DRINKWATER DEAD

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page 9

DRINKWATER DEAD

Noted British Dramatist MISSION OF THE POET By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyrlght- ( Received March 26, 6.30 p.m.) London, March 25. The death has occurred of Mr. John Drink water, noted poet and dramatist. HOW FAME CAME Words Pregnant and Living John Drinkwater was born ill ISS2 and educated at Oxford High School and Birmingham University. Circumstances forced him, when 19 years old, to enter an insurance office where, as a clerk, he worked for 12 years, though not all the time with the one company. But even while earning a salary of only £35 a year he began to write poetry and to interest himself in amateur theatricals and the writing of plays. He set out with a definite idea of the poet’s mission, which is, he said in one of his essays, “not to express his age, but to express himself.” lie looked with favour on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s definition of poetry as “the best words in the best order,” but with the saving qualification that the words should be pregnant and living. His first book of verse, published in 190 S. contained little of distinction or promise. Nor did his second volume display any marked advance on the first. But the volume he published in 1914 made his name widely known as one of the foremost of England’s poets. In that volume, which included “January Dusk,” “In Lady Street,” “Reckoning.” and “A Prayer,” he struck a note that was to remain with him throughout the rest of his life. In “A Prayer” he expressed his outlook and aspirations:—

“Lord not for light in darkness do we prav. Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, Not that the slow ascension of our day Be otherwise.

Not for a clearer vision of the things Whereof the fashioning shall make us

great. Nor for remission of the perils and stings Of time and fate. . .

Grant us the will to fashion as we feel, Grant ns the strength to labour as we

know. Grant ns the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow.

Knowledge we ask not —knowledge Thon hast lent, But, Lord, the will—there lies our bitter need, Give ns to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed.” Source of His Inspiration. Drinkwater’s genius lay not in lightness and delicacy of touch. It was more didactic, descriptive, narrative, than lyrical. He was more at home when he felt the earth under his feet, and walking in the Cotswolds or in the streets of the city it was the visible life and beauty around him, the human joys and griefs, strivings and visions in which he could share that were his surest sources of inspiration. He was more prophet than minstrel, more preacher than singer. Well as his poems have become known, it is in his plays that his fame mainly rests. In his early days he joined in founding the Pilgrim Players, since developed into the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and he wrote plays to be produced there under his own direction. These were in blank verse and were not highly profitable. Then fame came to him in full measure with a play that was donejn prose. The success of “Abraham Lincoln” (1918), a chronicle play, was so big and so immediate that it carried him straightway into a full tide of popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. Drinkwater kept to the simple homely language of Lincoln and was not afraid to “telescope” events. Its success persuaded him to keep to that style of writing, and so there followed such plays as “Oliver Cromwell” and “John Lee.” Neither of these, however, had the same success as “Abraham Lincoln.” Drinkwater also wrote an essay on the Lyric, 1916, studies of William Morris, 1912, of Swinburne, 1913, and “Patriotism in Literature.”