Literary Views & Reviews

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 3

Literary Views & Reviews

A SHAW PLAY FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD

The cover of the work here reviewed reads: “Plays from Eternity. The Afterworld’s Great Writers. Transmitted and made available to this earth by Saint Patricia. No. 15. ‘Saint Patricia.’ A New Biographical Drama in Four Acts. By Bernard Shaw." [Reviewed by C.E.S.] Headers whose interests take them into the byways of literature, so called, are generally long-suffering by nature and w'illing to go a long distance with those whose peculiar talents have condemned them, in Balzac’s phrase, “to the shadow and the silence.” Writers of this minor eccentric type produce w’orks of the kind classified by Charles Lamb as “books which are no books —biblia a-biblia.” Some he enumerates; but he was apparently not familiar with another kind of literature which usually qualifies for inclusion in the genus he invented. These are the scripts dictated to mediums' who are automatic writers by the illustrious dead from beyond the grave.

Numbers of these are available for the curious inquirer to read. There are, for instance, “The Scripts of Cleopas” and “The Scripts of Philip” from the pens and ouija boards of Geraldine Cummins and Hester Dowden. Matters of import to students of early Christianity are discussed in these writings. Percy Alien’s more informal “Talks with Elizabethans” reveals that the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays. He was versatile in other ways, for in 1575 he was the father of a child born to Queen Elizabeth. This boy was substituted for Lady Southampton's son “to be brought up as the legitimate third Earl of Southampton; he. who, in process of time, will become the Fair Youth of his father’s, that is to say of ‘Shakespeare’s’ sonnets.” This is indeed an unlooked for development; but it is one that is characteristic of numbers of these communications from what may be called the astral plane. Taken in small doses, they are sometimes exhilarating. The work of the latest aspiran* for honours in “automatic transmission” was mentioned in a recent article in “The Press." She is Patricia Joudry, a Canadian, whose married name is Patricia Steele. According to a letter from her press agent, “the medium has been named Saint Patricia by Jesus Christ, who on July 1. 1961. made his long-awaited return to earth and now resides at Shornhill. Gloucestershire, a fact which is yet to be publicly announced.” "Saint Patricia” is the most industrious medium ever developed, for between May and December hist year, she todk down two boqks by Bernard Shaw, one entitled “My Life and Soft Times," and six plays by the same author, including one written in collaboration, oddly enough, with Willa Cather. But this is not all. There are two plays by Robert Sherwood, and one each by Anton Chekov. Walt Whitman. Sidney Howard, and Eugene O'Neill. William Shakespeare has dashed off a slim volume of “New Sonnets. Late Awekening”; and there is also the first section of a new Bible. With the exception of the last named all the manuscrips are “available for inspection.” presumably at the centre of the world now situated in Gloucestershire.

The first of these works is now before the public. It is George Bernard Shaw’s first play from the spirit world—a four-act mammoth, entitled, “Saint Patricia.’’

Taking this play down must have been embarrassing for Saint Patricia; for she is the heroine and Mr Shaw dotes on her. He was never like this with Miss Terry or Mrs Patrick Campbell. His old crisp style has sadly deteriorated. No-one would ever think that this was the author of “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide” or of the plays. “Saint Patricia.” to begin with, is a broken-backed effort. The first two acts deal for the most part with Patricia Joudry’s eventful life m Canada. The only conclusion that can be drawn from them is that there was a maudlin, adulatory side to Mr Shaw’s nature that his earth-bound readers never suspected. Act 111, however, is quite different. Mias Joudry is left, as it were, up in the air; the curtain rises on an entirely unrelated scena sub-titled “Don Juan in Heaven.” “It is a magnificent club room, in which Are gathered 14 men in dress of various periods. They are William Shakespeare, whose real name is Sir Francis Bacon, Henrik Ibsen. Oscar Wilde. Walt Whitman, Eugene O’Neill, Bernard Shaw,” and others equally famous. The situation recalls a once well-known book of American humour, not yet quite forgotten, perhaps, “The Houseboat on the Styx,” by J. K. Bangs. No doubt Mr Shaw had read it.

The senes.of dialogues that follow is not without piquancy and literary merit. This is largely owing to the presence of Oscar Wilde; and that, of course, is as it should be. Mr Wilde died in Paris in 1900; but. as all students of the occult are aware, he has never stopped talking since. Mr Wilde has controlled countless mediums the whole world over. He continues to be a terrible rattle. The slightly vapid epigrams come out in the old drawling way, as if time had stopped just short of the fatal year 1895.

In “Saint Patricia” he and Mr Shaw put on a cross-talk act which is quite the best thing in the play. Some examples may be quoted;

“Shaw: Your play was patronising: you have never scorned your audience so much. There is no greater act of hostility possible to a dramatist than to insult the intelligence of a theatre full of men and women. “Wilde: Men and women seldom attended my plays.

My audiences were composed of something in between, and hence were accustomed to being insulted.” A few pages later Wilde comments frankly on Shaw's plays. “Ihe current presentation of your works is limited to the occasional revival of ’Candida' whenever a husband and wife acting team are feeling friendly towards each other, a sentiment which customarily endures throughout the first week of rehearsal, after which they turn with relief to ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ and revive that instead.” It is a pleasure to report that Ibsen has brightened up in “the after-life.” When Tolstoy bemoaned the spiritual perils that confront modem Russia, he replied, “Mr Tolstoy, your countrymen are immeasurably richer for your great work, ‘War and Peace.’ Would that all of them would repay their debt to you by reading it again. By the time they had got through it, the danger would have passed.” Sir Francis Bacon, however, is just as enigmatic as ever. Most of the time he can only be described as “hors de combat.” He is lying down on a couch, and when addressed “he sits up” and utters a few lines of very blank verse. Then “he lies down” again, and that is that. Presumably the effort of being Shakespeare in the spirit world is exhausting. Act IV, sadly enough, has none of these delightful moments: for the playwright’s passion for Saint Patricia increases to the point of frenzy. “Patricia’s beauty,” he writes in the opening stage directions. “has deepened and mellowed with the years: her blonde hair is long, curved up into a chignon, and at the moment her face is radiant with excitement.” Incidentally, the other saint in the master’s life—Saint Joan—has proved to be not nearly as appealing as the new one. In fact, Mr Shaw found her “tedious in the extreme, wishing only to discuss theologies and techniques of warfare.” As matters stand, discussing Saint Patricia’s hair-do is much more fun.

It is not perhaps worth while dealing with Act IV in

more detail; but the final curtain of the play has a sort of wild improbability that suggests genius of an apocalyptic kind. “During the final lines of the Angel’s speech, Patricia has walked over to the Christmas tree, Shaw beside her, to look at the little present for Jasher from Robert Keen. Now she turns to Shaw, who takes her in his arms as The curtain comes down. End.”