Books: Troy Town

A TALE OF TROY—John Masefield— MacMillan ($1.50). Though England’s Poet Laureate Masefield does not believe in drinking his annual allowance of good Canary wine (TIME, Jan. 11) he upholds most laureately another time-honored poetic tradition: reading poetry aloud. He dedicates this Tale of Troy to the seven “beautiful Speakers” who recited it, last Midsummer Night, in his attentive presence.

In 46 pages, eleven poems. Poet Masefield telescopes the Iliad’s 24 books, hitting such high spots as Paris’ rape of Helen, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia for a favorable wind, and focusing on wily Odysseus’ successful gate-crashing scheme of the Wooden Horse. Though he contributes no mighty lines or markedly memorable verse to the Troy legend, Masefield’s dramatic narrative, in which different speakers take up the story in turn, adds some freshness of its own to an oft-told tale.