AN AUSTRALIAN POET-DRAMATIST.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1085, 25 March 1911, Page 9

AN AUSTRALIAN POET-DRAMA-TIST.

The London "Nation" writes very appreciatively of a poetic play "To-mor-row," by John Lo Gay Brereton, a well-known Australian verso writer: — Mr. Le Gay Brereton, of Sydney University, is known to some of us in England as a critical essayist, who has taken the Elizabethan drama for his main field; tho publication of his oneact play, "To-morrow," should make him known to a good many more as a poet and a dramatist. We are all liable to prejudice; and it may well be that •knowledgo of Mr. Brereton's academic position and specialisation in tho Elizabethan. will prejudice many against him as a creativo writer; they will think it impossible that a play by him should bo anything but a scholarly imitation of tho famous dramatists he studies and expounds. And perhaps the prejudice will bo stiffened by knowing further that this play of his is Elizabethan in subject and atmosphere, since it is, in Mr. Breroton's words, "a dramatic sketch of tho character and environment of Robert Greene." A few pages of "To-morrow" will altogether dispel that prejudice, in spite of tho fact that tlio verso has a dccidedly Elizabethan flavour, and has also the Elizabethan knack of causelessly dropping into proso for a few sentences —a knack that Mr. Brereton had done better to avoid. But in every other respect Mr. Brereton's "To-morrow" is evidently the wort: of a man in whom an unmistakably dramatic talent has been stimulated by study of Elizabethan methods to its own native and individual expression; it lias learnt from its great exemplars how to.mako personalities reveal themselves in poetry clearly and yet subtly, and , how to make poetry "hdd swiftness and vividness to an action, instead of encumbering an action with superfluous beauty. Robert Greene himself would probably have refused to recognise this "dramatic sketch" as a play, though ho could 110s have helped recognising himself in it. Tho form and treatment of its substance is entirely modc-rn; the action is wholly psychological, though perfectly theatrical as wo see theatrical matters; it is brought to no rounded-oif conclusion, but ends interrogatively, as it were, on an unresolved discord. In a word, it is simply an episode printed dramatically; tho merest suggestion, Greene would have said, of a possible play. But it is- an episode which typifies' a whole lifo of. rare interest, into which is concentrated a complete character, tho strange, perverse, striving, brilliant, futile character of Robert Greene; and that is the sort of episode which perfectly satisfies our dramatic sense-to-day. It is. possible that Mr. Brereton's play will chiefly interest those who havo. already been attracted • and baffled by Greens'scharacter. Nevertheless, wero any manager bold enough to stage this play, it would bo surprising if an audience which had never heard of Greene were not held by its vigorous motions, its taking .-erso, and the rapid, surprising, but Inevitable changes in its action. The play is founded, presumably, on a well- ■ 'kit6'Wn"passage in one: of' Greeners, pamIt, l)hfeis' touch tells how, "having/'been wrought up to repciitanco for his villainies and sins fa purely artistic ru"peiitance, as. Mr. Brereton perceives and makes clear), he fell back again into his old courses through tho. "chaff" and persuasion of his ready-to-perish friends and ■ copesmates. Mr. Brereton has mixed into this the pathetic business ■ of the proud, well-born girl whom Greene married and then deserted; and

the fascinated love of the poor woman, his landlady, wlio sinned for his sake, clung to him .through all his viee and cruelty,. and •in the end crowned his head with bays , when he died of drink and debauchery. It would not bo fair to give: any long, detached samples' of Mr. Brereton's pqclic quality. There are lines of striking imagery hero and there:— "Away, Touch me not, for your words aro fallen as seeds Between our lives, and therefrom grows a hedgo Of thorny hate." Or a£ain: — " Fire. cannot turn and dance along the ' ways Left bare'and blackened; what has been, has bssn." Greene's outward portrait is vividly drawn in these three lines, as well as the dull hatred of the man who speaks them, the drunken husband Greene has wronged:— "He sat there snivelling, and the tears ran down Into the pointed flame of beard that seems Still straining home to kindred fires below. . But Mr. Brcrcton, like a true dramalist, puts his intens'est. emotions not into set quotable speeches, but into rapid dialosue. The few long speeches aro purposely kept from breaking out of the prevailing mood; and it is in flashes of single lines that Mr. Brereton's talent for words comes out best. We must be content with asserting (anyone can prove it for himself) that Mr. Brereton's "To-morrow" is a remarkable and genuinely poetic play.