The Inviolable Pleasaunce

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 471, 28 September 1928, Page 14

The Inviolable Pleasaunce

[Written for The Bun.] is the forest of -Arden.” Such a sign upon an empty stage will suffice to induce in mosit of us a sense of expectancy and release from the malady of being. Reels of kinema film would not more effectively open for us the gates of the otherwhere. There are names magical through their associations, aad theie are names intrinsically magical; and Arden is one of these latter. We feel that Shakespeare must have been amuised by the name before he was put into his first doublet, and that, as a b ay, he peopled the place with the figures of his own reading and dreaming. Then Arden lost its first remotenesu, and became, perhaps, the scene of t-Jiat escapade which brought him into collision with the prototype of Justice Shallow. He put away childish things, and became the ambitious and turbulent seri be, prone to litigation and controversy, so occupied with the bitter urgencies of his calling that he was incapable of surveying his work as a whole.

He could not see the wood for the trees.

He, could not see Arden Wood as he saw it of old. But the magic of the loame persisted in that region of his consciousness where homing thou,'flits dwelt; and it was not only Rosalind, but Puck and Ariel, Titania and tile clown with the ass head, who came, to life in Arden. The name persists on a Warwickshire signpost to-day within sight and scent of the motor-omnibuses that ply their way from Leamington to Stratford. I cannot say how much of Arden Wood remains. If Shakespeare were vouchsafed an hour of childhood In which to visit the haunt, he might be found in. its precincts with desolation in his eyes. So it would be with all folk who unconsciously people some remembered spot with the figures of their reading and their dreaming. I know a grove of silver birches where dwell the White Queen from the "Alice” book, Ulysses, and the Orphan of Waterloo. The trees were planted there on Arbor Day, which is not much observed in New Zealand schools in these timesi, I am told. The place would be unrecognisable; but the memory persists. Each to his Arden. The Sorest passes, and the placenames multiply. You may live in a house called Bellevue, but the child that you were dwells in Arden. The sanest haunrt in all green War-

wickshire Was Arden Forest where the dappled herd Rustled the brittle wood-wrack, as they stirred Far from the murmur of the market town That spread her gardens, her thatched roofs adnwn Avon's bent course, her monitory spire Shepherding all. To Arden Shakespeare came Up from the badger-baiting and the brawl, The reeking cockpit, or the leering flame That lit fierce eyes about the huckster's stall; And there he ceased from turmoil; there, perchance, His mind and muse no more at variance, He came on freedom and bn fantasy Under the shadow of the greenwood tree. Each to his Arden. I have heard tall crests Of alien pines make music in the lea Of a warm bluff, whose brown declivity Was sapling-bearded, like a giant man Brooding on time. There have I stayed to s.:an The light on young Leith Water as It quests The blue Pacific. I have lingered long With stream for book, whose boulders preached to ine Sermons in stone. Then, after sermon, song: The limpid tui’s fourfold psalmody, With the faint bourdon of the summer breeze Drowsily resinous arnid the trees; And I have dreamed that Puck a j moment stood Within my pleasaunce, as in Arden Wood. C. R. ALLEN. Wellington. NEW ZEALANDER HEAD OF NEW PUBLISHING HOUSE A new firm of publishers, the Scholartis Press, has begun the production of books in London. The head of this organisation is Mr. Eric Partridge, a New Zealander. His family migrating to the Darling Downs, Mr. Partridge took honours in languages in the University of Queensland and, later, at Oxford. From a press presided over by a scholar of this kind, good books may very confidently be expected, and some excellent editions have already appeared, books of general interest and also works of fiction of a high standard. The head of the firm wishes above all things to interest the intelligent reader, and to destroy the idea that a private press is narrow in interests, and that its productions are unnecessarily expensive. In both respects the Scholartis books compare very favourably with those from other publishing houses of ancient repute and will be welcomed by all those who want something with a good literary style and some relation to life. A NEW ZEALANDER’S NOVEL OF SOUTH SEAS Mr. Monte Holcroft, a young New Zealand journalist, who recently had a novel accepted by John Long, of London, has received advice that the book will be included among the Christmas publications. The novel is called “Beyond the Breakers.”