BOOKS
THE RELIGION OF SHAKES self profoundly human. Such he
PEARE
In the "Religion of Shakes peare" by George Seibel (Watts & Co.) we have the following magni- ficent peroration:-
"Perhaps Shakespeare was too deeply interested in humanity to bother his head about divinity, As Dowden, very prettily, has put it, "a woman is dearer to Shakes- peare than an angel; a man is better than a God." To Shakes- peare the world was a great mov, ing panorama of passions, hopes, despairs, appetites, aspirations, joys, dreams, and graves, among all which he saw the human family Dufleted like little birds in a tempest. But he was human, and so felt like all the tribes lit by the eternal sun. And that is why we also being human, feel with him. That is why he has power to move us, not by golden pontp of rhetoric, but by the simple touch of sym pathy." Like Brutus he was a man. He had ained and suffered.
He had known the crucifixion of failure and the transfiguration of triumph. Juliet had kissed him. Katharine had earst him, Cressida had cozened him. He had drunk deep with Falstaff, played merry pranks with Pack, clutched the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and gope to Wittenberg with Horatio. fle taught men to appraise the worth of man by what he is and not by the dogming which he accepts. He accepted no dogmas himself; he could not have burned heretics like his great contempor. aries Calderon and Lope de Vega. Nor could he have merkeil at things held holy by simple faith, as Voltaire and Heine did., was divinely neutral, being him-
was, universal mugnanimous, tall statured, glad, serene-the mirror of mankind, the focus of history, the mountain top of the agea. All the generations of history. came trooping down the starry corridors of time to bring him pebbles and pearls for the mosale of his dreams. His brain was like a port to which the golden galleons of the past carried their cargoes of thought from all the brains of all the centuries. He was able to assimilate them all because he epitomized thèm all. He was the Man. The essence of all Shakes- peareah criticism.might be con centrated in this one sonnet:--
To My Bookbinder. Bind me my books in stuffs and
hues that mean Something, not in a mute and
formal guise;
Let every cover hide some keen
surprise
W
To shadow forth the volume's soul
unseen.
#
Habit good Whitman in a garb of
green;
!
THE CHINA
MAIL.
FROM THE NEW BOOKS there has been nothing I said that
So English!
"It was a refined audience, yet an audience English to the core, for nearly all the ladies wore Russian dresses almost entirely
concealed by Spanish shawls, with shoes of some quaint Turkish design, and perhaps a simple Chinese omament hanging from the throat. The Man About Town, by
A. F. Herbert. (Heinemann.) 6s.
set,
In the Soup.
has given you the idea that I have been looking for a flirtation."— The Trail of the Hawk, by Sinclair Lewis. (Jonathan Cape) 75. 6d. Love and All That,
that laughs. The man and woman "The enduring love is the love who can laugh at their love, who can kiss with smiles and embrace with chuckles, will outlast in mutual affection all the throat- lumpy, cow-eyed couples of their acquaintance.",
him.
SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1924
REVIEWS OF A RHYMER.
"Silk" By Samuel Merwin, (Con- Piece of old China. A legend.
stable.)
Although
'}
||
It tells us the story of 'one Who travelled about on some
Jan Po
Matic commissions both to
quaint Diplo.
strange as their genius is, Into the "IN FINE FEATHERS." society of English Poefty: It has, on the whole, not proved possible The story of an heir who, soon to incorporate the Prophetic Books, after his birth, loses his mother. and, except by students, they are and is entrusted to a gipsy nurse. unread. And poetry which after While Lord Northbridge, the A contury and a quarter is unread father, is away on business, the great quustiede bar it lacks the attack is takes for den It happened a very long time
but dead, and the
Ago rest of all, that of reaching son of the ourse is substituted for (A couple of thousand years have a great respect and affection and moving men as men,
Or Bo), The misdoings and the final It's quite up-to-date, the reverse for the Victorian era, and I have downfall of the heir apparent are
Of slow. son is amongst the most assured Veronica, the heroine, is saved not the slightest doubt that Tenny. well brought out in the climax. and unassailable of our immortals, from falling into his hands and Victorian, either in the age or it's and the real son of Lord North but it is not what was most marries the chief of a gipsy tribe, poet, which is most alive to-day, bridge. So I think it would be safe to prophesy that the next generation Davies, and much more highly of will think more highly of Mr. Mr. de la Mare, to mention oply two names, thap, to mention only one, of Mr. Robert Graves. Mr. de la Mare is of his own genera love than to be rich and President more than he is of all the others.
"It is better to be poor and intion, of course; but only a little of the Wiesel Insecticide Com pany."-The World In Faiseface, by George Jean Nathan. (Lane,),
generally the pursuer of man le The doctrine that woman is
true, but it is also true that in the course of the pursuit man generally runs backwards."
ed, household do not often go
Love and a precisely conduct together. No woman who loves a man deeply, wildly, passionately has ever been a perfect house- keeper,"
early days of motoring, used to "An old friend of mine, in the create a terrific clatter at dinner parties by reason of nuts, bolts, washers, and spare parts falling out of his ears into the soup. He used to spend most of the day lying "under his car tinkering at its vitals, and when he sneezed the air was full of ironmongery. His gentle and apologetic way of fishing for nuts and bolts in his neighbour's soup or (if necessary) 75. 6d. down his neighbour's back, how- ever, endeared him to everybody."
At The Green Goose, by D. B. W, Lewis. (Beachcomber.) (Hudder & Stoughton) 38. 6d, net.
A Shower-Bath.
"Ao English lady cyclist arrived dusty and tired at a West of Ireland hoted and desired a bath a lying down' one followed by a shower. The hostess directed her to pull a string when'she was ready for the shower bath Having com- pleted the first bath, therefore, she stood up and pulled the string. Nothing happened until she had pulled three times, when a male | voice overhead said: 'I beg yer
parrdon, ma'ain, but if ye stood little inore, to the westward i'd hit ye better." It was the "boots
Red gold for rare old Plato, with a can of water over a hole in the celling "Memaries, dreamer wise;
by Lord Long (Hutchinson.) 24s
A mouchoir for my Musset's
"streaming eyes;
Spenser the gossamer gown of
faerie queene.
1
And bind my Wycherley in hide of
swine;"
My Burns in homely borrel, stout
and strong;
A
crazy patch Verlaine's absin- thine song, And royal purple Marlowe's
inighty line. But-nothing else were fit to case
him in. Bind up Will Shakespeare in a
human skin.
The Hussy.
"She was of the kind who look at men appraisingly, and expect then to come up, be unduly seven distinct methods of getting familiar, and be crushed. She had
three variations of reply, of which men to say indiscreet things and
well-bred calmness: To afraid the favourite was to remark with
you have made a slighi error, Mr. Uh--I didn't quite, catch your name? Perhaps they failed to tell you that, I attend St. Orgul's evvvery Sunday, and have husband and child, and am not at all, really, you know! I hope that
POETRY TIMELESS.
મા
I am not underrating contem- porary poetry. Indeed I think there, has not often been a time fuller than the present of true poetic feeling both among those who write and those who read it.
suppose, we are all very grateful to our young Contemporary poets," They have kept English poetry alive for us by their sincerity and force: it is scarcely too much to say that they have given it a new birth. For my own part I con- stantly offer them the only kind of gratitude which they are likely to value, that of reading them again. And the gratitude often increases with each reading. But I rather suspect a child which is so very anxious to be unlike its an- cestors. I believe in the continuity
The story is full of suspense, and is Interesting for its character studies.
~N.H.F.P.
["In Fine Feathers" by Charles Garvice. John Long Ltd. 2/-
THE ENGLISH OAK.
mer when at last it loses that "glad There comes a time in late sum Wan-light grene" which has distinguish
piece as those lines about the Take such a simple little master- planets which he calls
derers"; or this of Winter:
Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow, And shrill on leafless bough The robin with his burning
breast
Alone sings now.
The rayless suu,
Day's journey done, Shreds its last ebbing light On fields in leagues of beauty
spread
Unearthly white.
Thick draws the dark.
And, spark by spark, The frost-fites kindle, and soon Over that sea of frozen foam Fleats the white moon.
That is what we have all seen and of the family, and think a healthy half felt; what auf grandfathers child is not more proud of being have seen before us, and our being himself and therefore a new and yet so old; old and yet, in himself than of finding that, while | grandsons will see after us: new
old. peuple of his grandfather. It is not of to-day only, or of to unlike his predecessors 2. I sap though we hear in it the voice of Who is the English poet most day's thoughts or experiences; and pose Blake. day of Blake? Not his defiant Pro-There are in, it other notes which phetic Books but his comparatively traditional Poetical Sketches and Songs of Innocence and Experi- ence. It has proved possible, in fuer, to incorporate liese, solitary and
person, he now and then reminds 'Mr. de la Mare's hands, so new.
And what is read to its own poer that is not all we hear.
are not of any one man or even of any one race of men. Is it not the greater poetry for that Poetry is a timeless thing.-John Bailey. in Continuity of Lettera "
#
ed it anong its dark-leafed neigh bours, and made it in oureyesatypo of unfading spring and of ever lastingness. it grows dark, too, at last, and is us dark as a cypress or a cedar of Lebanon; but observe how different this depth of colour is from that of the ela.
And fro
Till Love caught and dealt him a
knock Dowd blow,
A
thing which it frequently doss,
And oh,
I think that's about all you need
To know.
IL 种
By
"When the World Reeled."
Finds London shrouded in uncanny A Mr. Wilkinson-a scientist
Gay Thurne. (Ward, Lock & Co.)
mist,
And sets to work to ascertain the
cause
Of more than one sisch broach of
Nature's laws.
stand
It has been suid the English under- The elm, too, The horrid weather of their native
land,
stands alone, or in,, rows, of i isolated groups in the fields, and and.so-perhaps-they-do,-but-even-
in the clear sunshine its foliage 155
they
a dull, summer worn, almost rusty Do not appreciate. a frost in May.
green. There is no such worn and
Discovers, to his credit, how they're
Mr. Wilkinson
done,
Exciting, ever and anon
Romantic; altogether
A thrilling variation on
The subject of the weather,
-R. W.
weary look in the foliage of the vak. This is but one example of bizarre a rich, healthy green, deep but un, Which threaten England. in August and September. It is of Grotesque and sinister phenomena dimmed by tima and weather, and the leaf has a gloss to it. Again, on account of its manner of growth, with widespread branches aud boughs and twigs well apart, the foliage does not come before us as a mere dense mass of green-au intercepting cloud, as in a painted tree; but the sky is seen through it, and against the sky are seen the thousand thousand individual leaves, clear-cut and beautiful in shape.
It was one of my daily pleasures and look at one of the solitary oak during this fine weather to go out trees growing in the adjoining field when the morning sunlight was on it. To my mind it looked best when viewed at a distance of sixty grass field, with nothing but, the to seventy yards across the open
only could the leaves be distinctly sky beyond. At that distance not
seen, but the acorns as well, abundantly, and evenly distributed uver the whole iree, appearing as
small globes of purest bright foliage. The effect was very rich, apple-green among the deep green as of tapestry with an oak-leaf palters and colour, sprinkled thickly over with round polished gems of a light-green sewn into the abric.
To an artist with a soul in him,
such conditions would, I imagined, the very sight of such a tree in
make him sick of his poor little fuellectual art.-W. H. Hudson, in
"Hampshire Days,"
To-day is the Last Chance
To See The Magnificent
Picture
CARMEL MYERS
-
in
THE DANCER
OF THE NILE"
Get your places early for the biggest entertainment of
your life. Step up and enjoy yourself with every ounce of appreciation in your make-up!
Here is a picture made to order for you and every other picture lover that ever walked into a theatre!
IT'S GOT EVERYTHING!
Drama of the kind that gets under your skin, romance as appealing and delightful as ever written into a story, mystery and intrigue that will keep you guessing and wondering, tremealous sets, marvellous acting and a story that will föld" your interest every second.
After you've seen it you'll say: it for the world!"
"I wouldn't have missed
OTHER INTERESTING PICTURES ARE:- "King's Birthday Celebration"
AND
"Paris-Shanghai First Flight"
Arrival Of Captain D'OISY
World
Theatre To-day Only
SCREENLAND
Scene from "BRASSA Warner Bros. Production "DANCER OF THE NILE."
0.
Some, Wonderful New Effects.
In "The Dancer of the Nile,n, gigantic cinema · production." the scenes of which are laid-in Egypt more than three thousand years ago in the days of Tat-ankh-Amen, William E. S. Burle, well-known artial and director, has introduced something new to the silent dragi.
:
Every scene was laid out on a purely scientific basis, with pros- pective ever the controlling factor.. Fragments of actual sets were built as usual and these were com bined with the painted picture. Both blend perfectly. There are, few who will ever realize where the ucial production stops and where the picture really starts..
Ashy of the sets Inve complete veilings, side-walks and floors and when it is stated that the actors can walk in front
ur behind (columus or disappear through door-1 ►
Waya that are only painted, the value of Mr. Earle's process ean readily be Scut. The usual ("cheating}" in the matter of illaniation is absoot, and forence. the ceilings are properly lighted.
With such extention plans ns tilized by Mr. Earle, a production company, need go farther thun
WHO WAS THE GIRL
OF MYSTERY?
Society knew her as the alluring Olive Sloan who drove her car with reckless abandon and the scions of the rich to distraction with her beauty.
Yet she held mysterious meetings with the most dangerous and crafty characters of the underworld, What motivaded this beautiful girl to lead a life of mystery and marry the son of a powerful judge, though she did not love him?
A breathtaking romance of the underworld lavishly staged and enacted by a super All-Star Cast!
"CROOKED
From a
ALLEY"
Boston Blackie" story by Jack Boyle with an unusual all-star cast, featuring LAURA LA PLANTE, OWEN GORINE, THOMAS CARRIGAN BEGINNING TO-MORROW.
WORLD THEATRE
CROOKED ALLEY.”
Coming to World Theatre. There are many judges who do
Crooked Alley.
Because he was not granted this obviously reason. able request, another leader of the underworld sought. to teach the judge a lesson.
the hashy ranel'or Griffith Pack | not feel that there is a húghér fav for all his exteriors" wrote Albert than the law they uphold higher tion Tack Boyle, writer of those And from this remarkable situa Durrie, the critic, recently, after claim of merey and human feeling widely read stories of Boston viewing 3 private showing of the than society's unfeeling revenge Blackie," created a story in which mattered Wile what the subject picture. The possibilities are upon criminal. Hepeatedly, Bluckie is the outstanding figure. was or how produced, Movies were abrupt, inconceivable. It is faking news accounts tell of judges of this As a published story it was called just movies thes; but inckily that to be sure-but so is acting. The type; men who made it their busi The Daughter of Crooked. Alley, " period has passed into oblivion and players portraying the variousness to regard, the letter of the law but as a Universal all-ista photo- a few intrepid directors have dared characters are no more real than 48 greater than its spirit.
drama, coming to the World to get away from the beaten paths aro Mr. Bario's paintings of the One such judge displayed his theatre to-morrow, it is called
ancient Egyptian cities. Each inhuman temperament in a caso"Crooked Alley." form of endeavour is artistry, and where mercy
Thomas Carrigan plays Boston
•
would have bean
In Mr. Earle's production of The Dancer of the Nile" heit peting is permissible there can rewarded by a more lawful attitude Blackie in the picture and Laura utilizes What the term motion be no question to the very marvel on the part of the underworld, La Plante is "The Daughter of paintings." a phrase coined to ous arcomplishments of the diren whose most famous veggman he Crooked Alley." designate his paintings, in which tor of "The Dauer of the Xilo, compelled to die in the peniten Tum S. Guise, Kate Lester, Lillian Owen Gorino, actors move about with all the case Heretofore, the dirty has tiary. All this broken-down and Worth, Sidney Bracy, Al Hart, and freedom they wouhl enjoy were been in getting naturalism from reformed criminal asked for was to Frederick Stanton and others of they acting in real sers. Itia pro- such a setting which would permit be allowed to spend his last dying popular note have the remaining Up to a few years ago the mov- pess, it is said, will tend to the actors to neve and perform as moments with his friends, in principal rotes ing picture public secined satisfied revolutionize picture making, if on an getual sot, but with Mr with anything and everything the especially in those productions Earle's developmonte this objection producers eared to faist upon them.necessitating the erection of mum-has been reunoyed. What has been Who does not remember some of moth arid expensive sets," the atrocities of those curly days when the industry was verily in its infancy.
psed at only infrequent times is Hostined to be used and developed by directors more thoroughly in the future, thanks to Mr. Earle,
"The Dance of the Nile docs.
In getting his effects he uses three different processes and four different kinds of mintinga. He "Doubtless it way the novelty of also uggs bolle single and double not consist entholy of painted the invention that first intrigued exposure, depending on the back-backgrounds, however Paintings our faney and blinded me to its | ground néeiled, "It required seviml were used only in scenes whore Mr. gluring defects, for so long as the months for Mr. Earle and a staff Earle felt that he could get botter pictare moved and the bero rosqued of artists, working under him to results, than by constructed. sata. the heroine from the clutches of the perfect, the paintings which are Mory, big nets that rival those villain and there were chases and used in the production and another sed in other productions were. wrecks and "fights on the cliffs, it two months to Gim the picture.
COMING
ALONG THE MOONBEAM TRAIL
A thrilling Super-Feature showing Wild Animals" never seen before-in exact reproduction, living fighting, foraging as they did 10,000,000 years ago.
The authenticity of those animals is "endorsed by the most eminent scientists in the world.ą dant