[Includes the twelve poems published in the last-named.]
Prose
THE MODERNS. Robert Scott. 1916.
[Critical Studies of Robert Bridges, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, etc.]
DRAMA
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
THE hold of the Pantomime on the affections of the public is possibly as strong as ever it was, but the character of those entertainments has been slowly changing and with it the character of the audience. Professedly I suppose the Pantomimes are for children, but except that almost any entertainment will amuse children, owing to their extreme curiosity, there is little in the modern Pantomime that seems to have been devised for them. In fact, the Christmas Pantomime has of late years come to have a particularly sophisticated and adult savour, which is to be noticed in the treatment of the old fairy-tales—one or other of which, in name at least, still forms the basis of every Christmas Pantomime, although in a shape that would scarcely be recognised by the compilers of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
This is particularly noticeable in the metamorphosis of the Witch who, fatigued by the possession of mysteriously terrible powers, dwindles into the obscene-faced mother-in-law. The sere old woman who turned the seven white-horsed princesses into low stones, over which the moss crept slowly, has become a gin-inoculated Widow Twankey, who dances like a man and gloats over the highly-successful love-affairs of her son as leading to more and better drink.