A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND
Sir-Although so far I have been unable to read a copy of The Montgomeries of Glenholme, may I join the correspondence by saying that in my opirion some of the criticis have been at fault in the premises on which they base their criticism? Two of your correspondents, I think, seemed to consider the play fell below some high standard of their own; but must a play be literature? If so, we should have to do without much excellent entertainment, including the plays of even such favourites as Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward. Again, a play 1s, primarily, to be plaved: only
a reader practised in production can readily assess what will make good theatre. M.W. criticises the play in part on what she (I imagine this is a woman?) considers anachronisms: "La" and "pray," she says, may have been in use in Jane Austen’s day, but not in the 1880s. "La" was in use in England in the ’70s; why not in Otago in the ’80s? "Pray" I heard used quite often by an elderly Englishwoman who died in New Zealand in the 1940’s, and she did not use the word facetiously. One of Mr Peter Harcourt’s criticisms was based on Mr Montgomerie’s saying, "By George!" and "Haw, haw!" Any man who has a favourite ejactulation of the sort uses it frequently, and men still laugh, "Haw, haw!" They can’t help that, poor dears; it’s physiological; and our "rude forefathers" were no doubt "more tediously long-winded" than Mr Harcourt had supposed; in fact, even our highly intelligent ones were that: how much of Dickens and Thackeray do most of us read and enjoy today? Even those responsible for choosing the cut-down classics in use in secondary school libraries today are agreed on the long-windedness of most of the -Victorians. Let us have criticism, but let it be on a sound basis, first asking ourselves the purpose of a particular piece of writing: a poem is to be pondered, a household hint is to instruct and a play
To entertain
M.
D.
(Wellincton).
2 (This correspondence is now closed ~Ed. )
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 11
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354A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 11
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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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