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Martial Rose. Forever Juliet: The Life and Letters ofGwen Ffrangcon-Davies 1891-1992. Dereham (UK): Larks Press, 2003. Pp. 202 + illustrations. £9.50.
Outside anglophile theatrical circles the actress Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies is not well known in the United States. She acted in America only in 1962-1963 as Mrs. Candour in a touring production of School for Scandal. She is better known to the British public because of her long and distinguished career and also because of a series of retrospective programs in 1988, the first of which was entided "Forever Juliet," the source for the title for this engaging book. Martial Rose, recognized for his work on medieval drama and iconography, has chosen to write for a broad audience. The book is not a traditional biography, although Rose traces Ffrangcon-Davies's life and career from its inception (at fourteen she was given Ellen Terry's blessing) until her death. Rather, as he says in the introduction, he has represented "the actress's life through the letters and memorabilia." Neither is the book a mere epistolary collection, but rather a judicious selection from her letters and from the thousands of letters and notes written to her. The letters not only create a vivid portrait of the actress, but also provide a broad panorama of the English theater in the central half of the twentieth century. Long quotations from reviews, often from reviewers long forgotten but also from well-known critics like Kenneth Tynan and James Agate, provide a sense of the taste of the times. If most are congratulatory, Rose cannot be blamed for bias, for he notes that criticisms were few and sometimes idiosyncratic. James Agate, for example, who generally praised, was...