THE Casebook Series, edited by A. E. Dyson, the latest addition is Richard the Second, edited by Nicholas Brooke (Macmillan £2.25). It embraces a wide range of criti cism of one of Shakespeare's most popular but also most-controversial works. In his Introduction, Profes sor Brooke points out how interest in the play has shifted through the centuries; it was discussed and pro duced, then ...

... EVERYONE HAS heard of Pavlova, even people born long after her death, even people who have never seen a ballet in their lives, and they all know she was the greatest dancer of all time. Her professional career spanned thirty years and, even before the days of air travel she performed in more towns all over the world than any other dancer, or indeed, any other artist of any kind, before or ...

... IT IS strange, and even fortuitous, that only a couple of weeks after Theatre in Britain appeared, two more books have turned up to further plug the gap I mentioned previously. Regarding the first of these, Theatre Review '73 (W. H. Allen, £4), let me declare that this paper has a vested interest, in that the book's editor. Eric Johns, was my predecessor in my present chair and that some of ...

... ACTORS probably have more need than most for a guide listing London restaurants where it is possible to eat for under a pound, so Fuel Food by Mike Bygrave and Joan Goodman (Wildwood House. 95p) should represent a good investment Naturally enough. in this price range it helps if one has a preference for Chinese, Indian. Italian or Greek food, for English restaurants are remarkably thin on ...

... ORCHESTRA COLOURING BOOK, published by the Fun with Music organisation, is designed to familiarise children with the instruments of the symphony orchestra. The book was devised by Ann and Ezra Rachlin. whose On Location lessons have introduced many children to the pleasures of listening to music, and the pictures to colour are based on their Mexican marionettes Pablo. Juanita and the ...

... THE LASKYS can rightly lay claim to being the first family in Hollywood, for Jesse L. Lasky, a successful vaudeville act in his own right and also a producer of acts and shows, arrived among the orange groves in 1913, there to found the motion picture industry. with the assistance of his then brother-in-law, Samuel Goldwyn, and Cecil B. De Mille. Now, sixty years later, the grand, garish, ...

... VERY WILLING GRIFFIN (Peter Davies, £3.00) is an account by actor David Blagden of how he sailed the smallest vacht in the 1972 Singlehanded Transatlan tic Race to finish tenth on handicap out of 59 starters. From the first tentative plans for the building of Willing Griffin to the crossing of the finishing line at Newport after 52 days at sea (a record-breaking time for such a small yacht ...