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James Agate (1877 - 1947)
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British drama critic, diarist and essayist James Evershed Agate was considered the most powerful voice of the theater in his time. A friend of both Noel Coward and Lucius Beebe , he was noted for his wit and perverse but lovable personality, as evidenced by his observation, "What's wrong with a little incest? It's both handy and cheap." After working two years in a cotton mill, then sixteen years as a cotton broker in Manchester, Agate became a theater critic for the Manchester Guardian in 1915. Eight years later he moved on to the London Sunday Times, where he became the most famous and powerful critic in the West End. Agate was instrumental in helping along the careers of many young talents at this time, including John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, and Vivien Leigh. In addition to his dramatic reviews for the Times, which he wrote from 1923 until his death, he is also famous for an anthology of English drama critics from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries and his nine volume autobiography, Ego, which was written between 1935 and 1947 in diary format with bits of poetry and lyrical commentary thrown into the text. He also wrote the preface for the English edition of Sarah Bernhardt's Art of the Theatre, and was the godfather of screenwriter and film critic Paul Dehn. Adamant in his opinions, he once said, "My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made." James Agate's works include Alarums and Excursions; Amazing Theatre; Around Cinemas; At Half-Past Eight; Brief Chronicles; Buzz, Buzz!; Contemporary Theatre; Ego; Immoment Toys; More First Nights; Playgoing; Rachel; Red Letter Nights; Short View of the English Stage, 1900-1926; These Were Actors; and Those Were the Nights. Links: James Agate - The Noel Coward Society Creative Quotations from James Agate (1877-1947) Review of Ivor Novello's "Perchance to Dream" by Agate
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