CAMBRIDGE "MISCELLANY"

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

CAMBRIDGE "MISCELLANY"

TWO ATTRACTIVE VOLUMES. It used to bo said that there were only three real Tories in England and Professor George Saintsbury was one of them. That eminent critic wag more than a critic; ho was a personality. The Cambridge University Press lias issued in its pocket "Miscellany" series, a reprint of Saintsbury's two articles on Shakespeare from the fifth volume of the "Cambridge History of English Literature," and Miss Helen Waddell author of that delightful book "Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages," contributes a very readable preface. Saintsbury, the man and his knowledge of books, remind Miss Waddell of a definition of eternity—"whatsoever comprehendeth and possesseth the whole fulness of life here and now, 'to which naught of the future is lacking, .and from which naught of the past liath flowed away." Yet Saintsbury left directions that no biography of him should be written, and no letter published. In the same pleasant, handy series the Cambridge Press issues "The Study of Drama," by H. Granville Barker, a lecture given in Cambridge in 1934, to which copious and valuable notes have been added. That this distinguished actor, producer and should have lectured in Cambridge was symptomatic of the .change that has come over the drama and over the public tudo towards it, for until comparatively recent times professional stage performances in that University town could be banned by the vice-chancellor. Mr. Granville Barker has much that is interesting to say about drama, its form and production, the Puritan movement that worked so much harm, the modern revival, and the need for a national theatre.