It Wouldn’t Have Done for the Duke....
A JOAN BUTLER farce is now coming from 3YA in serial form, no doubt to the general delight. I remember a newspaper reviewer, commenting on one of her innumerable works, remarking on its close adherence to the canons of the Master Wodehouse; and remembering the subsequent dismal fate of that great man, I wonder whether Miss Butler is not the last of her line. Old jokes never
die, they say; Dut how prehistoric seem these jests about impecunious aristocrats pawning the coronet and acting manservant to , American millionaires, For the social changes which made these high-life tragicomedies a pos-
sible subject of popular mirth all occurred some forty years ago; and the joke has long ceased to have the faintest relevance to the life of the laughers and the world they know. The silly ass with the monocle and the braying voice has joined the Victorian masher in limboGeorge Orwell says he was killed at Mons-correspondents who met Wodehouse in Berlin say he was himself the last of the breed; and the whole frame of facetious references exists only in fiction and for the delusion of untravelled Americans. I fear we must say "Ichabod" to Joan Butler and her butlers, her earls, her footmen and her pork-packers; but it is certainly fun while it lasts.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451130.2.22.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 12
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222It Wouldn’t Have Done for the Duke.... New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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