THE MANTLE OF GILBERT.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 73, 17 June 1927, Page 14

THE MANTLE OF GILBERT.

{Written for The Sun.} A FEW years back there was removed from the vestibule of the Savoy Theatre, London, a tablet commemorating the long run of “The Mikado.” Us place was taken by a tablet that celebrated the longer run of “Paddy the Next Best Thing.” This might appear a sad commentary on our impoverished days. “Ichabod,” the devoted Savoyard murmurs, as he passes the spot: "The glory of the Savoy has departed." The glory may have departed; but is the spirit dead? Maybe it is only driven into the suburbs by the American invasion. The story of the post-Gilbert-and-Sullivan days at the Savoy is a story of twilight. After the famous quarrel over the carpet in the foyer at the Savoy, a quarrel which separated the famous collaborators, they came together again to give us “Utopia Limited” and “The Grand Duchess,” the last-named the thirteenth of their joint works and their only failure. After that they separated for good and all. Sir Arthur Sullivan found a new librettist In Captain Basil Hood. He lived to score only a portion of “The Emerald Isle,” and his work was completed by Edward German, who with Basil Hood attempted to carry on the GilbertSullivan tradition with “Merrie England” and “A Princess of Kensington.” There have been sporadic revivals of Gilbert and Sullivan at the Savoy, but the illustrious theatre went down, with others, before the inrush of American pieces, musical and not musical. There was a period when Bernard Shaw reigned at tho Savoy. A piquant succession. A cartoonist of that day depicted the modern Aristophanes in the habiliments of Strephon, in "lolanthe,” and tootling upon a whistle, with ribbons streaming from his hat. He conveyed very aptly one's sense of a misfit. It is true that "Arms and the Man’ was converted into "The Chocolate Soldier,” but only under protest of the author, as all who possess programmes of that light opera may read. Whoever is destined to wear the mantle of W. S. Gilbert, it is certainly not Mr Shaw. The spiritual home of “The Chocolate Soldier" is Daly’s, not the Savoy. II; is Continental light opera, not British comic opera. We look about for other humorists, and our glance falls naturally upon Shaw’s biographer and frequent opponent in controversy, Mr G. K. Chesterton, Here, it might seem, we are in a more promising region. If we look a little closer into Mr Chesterton’s genius, however, we will come upon two reasons why he has not found his Sullivan. The first reason he sets forth himself in one of his more intimate poems, wherein he marvels at the change wrought on the face of a beloved one at the sound of music. He regards himself.as lacking in that respect. It may be possible to write beautiful and sonorous verse, and yet bo a little hazy about the difference between "Annie Laurie” and "The Last Rose of Summer.” When one thinks of it. there i 3 in Chesterton’s poems little beyond "The Donkey” and some verses in the English hymnal that has appealed to • composer. The other reason is not so easy to express. Chesterton’s piety is stronger than his wit. He is a “jongleur” as his own St. Francis liked to call hlm•elf. “I cock my battered plumage to the glory of the Lord,” he writes somewhere. He jokes with a desperate seriousness. Gilbert never imported metaphysics into an opera. I doubt if Mr Ctesterton, were he ever to write one, cculd keep metaphysics out. His ene-act play. ‘Magic,” which was produced within a stone’s throw of the Savoy, is. for all Us wit and sparkle, • desperately serious affair. One need only read “The Ethics of Elfland” in his "Orthodoxy’’ to realise that; Mr Chesterton could not bring in a fairy as Gilbert could, with due regard to the needs of choristers and ballerina. Gilbert Chesterton is a preacher: W. S. Gilbert was a magistrate with a showman’s flair. The cloak will not lit Mr Chesterton. We mu3t turn to some of the younger men, and I do not think we will have to look very far. It Is a long time now since “Punch” rejected W. S. Gilbert’s "Yarn of the Nancy Bell” as being too cannibalistic for the reader's taste. Since then “Punch” has harboured many humorist!!, but none better fitted to take up the mantle of Gilbert than Mr A. P. Herbert. He has Gilbert’s satirical <lelight In British institutions; be has Gilbert’s faculty for spinning off tuneful lyrics. If the spirit of the Savoy has been banished from the Strand and the Embankment, It appears to have found a temporary shrine at Hammersmith. Any one who saw and heard that triumphantly British revue, "Riverside Nights,” must have been struck by the Savoyard flavour of one episode in particular, for which Mr Herbert was responsible. The persons of the play were a housemaid, a milkman, a policeman, and a burglar. I have foolishly forgotten the name of the composer who set Mr Herbert’s lyrics to music; but I know that words and music alike set one thinking, not of the ghosts of the Lord High Chancellor, Private Willis, or Pooh Bah, but of their lineal descendants. Mr Herbert recently encountered failure In “The White Witch.” a comedy drama which depended for .its power on an elaborate stage effect presenting the ramming of a yacht in the English Channel. One could not help feeling that if Mr .Herbert had been true to his genius “The White Witch" might have proved a second "Pinafore.” It may be argued that wireless and the kinema have altered the face of theatre-land. Of this, however, I am certain, that all our mastery over the forces of nature will not supply us with native wit and native melody. Savoy Hill is now the mammoth purveyor of entertainment. The days when people came to stare in wonder at the electric light bulbs carried in the coiffures cf Gilbert's fairies, are no more. But it was not the electric light that really mattered. It was the genius that could set the Lord High Chancellor and the two troopers dancing like goblins in Parliament Square under tho benevolent eye of Private Willis and of Big Ben. To-day familiarity with Big Ben begets ennui. You can hear him anywhere if you happen to be within cooee of an aerial. American musical comedy has ousted "A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Drury Lane. American musical comedy will beget ennui in time. Some day Mr Herbert may find his Sullivain and there will be an end of ennnl ‘as he dons the cloak of Gilbert. C. R. ALLEN,

“LA CORRIDA DE TOROS” (Written for THE SUN.) r PiIE bullfight, national sport or A pseudo-sport of Spain, has figured more than once in recent cables, first when the Prince of Wales refused to attend a “corrida” which had been arranged in his honour during his Spanish tour, and again a few days ago, when the description of a big fight was broadcast from Madrid. It is most curious and dreadful to English minds that any civilised people should take delight in these barbarities. We forget, however, that 300 years ago the citizens of London could go (and did), from the first hearing of a Shakespeare tragedy, to the “baiting” of a bull or bear —the tormenting of a chained animal by seeting dogs upon it. Such a performance sems even less laudable than the Spanish bullfight, since it needed no human bravery or skill. And to-day, when the bullfight is falling into disrepute among the finer elements of

Peninsular society, there are Spaniards who protest quite sincerly against the cruelty of the English fox-hunt, and the hunting of carted stags; against the English battues of pheasant and partridge, and perhaps most of all against the coursing of hares. Let it be well understood that this writer is no apologist for the Spanish vice. Pie is, on the contrary, a vegetarian of some years’ standing, who has keen objections to the slaughter of anything larger or less ferocious than a mosquito. Further, he has been troubled by a rising of his gorge on the mere reading of such descriptions as one finds in Blasco Ibanez’s “Blood and Sand” in Frank Harris’s great story of “Montes the Matador,” and in E. V. Lucas’s essay, “Whenever I See a Grey Horse.” But, apart from the hideous and inexcusable treatment of the horses, it seems that there are yet a few words to be said on the Spanish side. Bull-fighting calls for the utmost exercise of such manly (or, if you prefer it, savage) virtues as self-control and courage. The Andalusian bull is more often than not an extremely dangerous and aggressive beast, and the matador takes his life in his hands on each entry of the ring. Bloodshed is not the sole attraction. There is a special art, they say, a sometimes exquisite grace in the movement of a finished espada, or capeador. or banderillero, each in his own brilliant costume. See how the spectacle has appealed. to artists like Goya, and Manet, and Zuloaga, with many others. Even chilliest Saxon will enjoy its colour and excitement —until the ghastly moment when a poor crock of a blindfold horse is attacked by the bull. That sight must be utterly degrading, one feels, and surely an incentive to criminality. Yet human life is safer in Madrid, despite the grinding poverty that abounds there, than it is in almost any large .city of the prosperous United States. Perhaps there is something in the Spanish character —some legacy from the Moorish conquest—which requires this vicarious satisfaction, or “sublimation,” as they say in the jargon of modern psychology. And perhaps Chicago, too, would be safer after a course of bullfights. It is pleasant to turn from these sanguinary questions to the account of a Portugese bull-fight in Lord Frederic Hamilton’s memoirs, “The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday.” The Por-

ards, are yet “a very humane race,” says Lord Frederic,. “and are extraordinarily kind to animals. They are also devoted to bull-fights. These two tendencies seem irreconcilable, till the fact is grasped that a Portugese bullfight is absolutely bloodless. Neither bulls nor horses are killed; the whole spectacle resolves itself into an exhibition of horsemanship and skill. The bull’s horns are padded, and covered with leather thongs. The picador rides a really good and highly-trained horse. Should he allow the bull even to touch the horse with his padded horns, the unfortunate picador will get mercilessly hissed. The espada is armed with a wooden sword only, which lie plants inocuously on the neck of tho bull, and woe betide him should those tens of thousands of eager eyes watching him detect a deviation of

even one inch from the death-dealing spot. 3-Ie will be hissed out of the ring. Conspicuous at a Lisbon bullfight are a number of sturdy peasants, tricked out in showy clothes of scarlet and orange. These are ‘The men of strength.” -Should a bull prove cowardly in the ring, and decline to fight, the public clamour for him to be caught and expelled ignomiriously from the ring by the men of strength. Eight of the stalwart peasants will then hurl themselves on to the bull, and literally hustle him out of the arena.” What a charmingly absurd picture that evokes—the eight stout fellows (two for each leg?) “frogmarching” the reluctant, lily-livered hull. They order these things better in Portugal. TAURINO.