King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 38

The Queen has gone to bed In the middle of the day; But what about her bedfellow?

No one dares to say.

She cannot sleep at night: She does not care to try; The darkness makes her restless, And n.o.body knows why.

III (p. 48)

O, merry, merry will my heart be When I can sit me down and rest: If you would live to make old bones Keep your knees off the kitchen-stones, And go like a lady, warmly drest.

APPENDIX B

"THE CRIER BY NIGHT" was first performed by Mr. Stuart Walker's Portmanteau Theatre Company in Wyoming, U.S.A., in September 1916, and in New York at the Princess Theatre on 18 December 1916, with the following cast:

Hialti Mr. McKay Morris.

Thorgerd Miss Judith Lowry.

Blanid Miss Florence Buckton.

An Old, Strange Man Mr. Edgar Stehli.

Play produced by Mr. Stuart Walker and mounted by Mr. W. J. Zimmerer.

_SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF_

KING LEAR'S WIFE AND OTHER PLAYS. 1920. 4to. With binding design by Charles Ricketts. Pp. 209. 15_s._ net. (_Out of print._)

A special edition of 50 copies signed by the author, in white and gold binding. 31_s._ 6_d._ net. (_Out of print._)

Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie (Lecturer in Poetry at the University of Liverpool) in _The Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury_.

This volume has been long overdue. It was the great good fortune of "Georgian Poetry" that it was permitted to give this remarkable tragedy of "King Lear's Wife" to the world, and thus to have the privilege of pioneering Mr. Bottomley's reputation among those who are unable to do much experimental reading. It was obviously not only a dramatic poem but an actable play; so actable, indeed, that it had the extraordinary fortune of being acted; and what was perhaps even more remarkable of a poetic play nowadays, it showed itself capable of being acted precisely and entirely as it had been written, the technique of the poet contriving to be, with a completeness not to be paralleled anywhere to-day except in Italy, simultaneously the technique of the playwright.

The other plays contained in this volume are still to be staged. They would certainly be not less effective than "King Lear's Wife" ... the cunning elaboration of supernaturalism in "The Crier by Night" and "The Riding to Lithend," its combination in the former with the elemental humanities, in the latter with vivid character and strangely heroic pa.s.sion; the deft lucidity of "Laodice and Danae," which might serve as a type of dramatic suspense pa.s.sing at the exact moment into inevitable catastrophe: these things, one would think, should be eminently practical politics for the theatre. If any manager wants plays in which exciting action is at the same time profound significance, here they are.

However, we are only able to speculate on this aspect of Mr. Bottomley's work. But we can console ourselves by simply reading the plays as poetry.... In the days when theurgy was still an honourable profession, Apollonius of Tyana said "Knowing what people say is nothing; I know what people don't say." That might be put as motto for such poetry as Mr. Bottomley writes.

It is the art of exhibiting realities. What people don't say is what they really are; and they don't say it because they can't get hold of it. But he can, and he can make them say it ... they speak and act as unconstrainedly as the folk of the everyday world; yet every word and every gesture is a flas.h.i.+ng revelation of spiritual destiny. And not only men and women, but nature also: tarns and mountains, winds and the night, trees and stars--of these, too, Mr. Bottomley "knows what they don't say."

To the technical beauty of Mr. Bottomley's poetry I have not alluded. It is extraordinary; but, as in all great poetry, it is no more than the sign that the reality of things is being successfully exhibited.

Mr. John Drinkwater in "The Nature of Drama" ("Prose Papers": London, Elkin Mathews, 1917, p. 220).

I do say that the capital power of the commercialised theatre in England to-day is so great that it has been able to impose its standard on nearly all the people who are habitually in contact with its merchandise ...

so that one piece of catchpenny insincerity after another is extolled by what pa.s.ses for expert opinion as a valuable contribution to the great art of the dramatist, while a piece of work like Mr. Gordon Bottomley's "King Lear's Wife," which ... is for vigour of imagination, poetic eagerness, and dramatic pa.s.sion not to be excelled by anything that has been put on to the English stage since the Elizabethans, is met with a clamour of ignorance ... in most cases (1915-16) we find no standard whatever being brought to the judgment of an original work of art other than a spurious morality.

Solomon Eagle in _The Outlook_.

The various societies which desire to regenerate the theatre talk a good deal about the poetic drama of the future, but they do not seem to take much trouble to find it.... Of Mr. Gordon Bottomley's fine plays only one, to the best of my knowledge, has yet been produced in this country.... There is certainly the possibility of a great play in their author, and one at least of them is better than any play in verse which has been staged for many years, and is likely to live longer than most of the so-called masterpieces of our time. If "Midsummer Eve" had been by Claudel, or "The Riding to Lithend" by some German (a most unlikely supposition) all the coteries would have been talking about them years ago....

"Midsummer Eve" is original, and the work of a poet.... There is fine meditative poetry in it, poetry, moreover, not grafted or glued on to its main structure, but growing out of the dialogue naturally, in an inevitable manner.... "Laodice and Danae" is equally good reading, and it is dramatic. But none of these plays is equal to the two latest, "The Riding to Lithend" and "King Lear's Wife."...

Enough has been written about the grimness of "King Lear's Wife," the fine bursts of poetry in it, and the remarkable character of Goneril.... "The Riding to Lithend" is, up to the present, the best of Mr.

Bottomley's plays; and its superiority is a superiority which, I think, would be still more evident on the stage than it is in print.... It comes straight out of an old tale; the characters are recreated and enriched.... The diction is, as a rule, perfect in its propriety and often striking in its beauty. And, above all, Gunnar is a hero, his fight a heroic fight, his courage, his generosity, his humanity (a few sentences to wife and hound are wonderfully chosen), and even his weaknesses are such as to move the heart. His fall is like the fall of all n.o.ble and fighting things; the sense of defeat comes with it, but above that a feeling of exultation. On the stage the end, I fancy, would be profoundly moving, and the fight exciting to a degree, though there is no obvious rhodomontade about it.

Mr. John Freeman in _The Bookman_.

This comely volume at last makes public what has been too long a fugitive and cloistered pleasure.... These five plays show the author in the most powerful exercise of his faculties. Imagination here is free and moves with growing ease, music enlarges like a splendid wind through the verse; and the common reproach of mere "poetic plays" has been avoided in these, where character and action develope as surely as music itself. Gordon Bottomley has remembered that his plays can have no life except in the activity of his characters.... Fine careless raptures alone will not produce a play like "The Riding to Lithend" ...

you may quote almost any lines from this fierce Icelandic play and find that what you are reading is vital and essential to the expression of character and action. And in this poetry, too ... the beautiful images flow in and out with the ease of light on water; the rhythms have the natural movement of thought, and the secret discipline of masculine habit.

"King Lear's Wife" will be familiar to many readers, but to others it will come with the delicious shock of a new creation.... The new play is a beam of light crossing the darkness of the old. Few pa.s.sages of modern verse reach the beauty of Goneril's hunting-narration; and it is no isolated beauty.

Mr. William Rose Benet in The Literary Review of the _New York Evening Post_.

"The Crier by Night" is one of the most powerful and eerie poetic dramas of the supernatural that have been written in the last two decades. To me the best-known translations of Maeterlinck pale beside it.... I hold "The Riding to Lithend" his greatest achievement. To me it is like a piece of gorgeous tapestry blurred by wood-smoke and sea-mist and hung on a granite wall.

The dramatic structure is knit as compact as a rock.

Across the s.h.i.+mmering imagery of the diction blows a chill and foreboding wind of the spirit.... The verse is n.o.bly distinguished. "King Lear's Wife" is also a notable piece of work.... It possesses convincing reality.... Again the dramatic structure satisfies completely. "Midsummer Eve" is packed with fragrant beauty ... that creeps around the heart.... The atmosphere is the important thing about this play and is unforgettable. "Laodice and Danae" is more usual (for Bottomley, for very few other writers), but it is the work of a sure dramatic craftsman with an enthralling tale to tell.... There is a splendid artistic austerity about his work ... yet mixed with this there is an entirely full-blooded love of the earth, a delight in intensely human detail.... He has indeed displayed many gifts imperishably bright. His name should stand high in the roster of modern English verse.

_The Morning Post._

The rare beauty and distinction of these works have been ungrudgingly acclaimed by many critics, but they have hitherto lacked that wider recognition for which they are indubitably destined.... But now the bringing of them together in one volume permits us all to appraise the quality of what is the most significant accomplishment of our Georgians. It is impossible to be impervious to the strength and beauty, knit together, of these dramas.... Criticism may note with admiration the unerring skill of dramatic structure; with delight the mastery of language, which constrains the simplest words to the greatest needs; with wonder the reading of the human heart.... The man who can handle character and emotion with such mastery both of language and imagination is indeed a poet.... In Mr.

Bottomley the Georgian era has found an authentic voice--a veritable interpreter.

_The Times Literary Supplement._

We must honour the devoted writers who keep alive the desire for the poetic drama, and none more than Mr.

Gordon Bottomley.... He is a poet and justifies his use of poetic speech; he is eloquent, incisive, has a blank verse of his own which he writes with increasing mastery.... In "The Riding to Lithend" he rises with his story ... the death of Gunnar is well done; you read it breathlessly, for he makes it the death of Gunnar indeed; and even the slayers feel the greatness of it. Mr. Bottomley, in a more fortunate age, might, we think, have been a dramatic poet like Fletcher; he has Fletcher's eloquence though not his fun,... but not, of course, Fletcher's familiarity with the stage.... If he had been bred in the theatre, he might, we think, have had Fletcher's real and delightful success.

_John O' London's Weekly._

The c.u.mulative effect of a re-reading of Mr.

Bottomley's work is to convince one that he is a real poet who can write real drama. In the matter of construction these plays approach perfection; the building up is masterly, and the verse is full of variety and imagination.... The finest as drama is "King Lear's Wife," though for sheer beauty and spiritual significance I should be inclined to place "Midsummer Eve" first. Only one of these plays has been acted in England. If we had a live stage they would all be acted.

_The New Statesman._

Mr. Gordon Bottomley's plays are good art. There are moments in "King Lear's Wife" when he approaches greatness.... It contains pa.s.sages of very rare force, and the dramatic power ... is of a very high quality.

In this play and in "The Crier by Night" he recalls to us not the late Elizabethans so much as that strange uneasy genius Thomas Lovell Beddoes.... He is a purer poet, dramatically, than was Beddoes, and his song has a clearer richer quality, more imaginative, though not quite so fantastic; but he resembles Beddoes in his stern saddened preoccupations with the pa.s.sing of mortals. Few plays have a greater unity of atmosphere or a more boding one than has "The Riding to Lithend."