ONE assumes that Mr. SEAN O'CASEY'S method of setting his tragedy against a pattern of jokes is not due to ignorance of the difficulties involved but is a deliberate device to heighten the effect of the catastrophe. In The Shadow of a Gunman the tragic ending is effective enough when it arrives, but it is not sufficiently prepared, or perhaps too subtly, so that the audience has got itself into a thoroughly rollicking mood (sustained by Mr. ARTHUR SINCLAIR's broad diverting humour) and refuses to smile but must needs laugh aloud at everything. The discerning, who in

WHY WASH?

there, and, when they are found and the scenes-a diverting game for the in-
young girl is haled to the lorry by her structed-I gathered from the descrip-
brutal captors, the two room-fellows, tion, "Front sitting-room of 'Granville'
whose brave pretences have given place in the Paradise of Little Clerks, Wands-
to abject terror, let her go to her death, worth," that we were going to be shown
the poet cursing his cowardice, the the drab life of mean and sordid folk.
huckster bawling that it was no affair But Miss MAY SINCLAIR, whose novel
of his anny way.
has been translated into terms of the
Irish dramatists of the candid school theatre by Mr. FRANK VOSPER, does not
are not kind to their countrymen. Mr. forget that little clerks have hearts that
O'CASEY has indeed an almost inhuman beat as true as big clerks', and her John
detachment. The black-and-tanner who Ransome, the much-tortured hero of
makes the search of Seumas's room is this charming and forcible play, is a
a bully and a ruffian, but he is a less fine human being, with character, tender-
contemptible figure than Seumas or ness, loyalty, humour and courage; and
Donal or Tommy Owens, the little it may be as well to say at once that
boasting slum-rat, or the drink-sodden
Adolphus Grigson, with his Bible and
his law-abiding pose.

This play is a reminder of unhappy things that both Irishmen and Englishmen of sensibility would be glad to forget. Perhaps, then, there is something to be said for the laughter which is the standard English way of relief from disquieting reflection. I hope that was partly the explanation of it.

Mr. ARTHUR SINCLAIR, who plays most of the two Acts in his untidy bed, has a wonderful SINCLAIR part. A gross, lazy, peppery humbug of a man is Seumas Shields. Mr. HARRY HUTCHINSON'S Donal was skilfully and carefully played -a little too quietly for comfortable hearing. Mr. SYDNEY MORGAN'S Adolphus couldn't have been bettered, and Mr. BRIAN O'DARE'S Tommy Owens was horribly effective. Miss MAIRE O'NEILL and Miss SARA ALLGOOD gave us two competent short studies of Irish women, and Miss EILEEN CAREY'S charming little portrait of Minnie owed more perhaps to her natural gifts than to her technical accomplishment. I say "perhaps,' because it isn't easy to be sure that her reticent method wasn't a deliberate choice and the best choice for the part. This company of players deserves the benefit of all doubts.

J. M. SYNGE's Riders to the Sea, with Miss SARA ALLGOOD in her old part of the bereaved Maurya, did not move us as it was wont to do. Is this really no more than a too self-conscious literary drama which fails to wear?

Seumas Shields.. MR. ARTHUR SINCLAIR.
the Second Act begin to see the drift of
the playwright's plan, are necessarily
grieved. However, I think Mr. O'CASEY
must share some of the blame for that.
Donal Davoren, a young poet
whether good or bad it was not easy to
determine, as Mr. HARRY HUTCHINSON
persistently read his verses to the
backcloth-is sharing a room in the
distraught Dublin of 1920 with a vulgar
feckless pedlar, Seumas Shields. The
other denizens of the tenement have
decided that Donal is a gunman on the
run, which flatters the boy's vanity others, coming late, stood through the
and helps him to retain the admiration
of that sturdy patriot, pretty little
Minnie Powell. When the house is
raided by the" auxiliaries," Minnie takes

the bag of bombs which some casual

member of the I.R.A. has left under Seumas' bed to her own room, thinking they will be less likely to be looked for

Three ladies of the audience performed
deeds of grace which deserve a chronicler.
One (poor darling!) afflicted with a cough
twice fled from the theatre to avoid
spoiling her neighbours' pleasure; two

first play. A tablet should be put up
to them at the Court in perpetuam rei
memoriam.

T.

"THE COMBINED MAZE" (ROYALTY).
Studying the programme with the
view of deducing the plot and general
drift from the list of characters and

CIRCE AT THE POLYTECHNIC.
Ranny.
MR. RICHARD BIRD.
MISS MARY GREW.

Violet Usher

Mr. RICHARD BIRD's quite superb acting carried the play past all traps and difficulties to assured success.

Technically there is much to be said. against the play, which conspicuously suffers from the weaknesses incident to adaptation from the novel form. "Ten days," "Two months," "Eighteen. months," "Two years," "Three years pass." The novel can explain; the play must assume, or throw out just a bare hint or two of, what has happened in the intervals. Mr. BIRD showed you, with an admirable skill and a subtlety which is beyond praise, his handsome, resolute, modest, boyish, innocent "Ranny" keeping his fine body fit at the "Poly "; diffidently in love. with the equally staunch, diffident and charming Winnie; crudely seduced by the wiles of her false friend, Violet; trapped into marriage; depressed by

by Mr. AUBREY MATHER, the producer, MR. MAURICE CHEVALIER AND MISS YVONNE and by his team of players.

THE TRIUMPH OF TWEDDELL.

I NOTE that in The Manchester Guardian the recent Amateur Championship meeting at Hoylake is described as "a quiet and domestic event." In view of the absence of some of our most famous native players and the small contingent of competitors from Overseas there is some apparent justification for this description. But a more careful scrutiny reveals features of outstanding and possibly epoch-making importance in their bearing on sporting journalism.

To begin with, this was the first occasion recorded in golfing annals on which the championship was won by a physician, and at the same time one of the most formidable competitors was a distinguished surgeon. This fact, however, may be passed over without detailed comment since no calling is immune to the lure of the links. Much more remarkable is the information as to the antecedents of the winner divulged by the writer from whom I have already quoted. For it transpires that Dr. TWEDDELL is a Durham man by birth, that he learned his golf in Yorkshire, improved it at Aberdeen, spent some time on the Manchester links at Hopwood, and is now in practice at Stourbridge. The advantages of this Odyssey cannot be exaggerated when one reflects on the peculiar virtues of the various districts in which he has successively resided the fine fighting qualities of the men of Durham; the imperturbable solidity of the Yorkshireman : the pawkiness of the Aberdonian; the traditional pre-eminence in light. and leading of the Lancastrian, and the fame enjoyed by Stourbridge for the manufacture of iron and firebricks.

The excellence of Dr. TwEDDELL'S iron play was remarkable, and it is not fanciful to ascribe it to heredity, since I find, on consulting the Dictionary of National Biography, that a distinguished engineer of that name in the middle of the last century was the inventor of the hydraulic riveter.

REAUCHAMP. 2)

The success of a competitor so formid ably equipped ought not to have excited surprise. It was rather the predestined triumph of one endowed with an irresistible superiority complex. And it is to be hoped that in future our golfing chroniclers, instead of confining their cast a gloom on these meetings. As a attention to the condition of the course, great writer has recently observed, the the conduct of the spectators and details weakness of British golfers, amateurs of the play, will devote themselves to and professionals alike, is an inability tracing the family history of the com- to preserve uniformity in excellence. petitors and their efforts to overcome How painfully acute are the emotions those hereditary inhibitions and sub- excited by these fluctuations of form But conscious urges which are responsible is admirably shown in the moving for the tragic collapses that so often lines recently written by a friend who

Joan (to next-door neighbour's child). "VERY WELL, I WON'T SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN; AND I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU ANY MORE. SO YOU'D BETTER GET YOUR PEOPLE TO MOVE."

for obvious reasons is desirous to re-
main anonymous:-
:-

To

"At Worplesdon and Leatherhead
Strong women weep for WETHERED;
And clubmates of stout TOLLEY
Are whelmed in melancholy;
Stourbridge, happy Stourbridge, is going

to strike a medal

TWEDDELL."

THE LATE LAMENTING. CHRISTMAS DAY has its glamour and Boxing Day its devotees. New Year's Day finds the impassive Scots almost excited. Easter Monday, Whit-Monday and the August Bank Holiday are beacons in the lives of millions of toilers.

a horror of being late; ""It is so diffi-
cult accurately to gauge the time a car
takes;" "Taxis are so rare that one
must snatch at the first," and so forth.
When we are late the fault is anyone's
but our own, usually our wives'.

And we what will be our redress? We shall have none but the satisfaction that a little malice can give. For instance, when he gives me a chance, I am now saying, at intervals, "I hear it was a wonderful spread." E. V. L.

So much for the mere condition of unpunctuality. We come now to degrees. TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING. Lateness, so long as it is a matter of minutes, is tolerable, and in fact it is of the poor-house at Merry flats, in the parish of [One hundred and seventy-four male inmates now so common that hostesses and Govan, recently marched five miles to the theatrical managers prepare for it, so Council Chamber to protest against being that if you are punctual you are early. obliged to eat porridge seven hundred and But the number of minutes is strictly thirty times in the year.] rationed: the curtain must rise within ten of the advertised time and guests must be at dinner within fifteen. For lunch eight minutes is the permitted limit.

Let that be granted, but allow me at the same time to know what I am talking about when I say that the day on which our Hunt gives the earth-stoppers their annual dinner is marked with a letter no less ensanguined in hue. There are earth-stoppers in our Hunt who could sleep peacefully through all the sacred anniversaries that I have named but who, on the day of this feast, must be acutely conscious of everything that is happening. Such a one is Pedder, a It is unwritten rules like these that gardener and handyman of my acquaint- make Pedder so remarkable and worth ance, who, having charge of a spinney (I hope) the attention I am paying him; which is drawn several times every for, having lost his "invite," he trusted season, is an important guest on such to what has hitherto been a very sound occasions. Although by no means un-memory, and in his best clothes, with a able to provide delicacies in his own "twist" on him (his own phrase) that he home, and although married (for the wouldn't have taken five pounds for, he second time) to an excellent cook, this arrived at "The Half Moon," Thoresby dinner means much to him, and is worth Minor, an hour-and-a-half on foot from preparing for with fasting if not also his home, at 6.55 on Tuesday, May 3rd with prayer. Prayer quite possibly, for exactly a day late! Pedder is a light in his community and holds forth in some small conventicle on Sunday mornings; and did not the greatest Nonconformist of our time, CHARLES SPURGEON, explain to a disapproving elder his devotion to cigars by saying that he smoked them to the glory of God?

Into the ethics of earth-stopping this is no place to enter, even if I were qualified. There are some who like to think that the pack should do without the advantage which the process gives them. These chiefly are non-huntingmen. Hunting-men view the proceeding with more leniency. There let the matter stay. My immediate concern is with the admirable and abundant repast offered by the Hunt to its earth-stopping allies, which this year was fixed for Monday, May 2nd. Pedder showed me the "invite.' The feast was to be held at "The Half Moon," Thoresby Minor, at seven o'clock: his horizon again had a star indeed, a star to which he intended to hitch a very receptive digestive apparatus.

|

He cannot forget it; nor has the countryside been allowed to forget it; nor have I. Before the fatal 3rd of May Pedder was interested in other things-in religion, in potatoes, in slugs, in cauliflowers, in blackbirds, in weedkillers, in this here broadcasting, in that there Labour Party; but now there is but one theme for his mind and tongue his colossal blunder.

"How I come to make such a muddle of it beats me altogether."

IF there is virtue in a name
As some, in spite of SHAKESPEARE, claim,
Life should be one long wedding-bell
For those in Merryflats who dwell;
Instead, alas! of which
Nearly nine-score of them, red-hot
With wrath, have now bewailed their lot
In tones of dolorous pitch.
You ask what urges them to vent
What is the grievance that of late
So vocally their discontent-
Caused them to march and demonstrate?
For respite and relief they pray
The answer's crystal clear.
From porridge-porridge twice a day

All through the rolling year.
Scots wha of old wi' WALLACE bled
Were never reared upon white bread;
On oatmeal they grew stout and strong,
And rushed into the battle throng

To conquer or to die.
But Scots wha hae in Merry flats
Their home need ampler fare, and that's
What prompts their bitter cry.
Moreover from their piteous tale
We learn that prisoners in jail
Enjoy a liberal diet free
From nauseous monotony,

"Pedder,' says my old woman to me,
Pedder, you've never been late for your Are
ordinary vittles. Think of being twenty-On
four hours late to the invited feast. You
must be getting to second childhood.'
That's what worries me. Do you think
I be?"

"If I ever had anything really fixed
in my mind it was that the dinner was
of a Tuesday."

"When I got to the 'The Half Moon' and heard that it had been yesterday you could have knocked me down with a feather."

"A whole day late! Of course there's something funny about that, I know; but the shame of it is what I can't get over."

"I've always been famous as a
punctual kind of man up till now."

"The more I think of it, the more..
And so forth.

We arrive now at the question of unpunctuality, by which, oddly enough, although earliness and lateness are equally involved in the word, we mean only lateness. Those who come early do so at their own risk; they may be smiled at for poor fish, but they are These lamentations will never quite under no stigma. It is those that come cease. Time will soften the smart, but late whose conduct is execrated. When to the end of his days his lateness and we come early it is due notoriously to his loss will form the burden of Pedder's a foible of our own: "We have such | dirge.

While blameless Merryflatters
doomed their appetites to stay
oatmeal served up twice a day
Upon the Poor-house platters.
The upshot of their bold appeals
For more variety in meals
Is doubtful; but the powers that be
Might well appoint a referee,

And Mr. Justice HORRIDGE
Seems on euphonious grounds the best
Equipped to succour the oppressed

Victims of toujours porridge.

Another Headache for the Historian.

At the presentation of Colours to the Irish Guards :

"The little Princess Elizabeth, seated in her perambulator at the foot of the terrace, clapped her baby hands and gurgled delightfully as she watched the evolutions of the Guards." Sunday Paper.

"Little Princess Elizabeth was present, but

could hardly be regarded as a spectator. Even turb her: she slept peacefully all the time." the lively music of the big band did not disAnother Sunday Paper.