and besides, we are less tolerant of
"Wardour Street" than
when the Eminent Vic-
torian plied his ready
pen. Let it be granted
that he has suffered an
undue decline in favour,
and that, though per-
haps his diffuse his-
torical dramas are not
the matter that will re-
store him to his honour-
able niche, he does here
contrive often to rise to
the height of his argu-
ment when deeply
moved by the legend of
his chosen hero's valour
in war, wisdom in coun-
cil, and passionate
English nationalism and
Pope-baiting cisalpin-

ism.

turbable Gurth seemed to me a sound mode browse calmly on strange vege-
piece of work, and so too was Mr. tables under a flaming sun what time
CLIFFORD MARQUAND'S Stigand, though Harold and Tostig have words. Harold
his description of the battle of Senlac is wrecked on Ponthieu's rock-strewn
lost its effect from being largely inaud-coast against a black night symmetric-
ible. Mr. SCOTT SUNDERLAND'S clear ally patterned with stars-all very
and fiery elocut on was welcome, though highly stylised and, to tell truth, very
he seemed to fail to give us an impres- agreeable; and competently painted by
sion of any depths in the stark, am- Miss HILDA BLACKMAR DASH.
bitious, capable Norman.
costumes were effective. Gayer, I should
Miss GWEN FFRANGÇON-DAVIES, after judge, than the fashion of their supposed
her charming prologue as a DU MAURIER day; and indeed the general air of tidy
beauty of the mid-seventies, performed splendour in the interiors consorts ill
her pale part of Edith with a wan with the franker kind of social historian's

Miss 1876. "ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE YOU TO 1066."

Count William of Normandy.
Miss 1876
Harold
Stigand

MR. SCOTT SUNDERLAND.

MR. LAURENCE OLIVIER.

MR. CLIFFORD MARQUAND.

The

record of our AngloSaxon domestic technique. It was perhaps a pity to clothe the passionate intriguing vamp, Aldwyth, in Mephistophelian red and so tempt Miss EILEEN BELDON to a rather tiresome overelabcration of her villainy.

In summary: Harold may be said to have antiquarian rather than dramatic interest. There were undeniable streaks of dulness; but there were at least occasional flashes of true fire; there was always something pleasant to look upon, and there were two jokes.

An intelligent programme, with a genuinely informative introductory note by Mr. ALAN BLAND, laid us under renewed debt to Sir BARRY JACKSON's intelligent management. T.

"GENTLEMEN PREFER

BLONDES' (PRINCE OF WALES).

A diary, whether composed by PEPYS or by

The chronicle is well put together and we are given clearly the sequence of events and the play of motive from the time when Harold begs hunting-leave of his ailing King—a not very plausible motive this, by the way, for leaving so potentially disturbed a kingdom at so inconvenient a time -till the fatal Norman arrow pierced the eye of the last of the Saxon chieftains and the way was open for the melancholy and faint sweetness which the lady in the present case, can making of a united kingdom of England. faded tactfully into the background. hardly be expected to offer the best The pageant was interesting and the Mr. PAUL SHELVING has generously possible material for conveyance into relation generally, undistracted by indulged his pretty and effective man- dramatic form. For one thing it is critical emendations of our original nerisms. HALLEY'S bloody comet sways impossible to do full justice to the literschoolboy impressions, flattered the upon the back-cloth; a leaf from a Book ary qualities of the original. In Gentlememory. The outline of the character of Hours inspires the background of the men Prefer Blondes (the book) the happy of rebellious Tostig was indeed filled in decorous wooing of Edith by Harold in and careless inconsequence of the diarwith some plausible effect of explaining the convent garden while (something ist's illiterate style, and in particular his treachery as an affair of tempera- out of key with this convention) there her total disregard of the value of conment. Harold remains the patriot demi- is a duet between a gramophone record junctions, were at least as great an god-a noble figure, well interpreted of a nightingale in a Surrey garden and attraction as her story and her selfby Mr. LAURENCE OLIVIER (perhaps Miss FFRANGÇON DAVIES, presumably revelation. Here in the play, though a little too young for Harold's forty Anglo-Saxon music for her having been we get occasional lapses from grammar, stormy years), whose proud carriage and tactfully inserted by Mr. ERNEST IRVING this attraction has been largely sacriadmirable elocution gave great pleasure. while the bird is taking breath; South ficed. On the other hand we gain Mr. RALPH RICHARDSON's loyal imper-Down mutton in the Bayeux tapestry something from the visible presentation,

enforced by an authentic American
accent, of a type not very easy for Eng-
lishmen (it is one of the few things we
have not yet imported
from over there) to
realise on paper; and
we gain even more from
the greater prominence
given to the contrasted
character of Dorothy,
the brunette. The brutal-
candour of her devasta-
ting interventions,
which not only help to
explain the preference
that the "gentlemen
of the play have for a
blonde, but serve as an
excellent foil to the disin-
genuous innocence of
the heroine, gave us the
best fun of the evening.

heaviest task, did all that was humanly eron" Dorothy, had an easier part. She possible to realise a type of hypocrisy just stood around and threw off cynical developed to the point of self-deception. comments, many of them audible, or

HAJELDEN.

Dorothy Shaw.
Lady Beekman
Sir Francis Beekman
Lorelei Lee

loyally obliterated herself when Lorelei required privacy for her interviews.

Mr. ERNEST THESIGER as Mr. Spoffard had a rather poor allotment of fun. He may have been in his own element, but made little attempt to be in the American picture. Mr. GEORGES ROMAIN and Mr. ADRIAN ROSLEY were extremely divertingas two Frenchmen extracted from an immemorial past of stage tradition. But the best of the smaller sketches was Mr. NICK ADAMS' Gus Eisman, the hyphenated gentleman who had provided Lorelei with the wherewithal for acquiring that higher education which he had himself missed. A pathetic figure, he won our sympathies alike by his magnanimous appreciation of her advance beyond. his control and by his quiet acceptance of the irony of fate. Sic vos non vobis. The very generosity which had enabled Lorelei to expand herself by travel had made it possible for Another to supplant him. I wish we could have seen more of Mr. NICK ADAMS. He arrived on the scene far too late.

MISS EDNA HIBBARD.
MISS HELEN FERRERS.
MR. MORTON SELTEN.
MISS JOAN BOURDELLE.

The other diversions were of a lower order, being for the most part frankly farcical, though I should have been sorry to miss the episode of the French lawyer and his son: (Lorelei, with a true sense of American proprietorship, couldn't understand what a Frenchman should be doing in a hotel like the Paris Ritz.) The constant use of such diversions-I shouldn't care to say how many knocks occurred on the door of Almost she persuaded even us that Lorelei's apartment-was needed to there could be nothing inherently vicious mitigate what tended to be a certain in so "refined" an ingénue of vice. monotony in the general conditions. Miss EDNA HIBBARD, as her "chapFor the scene, though it changed from the royal suite on an ocean liner to a sitting-room, scarcely less royal, in the Ritz at Paris, remained in all essentials the same, serving continuously as Lorelei's happy hunting-ground. Nor was there much variety in her method, though towards the end the exposure of the early stages of her career called for a finer exhibition of persuasive art to defeat it. As with the book, the end came just when our powers of enjoyment were on the verge of exhaustion. I doubt whether we could have borne another Act of it.

There are one or two rather ugly features the gratuitous episode, for instance, of the improper (or riskay) picture-postcards and the rejuvenation of the amorous old dotard, Spoffard père; and one line must have escaped the vigilance of the Censor; but if generous allowance is made for the leading motive of the play its humour may pass as sufficiently permissible.

Miss JOAN BOURDELLE, who had the

STAGE FRENCHMEN.

I cannot judge how much more--or less I should have enjoyed the play if I hadn't read the book. But it is certain that there are many features in the printed page which, however improbable, may, by the doubtful light of one's imagination, be accepted as intelligible fantasy, but in the fierce glare of the stage become preposterous farce. For this reason, and because we lose, as I said, the very distinctive quality of Lorelei's literary style, I must for myself come to the conclusion, though the play made me laugh a good deal, that the book's "the thing.' O. S.

"Office Furniture, Dentist's Equipment, Stock-in-Trade of a Ladies' Outfitter, and a large quantity of Easter Eggs, comprising:Gent's Spanish mahogany wardrobe, antique tallboy chest of drawers, Spanish mahogany secretaire, etc."-West-Country Paper. Connoisseurs will agree that Spanish furniture reached its zenith in the Oolitic Period.

Guest. "ANGEL, MAY I USE YOUR TELEPHONE? I WANT TO HEAR HOW BABY IS. THE PAPER - HANGER SAID HE'D GIVE HIM HIS BOTTLE."

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

the postman of shell-swept Rheims anxiously peering through his spectacles for the numbers of the surviving houses. Mr. FURST's translation, entitled As They Seemed To Me (METHUEN), is most capably done; and he deserves an extra good mark for translating the raciest idioms literally and giving the Italian in brackets.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.) AN Italian FROISSART, a chronicler who is also a picturemaker, in these terms GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO describes Signor UGO OJETTI, the author of Cose Viste. A selection in English of some forty sketches and essays from Signor OJETTI's delightful three volumes has now been prepared by Mr. HENRY Maps of the Spanish Main and the names of DRAKE and FURST, himself one of D'ANNUNZIO's foreign legionaries and FROBISHER and GRENVILLE enrich even the covers of their linguistic disciples. The essayist, nominated by MUSSOLINI books for those fortunate authors who write in "The Golden two years ago as the editor of the Corriere della Sera, Hind" series of biographies. Mr. MILTON WALDMAN, in his approaches life rather as a connoisseur than a thinker. Of Sir Walter Raleigh (LANE), has known well how to make use an old Roman family, he has dedicated himself almost en- of his matchless opportunities, and if occasionally he does tirely to letters and art, lived in Paris, travelled in America incline, as historians will, to belittle one's dearest idols, yet and Asia, and done yeoman service in the War zone as when all is said the figure he presents to us is placed more conserver of national art treasures. Many of these ex- nearly where I for one would have him than some earlier. periences, reacting on a highly sensitized and emotionally authorities have allowed. The writer, not shirking the adacquisitive temperament, are reflected in the present book, mission that RALEIGH could be as merciless on occasion as he the writer's method being that of a literary impressionist, a was reckless of his own safety, or that he was as vain and verbal pointilliste. In this manner a score of notable overbearing towards others as he was spiritual in his philosoEuropeans are put on the canvas. KING VICTOR appears, phic conceptions, finds him almost incredibly versatile in an and QUEEN MARGHERITA, MOMMSEN and BOITO, MAETER- age of varied accomplishment, scientist no less than statesLINCK and BARRĖS. PUCCINI figures in his villa among the man, soldier as well as courtier, at his greatest as a man of Tuscan stone-pines, busied with the score of Turandot; letters, and only rather incidentally, because it was the RODIN carves a beef-steak as big as a flag and talks about fashion of the time, a sailor. This coloniser of a New World, sculpture as a hedger might talk about hedging; ZOLA believing that dreams and gold pieces were both alike worth arrives in Rome to investigate the POPE and is tactfully dying for, united with the most far-sighted patriotism the diverted to a secular prince. Less illustrious figures are coolest calculations of personal interest, and with the selfhandled with equal distinction, the most memorable being sacrifice of a martyr a never-failing consciousness of the in