Leslie Howard Extolls Galsworthy as Playwright Who "Makes Small Parts Real"--Expects to Act Shakespeare

Critics don't cut much ice with Leslie Howard, playwright and actor now playing in "Escape" at the Plymouth theatre. This much he admitted to a CRIMSON reporter in his dressing room after the matinee yesterday.

'Many crities become not only professionally fault-seeking but have certain prejudices favoring or disfavoring certain authors and actors. George Jean Nathan is one of those in whom I wouldn't put a great deal of faith.

"That a play in nine episodes such as "Escape" could run twenty weeks in New York is a good deal of a triumph. If you were to tell an average playwright to take nine scenes, a prisoner escaping, and later being caught, with no trace of romance, and write a play out of it, he would turn out something of a mess, unquestionably. There is not much on the surface to work with.

"Galsworthy makes the small parts real, any man can write a lead that will not play too badly, but so much of the fineness of the play lies in the small parts that the great playwright won't overlook them."

Commenting upon Walter Hampden's recent statement that the level of the stage would be lowered if Shakespeare were abandoned, Mr. Howard said. "I always read Shakespeare with a good deal of boredom at first, but the longer I am on the stage, and the more I write myself, the more I appreciate the man's greatness. I hope to play Shakespeare before very long, if only to gratify a whim. The plays that he wrote and those of his contemporaries are unequalled as far as an actor is concerned."