Vice And Virtue Went Hand In Hand In Merrie England

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 28, 23 December 1938, Page 12

Vice And Virtue Went Hand In Hand In Merrie England

Kaleidoscope Of Elizabethan Days

TPILOSE who read Gwyn Jones’s exGellent first novel, "Richard Savage," will not willingly pass by his second effort, "Garland of Bays." Again the treatment is a biography of fiction, set this time against the broad glowing canvas of the Hlizabethan scene. Under Mr. Jones’s searching gaze, "Merrie England’ emerges as a kaleidoscope of religious fervours and inhuman cruelty, poetry and pot-houses, idealism and over-eating, downtrodden women and prancing, coxcomb men. . The leading character, who can in nowise be called the hero, is a poor, shoddy, creature, refiecting in chameleon fashion the company in which he finds himself.

Boasts And Struts Thus he boasts and struts and seduces, gains a little scholarship, writes plagiarised poetry ‘and plays, frequents the stews of Italy and London, lives on his wife, his friends, his mistresses; begs, borrows and frequently steals, evades the hangman and dies in. young middie age, a pauper, But Robert Greene’s life serves mainly to introduce a myriad other characters, clear-cut human-beings of varied appeal, who knit this diverse tapestry of Elizabeth’s England into a colourful whole. The Puritan father of young Greene is a believable person, a selfstyled Man of God with a strong right arm to whip the devil out of

his erring offspring, and a hightlycoloured vision of Hell ever hefore his eyes. Alice, the sister, -s a pure maid, defiled by the arch-villain of the piece, one Sidley, a wealthy yeuth and Cambridge friend of Rohert Greene. Sidley is so bad that even Robert, with his background Puritan teaching, sometimes wonders whether he can be anti-(Shrist himself,

One observes with cont placency that Sidley amply gets his deserts, and even suffers some slight change of heart before his self-inflicted death. "Garland of Bays" is a swiftmoving book, full of action and vigorous as a modern thriller, with the added advantage of good writing and painstaking research inio a period of history which never faiis to fascinate. The Virgin Queen There are glimpses of Eliza. beth herself, "her face long and fair and wrinkled more than it need be, with thin lips that revealed blackened teeth when she smiled, her nose slightly hooked and the more regal for that, her eyes black and sharp, her hair almost as red as his own, but, so he suspected, not so firmly attached to her scalp." Kit Marlowe makes his meteoric raid on the theatres of the day .. "the less critical section of the audienee was stunned with the sheet and sustained rhetoric, the more knowledgeable overwhelmed by this undreamt-of virile lyricism, which beat and pounded over thei hearts." Thereafter Greene and his fellows copied Marlowe... "They wrote . with Marlowe’s left foot rather than his right hand, but felt they were as good as their master." Shakespeare appears as a quiet young man from Straiford, having his first London successes, "Henry VI." and "Comedy of Errors," under

Marlowe’s wing.

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"Garland of: Bays." Gwyn Jones. Gollancz, London. Our copy from the publishers.