A NOVEL CLEOPATRA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20384, 12 October 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

A NOVEL CLEOPATRA.

VULGARISED HISTORY.

" Sooner or later E. Barrington was bound to take the story of Cleopatra as (he subject for one of lier romances " so licr publishers declare upon the jacket of her latest effort. This is on fortunately quite true, but, the. most enthusiastic admirer of the prolific writer's " novelised " biographies will surely wish, on reading " The Laughing Queen," that it had been later rather than sooner. E. Barrington has a facile pen and a certain gift for projecting herself into the lives of the characters she describes, but in " The Laughing Queen " she has essayed a task far beyond her powers. Confronted with the magnificent story immortalised by Shakespeare's genius, the essentially second-rato quality of her writing becomes painfully evident when she makes Cleopatra remark to Apollodorus, her Sicilian secretary: "Forgot the daughter of the Gods anil the Divine Jsis and al! that stuff," the words might well be addressed to the reader. For here is no divinity, no royal Kgvpt, but a pert, unpleasantly modern flapper, entirely devoid of the mysterious power which beguiled Antony, that selfish libertine, into losing an Empire for her sake. Caesar is shorn of his majesty, the patriotic Brutus becomes a greedy traitor. Cicero a silly babbler—all are cheapened and. vulgarised in this dreadful book. John Erskine, in " The Private Life of Tlelen of Troy." managed, for all his modernising humour, to preserve the witchery of that deathless beauty. But Heaven help Helen if she ever falls, as she well may, into the ruthless hands of E. Barrington. Andromache herself would be satisfied with a revenge so subtle and so complete, u The Laughing Queen," by E. Barrington (Harrup).