Evening star., 1934-07-22
REVIEW OF THE NEW BCQ)K1

at night to take refuge in the precinct of st.
Martins s-le- Grand where Hildas approaching
motherhood may be concealed and she may
escape the terrible punishment decreed by
the law for lewd women. They are captured
at the drawbridge gate and the widow Stike-
ney demands the full punishment Of the law.
The description of this affords MIR. Lindsay
opportunity for a detailed and dramatic account
of of the most brutal legalized customs
of the period Again, Andrew in a crusading
talk to the young men in the fields, preparatory
to the coming of Mortimer, has urged decency.
honesty, chivalry and the avenging of all
wrongs. The stupid John. apprentice to the
church widow" Beaufier, a mercer, broods
over the Illicit relations of his supposedly
sanctihed mistress and his fellow apprentice.
Walden, and finally murders the widow
Beaufier. Walden is seized for the crime
and languishes in Newgate, while John es-
capes and finds refuge with relative in the
country.
So real do all the families on the Bridge
and all their affairs seem that we forget we
are watching a pageant of the fifteenth CEN
tury and feel that what we witness is In the
present. Perhaps the greed and strife and
corruption and bad laws of the fifteenth CEN
tury were not much worse than the same
things in the twentieth century. though their
manifestations were more brutal prefatory
list of the IL houses on the Bridge, extending
from Southwark to London. with their inhabi-
tants, makes 1t easy to follow the devious doings
of all the merchants and their households. At
night, behind the drawn shutters, the pace of
their life slows down but does not stop. The
plotting student, William Furby, almost a mad
man, PAGES his floor and bites his nails with
anger. Henry Picard communes with the ghost
of his dead WIFE Young Petronilla Chark lies
in bed and hates her miserly old husband who
has bought her for her dowry, while her
stepson Daniel, listens from his bed In the
shop below for sounds of his father beating his
stepmother Kindly, weak Nicholas Jordan,
realizing the curse of insanity in his family.
sleeps off the wine of which he has drunk too
much at the Bowl and Mouth Tavern. Code
leva Jordan rolls on nettles in her bed to
chasten herself in preparation for the monastic
life she has chosen, but which her parents
oppose. What goes on in the houses Of the
widows would shock all the good wives of the
Bridge. "Curfew had rung from every parish
church. The gates of the city we're shut and
guarded On the bridge there was no
noise but the thrashing of the water through
the arches"
The heroine of London Bridge Is Falling"
Jane Piel, daughter of Gilbert Piel. the grocer.
is as sophisticated as any twentieth century
girl, with her careful attention to her dress,
her makeup and her plucked eyebrows Yet
she is dreamer, longing for the perfect lover.
like those she reads of in her romances or
chivalry. She finds his approximation in An
drew Picard, with whom she perishes in the
flames Of London Bridge, when it is fired by the
rebels during the invasion of Cade. Mr.. Lindsay
has done a notable piece of scholarly work,
but 1t is not merely an antiquarian document to
be placed on file; it is novel whose appeal is
emotional as well intellectual, whose pages
are riotous with hfe
A COMPANION TO SHAKESPEARE STUDIES.
Edited by Harley Granville-Barker and c..
B. Harrison New York: The Macmillan Co.
THE celebration in April of Shakespeares
birthday by a unique program in the per-
feet little EliZabethan Theater of the Folger
Library here in Washington and the Shake
speare Summer festival at Stratford- on Avon
are two distinguished evidences that Shake
speare is sti11 living force for many people.
This volume Of essays on various Shakespearian
subjects, by prominent students Of Shakespeare,
is not for scholars alone, not even primarily
for them. 1t will appeal to all those who
tain their interest in the great period of Eng
lands drama and in the greatest of the worlds
dramatiStS whom it produced. Controversial
subjects, textual har-splitting personal theories
and knotty problems are avoided. The subjects
are cultural, not pedantic. They include Shake
speares hfe the theaters and companies OF
his time, his national and social backgrounds,
his sources, the other drama of the age, Shake
speare texts, Shakespeare dramatic artist
and as poet. Shakespeare's relation to music
and to Elizabethan English, Shakespearian crit
isism and scholarship and Shakespeare in the
theater from the Restoration to the present
time Among the contributors Of essays are
the two editors, Edward j. Dent, j. W. Mackail
George Rylands. Bonamy Dobree, A. w. Pol
lard and T. S. Eliot.