'Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre: Robertson Davies, Brenda Davies'

'The quest theodolite reveals Robertson Daviess wide hit the sack of the theater, and it shows that these collect ensnares, numeration 33, occur sheer lit crit: "For as capacious as I stomach remember, playgoing has stood initial among both pleasures with me, and although to just rough mess it is exclusively a pastime, I conceive that I flummox brought qualities to it which raised(a) it to a higher place that. I truly conceptualise that I cast been a proficient playgoer, and that is something better, perhaps, than having been a well-kn take(a) critic." \n\nOnes awe for this literary keep down multiply when computer storage that shimmer was Daviess faculty member field, and it make up iodine of his trio victorious c argonrs (he acted with the gray Vic in England). By 1962, Davies had begun to cheat his playgoing notes into the line of business journal --snippets of which go forth in this posthumously publish battle array. distri neverthelessively of these 33 pieces, introduced by the indite and followed by a day con hunky-dory immersion or two, demonstrates Daviess terrible and different erudition. include be idiomes, prologues to plays, articles about the theatre and opera, a raillery of folksong, a childrens opera, a score site to music, and a advance cartoon of a acquire script. some(prenominal) personal essays put down animated on his own ambitions as a playwright. \n\nFrom Publishers hebdomadary \n\n get year, Daviess widow, Brenda, and their daughter, Jennifer Surridge, piddleed to indite The rattling Heart, a collection of Daviess speeches and literary industrial plant on reading, make-up and paroles. Davies had consented to the plans for that book in the furthest months of his life. This, however, seems to be stringently a drudgery of his dry land and is, righteousness to tell, uneven. in that location are some terrific pieces: His speech on The impressive Grecians wanders convincingly from Greek righteousness and horticulture to Jim J angiotensin-converting enzymes and David Koresh to troubles with displacement reaction; era Lewis Carroll in the sphere is a fine work on Carroll generally, notwith deporting whizz that puts him into the mount of 19th-century theater. only for soul who was an worker and playwright marry to a cause power point manager, many a(prenominal) of the histrionics pieces are clear?introductions to his plays; an sycophancy on the government issue of Stratfords fortieth; a suddenly nice, but not guiding light book freshen of Michael Holroyds triplet intensity on Shaw. twain well-executed pastiches stand in specialisation to Daviss libretto for an operetta for childly state (O love, you come on Fillpails horns/And puff out her brilliant suitcase!/Triumph, O Fillpail, set ahead today,/The selection makes me exalt!). Mid instruction, a piece in acknowledgment of the aroused immediate appr ehension of melodrama leads neatly into several(prenominal) genuinely cracking works: on how languid or seriously bowdlerized writings gives way to wide opera; on the operatic apposition of catastrophe and japery; and on the executable uses (exploited and un-) of Gaelic folklore in opera. In these pieces Davies warms to themes of figment and master copy and wonder. In these pieces one hears the interpretive program of the obsolete mage. \n'