CHRISTOPHER FRY'S PLAY
Sir-I myself heard Mr. Eric Linklater (no mean judge) describe Christopher Fry as "God’s gift to the theatre." And that in Wellington, too. What temerity he had to challenge in anticipation the judgment of the well-experi-enced, much-travelled critics on the insular New Zealand heath!
J.
L.
(Wellington).
Sir,-Mr. Mason’s effort in your issue of March 4 made me chortle with gleeful appreciation. And I have been moved to reply in kind. MARK ASSHETON’S ORATION Friends, rum ‘uns, countrymen! lend me your ears. a I come to bury Fry, sir, not to praise him. The noble Bruce Hath told you, Fry, sir, is terrific. If this were so-lI’ve made a grievous fault, And grievously I’d have to answer for ’t. Here under leave of Bruce, and of the rest, (For Mason is an honourable man, So are the others-all honourable men) Come I to speak in Christopher’s funeral. I speak but to disprove what Bruce has spoke, And here I am to speak what I do know. O judgment! Art thou fled to Brucish breasts, And have men lost their reason? I think not! I come not, friends, to steal away your Fry, I am no orator as Mason is, But as you know me all, a plain blunt man That loves the Theatre-as Mason knows full well. : I only speak right on I tell you which you yourselves do : know That Fry is but a wind-bag-full of strange oaths That makes the going hard. .. He came-we saw-Fry stonkered. ~ Oh, what a fali was there, my countrymen. oo is written in the Office known as Which is the gauge of any play’s success. Not all the Masons in this pleasant land Could build with Fry an edifice on sand Which could withstand the test of time. Within the space of time a new-born lamb Would gecupy to oscillate his tail The population would with upturn’d thumb Pronounce the doom of Fry Oh, Mason, take some of the people, Forget your Ivory Tower or Lofty Steeple; The Play’s the thing to make us laugh or cryGod save us the verbosity of Fry.
L. ASSHETON
HARBORD
(Lower Hutt).
(This correspondence is now closed._-Ed.)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550325.2.11.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 5
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363CHRISTOPHER FRY'S PLAY New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 5
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