LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21975, 26 December 1936, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP

The prospectus has just been issued —itself a notable example of fine printing—of the Australian Limited Editions Society. The society has been founded by a number of booklovers, artists, writers, and printers “with the twofold object of publishing historical, literary, and artistic books of interest and merit and at the same time providing the printers of Australia with an opportunity of displaying their skill in fine book production.” The society is limited to 500 members, and each publication will be limited in edition to not more than that number, in addition to copyright and author copies. There will be no copies for sale to the public. The annual subscription is three guineas. The officers include many eminent Australian writers and artists: and the technical committee. Douglas Annand, Alan Baker, Alan Ball, Adrian Flint, E. H. Shea, Ben Waite, and Perce Green, is particularly strong. Mr Green, a New Zealander by birth, is responsible for the printing of the prospectus. Mr Christopher Motley recently went to see John Gielgud play “Kamlet” in New York. Some of his comments, in the “Saturday Review of Literature”: Delightful to see “Hamlet" played as the magnificent melodrama it is; in the best transpontine (or Hoboken! spirit, if I may say so without startling Mr McClintic. The excitement and “good theayter.” all the Crime Club elements, were finely pushed home. The settings and most of the mechanics admirable. The ghost, always a nuisance, rather bad: too definitely physical. I thought; disconcertingly stumpy in stature and pedestrian in movement. Has the experiment ever been tried of having the Ghost’s lines uttered by Hamlet himself? This would be psychologically valuable, though ohc would hesitate to impose further burden on that overtaxed part.—The opening scene seemed to me to lose some of its foreboding fright by too much hurry. Of the Prince himself: Mr Gielgud’s performance has many charms though a shade too much in the Old Vic tradition for my own comfort There Were moments when I definitely parted company from his interpretation: I disagree, for instance, on the great climax, where Hamlet decides to test his murderous uncle by writing-in the special scene for the players. Those curtain lines, “The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” should surely not be done in a frenzy of gasping and hysteria. Not in that mood, I submit does one sit down to write. There is the moment for coldest, calculating malice, steely and stealthy. But how pleasing to see the part played by a.Hamlet still quite young (Mr GielgUd is 32) and with such winning qualities of youth. Also, let me add, what refreshment of clear and intelligible articulatioa There were several passages better played than I had seen them befo/fe: the advice to the players, fas’ instance, which rather amusingly contradicted some of Mr Gielgud's owk method in other scenes. The general feeling was of just a little too conscientious direction: the movement on the great stairways was (almost unavoidably, I quite realise) so minutely and precisely calculated . . . The Hamlet that gave me most to think about was the Barry Jackson production in modern dress. How I Should love to see that done again. Weren’t all Shakespeare’s plays originally done in modem dress—that is. in the costume of the spectators* own time? The Oxford “Periodical” counts among the services which it has rendered readers the-“practical advice” offered from time to time; for example, “reminding readers that Oxford books still in print and offered as bargains at fancy prices in sec-ond-hand booksellers’ catalogues are, none the less, procurable at the published price, as would-be purchasers can see for themselves in the Oxford Catalogue. There is a case in point in ‘Obiter Scripta’ this month.” The note there is as follows: A well-known second-hand bookseller asks nine guineas for “The Mirrour of the Blessed Lyfe of Jesu Christ,” translated from the Latin (attributed to Cardinal BonaVentura) bv Nicholas Love, and edited hr L. F. Powell. This book, which was published in 1908, still stands in the Oxford University Press General Catalogue at its original price of one guinea. Despite all political changes In Germany, Shakespeare still continues to dominate the German Stage, wrote the Berlin correspondent of the “Observer” recently. A bold experiment has been made at the Deutsches Theatre, where a version of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” was presented. This particular version was made by Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz, an eighteenth century poet, who was a friend of Goethe. He called it “Amor vincit omnia,” and Goethe praised his translation in his autobiography, “Dichtung and Wahrheit.” Although the play was recognised by the German critics as “a difficult one to produce,” they 1 praised both the excellent production and acting. The opening paragraph of Mr Basil de Selincourt’s review of G. JL Chesterton’s “Autobiography,” posthumously published: G. K. Chesterton, with his paradoxes and his passion for a principle, has so long been a national institution that one can scarcely believe this autobiography to be good-bye. He did not intend it so; it is written with all his vital rotundity and with all h;s old preference for theory and explanation and especially for explanatory surprise. His writing, as he himself vigorously asserts, was always in this sense journalistic, that when he took pen in hand he immediately addressed himself to the contemporary reader, talking rather than writing. But the instinct of the journalist is genera i!“ to obtain agreement by assuming that it exists and by crediting his public j with an intelligence at least equal to ; his own. Chesterton shared with j Bernard Shaw the belief that th* I reader’s, at least the English reader s, j attachment might best be obtained by bullying and browbeating him. tb' I difference, of course, being that Chr--j terton’s method was fundamentally j affectionate and good-humoured. i I The Limited Editions Club j (America) will publish "Great Exj pectations” next year with a prej face by Bernard Shaw. Mr Shaw ] will say that when Dickens orjg:j nally wrote the book it had an encW ing that Bulwer-Lytton found tr ■ j gloomy. He thinks it a better endj ing than the one universally known. | Shaw maintains that with the old ( ending as it appeared in magazine ■ form, “Great Expectations” is the ! best of the Dickens novels. | One of the English bishops has ! come to the conclusion that our modern novelists must bear the bdarre j for many road accidents. Their I heroes, especially in detective : stories, are nothing of heroes unk's j they go round corners on two wheel* 1 at 80 miles an hour.