THE KING'S ENGLISH

American plays are corrupting the English language in its native land according to Mr. C. B. Cochran, London theatrical producer. No longer is the Mayfair patois spoken in England; instead one hears "the language of Broadway". Titled ladies, grown weary of formalisms, delight in this latest vogue. And the new rich are cured of dropping their his only to affect a dialed peculiar to the characters created by Mr. Ring Laidner. There ought, says the patriotic producer, to be a law.

If England is suffering from an over does of Brooklyn jargon she is only being repaid in kind. For years the stages of this country have been peopled with men and women whose homes are represented as being any place in these United States, but whose speech is redolent of Buckingham Palace. Until the recent advent of the new naturalism of the theatre (low voice, mumbled words, incoherent murmurs), farm girls were quite likely to burst forth in ducal accents. Any person recognizing an r as something more than an opportunity for a drawl was looked upon as distinctly provincial. Thanks to the school of which the Messrs. O'Neil and Stallings are the chief exponents, theatrical language has lately come to have more or less close connections with the supposed environment of the speaker, and the British idiom is largely relegated to the use of the British. But the salvation of American drama was not due to efforts on the part of foreigners. Therefore one may be pardoned for publicly sympathizing with the English in their plight and privately snickering at the American rape of the tongue of the fatherland.