Jack London’s Scorn of Women: World Premiere Booklet ed. by Marlan Beilke (review)

Reviews 227 into his book, and what is here must be dug out with great effort. For example, sugar and kerosene are also given as Kansas remedies for coughs and for sore throat, but one discovers this only by paging through the whole section on folk medicine; whether there is any real distinction in the Kansas folkmind between these ailments, and why such remedies often are composed of a combination of sweet and unpalatable substances, are unexplored subjects. Certainly there are numerous fascinating bits of folklore here, ranging from “If you bump heads, you are supposed to sleep together” (#164) to “Never stir gunpowder and alcohol together” (#4957). One deduces that the former is probably a whimsical “artistic superstition” (preserved for its amusement value rather than because of firm belief), and the latter is really an injunction against drinking while handling firearms. In fact, “belief” is an ambiguous term for a considerable portion of the collection consisting of well-known proverbs, stereotyped expressions (i.e. “Gentlemen prefer blondes”), and even such bizarre items as “When fingers have worn off old gloves, sew the gloves together. They will make unusual table covers” (#2373). Not surprisingly, many of the items in Folklore from Kansas reflect a rural and small-town environment, although a specific western American slant is not discernible. True, there are numerous items about horses, cows, deer, antelope, coyotes, etc., but the beliefs are not distinctively western, and cats seem to be mentioned more often than any of these critters. While there is a wonderful photo of a tornado on page 303, there are only two tornado belief items in the book, and these are buried under “Miscellaneous Weather Indicators” on page 345. The photographs scattered through the text are a definite plus for the browser, but they are another source of frustration for the scholar; although they offer marvelous glimpses of (presumably) Kansas folk of the past, none of the illustrations is specifically credited to a time and place, and none has any specific connection with any of the quoted belief items. Altogether this is much more a book for casual browsing than for serious scholarship. Only isolated context-freft raw materials for comparative study are found between these covers. JAN HAROLD BRUNVAND, University of Utah Jack London’sScorn of Women: World Premiere Booklet. Edited by Marian Beilke. (Amador City, California: Quintessence Publications, 1979.-$3.00.) The world premiere of Jack London’s 1906 play, Scorn of Women, took place in Jackson, California, on April 26, 1979. The 73-year delay between publication and performance seems suspicious, yet London’s Klon­ dike comedy is no worse than many melodramas of the day, and it has its 228 Western American Literature own appeal, if only as a curiosity, as his first attempt to write for the stage (he was a collaborator in the 1905 San Francisco production of a one-act play based upon his short story, “The Great Interrogation,” but the play was actually written by Lee Bascom and London merely went along for the ride). Director Marian Beilke thought that Scorn of Women was worth per­ forming, especially since no one else had ever done it. For those who missed the premiere performances — and there is no guarantee that the play will ever be performed again — this souvenir booklet is the next best thing to having been there. It brings alive the spirit of the youthful cast who performed the play and the enthusiasm of the dedicated director without whom the play W'ould still be forgotten. Beilke’s booklet, published by his own Quintessence Publications, is a gold mine of information not only about this obscure play, but about London’s little-known career as a playwright. London followed Scorn of Women with Theft (1910), a flawed yet compelling political melodrama with a Watergate theme, and with The Acorn-Planter (1916), a lyrical “California forest play” which the Bohemian Club thought altogether too fanciful for orchestration and staging. In between, there were numerous dramatic adaptations and theatrical ventures which kept London in touch with the world of the theatre. He wanted to write at least one good play, he explained; the heavy-handed, talky Theft was the...