numbers two trumpets, kettle-drums, and two hautboys are added to the
string. A few numbers have two flutes, but flutes and hautboys never
occur simultaneously, which leads me to think that in Purcell's days
the flutes and hautboys were generally played by the same players. The
solos are accompanied sometimes by violins and bass in three parts,
more often by the harpsichord and bass alone, the other instruments
playing no more than the _ritornelli_. On the question of orchestration
we never had a moment's hesitation. We were determined from the very
first that we would not add a single note to Purcell's score. This
meant, of course, that a very serious responsibility would be thrown on
the harpsichord. We had experimented once with a harpsichord in a Bach
Concerto at a concert, with the very embarrassing discovery that the
harpsichord player could hardly hear a note that he played, while the
unfortunate conductor could hear nothing else but the harpsichord. To
the audience, as a matter of fact, the result was quite satisfactory.
The harpsichord in the theatre was a more perilous problem, especially
as we were not able to have any rehearsal of any kind in the theatre
until the day before the first performance. Would the harpsichord be
audible in the audience? Would it be audible on the stage? Would it
stay in tune under the very variable conditions of temperature? Would
one harpsichord be enough, or ought we to have two, as Hasse had at
the Dresden Opera House? Would the harpsichord be monotonous as well
as inadequate? Ought we to have in addition a pianoforte or possibly
a harp? We decided to do the very best we could with one harpsichord
and chance it. In view of the probability that the harpsichord might
become amazingly monotonous, the harpsichord part was considered with
the greatest possible care and no pains spared to make it as varied,
as effective, and as expressive as possible. Once in the theatre, the
instrument was tried in various positions until the right place for
it was found. It was clearly audible both on the stage and in all
parts of the house without ever becoming too insistent. Here I must
say how deeply we were indebted to the sensitive musicianship of the
player, an undergraduate in his first year, who, although he had never
placed his fingers on a harpsichord until about a fortnight before the
performance, was gifted with exactly that fine sense of scholarship in
music which is the first essential of the complete _maestro al cembalo_.
EDWARD J. DENT
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MERCURY
_Editor_--J. C. SQUIRE _Assistant-Editor_--EDWARD SHANKS
Vol. I No. 6 April 1920
EDITORIAL NOTES
Last month we referred here to the fact that a deputation was to wait
on Mr. Fisher to press the claim of the drama to State encouragement.
The deputation, which included critics, actors, and representatives
of all the most important societies concerned, was received on March
13th. Whatever may or may not come of it, its mere reception in
Whitehall is an event which marks an important step in the evolution
of the official attitude towards the drama, which, until recently, was
conceived as a thing with which the State had no relations save that
of blue-penciller. For this we may chiefly thank the new and vigorous
British Drama League and its secretary, Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth. Several
resolutions were laid before the Minister. With some of the proposals
commended to him he had, as Minister of Education, nothing to do; but
his reply to the deputation was very sympathetic in tone and showed
full cognisance of the part that dramatic representation might play in
national life.
* * * * *
We do not propose to dwell at length upon all the suggestions which,
tentatively or confidently, were made by the deputation or the
Conference which instructed it. One of them we frankly dislike, and
that is the proposal that the Universities should recognise the new
status of the drama by establishing faculties of the drama. Those who
propose this cannot mean merely that our dramatic inheritance should be
studied as literature; for the encouragement of such study falls within
the scope of the English schools, which are becoming more important
and more intelligently conducted every year. They cannot mean, either,
we suppose, that dramatic representation should be encouraged; that
is not the job of a faculty unless a Doctorate or Baccalaureate of
Histrionics be contemplated. They can only intend that a theoretical
and practical training in the dramatist's art should be given, that a
scientific study of the principles--technics or some such thing would
be the word--of dramatic writing, based on the analysis of admitted
masterpieces and (perhaps) admitted failures, should be followed, or
accompanied, by the writing, under surveillance, of new dramatic works.
It is conceivable. We met recently a lady who had won the Doctorate of
Philosophy in an American University. She had nothing about her of the
grey sobriety of the metaphysician or the ethicist; and, questioned,
she stated that she had taken her degree in the School of Short-Story
Writing. Well, we know those American academic treatises on short-story
writing: champion instruments for taking the bloom off any work of
art and killing the artistic impulses of any student simple enough to
surrender himself to them. And though we do not know, and we don't
think posterity will know, the plays written by those graduates of
American Universities who have gone out into the world as dramatic
writers of approved competence, we have seen some of the manuals on
which they also have pastured: manuals admirable only as subjects
for burlesque. In the teaching of literature criticism of the drama,
examination (if you like) of the elements of dramatic construction,
has its place with other forms of criticism; the history of the drama
with other sorts of history. There is no harm done, and a certain
stimulus may be given to the talented, if students are encouraged to
write "original" works, and if a certain amount of academic credit
is given for such works. But a school of dramatic production, or
of novel-writing, or of poetical composition ... may we be saved
from that! The way in which teachers may develop dramatic, as other
literary, talent is by encouraging the intelligent reading of good
literature, and by demonstrating the grand truth that its roots lie in
life fearlessly observed and passionately felt.
* * * * *
The more amateur dramatic performance--of works which have some
imaginative quality in them--the better. If the Board of Education,
which has already (we think) done a good deal to encourage both music
and mimetics in the schools, can still further humanise the curriculum,
all the richer will be the community, all the more amusing will be the
lives of the children, and, in the end, all the richer will be our
art. The Universities may probably be left to take care of themselves.
Very likely a word of encouragement from a Minister of Education, a
Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury might in some places
remove obscurantist opposition or secure facilities which have not been
forthcoming. But young men are not children. They can arrange things
for themselves, with the assistance of sympathetic and not necessarily
official elders. And that the junior members of the Universities,
since the war, have been taking with a new zest to dramatic production
is a matter of common observation. If we go no farther than Oxford
and Cambridge we have seen during the present term--eight weeks old
as we write--the successful production of Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_ by
the O.U.D.S., and at Cambridge the Marlowe Society's production of
_The White Devil_ and the revival of Purcell's _Faerie Queene_,
organised by Dr. Rootham, Mr. Clive Carey, and Mr. Dent. This last was
an imposing operation: a large acting cast, a ballet, an orchestra,
dresses and scenery were supplied by junior members of the University
and local ladies. Next term the A.D.C. are performing a modern
comedy, and _Comus_ is amongst the other things mooted for May Week.
Organisation from above is nothing as good as this, especially if it
takes the form of organisation of an academic course.
* * * * *
But the place of the drama in education is too large and difficult a
subject to be dealt with in detail here: what we do wish to say a few
words about is what, after all, was the main object of the deputation's
visit to Whitehall, though it had little to do with the Minister of
Education, as such--we mean the National Theatre. It was to this that
the speakers for the deputation, particularly Dr. Courtney and Sir
Sidney Lee, chiefly addressed themselves. Here also we have a subject
which invites extended treatment if we begin to contemplate the
possible relations between public authorities generally and the drama.
It is reported that in South London a Town Council desires to give help
out of the rates to the new operatic venture at the Surrey Theatre;
and before long we shall probably hear suggestions that where local
authorities wish to maintain theatrical enterprises they should obtain
grants-in-aid from the Government. That is a large and a complicated,
not to say a controversial, matter. But the National Theatre question
can be strictly localised. All we need ask is: Ought there, or ought
there not, to be a permanently endowed institution in London where the
best English plays should be produced regardless of commercial risks,
and ought, or ought not, the State to lend its moral and financial
support to such an institution? And since there exists already a
National Theatre Fund, which has acquired a site for a playhouse, we
are faced ultimately with the question whether the Government should
take a direct financial and administrative interest in that scheme.
* * * * *
The National Theatre scheme grew out of the preparations for
commemorating the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death--which fell in
1916, during the war. In 1904 a committee was organised, and in 1905
it was resolved, at a Mansion House meeting, to collect funds for an
architectural memorial and, if possible, for a small theatre in which
Elizabethan and other plays could be performed. In 1908 another Mansion
House meeting was held, at which it was proposed to erect a statue in
Portland Place (so convenient because it is very wide and nobody ever
goes there) at a cost of not less than £100,000. Such an expenditure on
such an object horrified a great many people. For some time--notably
after the publication of an admirable book by Messrs. Granville Barker
and William Archer--interest had been growing in the proposal for a
National Theatre. The £100,000 statue scheme naturally led to the
suggestion that a theatre would be a better memorial than a statue,
and that two birds could be killed with one stone if the National
Theatre were to be the Shakespeare Memorial. The notion was accepted;
the two movements were amalgamated; and a fund for a Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre was opened by a committee of which Lord Plymouth was
chairman and Sir Israel Gollancz secretary. The public appeal was not
so successful as it might have been. By 1910 the sum of £90,000 had
been collected, of which £70,000 came from a single donor, Sir Carl
Meyer. The committee spent £61,000 on a site in Gower Street, from
which a certain revenue has since been received. Then came the war. The
collection of money stopped, and it has not (so far as we are aware)
been made clear to the public what the committee has been doing since
the Armistice, what it proposes to do in the near future, and when it
intends to make a bid for the rest of the four or five or (it may now
be) six or seven hundred thousand that is required for the erection and
endowment of a theatre.
* * * * *
Now it is evident that sooner or later the project must be resumed and
a further appeal made to the public. It is possible that this appeal
will be more successful than the last. After all, we hear of twenty new
millionaires in Bradford alone, and any one of these could contribute
a large portion of the whole sum required, thereby earning fame and,
very likely, a public honour better deserved than some. It is obvious
on the face of it that if the Government is known to look on the scheme
with a benevolent eye its chances of success will be brighter. Is
it impossible that, should the whole sum not be raised from private
persons, the Government should guarantee a subsidy? This would, of
course, involve some measure of Government control, and the presence
of Government representatives on the permanent body of Trustees,
who would sit there precisely as do the two Government directors
recently appointed to the Board of a Cellulose Company. We say this
without prejudice to the general question of the relations between the
community and the theatre. The idea has been mooted that municipalities
should subsidise theatres and that the Government should assist them
with grants-in-aid. It is attractive, and a Whitehall Committee
might well be appointed to explore it. But the National Theatre is a
distinct and peculiar proposal. What we desire is that there should
be in the capital one house with a position resembling that of the
Comédie Française, or the Old Imperial Opera House in Petrograd, a
house devoted to the production of good plays, provided with a stock
company, and guaranteed against all the fluctuations of fortune. In
brief, the revival of the English classic plays should be systematised.
It should not be left to chance whether an Englishman should live and
die without having an opportunity of seeing a competent, or indeed
any, performance of _Troilus and Cressida_, of Marlowe's _Faustus_, of
_The Duchess of Malfi_, of _The Critic_, of _The Knight of the Burning
Pestle_, of _The Way of the World_, of _The Broken Heart_: to mention
but a few of the interesting plays that ordinary managers can scarcely
ever be expected to put on. For the ordinary manager must almost always
build on hopes of a long run. These plays probably would not hold
the stage for long runs; and if one of them did have a long run, it
would only mean that during that run no other play would be visible at
the theatre where it was being produced. Some of Shakespeare's plays
have scarcely any prospect of being produced in our time in a London
theatre, save only at the "Old Vic.," which has so finely struggled for
existence, and so gloriously (though how far does its permanence rest
on the continuance of a single life?) succeeded. Theatres are limited
in number. They have become the subjects of violent speculation. Even
if a private man with the most ambitious of plans obtained a theatre
we should have no guarantee that he would not pass his theatre on next
day to somebody who was willing to give him a handsome profit for his
lease and hoped to recoup himself by a year's run of revue or American
melodrama. We conceive that if publishing houses were like theatres,
and could issue only one work at a time, Messrs. Methuen (we hope
they will allow us to use their name as an illustration) might well
be excused if, as between Shakespeare (of whom they publish admirable
editions) and _Tarzan of the Apes_ they chose, at this moment, the
latter. There is a public for both kinds, but the smaller at any given
moment (though over a long period the larger) is very badly catered
for in the theatrical world, where everybody is bidding for the great
rewards that the larger public can bestow, and is, at present, under
the necessity of paying a "shortage" rent, which will not go down
unless some prodigiously rich and adventurous syndicate starts building
new theatres wholesale.
* * * * *
How far a National Theatre, especially a State-assisted National
Theatre, can be expected, or will consider it its duty, to produce new
plays of merit is doubtful. If that is one of its functions it will
not be its chief function; were it so its work would be the centre of
perpetual tempests of controversy, and its controllers would learn what
lobbying means. It will have quite enough to do if it concentrates
on the systematic revival, on repertory lines, of the best classic
plays, with occasional production of foreign plays and of old plays of
historical interest. That, surely, is a thing which should be done, a
work which should be continually maintained and developed, a work which
should as certainly be maintained at the public expense (if necessary)
as should, say, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ or the _Dictionary
of National Biography_, should there ever come a time when no
publisher felt able to spare the capital required to keep those great
compilations going. After all, what is there to differentiate the cases
of these enterprises from that of the British Museum, which nobody,
whatever his opinion about public undertakings generally, suggests
should be, or ever could be, stablished and maintained on its present
scale by private enterprise?
* * * * *
The binding-case for Vol. I. of THE LONDON MERCURY will be ready
early in April. The case is of black cloth, with a white label in a
sunk panel. It is designed to hold the six numbers plus an eight-page
index (which will also be ready early in the month) and minus the six
wrappers and the advertisement pages. Binding-cases will be supplied
from this office at 3_s._ 6_d._ post free. If readers prefer that we
should bind their numbers for them, they may send them here and pay an
inclusive 6_s._, which will cover the cost of the case, the work of
binding, and the return postage. The volume will be rather a fat one,
but we felt that readers would think that twice a year was quite often
enough to have this labour imposed on them.
LITERARY INTELLIGENCE
Arthur Henry Bullen died suddenly on February 29th, 1920, in his
sixty-third year, at Stratford-on-Avon, where he had lived since 1906.
He used to say that in his boyhood, as the son of Dr. George Bullen,
Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum, he ran about the
Library and browsed at pleasure, cultivating in his teens a taste (no
doubt inherited) not only for the best in literature, but for the best
in books too. He went to the City of London School and to Worcester
College, Oxford, as a scholar; but, to judge from his mature habits,
he must have been almost completely self-educated. A pleasant glimpse
of him at Oxford may be seen in Professor Poulton's _Viriamu Jones_.
He was already a man of very wide reading; within a few years of
going down from Oxford he began to make himself known as an editor of
Elizabethan drama and anthologies. _Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books_
and its sequels no doubt are the most popular of his books; he
rediscovered Thomas Campion, and poured out reprints of _Old English
Plays_ (two series), and the works of John Day, Marlowe, Marston,
Middleton, and Peele. To edit a book, however, did not suffice him. For
the last decade of the nineteenth century the firm of Lawrence & Bullen
published a large number of remarkable works, ancient and modern,
including not only familiar successes like Miss Harraden's _Ships that
Pass in the Night_ and Mr. W. W. Jacobs' _Many Cargoes_, half-a-dozen
of the novels of George Gissing (a close friend of Bullen's), and early
works of Mr. H. G. Wells, Moira O'Neill, and the authors of the _Irish
R.M_., but also sumptuous and beautiful books, such as Botticelli's
_Illustrations to Dante_, William Strang's _Death and the Ploughman's
Wife_, and illustrated translations of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Straparola,
Masuccio, and Ser Giovanni. Bullen's special taste was shown in the
"Muses' Library," which began with Herrick, and included Keats (with an
incomparable introduction by Robert Bridges) and William Blake (edited
by W. B. Yeats).
* * * * *