Books: The Raven Himself Is Hoarse

MACBETH (125 pp.)—William Shakespeare, illusfrated by Salvador Dali—Doubleday, Doran ($3.50).

(Scene: A bar in Eastcheap. Enter two Elizabethan book-reviewers, one clapping the other upon the shoulder.) 1st BR. How now, scribbler, what news this day? 2nd BR. Alas! this day indeed; this Doubleday!

1st BR. Speak out, wordster! 2nd BR. This dawn, eleven o’clock, when

I arose, Peering upon the world with

clotted eye, A package lay without my port; ’twas brought By one whom rain nor snow nor sleet can keep From his appointed round. I clipped its cords, And saw, dust-jacketed in gold

and red, A spectacle acute. To say it

shortly:

Will Shakespeare’s Scottish play about Macbeth

Hath found a limner in McDali. 1st BR. Cawdor and Salvador! Insane conjunction! Is-Master Doubleday

Deranged i’ the wits? 2nd BR. It is a blend

As strange as if Madrid’s hot

Manzanares Were suddenly to turn his tide,

and flow Regurgitant into the Firth of

Forth.

The strumming of flamencos on

a brae Were not more singular. And

add to this:

Surrealism’s parched, miasmic

winds

Puffed thro’ the towers of Glamis.

1st BR. Stranger Catalonian never wore

sporran! I pray you, good

fellow, itemize the damage;

that I, without the hardship

of reading, may yet write

knowingly.

2nd BR. Item: poor Scotia’s purply heath

portrayed Like to the runways used by

‘planes. Thereon Squat the three witches, pond’ring a takeoff. Item:

Facing page 42, Lady Macbeth Is wholly chopped in two from

brow to chine.

Over the sibling halves, the

fierce McDali Has hung a hairdo drawn” from

Botticelli.

The lady bears two earrings,

one of which, Dangling displaced, in Dali’s

playful mode, Droops from the center of her

clefted forehead.

Elsewhere, poor lady, she hath

no face at all, And finally her very head is

lopped.

Item: throughout these strange

configurations, Copied, at best, from Breughel

and Da Vinci, Appears a nasty crutch, the

which, they tell me, Is saggy emblem of the clan

McDali.

In truth, I was surprised that

Birnam Wood

Did not advance on crutches. 1st BR. Here’s a tartan would give a man goose-pimples! What shall you tell your readers? 2nd BR. I’ll tell them straight that, for

this selfsame price, Three thalers fifty groats, they

may procure

The plays of William Shakespeare all complete, Untouched by Salvador. 1st BR. Brave words, Master Critic!

I’ll away and do the same.

The moral is as clear as lightning’s touch,

A healthy play runs best without a crutch.