Pastiche and Prejudice

A master critic plays the most delicious literary game: imitating the greats so perfectly that you'd swear they wrote it themselves. Arthur Bingham Walkley, after decades as The Times's legendary drama critic, unleashes his accumulated wit in these brilliant pastiches, slipping into the voices of Shakespeare, Aristotle, Victorian novelists, and Edwardian theater wits with uncanny precision. But this isn't mere mimicry Walkley uses each borrowed style to skewer his favorite targets: the pretensions of modern culture, the absurdities of politics, the arriving threat of cinema, and the eternal follies of the stage. Reading these pieces feels like watching a master chef taste a dozen cuisines at once and find the precise flavor of each. For anyone who loves language, theater, or the particular pleasure of seeing a clever person be clever on purpose, this collection is a hidden treasure.