King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 39

In all the plays, however, one finds a real poet who is also a real dramatist; there is little of decoration in any of the plays, and nothing of that windy seasonal rhetoric which is so common in some poetic plays.

I. B. in _The Manchester Guardian_.

It is an excellent thing that these plays, the earliest of which was published twenty years ago, should have been brought together and given a new lease of public life.... It is indeed quite extraordinary that, with so much publis.h.i.+ng of poetry during the last few years, work of such high distinction should have remained under cover. Mr.

Gordon Bottomley's art of tragedy, as well as his craftsmans.h.i.+p in verse, can be seen ripening through this series until it comes to a rich maturity in "King Lear's Wife." Here ... austerity and compa.s.sion are compounded, and so create the tragic atmosphere in which small words are big with infinite meaning and hints develope the power of hammer-blows.... It is the best of the group, and it is significant, as showing the inherent union between matter and form, that when the poet writes his best play he also writes his best verse.... He is admirably master of himself and of his medium.

_The Spectator._

Neither in the setting of the scene of "King Lear's Wife," the conduct of the story, or its embellishment and ill.u.s.tration, is there a wasted word.... But amid the abundance of this most rich, most ample of little plays, there is surely nothing--nothing, we mean, that can be detached from its setting--that surpa.s.ses Goneril's two speeches to her mother.... Whether Mr.

Gordon Bottomley--though calling his creations by their Shakespearean names in his heart--would not have done better to call his monarch Cole or Cadwallader in print is a question with which controversy will probably long be busy. It is a play which would not be spoiled if, in a pet, he had called the protagonists Smith, Jones, and Robinson. We recommend this test, by the way, to those who are called upon to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon the poetic drama. There is more in it than meets the eye.

_The London Mercury._

It is some years since the public was surprised to learn that Mr. Gordon Bottomley had written a prelude to "King Lear," which not only offered some solution of the problems of that work, but was also in itself a play of considerable beauty, originality, and power.

This piece now serves for the t.i.tle of a volume of collected plays.... It was effective and moving on the stage, and it makes its effect, though perhaps a different one, when it is read in the study.... An extract will serve to ill.u.s.trate the flexible, elastic, and individual versification. We should do wrong, however, if we were to give the impression that his plays are only for the study, valuable for such pa.s.sages, and lacking in the harder bones of dramatic merit. The action is not an excuse for decorative poetry, but is the immediate and all-important thing.... These are the creations of a dramatist who has no need of descriptive decoration to conceal the weakness of his prime conceptions.

_The Nation._

The wave of poetic drama has now ebbed, and this form is practised very little to-day, lyrical and experimental verse having almost entirely supplanted it. Mr. Bottomley's plays are the only ones which, with the going-out of the tide, have managed to escape its "long withdrawing roar" and retain a place on the sh.o.r.e.... Without any doubt they express a singular power of mysterious evocation.... They are not at all vague and inchoate--on the contrary, these towering shadows are remarkably and firmly differentiated....

We find "The Crier by Night" and "The Riding to Lithend"--especially the former--the most darkly and magically impressive of all the plays.... An image in the former positively makes you jump as Donne makes you jump with his imagery.... But perhaps his most striking achievement is the way he can make these shapes of an intensely brooding ... imagination speak out in taut, muscular, even gruffly vivid language. He has avoided, and very properly avoided, the tenuous chantings, effeminate imagery, and listless monochrome of the Celtic drama. Mr. Bottomley's plays, in fact, are peculiar and esoteric, but they undoubtedly achieve a strong success in their own character.

_The Athenaeum._

Mr. Gordon Bottomley is one of the few writers of poetical plays whom it is necessary to take very seriously: his blemishes are minor and few in number; his poetical qualities very much outweigh his defects.

He is at his best in expressing subtle states of mind, and in formulating generalizations. His real distinction lies in his dramatic power. His characters have solidity and life ... they are not mere symbols, but human beings. His plays are marked by the economy of construction of stage plays. It is significant to note that Mr. Bottomley's pieces are excellent in proportion as they are actable.

_The Sat.u.r.day Westminster Gazette._

Of their kind, Mr. Bottomley's plays are remarkably good. They have atmosphere and action; they are exquisitely wrought; they are moving and dramatic.

They will surely be among the most delightful discoveries of future generations; and if by the beginning of the twenty-first century our successors have contrived to establish a national or folk theatre, it is fairly safe to prophesy that three at least of them will find a place in its repertory.

_The Observer._

Since the issue of "The Crier by Night" in 1902, Mr.

Bottomley has worked with a sincerity and devotion which are more commendable than the more frequent essays of less conscientious artists. We remember one considerable and beautifully produced book of miscellaneous verse, "The Gate of Smaragdus," and there have been other plays issued semi-privately, until the publication of "King Lear's Wife" gave him a wider public, and reminded younger readers of his very definite and dignified talent.... If as a _tour de force_, the latter is the greatest, we still prefer, for sheer poetic beauty, for propriety of phrase and for directness of action, the earlier "Riding to Lithend." Hallgerd is an exceptionally fine creation, and she is given to speak pa.s.sages of rare force and beauty. This play, too, has a fierce dramatic quality.

Mr. R. Ellis Roberts in _The Daily News_.

Mr. Bottomley's plays have all one merit without which poetical drama is a thing indefensible. There is always in them a definite note of necessity.... Not only does Mr. Bottomley choose subjects which make his decision to write in verse seem natural and right, he writes blank verse of a dignity and worth which responds at once to the needs of natural, and the convention of poetic, speech. His poetry is in the full English tradition; he enjoys his vocabulary with that careful, inventive joy which is the privilege of all who are sensitive to the individual word. He can use rhetoric; but he rarely allows himself to be drawn away into mere hectic luxury of language. The best of his plays is, I think, "The Riding to Lithend," a rendering of the old life of Iceland, which really represents for us the pa.s.sionate, hasty life of the old Sagas, while it is free from the pedantry which spoils so many efforts to reproduce Scandinavian heroics. Hallgerd is a genuine piece of dramatic creation. "Midsummer Eve," with its quiet, wind-blown pathos, is equally notable; and the quality of its verse shows Mr. Bottomley's talent at its highest and simplest.

_The Actor._

In these plays, the public is reminded of Mr. Gordon Bottomley's almost unique power, as among his contemporaries, of presenting the sinister, the grim, the tragic, or the merely weird, in a poetic garment of power and beauty ... in dramatic force and verse charm.

_The Journal of Commerce_, Chicago, U.S.A.

These plays are put into a format and style of book that honour the contents, and when you know the contents of this remarkable dramatic poetry that is praise indeed. They hold you strangely.... The dialogue is skilfully modulated, it is a veritable song-speech, illuminated by luminous pauses, by the speaking silences that can invest, if rightly used, the static with so much more dramatic feeling than the more obviously emotional action. The plays are impressive even in the reading of them, then how much more effective they would be if acted and declaimed--but in a manner worthy of their high art.