Fortune, My Foe and Eros at Breakfast by Robertson Davies, and: Reading and Writing by Robertson Davies, and: Jezebel by Robertson Davies (review)

206 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 Like the annotations, the editorial work is thorough and professional. Scherf's task was made all the more difficult by the inept editing of the Selected Poems by Earle Birney and Margerie Lowry, who rearranged papers and often marked on the manuscripts themselves, so it is remarkable that she has managed to pull things together as well as she has. Not only do we have accurate texts, but the variant readings are especially useful (although it would be helpful to know in which manuscripts they are to be found - information that we are given only for copy-texts). In my work with the Lowry manuscripts I have run across variants that Scherf does not cite, but she restricts her list of variant readings to versions written before the copy-text, and it is probable that these manuscripts all postdate the copy-texts. Given her normally scrupulous work, however, I am startled to find an error in the crude poem about Charlotte Haldane (poem 457), taken from the typescript of The Ordeal of SigbjfJrn Wilderness, located in box 22, file 19, of the University of British Columbia's Lowry Archive. Scherf's copy-text location index indicates that that is her source, but if so the first line should read 'Roxy was a doxy and she lived in Cambridge [not Histon] Eng.' I also regard the inclusion of poem 460 as a mistake because it is not a poem by Lowry; instead, it is a slightly miscopied advertisement for Burma-Shave, a brand of brushless shaving cream, which Lowry recorded in a notebook during a trip across America. Minor complaints notwithstanding, The Collected Poetn) ofMalcolm Lown) is one of the most significant works of Lowry scholarship in recent years. It is an essential text not only for studies of Lowry's poetry but for any serious criticism of his work in general. (PATRICK A. MC CARTHY) Robertson Davies. Fortune, My Foe and Eros at Breakfast Simon and Pierre. 126. $14.99 paper Robertson Davies. Reading and Writing University of Utah Press. 64. us $12.95 Robertson Davies. Jezebel Privately printed and distributed by McClelland and Stewart. 31. n.p. A reprinting of two plays from the 1940s, the handsome publication of a recent lecture-series, the libretto of a contemporary oratorio: such was the production of Robertson Davies in the year in which he celebrated his eightieth birthday. Davies's experience in the early days of Canadian theatre was not altogether a happy one. Indeed, in Reading and Writing he remarks: 1 wrote HUMANmE5 207 seventeen I that I was not to be a playwright, because conception of comedy was not to the popular taste,' He even de- ':3·H"Arr1l'...~t' but that is to underestimate what mc.ae:st LALV ....l); ... ....,U. •• ...,U.JJH... theatrical contribution. ......""....." ....,.....,........-1 invaluable work at a crucial in the Canadian drama (the phrase 'roughing it in bush' springs to mind, and it may not be coincidental that Susanna is an character in afliOUler plays, At the Heart's Core). But the was not ripe for major achievements in genre. It is curious to return in the 19905 to some of Davies's dramatic creations of almost half a century ago. sometimes seem oddly JoIdfor the work of a elegance and inventiveness as look in vain on the COlntE~rn'DoraI'V at U. ...£'nvl'nc'" "''''''''''''~''T'\[7 their productions, and London theatre audiences to the work of Christopher and translations seem to us because are no longer 'contemporary' yet are too recent to be as accomplished dramas a When seen at a historical remove, their they have much to offer. Fortune, My Foe, written a pnJtessl1on.:ll was Davies's first at a manners and ideas in the Shavian lem was not to ","a...._." ..',....A7·,.., thing, A Message,' When - philistinism versus distinction between education and gelnUlme I"''''........',...,.. ",h(!t',\... h,'t1,t"r even if it a attention span than many TV-nurtured play-goers can command . Davies's 'to the public taste' is presumably represented here his assumption that audiences can be elTIotionally ideas. This is different Orville pressive lV1E!SSi:ige his exemplifies . Moreover, Tapscott and...