a sense

of humor

as the yardstick with which to measure a play is fraught with peculiar difficul

Hties nowadays. Because humor is always an individual perception. And it raises immediately the question whether a genuine sense of

humor is meant or merely a sense of fun; and precisely what are each of these things, anyway? In addition, our psychological friends are apt to remark with a leer that if you possess an exceptional sense of humor you are thereby merely avoiding real emotion. And so it goes. The whole subject is fraught with argument.

We find it difficult, nevertheless, to view the Theatre Guild's new production, "Volpone," from any other standpoint than that of its power to amuse. All the world knows, of course-or does once it has looked up the subject in a book-that Ben Jonson originally wrote a comedy called "Volpone" and produced it in London many, many years ago. Recently Stefan Zweig refashioned it into a modern sardonic farce, done in German, and the Theatre Guild has produced an English translation of this modern version. Ben Jonson, therefore, we suspect, lurks pretty far in the background. And, for all we know, is responsible only for the idea and plot, itself, in this present play.

Let

It isn't a very good plot, either. us merely quote the paragraph wherein Ben Jonson, himself, describes it:

Volpone, childless, rich, feigns sick, despairs,

Offers his state to hopes of several

heirs,

Lies languishing: his parasite receives Presents of all, assures, deludes; then

weaves

Other cross plots, which one them

selves, are told,

New tricks for safety are sought; they thrive; when bold, Each tempts the other again, and all

are sold.

Here is essentially a series of theatrical devices arranged to bolster up an idea, which, to be genuinely credible, would have to be shown with very delicate psychological strokes. Needless to state, Ben Jonson never made any dramatic stroke that was delicate, and Stefan Zweig has not improved on his

master.

The result is a comedy of life in (presumably) sixteenth-century Venice (presumably) sixteenth-century Venice which starts out in true Shakesperean comedy style-being heavily comic and possessing the kind of humor high school boys enjoy-and then rather surprises the beholder by becoming increasingly dramatic, very ingenious, and actually surprising; and ends with such a rattling good last act that you are slightly ashamed of yourself for having concluded at the start that it was merely another version of the old "Comedy of Errors."

If the psychologists are right, keen humor is the possession only of a society which averts itself from reality. Since the Englishman of Ben Jonson's day ap

parently never averted his face from reality at any cost, it is perhaps too much to expect delicate humorous drama from him. The best comedy our good old English dramatists were capable of always involved gentlemen kicking one another in the seat of the pants or slipping upon banana peels. Cuckolds abounded, virgins were rare, playing clownish tricks was the height of drawing-room wit. Essentially, then, "Volpone" is based on this twelve-yearold kind of humor, so that, no matter how fine the Theatre Guild's company is, the performance itself gives the impression of a lot of people trying to

make very funny something which isn't really very funny nowadays, after all. The more beautiful

the production, the more effective the setting, and, above all, the more excellent the acting, the clearer this effort is noticeable. In the case of "Volpone," it results in a beautiful, colorful production well worth seeing, but devoted to a play which can hardly be called unusual.

The only thing that saves it, to our way of thinking, is the entrance of genuine reality in the third scene in the form of a gallant captain, who attempts to scatter to the four winds the incredible machinations of Volpone, the Levantine, and Mosca, his toady servantonly, alas! to find himself, an honest gentleman, thrust into the stocks as a reward for his gallant attempt to save a lady.

From the entrance of this captain the play becomes real, and the drama interest steadily rises. The play, which until then totters and dodders, suddenly becomes a drama-and succeeds amazingly well.

Whether Stefan Zweig or Ben Jonson is responsible for this, it is difficult to decide, Personally, we don't care. We were sorry to see Alfred Lunt and Dudley Digges and the rest trying so hard and so artistically to be funny; and were mightily relieved when the affair ended up worth while, after all.

On the credit side, it is only fair to add that in the ten years which have elapsed since the Guild first began its

activities it has built up a company of players who are worth seeing for themselves, no matter what the play. Certainly, in a season which has included such worth-while affairs as "Strange Interlude," "Porgy," and "Marco's Millions" it would be a jaundiced critic who would take the Guild to task for having allowed intellectual "highbrowism" to overcome their better judgment in this one instance.

FRANCIS R. BELLAMY.

A

LTHOUGH Richard Wagner did not compose the music to "Parsifal" until 1878-9, it was in the spring of 1857, twenty years earlier, that the idea of an opera on the subject began to take a definite shape in his mind. He was then living in Zurich (during his period of exile, 1849-1861). He writes in his autobiography:

Beautiful spring weather now set in; on Good-Friday I awoke to find the sun shining brightly... the little garden was radiant with green, the birds sang, and at last I could sit on the roof and enjoy the long-yearnedfor peace with its message of promise. Full of this sentiment, I suddenly remembered that the day was GoodFriday, and I called to mind the significance this omen had already once assumed for me when I was reading Wolfram's Parsifal. Since the sojourn in Marienbad, where I had conceived the Meistersinger and Lohengrin, I had never occupied myself again with that poem; now its overwhelming possibilities struck me with overwhelming force, and out of my thoughts about Good-Friday I rapidly conceived a whole drama, of which I made a rough sketch with a few dashes of the pen, dividing the whole into three

acts.

Now there be those who regard "Parsifal" as a semi-religious rite, to be attended with devotion and reverence once a year. There are those who go to hear it solely for the music, finding it more to their taste than some of the Master's more tempestuous scores. There is also an unregenerate contingent, perhaps not as large as the two groups above mentioned, that insists on regarding "Parsifal" as music-drama pure and simple, and applying therefore the same standards of criticism to it that they would to, let us say, "Tristan" or "Walküre."

Personally we happen to be in the last category and, although we have no intention at this late day of entering into any discussion anent the philosophy, psychology, or theology of Wagner's poem, we do take this opportunity of observing that, to our mind, the greatness of this, his last opera, would seem. to rest far more on the purely human element than in its somewhat involved mysticism.

Surely nothing could be more touch

Good Friday Spell

By EUGENE BONNER

ing than the bewildered boy of the first act, set upon by the fanatical Knights of the Grail for shooting in all innocence the sacred bird, and who, after breaking his bow and following Gurnemanz to the Temple of the Grail, i thrown out for not at once realizing the meaning of the celebration of the Eucharist, which he sees for the first time; the care-free youth of the second act transformed into a man by Kundry's kiss; the almost

pagan loveliness of the Good Friday

spell, the redemption and death of Kundry-surely in all this it's the human note that grips us, far more than the solemn self-conscious rites of Monsalvat

with those lugubrious Knights marching

round and round.

Nevertheless, from whatever angle

you may have approached this work at the Metropolitan Opera House on Good

Rudolf Laubenthal as Parsifal

Friday last, the performance on that occasion gave, or should have given, complete satisfaction. Having been priv ileged to see many representations of "Parsifal" in various countries during the last twenty years, we have yet to see the opera more exquisitely or sympa. thetically done. Imperfections there were, of course, but taken as a whole it was so competently and even reverently done that it would be churlish in this case to pick out flaws.

Rudolf Laubenthal as Parsifal gave us

by far the finest piece of work he has yet

done here, and after his Siegfried of this
season that is high praise. Here's a
German tenor with a really beautiful
voice (which, alas! he often uses badly),
ing. Added to which he is astonishingly
a fine presence, young, and good-look-
playing of such varied rôles as the
versatile, as is shown by his successful
happy-go-lucky hero of "The Bartered
Bride," Siegfried, and Tristan. Simple
and appealing throughout, his Parsifal in
the last act had a grave youthful dig-
nity, poignant and very beautiful, while
vocally he has never done anything bet
ter. Can it be that the Metropolitan has
here a very great artist which the major
ity of the critics have been slow in
recognizing?

Gertrude Kappel's interpretation of
the baffling rôle of Kundry was beautiful
and impressive, her first and last acts
being profoundly moving. Her seduc-
tion scene of the second act, while vo-
cally inspiring, was not quite so satis
factory from the dramatic point of view,
but, as the scene in question suffered
throughout from bad stage direction, she
cannot be held altogether responsible for
failing to attain her usual heights.

Clarence Whitehill was a superb Amfortas and Michael Bohnen's Gurnemanz was the most sympathetic and the least boring we have yet encountered. Mr. Bodanzky conducted a curiously uneven performance, and just why the management saw fit to restore for our delectation that bewhiskered, fly-blown second-act garden set is another one of those apparently insoluble mysteries, but, taken as a whole, the performance was a notable one-one to remain long in the memories of those fortunate enough to have been present on this

occasion.

H

AROLD LLOYD is more than

a man-he's an organization. Skillful as he is and funny in his own right, his success has rested very largely on the sterling abilities of his gag-men, his authors, directors, and photographers, who, over and over again, have crammed into a single Harold Lloyd picture more real fun than can be found in ten average comedies.

"Speedy" is no exception to this happy rule, even though its onrushing sequences lack the total unexpectedness of the earlier Lloyds. Mr. Lloyd himself is a city feller instead of a boy from the sticks; he takes his girl to Coney instead of wooing her on a rustic bridge, and his manner is flip and selfassured where once it was quite the reverse. But don't let that keep you away. "Speedy" loses several jobs on account of the things which happen to him, and why he doesn't lose his life, as well, is something you'll have to figure out for yourself. It is our contention that Harold Lloyd and his handy men know more camera tricks to the reel than all the rest of the film-fakers put together. When they want an effect they get it, and they always contrive to make it look blamelessly authentic.

Take, for instance, the scenes in "Speedy" wherein the runaway horse car dashes down Fifth Avenue and under the Washington Arch, or rounds perilously into Fifty-ninth Street. Mr. Lloyd has been doing this sort of thing for so long that there should be innumerable smart Alecks around who can tell you how he does it; but they never seem to know, exactly. This is because, perhaps, the young man has so much imagination in his head and in his camp that he never does anything twice alike.

If you go to see "Speedy," as we heartily recommend that you do, try to remember what other form of comic entertainment you have seen which can truthfully be said to have given you more for your money. You'll end, if we're not mistaken, by handing the grand prize to Harold Lloyd.

for it; not even Janet Gaynor, who is without doubt one of the very best actresses the screen has ever had.

"Street Angel" opens with an amusing Italian street scene, and then dissolves into a view of Miss Gaynor, as Angela, agonizing in an attic over her sick mother, who needs medicine immediately. Angela, lacking the 20 lire to buy it, goes onto the streets, with some vague idea of purveying her beauty to passing males. She knows so little of the technique of this oldest of professions that she meets with no success whatever. On the contrary, she is unjustly accused of attempted robbery by one of her prospects and is turned over to the police, whose charges against her impel a judge to sentence her to a year in the workhouse.

She escapes from her guards on the way to this institution and, after a very Douglas Fairbanks chase, reaches her attic residence, to find her mother dead. So she joins a traveling circus and meets Gino, a young artist, who paints a portrait of her and finally takes her away with him when she breaks her ankle in a fall.

They live together (in a nice way, of course this being a motion picture), and Gino sells the portrait to buy food for them. The purchaser immediately employs another artist to do it over into an old master and resells it at enormous

profit to a church, as an early Madonna.

Now Gino gets a commission to do a mural, and he and Angela are about to be married when a policeman recognizes the girl as a fugitive from justice. Right here the picture qualifies for admission to the great company of "Tales from the Never Never Land." It becomes, in the immortal words of Robert Benchley,

"one of those things by the Molehill Construction Company."

For Angela never says a word to Gino about the utterly silly charge against her, but goes with the officer and serves a term in the calaboose, leaving her prospective bridegroom ignorant of her whereabouts. So, dunt esk.

He finds her, of course, after her release, but some one has told him of her frightfully salacious past. Outraged at her perfidy, the worthy fellow chases her into a church, with the idea of killing her; but wait! Above the altar hangs his portrait of her-the phony Madonna. At sight of it he melts, and all's well that ends well, even when it doesn't end half soon enough.

Charles Farrell is cast as Gino, and candor compels the statement that he is not at his best. One thing more, and we have done: "O Sole Mio" is played, and whistled, over and over again, on the Movietone.

"The Chaser"

WE

"Skyscraper "

S

OME time ago we wrote about a traveling bag, called the Migrator, which is small enough to go under a Pullman seat, yet through an ingenious hanger arranged in the lid will hold a number of frocks without wrinkling, as well as hats, shoes, and all other necessaries these latter in compartments in the body of the case. This company now makes several other types of case, all made on the same principle. There is an overnight case, fourteen inches long, which will hold two frocks in the lid, a woman's suitcase that will hold four frocks in the lid and differs from the other cases in having no compartments in the body of the case and in being the shape of a regular suitcase instead of square. There is a man's suitcase also which seems very practical. A dress suit or extra suit can be packed in the lid and is held there so firmly by the hanger and straps that it won't get at all mussed. There are also compartments for shoes, shirts, ties, and so on. The Migrator trunk is a small square trunk that one man can carry by the top handle, yet it holds an amazing amount of stuff. If your vacation plans include new luggage, we advise you to look at these Migrators before you decide.

The same company makes a wardrobe trunk which, instead of being split longitudinally, has a door on one side which gives direct access to the compartment where the clothing is hung on hangers. The drawers are in the same relative position as they are in the usual wardrobe trunk, but are reached by a separate door. The result is that you can open this trunk without tearing the rugs to pieces or spraining your ankle. Also, you can stand it in a corner of a closet instead of out in the middle of the room,

LOREN STOUT

IF

and still have everything in it readily accessible.

was

An extremely light suitcase among this luggage. It is made of a very light, tough birch veneer which has to be specially imported-a veneer that is used for airplanes, and is covered with lacquered linen. We believe that the kind gentleman who showed it to us said that it weighed only 3 pounds 10 ounces -which is about half of what the ordinary suitcase that size weighs.

Luggage for plane travelers-let us amend that to airplane travelers, in case you are reading this thrilling page aloud to the family is beginning to be advertised in the public prints. We have seen several such advertisements and displays, though we have been unable to discover that the luggage thus offered differs in any way from ordinary luggage. Just what can a manufacturer do to so adapt luggage to flying that people who travel by air will want to buy special luggage to accompany them? How about equipping suitcases with little parachutes, so that if they fall out no bottles will be broken?

Which reminds us of a suitcase we once saw that seemed very practical to

us.

It was equipped with two little rubber-tired wheels which folded up against the side of the suitcase when not

in use.

When you carried the case, it simply rested on the wheels and you could trundle it along beside you comfortably for miles without fatigue. But of course it looked funny. The only person we ever knew who was courageous enough to carry one was an old lady-one of that older generation whom we hear so frequently criticised for their timidity and lack of originality.

W

E have seen some nice modernistic rugs for summer made of grass fiber. The designs are colorful and bold, yet not so bizarre as to refuse to harmonize with your furniture. They are the only inexpensive rugs we have seen of this kind.

Another little rug which has a definite place is a half-circle Holland rush mat. It would go nicely under a little table that stands against the wall.

HE wind has been blowing hard to

day, and the windows rattled so early this morning that we had to rise from dreams of thee to wedge them tight with matches and bits of cardboard, and then we remembered a set of six little rubber wedges that we saw quite a long time ago in a store. They are made for just that purpose, and we are going out presently and buy some.

Another thing we saw at the same time was a stand to hold a watch on a bedside table. It is adjustable so that it will hold any size watch at an angle from which it can easily be seen with half an eye from a recumbent position.

I

F you do your own housecleaning. there is a very handy cleaning mat which will insure you against housemaid's knee-if we are correct in our assumption about that malady. It-the mat, not the malady-is soft and well padded, is made of rush, and has a waterproof bottom.

A companion piece is the fiber dishpan, which is cream-colored with gold of bands, and will lessen the danger china breakage in the kitchen.

And have you seen any Aranium? It is a non-tarnishable chromium plate which looks like silver, and which is be ing used for bread-trays and toasters and electric coffee percolators and such We thought it nice looking.

H

IS father told little Luxor Price this story as spun for him by Great-Uncle David, the gallant

Major Price, a remarkable military gentleman, who, upon being forced from active service by the loss of an arm, proceeded to become an authority on Persia, and later wrote the first ponderous history of the Mohammedan Empire, a standard for many years.

As for his great-great-nephew, Luxor Price himself, he began drawing by chance for his own small boy, who still remains his inspiration and his fiercest critic. For his first professional attempt he was refused five dollars, for his second he received thirty, for his third three hundred, and for his fourth fifteen hundred dollars! So he threw up everything for art, since when he has published a delightful pictured panorama of American history, drawn bit by bit for his small boy, a fantastic book, "The Quoks," and numerous illustrations, some of which have appeared on this page.

How Ma Kangaroo Got a Prop

THE

As remembered by Luxor Price

HE very first white man to land in Australia was the famous Captain Cook, and the very first person he ran into was Boomerang Black Man. After they had passed the time of day, the Captain looked about and saw a strange creature leaping by. Its front paws were quite short, its hind paws were simply e-nor-mous, and its tail was very, very, very long.

"What on earth," cried Captain Cook, "do you call that?"

"Kangaroo?" asked Boomerang Black Man politely, wrinkling his black fore

head.

Now in his language he meant, "What you say?" but Captain Cook didn't understand Boomerang talk, so he turned his ship right around and sailed back to

April 25, 1928

Illustrated by Luxor Price

some.

Until one day she happened to see Boomerang Black Man. And he was walking straight up and down on his hind paws. Ma Kangaroo had never

seen such a sight.

"Hm-m!" she thought, and tried to do the same. But she only fell on her silly nose and bumped the back of her head till she saw kangaroo stars, and the harder she tried to stand on her stumpy hind legs, the more she fell every which way.

Boomerang Black Man stopped walking on his hind paws and began to laugh.

"Wallabz," he grinned. So you see he must have meant "Wobbly."

Now that made Ma furious, especially as she knew how silly she must look, but presently she had an idea.

"I'll just grow me some hind paws like Boomerang Black Man's," she decided. "And while I'm about it, I might as well grow good big ones."

So she did. The new hind paws were a great improvement, but her arrangements weren't perfect yet. For she found that with her tiny stumps of legs and e-nor-mous feet, she could only shuffle along like a little man in a big man's shoes, and when Baby Kangaroo propped himself against Mother's knee to bask in the sun, over Ma sprawled on her back in a most undignified manner.

"I must grow me long legs to match my big feet," she decided.

as

So he did, and that was fine, for now the could not only walk straight up and down like Boomerang Black Man, but skip and leap well. But just the same, when Baby Kangaroo leaned against her knees to bask in the sun, if he so much as slapped a fly or scratched his head, over Ma toppled backwards in a sprawling heap. That made her cross, so she boxed the baby's ears so the baby cried and it was all very dreadful. Still Ma couldn't think of a thing to do.

But one day she saw Boomerang Black Man come out of his little house built on stilts and sit down and lean his back against the front door. Suddenly over tipped the house, and Boomerang Black Man went sprawling on his back.

"Ha ha!" laughed Ma Kangaroo. "Wallabz! Wallabz yourself!" and she chuckled a loud kangaroo chuckle.

Boomerang Black Man was furious, but he pretended not to hear, and only picked himself up, very dignified, set up his house-on-stilts again, and sat down, leaning his back against the front door.

But while Ma watched suddenly overtipped the house and Boomerang Black Man lay sprawling on his back again. "Ha, ha!" shrieked Ma Kangaroo. "Wallabz! Wallabz yourself!"

was

But Boomerang Black Man pretty smart, so he scratched his wool and sat thinking so long that Ma almost went home. Presently he got up, and came back with a long pole. Setting up his house-on-stilts once more, he propped it at the back with the pole, sat down, and boldly leaned against the front door.

Ma Kangaroo waited, all ready to laugh, for, being a woman, and a kangaroo woman at that, she didn't quite understand what he had done. But nothing happened. The house-on-stilts did not tip over, the pole held fast, and Boomerang Black Man sat back as comfy and proud as you please.

Suddenly Ma Kangaroo had a bright (Please turn to continuation, page 680)