RADICAL RADCLIFFE

President Comstock has forbidden eleven Radcliffe students to act in the Dramatic Club's "A Bride for the Unicorn", not because of any specific lines but because of the unsuitability of the parts. And this prohibition was issued after the cast had been tried and chosen, and presumably had a pretty correct conception of the characters to be portrayed. But in addition to this display of shrinking Puritanism on the part of Radcliffe, President Conant has found it necessary for the advisory board of the Dramatic Club at Harvard to decide whether the play shall be banned entirely or not.

If the decision accords with the moral standards of the fifth century B.C. and of the twentieth century A.D. its nature is obvious: for the play is based upon ideas taken from several Greek myths, those concerning the Argonauts' adventures and the life of Persephone. Thus it is mainly a modern symbolic expression of age-firm Greek ideas analogous to those contained in the "Medea" of Euripides. President Comstock's objection passes over the expression and concerns the characters themselves, so that it must rest ultimately upon the Greek sources of the play.

Hence the prohibition on Radcliffe participating in "A Bride for the Unicorn" is very nearly parallel to a prohibition on college girls acting in one of the great tragedies; yet Vassar gives Greek plays regularly. A still closer parallel can be found in "Mourning Becomes Electra," with the extremely important distinction that while this is handled realistically, Johnston's play is symbolic. Thus it would be more absurd for Harvard Dramatic Club advisers to ban the latter than O'Neill's play.