... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. V J|l J' I. MADAME PLAYS NAP, AT THE NEW THEATRE. MADAME plays Nap-- and wins. Truth to tell, she did not hold many trumps, for the play is merely an elaborated anecdote turned sans-gêne into a three-act play, the kind of thing that would have gladdened the heart of the late lamented author of The Comic History of England, and comes at the right time ...

... J' The Literary Lounger, By L. P. Hartley A The Naughty Middle Ages. Mr. James Branch Cabell's particular form of fantasy is a special taste-- one likes it or one doesn't; the personal idiom is so strong that it drives out purely aesthetic considerations. I cannot quite acclimatise myself to the atmosphere of cloudy Middle- Age legend spiced by Vie Parisienne naughti ness. At the same time one ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J T. Grein i. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, AT DRURY LANE. FABELHAFT! exclaimed the German, and that was the superlative of kolossal. Epatant! echoed the Frenchman. Marvellous 1 I chimed in. And I meant it. Pantomime has come back to Drury Lane with new glittering of the old glory. The spectacle literally baffles description. These lovely visions of Beauty's Garden of the ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley Terrors of thi Salon. To us of to-day the word Salon conjures up alarming thoughts. No doubt it was a privilege to be admitted to these famous gatherings; but could it have been an unmixed pleasure? For the habitué and the recognised literary lion perhaps it was. But for the new comer what an ordeal, what a chance to make a fool of himself Think of ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. i. ILLUSION, AT EVERYMAN. DID ever author write so difficult a part as that of Marie Louise in Jean-Jacques Bernard's play Illusion (L'Invitation au Voyage), inspired by one of Baudelaire's poems? Her plight is the constant haunting by the vision of a man whom we, the audience, never see--an unremitting obsession compared with which Lady Macbeth's ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley A I5 Categories. There are few faculties I envy more than the power, which comes naturally to many, of seeing the common quality in things superficially unalike and of sifting them into appro priate categories. What a boon to the critic, to have a mind unappalled by diversity, copiously furnished with labels and pigeon holes, and looking on a land scape ...

... . By L. P. Hartley A Seeing Pictures. Seeing pictures is the least exciting form of aesthetic eniovment. You see all the picture at once: the element of time is not involved in the experience: and so you feel no suspense, suspense which is just what makes a book or a piece of music exciting. Nobody says of a picture, I could not put it down, so anxious was i to find out how it ended, or Each ...

... I . if 11 By J. T. Grein. -J I. 41 THE WHITE ASSEGAI, AT THE PLAYHOUSE. OUR general public cares, alas! so little for and knows less of the Crown lands and Dominions that Sir Barry Jackson and the author, Mr. Allan King, deserve our appreciation for initiating us into our ways of dealing with the tribes of south Africa and the mode of living of our colonists. At great length and in minuteness ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley A Book by Any Other Name What makes a good title? And does its title have any effect on a book's popularity? Publishers will tell you yes, the title makes an enormous difference. If that be so, then one ought to be able to discover in titles the common quality that catches the popular fancy. To me, I own, this seems a hopeless task. Take the Elizabethan ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. Cw5 I. IN THE ZONE AND THE MAN IN POSSESSION,'' AT THE AMBASSADORS. MR. EUGENE O'NEILL'S lugubrious little play, In the Zone, has been seen before at the Everyman. For all its apt description of an episode in a tramper, it is, from the English point of view, unsatisfactory. No British tars, on the mere evidence of a fellow-sailor hiding a little box, ...

... p-- flfcgfjj By MICHAEL ORME. THE gradual return of the so-called Western drama is significant in the history of the talking-film. It indicates a response to the public's reluctance to ex change the sweep and fine breezy action of this pictorial happy hunting- ground for the static drama of the transposed stage-play. Moreover, the addition of sound and dialogue to a type of screen ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley. p The Historical Novel. It was once the fashion in historical novels to take pains to make the setting true in every detail to its period, but to people it with men and women of the author's own epoch. The characters were the only anachronisms. True, they em ployed an archaic form of speech, liberally interlarded with such words as Gramercy and Zounds ...