THEATRE HISTORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 621, 25 May 1951, Page 13

THEATRE HISTORY

THE ENGLISH STAGE, 1850-1950, by Lynton Hudson; Harrap. English price, 10/6. N 1851 Charles Dickens described Sadlers Wells as a bear garden. The theatre of that time was, as Mr. Hudson reminds us, a "scene of semi-darkness and confusion." It survived "by the illpaid works of hack playwrights, botchers and plagiarists." It had to contend with social ostracism and religious prejudice. he hundred years which followed are traced for us here from the "Blood-on-the-breadknife" melodramas, to the "tea-cup-and-saucer" plays of Robertson, the plays of ideas, the spectacles and the thrillers, up to the present almost plotless iridescences of Fry and Bridie. We meet with one or two surprises. Oscar Wilde is diagnosed, not as an original, but as a copyist. The resemblance between The Importance of Being Earnest and a much less polished play by W. S. Gilbert (noted by Bernard Shaw but forgotten apparently by others) is shown in detail and is too remarkable to have been a coincidence. : The latter chapters on the more recent and on the current theatre change from more or less straight reconstruction into careful essays on present conditions and future promises. Some pronouncements might be argued — "Glamorous Night sounded the death-knell of the musical comedy comedian and the tap dancer" is perhaps too sweeping, but Mr. Hudson’s knowledge and sympathy with the theatre allied to a really formidable job of research make this a very readable and informative book.

Isobel

Andrews