There is a certain fable in which a wolf set itself up to judge the conduct of the relatives of an appetising lamb, and executed a vicarious injustice. From time to time London dramatic critics of the highest standard and most respected character have been excluded by particular managers for a while from their houses, because the managers thought they had not been "absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and on the most dignified plane." Time and their friends have convinced the managers that they had blundered, and peace was made.
Suppose, however, that those individual managers, who really are people taking a far more dignified view of their calling than that of putting it on the level of the dry-goods store, had been part of a syndicate of Klaws, would those critics have been readmitted? Would the fact have been recognized that the unfavourable notices were really honest dignified criticisms, even if disputable upon the point of justice? Of course not. If the newspapers had combined against the theatres, the Syndicate managers would have climbed down. Would they have combined? I think not. Here, indeed, is the peril.
It appears that the Syndicate has already laid its claws on some of the London theatres. What combination is likely to be formed to fight it; and if there be none, what is the inevitable result? In this land, many centuries ago, even before the famous statute of James I. that regulates our Patent Law, the British feeling has been hostile to monopolies. Apparently this spirit was thrown overboard during the famous passage of The Mayflower, or when Boston Bay was turned into a teapot, and certainly the American takes everything on trust, except, indeed, the honesty of his rulers and judges. Unfortunately one of the things we are importing from America—would that there were a real prohibitive tariff against it!—is the monopolistic spirit; and this being the case, it is very rash to hope that we shall band ourselves adequately to resist the attacks of the theatre syndicates.
It is easy to see how such a thing would be worked: at the beginning quietly, pleasantly, until the hold became so strong that the gloves could be taken off and players might be warned not to accept engagements from outsiders on pain of getting none from the trust; and dramatists informed that unless they kept all their wares for the Syndicate they must look to the few outsiders for a living. The American managers, in their big way, would buy up some of the irreconcilable newspapers, would acquire a preponderating influence in the neutral, and discover that the critics representing the independent journals were not "absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and always on the most dignified plane." Truly, if we are to be judged by such a method, few, if any, of us will escape a whipping. Does the Syndicate regard any critic who expresses an unfavourable opinion about its wares as "absolutely impartial," etc.? Surely no one who is not "absolutely impartial," etc., is entitled to apply such a standard to the critics: would this consideration prevent Mr Klaw from judging them and carrying out his sentences? It is to be feared that he would do Jedburgh justice on some of us, and the out-of-work critics would join the crowd at Poverty Corner.
CHAPTER IV
PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES
The Pseudo-Historical
A play running at the Savoy in March 1905, concerning Madame du Barri, called forth the usual complaints about inaccuracy in detail and undesirability of subject. The latter point is not our theme, and may be dismissed with the remark that there was nothing in the life of the creature as presented upon the stage to serve as an excuse for requiring us to spend an evening with such a worthless baggage.
At an early stage of his career the critic welcomes this class of pseudo-historical drama—but his welcome takes an unamiable form. He likes to have it produced on a Saturday evening, so that he may pass a happy Sunday. The inaccuracies fascinate him. They offer such a splendid chance of showing the knowledge possessed by him—and his library. When very young he deals with the matter in a straightforward fashion, and trounces the author for every unwitting solecism and willing falsification that is discovered.
He writes a learned little disquisition headed by a remark, in the Macaulay vein, as to matters of common knowledge, and shows from direct authority that the dramatist is quite wrong in mixing up the Du Barri who married the heroine with the Du Barri who took her away from the milliner's shop, and gives a facetious touch of lightness to his remarks by pointing out that neither of the scoundrels was connected with a certain much-advertised proprietary food.
The more obscure the blunder the greater the writer's joy in it, for he will be able to introduce observations beginning "That little known but elegant author," etc., and if the subject is earlier than the Du Barri period he will present some quotations in the uneconomically spelt old French.
A little later in his career his method changes: he relies upon his batterie de cuisine as much as ever, but uses some art to conceal the employment of his apparatus. There will be mere hints about the errors; an adjective between two commas will sometimes represent a severe correction. The books are not referred to, the corrections are made in a fashion which suggests that no greater authority is needed than that of the critic.
A time arrives when he comes to the conclusion that it is no part of his duties to deal with the historical aspect of the matter; but, of course, the habit is upon him, and he excuses himself by saying, after he has pointed out all the errors which he has noticed, that they would not matter in the least if the play were meritorious in other respects.
It is difficult to defend his attitude, which, however, is due to his appreciation of the fact that nowadays a little knowledge is a well-paid thing. Moreover, he does not wish it to be thought that his knowledge of history—and books—is less than that of his rivals. Of course the inaccuracies do not matter very much unless they are so gross as to shock the great half-literate.
There is, however, a more valid objection to the historical play than that it is certain to be inaccurate; the historical drama is rarely a good drama.
The author is compelled by his matter to present it in a conventional fashion, for to give a Du Barri or a Napoleon, a Nelson or a Wellington, not in accordance with the popular concept of such personages would be to seek failure. Moreover, the writer is necessarily forced to belittle the subject if not bold enough to take a simple episode in the life of his hero or heroine, and even then, unless the miracle-working power of genius is employed, the great figure comes out as a small puppet.
The player may be made to look up like Napoleon, may follow traditions as to his gestures and mode of speech, but in none of the vast number of plays concerning the wonderful monster has he ever appeared to be a person of genius: whether handled facetiously, as in Mr Shaw's ingenious play The Man of Destiny, or Madame Sans-Gene, pathetically as in the play presented by Mr Martin Harvey, or formidably as in most works, he never seems at all different from any commonplace man put into the like circumstances. Exactly that in which he differed from all others is exactly what cannot be put upon the stage. We have had Nelson, and of course it was quite impassible to get any suggestion of the qualities that made him Nelson.
The modern tendency in the matter seems to be to choose the reprehensible—such, for instance, as Mlle. Mars, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barri, and La Montansier, women in the career of whom no doubt there were many dramas, similar, however, to the dramas in the lives of other women of their class less famous and infamous. When, however, they are put upon the stage they cease to be remarkable, and the characters introduced to support them have the same fate; for instance, the Louis XV. at the Savoy does not give the faintest idea of the ineffably vile monarch, whilst no glimpse is shown of the quality which enabled a Du Barri to obtain her tremendous power.
It is always a case of mountain and mouse in these plays; take as an example the Sardou Dante play produced with prodigious drum-beating a while ago at Drury Lane. Who, if names had been altered, would have guessed that the hero of the piece was the author of the immortal poems? There has been hardly a historical play in modern times in which the identity of the famous personages could be guessed except from the names, the make-up, the costumes, and the specific facts; at the best the pieces are tableaux vivants.
Perhaps there is nothing illegitimate in the ambition of the player to pose as one of the mighty dead, and it is rather humility in the author which urges him to seek adventitious interest than vanity that causes him to believe himself really able to give a true idea of a Napoleon. Into such delicate questions it is needless to inquire. The point is that the lives of the great are not more dramatic than the lives of the small. Napoleon at St Helena was not more unhappy than were millions of people of his day. There is a drama as poignant in the history of César Birotteau as in that of Marie Antoinette, as big a tragedy in the career of Whitaker Wright as in that of Napoleon III.
There was a reason, which exists no longer, why the authors of the Middle Ages chose characters of great social status for their principal parts, and even this reason was not altogether well founded. It would be wrong to assert that historical plays ought not to be written, for, whilst not recommending the use of the stage instead of history classes, one can see that a historical play may illustrate ideas that could hardly be presented otherwise.
There is a noteworthy instance in the work of the much-abused Ibsen. The Pretenders is a historical drama amazingly rich in idea; whether the idea of kingship superbly handled in it is an anachronism it is hard to say, or to tell whether the dramatist chose his subject to illustrate his idea or the idea to embellish his subject; but in it, though obviously there is scope for magnificent mounting and interesting detail, one feels that the genius of the author has prevented him from making any sacrifice of the dramatic aspect. He has not chosen a popular historical personage and made him into the hero of the melodrama, as happens in the case of nine out of ten of the so-called historical plays, but has written a drama that demands a royal atmosphere, which he handles admirably.
What a pity that the money lavished upon the Du Barri play—and lavished very cleverly, it must be admitted, so far as the production of beautiful stage-pictures is concerned—was not spent in the mounting of a great drama like The Pretenders, rich in strong acting parts, magnificent in presentation of character, and really illuminated by ideas!
The Horrible in Drama
It has been alleged that The Monkey's Paw, a clever one-act play by Messrs Jacobs and Barker, formerly presented at the Haymarket Theatre, is too horrible for the stage. The part complained of is confined to the last scene of three.
A young man has been killed in a factory, and his body was so mangled by the fatal wheels that even his father was not allowed to see it. Late at night the father, by means of a diabolical talisman—the Monkey's Paw—succeeds in recalling his son to life, and the audience hears a knocking at the door. What is knocking? The mother is making frantic efforts to pull back the bolts. Her son is there, returned from the grave. The father, aware that the talisman, which promised the fulfilment of three wishes, is of a fiendish malignity, guesses that if the door be opened his son will stand before them alive, but fearfully mangled and mutilated, so he is groping upon the floor for the Monkey's Paw, and the audience feels that on the other side of the door is an obscene horror fresh from the grave. There was a sigh of relief in the theatre when the father found the talisman, and, using the last wish, prayed successfully that his son might be dead and at peace.
The knock, knock, was decidedly impressive, like the knocking at the door in Macbeth, which greatly affected Charles Lamb. Is this matter too horrible for the stage? One may compare it with another horror given not long ago, The Soothing System, which Mr Bourchier adapted cleverly from a story by Edgar Poe and produced at the Garrick, showing the terrible adventures of two visitors to a lunatic asylum, the inmates of which had overpowered their keepers. This was very powerful and horrible, and perhaps would have given a shiver to the hero of a famous tale in the collection of goblin stories by the Brothers Grimm.
Nevertheless it was not legitimate, partly because the circumstances are rare when it is permissible to present madness on the stage, partly because some of the mad people were repulsive to the eye, and partly because horror was the sole means and end of the piece. Many condemned The Monkey's Paw, yet a line can be drawn between it and The Soothing System—not a nice sharp line, but one of those blurred lines so faint and so uncertain, that even if their existence be admitted, there is always room for a fight on the question whether a work lies on this or that side of it.
Speaking roughly, one may say that The Monkey's Paw is legitimate because there is nothing in it repulsive to the eye, and for the reason that horror is not the sole means and end of it: the story, like its prototype folk-lore tale, "The Three Wishes," has an obvious moral. It belongs to art because the emotion caused is due to a stimulus to our imagination by the force of an idea and not of a thing exhibited. If an effort were made to show us any ghastly creature knocking, the work would be out of court.
To illustrate the line of definition already indicated, a few instances of the horrible presented on the stage in our time may be given usefully; it must be added that most appear to lie on the wrong side.
Shakespeare's adventures in the horrible are legitimate, with an exception in the case of one play of doubtful authenticity, Titus Andronicus. On the other hand, Sweeney Todd; or, The Barber of Fleet Street, would probably find no defender; whilst a historical drama I once saw in the South of France, where the hero was put upon the rack in front of the footlights and squirmed and screamed, was quite unendurable; and this is rather a pity, since there is a very powerful dramatic scene in Balzac's Notes sur Catherine de Medicis, which in consequence of this objection should not be used. There is a mitigated form of the torture business in La Tosca that caused great discussion. Perhaps those who deem it illegitimate are somewhat supersensitive; it would be more polite, and perhaps accurate, to call them hyper-modern.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde presented a very difficult case. I can remember nothing so "creepy" and "shuddery" as the first appearance of Mr Mansfield at the Lyceum in the character of the evil doctor; the house gasped at the half-seen image of a sort of obscene beast at the conservatory window, and there was the silence of breathless horror when it bounded into the room and seized its victim. Until the impression wore off the Mansfield Hyde was almost as horrible as the fantastic things born of the cruel imagination and brilliant pencil of Mr S.H. Sime, whose work is sometimes so richly embellished by imagination as well as by superb technique that one cannot deny its claim to be regarded as art.
Something of the distinction here discussed can be seen by comparing Mr Sime's drawings with the pictures of the mad painter Wirtz, whose abominable gallery at Brussels is a chamber of unimaginative horrors. It may be remembered that Mr Mansfield had a competitor in Mr Bandman Palmer, who, however, missed horror by the simple vulgarity of his horrors, and, though he may have impressed the simple-minded, was ludicrous to the thoughtful.
Returning for a moment to the clearly unpermissible, one might take a book like "Frankenstein." Certainly any presentation on the stage of the man-monster as described by the talented authoress would fall under the censure of being disgusting. This term may be used concerning several needless exhibitions of blood on the stage, and of such a matter as Nana, once presented in Paris. When the hapless heroine appeared in the last act with wax spots to indicate the pustules of smallpox, she very nearly "took a lot out of us," if one may borrow a phrase from "Mr Hopkinson." Obviously anything that reminds one of the ghastly horrors at the Royal College of Surgeons or the Polyclinic Institute is quite unforgivable.
This brings us not unnaturally to a matter in which there has been some change of taste. A fearful exhibition of a man in a fit, given with horrible power by that admirable actor Mr Pateman in a melodrama called Master and Man, would perhaps not be condemned in our days, but probably we would not endure, and certainly there would be little praise for, some of the death scenes once famous in drama. The critics nowadays would apply to the actress the phrase of the auctioneer to his wife, and implore her to "get on with her dying."
There was the famous Mlle. Croizette in Le Sphinx, by that detestable dramatist Octave Feuillet; she squirmed horribly after taking poison from a ring; and it was alleged that she had studied the death of patients in hospitals—a brutal, horrible thing to do. There is a good deal too much dying in Frou-Frou, La Dame aux Camellias and Adrienne Lecouvrer. Without going back to the traditions of the Greek theatre, one may say confidently that, if death on the stage is permissible, dying is almost illegitimate, and trick falls, exhibitions of agony, and the like are mere pandering to a very vulgar taste. Occasionally the dying is so handled that, though somewhat prolonged, such a vigorous phrase ought not to be applied to it. For instance, one may refer to In the Hospital, once presented at the Court, where Mr Beveridge, in an admirable performance, gave a very tactful, restrained exhibition of approaching death and actual decease. Another objection exists to any exhibition upon the stage of dying as compared with death. The symptoms often call up terrible memories to some members of the audience which are not evoked by the simple fact of death itself. It cannot be pretended that these references to instances of the horrible and the trifling comments upon them establish the existence of the distinction indicated, but they may be of some assistance to those who endeavour to explore the matter. It is at least pleasant to note that there is a modern tendency to obtain effects of the horrible by appeals to the imagination rather than to the senses.
It should be added that Mr F.R. Benson presented a Frankenstein play written by Mr Stephen Phillips, but the question of the horrible appearance was discreetly avoided.
The Immorality Play
The summer visit to London of foreign players generally gives birth to discussions upon several topics. Of course the question as to the relative merits of French and English acting is raised. Upon this, one may give a warning to the thoughtless not to accept as universal the vague proposition that the French are a nation of born actors. Of course everybody each year points out that it is absurd there should be several foreign companies at a time in London cutting the throats of one another, as to which one may say that the matter is far more complicated than most people suppose.
The point worth nothing is the choice of plays by our visitors. Some of them no doubt are wise; Bernhardt, for instance, recognizes the fact that a showy piece with a big part for her is exactly the right thing provided that it is easily understood by the Berlitzians and Ollendorffians. There are others, however, such as Madame Réjane, more ambitious, who in their selection of plays do some disservice to their country.
The humour of Mr Gilbert's line "The not too French French bean" appeals irresistibly to the English.
There has long been a vague idea in British bosoms that our neighbours in sexual matters are far more immoral than ourselves. This is not the occasion upon which to examine the causes and origin of such a decidedly erroneous view. One may, however, single out one of them. It is largely the fault of writers of fiction that we remain in ignorance, or rather—and this is worse—in error concerning the character of our amiable neighbours.
In former days, putting aside the naughty farces not supposed to present a picture of actual life, most French dramas were quite sound in conventional morality. Augier presented some wicked people, such as Olympe, concerning whom he invented the phrase la nostalgie de la boue; but he was unequivocably moral in his aims, and preached the sanctity of marriage and maternity. Dumas fils, putting aside one indiscretion, was equally vigorous in his desire to support accepted views of morality. His illustrious father, it may be admitted, occasionally propounded startling propositions, but without prejudice, I fancy, to a sound belief in the idea that exceptional cases must be regarded as exceptions.
None, however, of these writers, however artificial their views of life, ever offered pictures of society based upon the proposition that the chastity of woman is of no importance.
Many of the present school of French dramatists write plays—unfortunately chosen for presentation in England—which assume the existence in society of a large class of people, otherwise amiable, who act upon the proposition that in Paris as in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Unmarried men and women live together, the males paying for the board and lodging, etc., of the females without there being any pretence that the intimacy of their relations is radically immoral under normal circumstances. They do not even indulge in fireworks in such plays. You do not have parodies of the famous phrase "Property is theft"; for the heroines fail to justify themselves by remarking that marriage is immorality. There is simply a business of union and disunion, collage and décollage, coupled with what one may call cross-unions, all of them apparently free from the embarrassment of children and none of them involving any of the more dignified of the human emotions. One of the worst of the number was L'Age d'Aimer, by M. Pierre Wolff, a piece so cynically immoral, and written with such an air of truth, that it might well cause some of us to shrink in horror from the idea of an entente cordiale with a people which, if truly represented by its fashionable dramatists, has no concept of cleanliness of life. Without posing as a champion of orthodox morality and certainly without taking objection to the study of sex questions on the stage, one may protest against works in which it is assumed there is no sex question, because every form of union, on any basis, except perhaps that of marriage, is permissible.
By-the-by, why was the press that was so indignant about the so-called problem play almost silent concerning these French dramas? Where were the phrases, such as miasmatic putrescence or putrescent miasma—I forget which it was—that used to greet the dramas of Ibsen? Where are the splendid Puritans who howled about A Wife without a Smile? Could it be—the thought is painful—that they did not quite understand L'Age d'Aimer and imagined that all the people were married? This idea is simply humiliating to one of the craft. "Ne rien comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" is a very novel view of a famous phrase.
Madame Réjane, it was stated in the papers, has expressed herself shocked by A Wife without a Smile, and alleged that she would never act in such a piece; but it may well be that her horror lay in the fact that the parties concerned in the farce had been through a ceremony of marriage, and that she would have accepted it as permissible if it were correctly entitled A Cocotte without a Leer. The point is, not that those who understand these plays or those who do not are affected in their moral ideas by them, but that they give a deplorable picture of French life and in such a guise as to suggest that it is a picture of normal French life; unfortunately L'Age d'Aimer is only one of many.
It is a great pity to use such a powerful vehicle as the stage for slandering a nation. That there is a certain amount of truth in works of the Zaza, Sapho, Les Demi-Vierges and L'Age d'Aimer type is incontestable; yet so far as they are true to general life one can find their parallel in this holy island. Unfortunately, whilst the fast society of Paris is no bigger than that of London, and whilst Paris is infinitely less in relation to France than London in relation to England, the great French nation is generally judged over here by flashy pictures of the fast section of Paris society, drawn, very often, if not always, from the outside, by clever people too indolent to know that the psychology of decent people is quite as interesting and dramatic as that of the gutter-creatures of mere passion who dignify their cynical desires with noble names, and, so far as the latest school is concerned, fail even to reach the humblest concept of free love.
Scripture Plays
There have been some complaints about the attitude of several of the dramatic critics concerning Mr Jerome's drama The Passing of the Third Floor Back. It has been suggested that they have not welcomed with sufficient warmth a sincere attempt "to broaden the basis," a phrase apparently borrowed from the Tariff Reformers, to enlarge the boundaries of the British drama, but have treated the production of the piece as an everyday affair, confining their remarks to criticism concerning the workmanship.
In The Third Floor Back a character is introduced who is called "The Stranger," but known by everybody in the theatre to represent Jesus Christ; and "The Stranger" visits a somewhat remarkable boarding-house in which all the boarders and the landlady are vile, and after his visit all of them are fit for immediate translation to heaven.
Certainly, many of us are anxious to broaden the basis of our drama. A little while ago an important foreign paper contained a article saying that the object of the London stage is "to introduce living pictures to say pretty things for young girls," and that "of the social, religious, economic or intellectual struggles which agitate our time no trace is observable in the English stage literature of the day," and that English stage literature "has become nothing more than an insipid and dying study of the doings of the aristocratic and the rich." How sickening to know that in the main the charges are true, and that our drama, with, fortunately some exceptions, is merely a kind of Pap and Puppet affair.
On the other hand, the broadening effect of a play such as Mr Jerome's is not obvious. The Censor has been dodged, just as he was dodged many years ago, when Verdi's opera Nebuchadonozor was called Ninus or when Ben Hur was presented or The Daughters of Babylon. That official has already permitted the performance of Everyman and Hannele. Consequently, it is not easy to see that the suggested broadening of the basis has taken place.
Moreover, there are many who doubt whether broadening, so as to admit a free trade in what could be called religious or Scripture drama, is desirable. We do not pretend that the office of Censor ought to be maintained merely to keep back a flood of plays introducing Scriptural characters. The office, no doubt, does good as well as harm, but the harm far outweighs the good. Would it be beneficial if this particular restriction—this working rule that characters bearing the names of personages of the Old and New Testament are not to be presented on the stage—were relaxed. There are enthusiastic persons who desire a closer union between Church and the Stage, and wish to have the theatre employed as a kind of pulpit, who believe that Scripture plays would be beneficial. It is conceivable that under certain circumstances the attitude of these persons would be sound, but not under the present circumstances.
Most of our theatres are run as a mere commercial speculation by people who care little enough about art, and probably nothing about religion. We have had one instance of the sort of thing that might be expected, The Sign of the Cross, in which a commonplace melodrama was mixed up with hymns and pseudo-religious talk and miracles, and a ballet as immodest, as pulse-disturbing, as any given in the theatres or the halls. Many visited the play who had never been to a theatre before, since they believed that it was really a religious drama outside their ban. Some were horrified, and from being potential playgoers became rapidly adverse to the stage and all its works; others were shocked and disturbed and delighted by the exhibition of female flesh in the ballet, with a result which can easily be guessed. No doubt a number of persons believed that the piece did good to them and other folk—some people will believe anything.
The people of taste and sensibility, who, whatever their state of religious belief, would regard with abhorrence the exhibition on the ordinary commercial stage of the Christ whom they were brought up to regard as Divine, have a title to consideration. The traffic in blasphemy that would immediately follow the suggested enlargement of the boundary of the theatre is horrible to contemplate. Such abominations as a combination of Christ and semi-naked women doing more or less mitigated danses du ventre, would be justified as giving an Oriental colour.
There is another side. It may be taken that our laws against blasphemy have moved a good deal since Lord Coleridge's famous summing-up concerning the essential mutability of the Common Law about blasphemy which he gave in Regina v. Ramsey and Foote; if the restriction were removed what power would prevent the atheists from producing distinctly anti-Christian plays which might very well cause riots, which certainly would prove a serious counterblast, if discreetly handled, to the efforts of the Church and Stage enthusiasts. One can conceive every kind of crank with money producing a play to advocate his particular brand of religion.
We could not expect all the actors chosen to represent Christ to be gentlemen of fine sensibility, high character, and sincere feeling for art, like Mr Forbes Robertson; it is hardly pleasant to think of the character in the hands of some members of the profession. One can imagine a feeling of revulsion if any of the actresses who have made history—in the Divorce Court—were chosen for the part of the Virgin Mary.
This is said without for one moment suggesting that the players are one whit the worse in their way of living than the rest of us, or that managers of theatres are wickeder or more unscrupulously commercial than anyone else. Yet, speaking of the managers, one is forced to admit that the majority consult the taste of the majority, that many are willing enough to pander to vulgar cravings, and it is not imaginable that, unless our stage can be put upon a new basis, a freedom to produce religious or Scriptural drama would fail to cause great scandals.
As the matter stands, the attitude of the Censor, though not logical, is not wholly unsatisfactory; it is ludicrous enough that he should have adopted an ostrich policy towards Mr Jerome's piece, yet no harm has been done by the production of this sincere and respectful drama. Indeed, some good may have come from it. In an ideal world, no doubt, we should all be severely logical; in England we are radically illogical, and we carry out most of our affairs on a basis of compromises.
If you do not call your leading character Christ in the theatre you may call him Christ outside, seems the proposition implied in the licence for The Passing of the Third Floor Back, but the very basis of the authority of the Lord Chamberlain is such that one cannot apply logic to his decrees and say that because he has permitted this he must sanction that. Some of these remarks may seem to suggest that it is advisable the office should be retained, which is not the case. We pay too high a price for it since it tends to paralyse the drama; on the other hand it is to be hoped that so long as the office exists the holders of it will be very careful concerning any efforts to exploit the Scriptures for the profit of the theatres.
The success of the St James's play will cause a rush of people, anxious to go "one better"—or worse—than Mr Jerome. No harm—possibly some good—may come from the present piece, but the circumstances should be regarded as exceptional. We have few playwrights so earnest as Mr Jerome, few actors or managers with such high ideals as those of Mr Forbes Robertson. It seems permissible and advisable to add that this article is not written from the point of view of one who professes to be "on the side of the angels," but merely as a protest against what in the long run would be one more blow to our staggering stage.
Anecdotal Plays
It appears that "Percival" of The Referee has made a great discovery. He has found out the reason why French plays are better than English, is able to put his "finger on the real difference which exists between French plays and English," he now knows why "many more plays are successfully adapted from French into English than vice versa." This sounded thrilling, but after finishing his article the reader was about in the humour of a person who has been promised "an awfully rippin' new story" and receives a feeble "chestnut."
Mr "Percival" is really like the American who discovered on going home very late at night the fact that the sun rises in the east, and cackled as much about his discovery as a hen over her first egg. His explanation is that, "with one exception—Pinero—the English playwright invents a plot and then writes in characters to carry that plot out. Your French playwright does not do this.... He takes an idea and works it out with dramatic action instead of taking a dramatic action and working it out with such incident ideas as may happen along. And sometimes your French dramatist just takes people with characteristics and lets them work their own play out for him."
There is no need to seek deeply to find out why "many more plays are successfully adopted from French into English than vice versa." The explanation is that owing to Parisian prejudice hardly any English plays of any merit, Shakespeare's excepted, have been adapted, and there is a ferocious hostility in France to foreign drama.
The modern French drama may be better than the English; perhaps "Percival" hardly asserts that it is, unless in the passage already quoted and in this phrase: "There is something about three plays in four in France which is lacking at home, and that something is something good." No doubt, if we take the past fifty years as a basis for comparison of the two dramas, the French is the better; but during the last fifteen there has been a change, and one could not make any sweeping assertion upon the subject as regards the plays of this period, unless it be limited to the plays produced in the ordinary way of theatrical commerce.
If the alleged superiority exists, one can offer two reasons for it without relying upon the brilliant discovery of "Percival." The first is the greater freedom of the French dramatist in choice of subject, and also in treatment; this gives him an enormous advantage.
The second is that, whilst there are almost as many people in Paris who will welcome rubbish as there are in London, there can also be found a large number of playgoers with a good deal of intellectual curiosity, whilst the intelligent amateur—using the phrase in its French sense—is comparatively rare in London. Consequently, the French dramatist has not only more freedom in subject and treatment than the English, but in addition a greater public of playgoers who bring their intellect into the auditorium. Probably "Percival" will claim that this second ground of explanation enters into his, and there is some truth in this.
On the other hand, his statement of fact that our dramatists, with the exception of Pinero, are mere story-tellers, and that the French authors write plays based upon ideas, is quite inaccurate.
Roughly, one may put dramas into three categories—the play of anecdote, the play of idea, and the play of character. "Percival" recognises the third category by his remark that "sometimes your French dramatist just takes people with characteristics and lets them work out their own play for him." As a matter of fact, few plays belong exclusively to any one of these categories. In which would "Percival" place Shakespeare's? He began to write a play by borrowing the plot from somebody, and primarily all his pieces may be regarded as anecdotal, but, in the passage of the story through his mind to the pen, in some cases it became the vehicle for an idea, and, in all, the story grew to be of infinitely less importance than the characters.
Take Othello. You may give an account of it as a story in which it is merely an adaptation of another man's work. You may treat it as a study of the idea of jealousy, and be uncertain whether suspicion is not more correct as a definition than jealousy, or you may consider it as an amazing gallery of pictures of character. It may be put into each category, and belongs to all.
Probably the question whether a drama belongs primarily to this, that, or the other of the categories is as otiose as the discussion whether the hen or the egg came first. No play lives that does not belong to the second and third category, and it cannot be put upon the boards without some reliance upon the first. On the other hand, whatever may be the belief of individual dramatists, it is doubtful whether any dramas are produced primarily based upon "taking people with characteristics and letting them work out their own play." It is obvious that people, even people with strongly marked characteristics, can live for years in juxtaposition without their relation to one another resulting in anything dramatic, or even theatrical. Paula Tanqueray and her husband might have lived and died unhappily together without offering any materials to the playwright, and so indeed might any of the characters in any of the plays by the brilliant author. Only when facts exterior to them begin to play upon the characters dramatically is there room for drama. There is an enormous amount of plot, psychological or physical, in every play.
Next to the first, the second category produces the plays most clearly defined. One might take the plays of Brieux, and some of the dead-and-gone dramas of Charles Reade. Here we have dramas of idea, more accurately of subject, still more accurately of problem. They are works in which the dramatist tries to prove something, or, at least, present some problem of social life, leaving to the audience the task of coming to a conclusion.
However, even M. Brieux cannot get on without category number one, whilst he puts as much of category number three in his work as he can. He invents a story, and he chooses and endeavours to display characters as a vehicle for exhibiting his subject. Sometimes, to be just, he gets along—in a fashion—with a surprisingly small amount of plot, as in Les Bienfaiteurs. Even then the necessity of having some sort of form makes a good deal of story necessary. Jean Jullien, the inventor of the phrase "Une tranche de la vie," endeavoured to give plays without formal beginning or end, unconsciously, perhaps, tried to carry out a desire of Merimée's to write a play in respect of which the audience needs no knowledge of antecedent facts; but his success—in more senses than one—was only partial.
The English dramatists of what one might call the Independent Theatre, Stage Society, and Court Theatre management have struggled to avoid the anecdotal play, sometimes with a brilliant result, as in The Voysey Inheritance, John Bull's Other Island, or Strife; Mr J.M. Barrie in several successful works has minimised the story as much as possible.
Why does "Percival" ignore them? Has he overlooked the fact that most of the French dramas successfully adapted belong primarily to the category he condemns, and nearly all the rest to a subdivision of number three, ignored by him. This subdivision consists of star plays—that is, of dramas of theatrical character—in the manufacture of which the French dramatists excel. Many of the dramas by Dumas fils show an ingenious combination of this subdivision with the anecdotal play. And Pinero—our exception—how would "Percival" classify His House in Order, which has a strong story? In reality it is a very adroit mixture of story, idea, and comedy of character, this is the case with the other works of our leading dramatist.
The fact is that "Percival" has mistaken treatment for conception. All dramatists try to combine the three categories, but the worst class attaches too much importance to the mere story; unfortunately our audiences are like the bad dramatist in this respect: hence the almost purely anecdotal play, like the anecdotal picture, is the most popular.
The Supernatural
That the forbidden is attractive is a commonplace and true. The third party in the divorce case is often less beautiful than the petitioner, the length of water beyond our own always promises better sport, the mushrooms seem to grow more thickly in the fields of others. In drama we see the same law in operation. No canon of art makes the "supernatural" unlawful to the dramatist, but it is generally looked upon as illegitimate in serious drama. The word "supernatural" is used in its popular sense, which is well enough understood, but indefinable. Naturally the dramatist is tempted the more when he sees the novelist using the supernatural effectively.
No wonder the playwright has tried to adapt Frankenstein; he has merely succeeded in presenting a grotesque unterrible figure where Mrs Shelley gave a thrill of horror. We have had several plays on the boards which overstep bounds. One can read Mr Jerome's tale "The Passing of the Third Floor Back" without being oppressed by a sense of the inadequacy of his machinery, but when Mr Forbes Robertson is supposed on the stage to "blarney" eight or nine people who have ugly souls into righteousness we are not only unconvinced but actively incredulous. Possibly to simple minds the affair would be more impressive if the lodger wore a halo supposed to be invisible to the people on the stage, or produced an occasional flash of lightning or growl of thunder.
Take that dear old crusted melodrama The Corsican Brothers. The story was thrilling enough when merely read; it was easy to believe that the Dei Franchi had a special brand of constitution which enabled them to see the family ghost whilst the more sceptical could talk of brain waves and suggestions and of subjective phenomena. That is where the modern novelist gets out of all hobbles; if you will not accept his spook as a genuine, old-fashioned spook, you can hardly refuse to swallow it as a subjective phenomenon. The blessed word "subjective" extricates him from all troubles.
The poor dramatist has no such refuge. Occasionally he can work his plot by means of a vision; and the hypnotic trance has served, as in the case of The Polish Jew; but his ghosts have to be strictly objective. In fact, using a technical term frivolously, his ghosts expect the ghost to walk regularly on Fridays. There is no humbug about them; no "Pepper"—but they have to be taken with a ton of salt!
This difficulty was, perhaps, of no great importance at a time when most people had faith in ghosts; when the most sceptical did not go further than Madame de Staël, who alleged that she did not believe in them but was afraid of them. It is not recorded what Benjamin Constant, her unhappy lover, thought about them. Nowadays things have changed and ghosts and the personal devil have joined the ranks of the unemployed, or only obtain employment with Mr Stead and his Julia.
There is, of course, the spook of the spiritualist, who demands serious consideration; but plays dealing with spiritualism are not common. Perhaps because such playgoers as will accept the more or less material ghost are even more sceptical than the scientific as to the objective phenomena of the spiritualist. No doubt managers try to rise to the occasion and to make a steady advance in ghosts, devils and angels, but the mechanical improvements seem small. Indeed, in a sense there has been no advance since the days when Pepper's ghost terrified us at the poor old Polytechnic, and unfortunately the system of Pepper can only be used to a limited extent. There were moments of thrill in Ulysses at His Majesty's.
The stage angels are the worst of the supernaturals. Because angels are supposed to dwell off the earth it is assumed that they must fly. Furthermore, it is imagined that as fliers they belong to the heavier-than-air order, the monoplane variety, and so must have gigantic wings; no one makes provision for the working of the wings, which would involve tremendous muscular energy. You may answer that they have miraculous energy wherewith to flap them. If, however, the miraculous enters into the matter, why not imagine a miraculous method of flying which does not demand wings—by so doing you would avoid the necessity of making the angels look like ill-constructed birds. Something "smart" might be done in the way of a "dirigible balloon" species of angel! Fiends are modelled as flying-machines on the lines of the bat—this may be taken from the latest Mephisto. The contrivers of stage effects are not to be blamed because they cannot overcome the difficulties offered by the playwrights. Yet they have not exhausted their means. They seem to be working on wrong lines, and so, too, are our scene-painters generally; but that is raising a very large question demanding separate treatment.
Certainly some years ago Mr Gordon Craig experimentally, in a curious piece called Sword or Song, presented at the Shaftesbury, gave suggestions in the supernatural that deserved attention, and in a broad way showed the possibility of arriving at striking stage effects by suggestion rather than actual depiction. It is, indeed, the fault of our play-mounters that they are too precise about dotting "i's" and crossing "t's," and like the pet photographers of amateurs they show too much detail.
Years ago, on the first night of Hansel und Gretel at Daly's—what a delightful first night!—for a while the effect of the troops of angels on the stairs was quite charming—for a while—but, alas! the stage grew lighter, gauzes were raised, and then we saw plainly the young women of the chorus, with big wings, and could identify face after face, recollecting this young lady as formerly a peasant boy in one comic opera, and that as a village maiden in another, and so on. What a "give away," to use a common effective phrase!
The last prodigious production of Faust? Well, what thinking person can swallow the devil and the electric sparks from the sword, the wine drawn from the table, the comicalities of the witches' kitchen, or be moved by the Brocken scenes? It is very well to say that Goethe intended and expected his drama to be put on the stage, though this can hardly apply to the second part. Even if he did he cannot have expected such material matters to be treated as of serious importance—of such importance that, as represented, his great drama seems chiefly contrived to lead up to spectacular effects, plus a seduction story occasionally hurt by needlessly plain phrases.
It may be said that this is the jam used to induce us to swallow the powder; but really there is so much jam and so little powder that the benefit of the dose is doubtful. To be just to Sir Herbert Tree—his Faust sinned no more in the matter than did the Lyceum setting; perhaps even a little less. Certainly there is rather more Goethe in the matter than Wills introduced.
It may be said that Shakespeare's plays were intended for the stage, and that he introduced "ghosts," as in Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard III.; possibly he believed in them. Yet, so far as one can judge from such knowledge as we have of the stage as he knew it and its resources, the treatment of his ghosts must have been really quite conventional and scenically unimpressive. There was some gain in this, for the more directly the ghost business is effective the more the attention of the audience is drawn to it; though the interest of the scene is not in the ghost but the effect it produces on the other characters; the case is one that may be summed up in the phrase quoted for us by Bacon—the better the worse.