Romantic Play

Radio Record, 18 March 1938, Page 26

Romantic Play

Thing of Beauty ERHAPS the greatest praise to be said to-day for a drama in rhyming couplets is that the rliymes passed unnoticed. This modern world is too obsessed with realism to be patient «f playwrights who would waste time in fiddling with rhyme and cadence. And, indeed, if rhyming be waste of time, Humbert Wolfe must have wasted plenty in the translation from the Hungarian of Eugene Heltai’s romantic comedy in three acts, "The Silent Knight." This beautiful love story of the knight who traded three years’ silence as the price for a single kiss is told with a richness of phrase and imagery that doubles its dramatic r wer. In spirit and temper, the new play is strongly reminiscent of James Flecker’s magnificent "Hassan." True, it is much slighter in almost every way, and its happy ending of love requited cannot match the sweeping tragedy of Flecker’s climax. Nevertheless, all those readers who hay? learnt to admire Humbert Wolfe’s poet’: gift, can be assured that here is no lapse of quality. His verse suits the theme ex-cellently-it is musical, uniformly strong, uncomplicated, with sometimes a fine lyricism of passion. "The Silent Knight" has already been played upon the London stage, With Diana Wynyard and Ralph Richardson in the parts of the Lady Zilia and her romantic knight; but on the ‘whole it is a play that should be avoided by all amateurs, and: by any but the best professional performers. Emphaticaily, however, this is a play to be read. It is a romance of haunting charm, with a fanciful and unusual plot, with diction of real beauty and an atmosphere that is at once brave and whimsical. "The Silent Knight," by Humbert Wolfe (William Heinemann, Ltd., London, Our copy from the publishers),