William Archer Biography

BOOK REVIEWS allegory of vitalism—the calendar of the flowers' brief unfoldings marks nature's quick eternity, the cyclical waves of Life. "Flowery Tuscany" concludes this well-constructed volume with a flourish of the Lawrencean sublime in which Nature rises above its own nature. Lawrence asserts changeable life's enduring substance through the symbol of an eternal sun, imagined in blithe defiance of the scientific pronouncement that time and entropy will eventually snuff the sun out: "As far as experience goes, in the human race, the one thing that is always there is the shining sun, and dark, shadow is an accident of intervention. Hence, strictly, there is no tragedy. The universe contains no tragedy, and man is only tragical because he is afraid of death. For my part, if the sun always shines, and always will shine, in spite of millions of clouds of words, then death, somehow, does not have many terrors. In the sunshine, even death is sunny. And there is no end to the sunshine." In his last years, Lawrence earned his vitalist cosmos by dying with imaginative grace. Bruce Clarke _______________ Texas Tech University William Archer Biography Peter Whitebrook. William Archer: A Biography. London: Methuen, 1993. xii + 435 pp. £25 NO STUDY of the Late Victorian and Edwardian drama and theatre—and especially the emergence of the "New Drama"—is possible without an understanding of the crucial role of the theatre critic, William Archer (1856-1924). He was associated with and knew intimately all of the leading playwrights, actors, and actresses—Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, Harley Granville Barker, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Janet Achurch, Charles Charrington , the young James Joyce, and the great love of Archer's life, Elizabeth Robins. But Archer's theatre criticism, over four decades, was second in importance only to his efforts and success in introducing and popularizing the works of Henrik Ibsen in Britain. Although much of Archer's achievement, particularly on Ibsen, has been well chronicled in Thomas Postlewait's William Archer on Risen: The Major Essays (1984) and Prophet of the New Drama: William Archer and the Risen Campaign (1987), and the biography William Archer: Life, Work, Friendships (1937) by his younger brother, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Archer. Peter Whitebrook provides a comprehensive portrait and as559 ELT 37:4 1994 sessment of a man who seemed to all, but a very few close friends, austere and something of a cold fish. Whitebrook attempts to present the real or inner Archer, portraying a personality whose austere demeanor concealed a very emotional and sensitive human being. Archer's relationship with Bernard Shaw is much illuminated and adds to what Michael Holroyd has discussed in his recent massive biography of Shaw. Archer was not only responsible for helping Shaw get started on his career, but remained a faithful friend and honest critic of Shaw's productions and ever (and over) tolerant of Shaw's foibles, idiosyncracies, and betrayals. They often differed on many issues, but both refused to permit these differences to affect their friendship. In this lifelong association, Archer was clearly the most tolerant and forebearing and one of the major interests which kept their friendship constant was a mutual interest in the "New Drama" and the work of Ibsen. Archer was undoubtedly the most important popularizer and interpreter of Ibsen in Britain. As a result of his Norwegian family origins, Archer possessed a superb command of the Norwegian language and his translations of Ibsen's works became the standard English versions well into the twentieth century. Indeed, Archer's translations, reviews, and studies of Ibsen's dramas were a major factor in introducing Ibsen not only in Britain, but on the Continent and in the United States. It was also this passion for Ibsen's work which led to his association with Elizabeth Robins and involved Archer in the great secret love affair of his life. A pretty young American widow and a talented actress, Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952) came to England in mid-1888. On her arrival in London she was befriended by Oscar Wilde—"one of the first men, and the first in England, to take her seriously as an artist." It was...