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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 874, 4 May 1956, Page 5

Sir-Dr. John Pocock is to be congratulated on having said so well what many of us have thought. Mr. Campion very obviously does not put the word first: does not, in fact, consider the dramatist the most important person in the theatre. With a good many plays, especially modern plays, such an attitude seems legitimate. But, as Dr. Pocock points out, a producer who holds this opinion can never achieve a successful interpretation of true dramatic poetry. Mr. Campion does not "disparage the word"; but he does fail to realise its importance and its possibilities. Plays without "good lines," he says, are "arid." I am tempted to go further, and say that they are not plays at all. Generalisations about great artists are always Gangerous, and I must try to avoid them myself. But if we do agree with Mr. Campion that "Shakespeare’s mature plays are great because of their revelation of man," we may yet object to his implied disparagement of Shakespeare’s poetry, which he achieves by putting inverted commas around the word. The poetry of the theatre is not ephemeral, and Mr. Campion has no

right to call the lover of poetry a "dilettante." Surely poetry is something not only created but creative, something that has value and meaning in and for itself, something that lives and goes on living. The poetry of Shakespeare’s dramas is not some kind of stage property, not a form of verbal costume for the actor to slip into for an hour or two. Shakespeare’s revelation of man is in his poetry; his poetry is his drama.

WAYLAND

(Christchurch).