PRICE AND PREJUDICE

Evening Star, Issue 23864, 19 April 1941, Page 5

PRICE AND PREJUDICE

The Repertory Society’s production of ‘ I’rido and Prejudice,’ which opens on Tuesday for a season of tour nights ami a matinee, covers an interesting period. Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in ISI7. It was a period ol great happenings in the world, comparable in a way to our own times. Yet how dilferent was woman’s place in that world. Women were not supposed to enter into such purely male activities as authorship, .lane Austen puhlisaed her novels anonymously.' She was never more than 200 miles away from tier home, and she died whim she was 42. yet she has become a standard by which all other Knglish woman novelists are measured! Kor ‘Pride and Prejudice ’ she was paid £l5O, a sum which 1 she considered outrageously high in view of the fact that “ it cost her nothing ’’ ! Macaulay called Miss Austen “ the Shakespeare ot Prose, Sir Waitin’ Scott pa id '.tribute to her “ esrpiisite touch." William l)ean Howells called her “ the most artistic of Knglish novelists." and Pro lessor Phelps has said that 1 Pride and Prejudice ’ is the best novel ever written by a woman.

Such is the author on whose work Helen Jerome based her now famous three-ant sentimental comedy. Jt speaks well for Miss Jerome’s work that she has captured both the approval ol the Austen authorities and the applause ■of the man-dn-the-streot who goes to a play to be amused. Dunedin audiences, both of the Jaueite and of the “ man-in-the-street ” type, will be able to

judge for themselves next week. The play will run Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with a matinee on Saturday, Friday being omitted on account of Anzac Day. The large cast includes such wellknown Repertory players as Mrs Wakefield Holmes, lloa Johnson, Betty Mac,phail, Betty Rhodes, Kathleen Nees, Jane Griffiths, Roland Watson. Leslie Jac-ik. Bernard Sullivan, Leslie Dunbar, and others.