Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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There is no more tragic phenomenon in this vale of tears than the deliberate perversion of an idea or a philosophy out of its original meaning in order to serve the base purposes of its enemies. Does a Christ preach a creed of peace on earth, good will to men, some Kaiser will pervert his words into " Gott mit Uns." Does a Nietzsche drive himself into madness transvaluing all the moral values, some nimbled-witted George Creel will reduce his works to a cheap credo for footpads. Does a serious-minded Bernard Shaw spend fifty years writing serious plays...
...that he will write four or five plays in his mind before a word of one reaches paper. " I like to entertain ideas," he said to me not long ago. " I like that word entertain." Life is to him a thing as bitter as the starkest moments of his tragic poems, as gentle as the sweetest of lyrics. And yet, as he writes in Birches- " Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better...
There are two kinds of tragedy: terrible and tearful. When you saw John Barrymore carried up the front stoop of Elsinore and off into the West, you didn't feel like crying. A tragic climax such as that one gives a feeling of mystery and terror much more than of pity. When, on the other hand, you see Camille dying by inches in the postponed embrace of Armand Duval, you do want to weep...
Within the last few weeks, there have been four new plays without a "happy ending." There was, for example, A Square Peg. The maltreated husband therein killed himself just before taking his final curtain call, but that was not the trag-edy of the piece. The tragic climax came when he was denied the grateful haven of a jail sentence. It was not an inspiring catastrophe. One hardly felt toward Mr. Huckins as toward a Lucifer, shouting defiance from the overheated shade of the Inferno...
...French historical drama, Pasteur, by Sacha Guitry, arrives at the Empire Theatre on March 14, with Henry Miller in the title role. Historical plays have had a stormy career in this city. They have passed all the way from the triumph of Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln to the tragic defeat of Mackay's George Washington...