THE HIGHER DRAMA
“If every manager considers it due to himself to produce nothing
cheaper than _The Prisoner of Zenda_, not to mention the
splendours of the Lyceum, then goodbye to high dramatic art.
The managers will, perhaps, retort that, if high dramatic art
means Ibsen, then they ask for nothing better than to get rid
of it. I am too polite to reply, bluntly, that high dramatic
art _does_ mean Ibsen; that Ibsen’s plays are at this
moment the head of the dramatic body; and that though an actor
manager can, and often does, do without a head, dramatic art
cannot.”--G.B.S. in _The Saturday Review_, 1897.
If it takes more than two swallows to make a summer, it certainly
takes more than two playwrights to make a dramatic renaissance. That
being admitted, no one could say that the plays of Oscar Wilde and
Bernard Shaw constituted in themselves a “new” drama. Such a definite
achievement cannot be credited to the period. But what can be credited
to the period is the creation of an atmosphere in which a new drama
might flourish at the appointed hour. This was done by the art of
criticism, and chiefly by Bernard Shaw, William Archer and J. T. Grein,
whose example and ideal was Ibsen. These three critics were more
than convinced and ardent Ibsenists; they were capable and tireless
in propagation of the cause, Bernard Shaw as critic and philosopher,
William Archer as critic and translator of the Master’s plays, and J.
T. Grein as critic, producer and founder of the Independent Theatre,
the earliest definite home of the Higher Drama. And with them, but
not of them, was A. B. Walkley, critic pure and simple, pouring oil
upon the waters of revolt with irony and intellectual banter born of
a capacity for taking an uncompromising middle attitude, and with a
common-sense which amounted in itself to genius.
These critics differed from their kind by an avowedly personal
approach, and they flaunted their apostasy in the face of those who
were content to maintain the old theatrical methods. The appeal to
personal taste might easily have been ignored by the upholders of
convention had it not been made by critics of undoubted skill and
unanswerable certainty of aim. The new critics accepted their own view
of the state of the drama with as much deliberation as the old accepted
the view of tradition and convention. They were frankly impressionist
and autobiographical. Walkley called his first collection of critical
essays _Playhouse Impressions_ (1892), and admitted to adventuring
among masterpieces in the approved method of Anatole France. The
diaries of Marie Bashkirtseff were among the books of the hour, and
he coined the verb “to bashkirtseff,” for the purpose, emphasising
a method which had also been defended by Oscar Wilde. Shaw was even
more autobiographical, but prophecy, and purpose other than the
entertainment of a moment or an hour, lurked behind his most indiscreet
confession. He did not argue from precedent, it is true, but he sought
all the more energetically to establish new precedents, chief among
which were a drama of ideas and “a pit of philosophers”--and Ibsen,
Ibsen, Ibsen, _toujours_ Ibsen!
The all-or-nothing seriousness of G.B.S. is happily recorded in the
following passage from Walkley’s book, which purports to describe
the author’s friend, Euthyphro, but whose identity is otherwise
obvious:--“A universal genius, a brilliant political economist, a
Fabian of the straitest sect of the Fabians, a critic (of other arts
than the dramatic), _comme il y en a peu_, he persists, where the
stage is concerned, in crying for the moon, and will not be satisfied,
as the rest of us have learned to be, with the only attainable
substitute, a good wholesome cheese. His standard of taste is as much
too high as Crito’s is too low. He asks from the theatre more than
the theatre can give, and quarrels with the theatre because it is
theatrical. He lumps _La Tosca_ and _A Man’s Shadow_ together
as ‘French machine-made plays,’ and, because he is not edified by them,
refuses to be merely amused. Because _The Dead Heart_ is not on
the level of a Greek tragedy, he is blind to its merits as a pantomime.
He refuses to recognise the advance made by Mr Pinero, because Mr
Pinero has not yet advanced as far as Henrik Ibsen. Half a loaf, the
wise agree, is better than no bread; but because it is only half a
loaf, Euthyphro complains that they have given him a stone.”
More than twenty years have passed since the above words were written,
and what A. B. Walkley imagined to be a demand for more than the
theatre could give has actually produced a new drama, if not a new
theatre, and the succeeding generation, in the person of Gordon Craig,
is already making demands which even iconoclasts of the Nineties would
have considered impossible.
William Archer is the father of modern dramatic criticism in this
country, and he was introducing ideas and an intelligent seriousness
into this disappointing and most thankless branch of criticism as far
back as the middle eighties, with such books as _About the Theatre_
(1886) and _Masks or Faces?_ (1888). He shared the honours of being one
of the earliest translators of Ibsen with Edmond Gosse, Eleanor Marx
Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx), and his own brother, Charles Archer,
who collaborated with him in several translations now in the complete
English edition.[4]
On 7th June 1889 Charles Charrington began the dramatic renaissance by
producing _A Doll’s House_ at the Novelty Theatre, with Janet Achurch
in the part of Nora. The play had been called the _Hernani_ of the
new dramatic movement in England, and the title has been justified
to the full. An interest was aroused such as had not been known in
artistic circles since the first performances of Wagner’s operas, and
the appearance of the Impressionist painters; and it was increased a
thousandfold by the production of _Ghosts_ and _Hedda Gabler_, in
1891, when the new manifestation of drama turned the opposition of
the older critics into indignation and reduced their criticism to a
wild display of invective and vituperation. It was, as William Archer
said at the time, “probably the most obstinate and rancorous prejudice
recorded in the history of the stage.” Bernard Shaw’s account of
Clement Scott’s criticism of _Ghosts_ in _The Daily Telegraph_, and the
famous leading article in the same issue (14th March 1891), recalls the
anxiety of the older generation when confronted with this frank drama.
The leading article, he wrote, compared the play to an open drain, a
loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly, or a lazar-house
with all its doors and windows open. Bestial, cynical, disgusting,
poisonous, sickly, delirious, indecent, loathsome, fetid, literary
carrion, crapulous stuff, clinical confessions: all these epithets were
used in the article as descriptions of Ibsen’s work. One passage in
the same leader said: “Realism is one thing; but the nostrils of the
audience must not be visibly held before a play can be stamped as true
to nature. It is difficult to expose in decorous words,” the writer
continued, “the gross and almost putrid indecorum of this play.” And as
more than one critic called upon the law to protect the players against
such dramas, some idea may be formed of the righteous indignation
aroused at the inception of the new drama.
After the first experiment with _A Doll’s House_, Charles Charrington
took his company on a world tour, and Janet Achurch played the part
of Nora over one hundred and fifty times in Australia, New Zealand,
India and Egypt. This tour took something like three years, and when
the pioneers returned to London they found Ibsen engaging the interest
of all the more thoughtful playgoers. _A Doll’s House_ was therefore
revived at the Avenue Theatre (now the Playhouse) on 19th April 1892,
and the same year saw the first stage performance of plays by Oscar
Wilde and Bernard Shaw. The following year, however, was more memorable
in the dramatic renaissance, for it saw the production of no less
than six plays by Ibsen--_The Master Builder_, _Rosmersholm_, _Hedda
Gabler_, _Brand_ (Fourth Act), _An Enemy of the People_, and _A Doll’s
House_, and the Independent Theatre produced five modern plays, one
adaptation and one translation, and, more important still, three by
modern British playwrights: _The Strike at Arlingford_, by George Moore
(his first play), _The Black Cat_, by John Todhunter, and _A Question
of Memory_, by “Michael Field.” Besides these came _The Second Mrs
Tanqueray_, by Pinero, _A Woman of No Importance_, by Oscar Wilde, and
_The Bauble Shop_, by Henry Arthur Jones, all of which were in the
modern movement and contributing to the newly awakened intelligent
interest in the theatre.
The appetite for a new drama thus created might have encouraged
managers and propagandist promoters to venture further afield, but it
did nothing of the sort. After 1893, and for practically seven years,
there was very little encouragement for those who stood for the higher
drama. It is true that plays by advanced foreigners as important as
Björnson Björnstjerne, Maurice Maeterlinck, Sudermann and Echegaray,
and a number of classical dramas managed to get produced; but Bernard
Shaw could find only occasional chances of production for his own
plays, and the younger school, since evolved out of his teaching
and criticism, was not yet born. The new drama was in the main an
occasional affair, highly experimental, and appealing only to a small
and seriously minded group of “intellectuals” in London. They very
largely belonged to the literary fringe of the Fabian Society and other
reform and revolutionary organisations, and these were practically the
sole supporters of the efforts of the Independent Theatre, the Stage
Society and the New Century Theatre.
Such a poor result from early efforts towards a new drama ought not
to have been, and, in fact, was not, unexpected. The new movement was
so radical in its demands that it had first to create conditions in
which it could exist. Everything was against rapid progress. It was
not a mere question of art, dramatic or theatrical; it was a question
also of economics, of professional interests, and of theatrical habit
and public indifference to anything that did not entertain by laughter
or tears. The new drama already existed on the Continent in the plays
of Ibsen, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Sudermann, Strindberg and others;
and both theatres and audiences were coming into existence in support
of it. But here, save for Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, we possessed
no native plays at all comparable with these foreign ones, and until
there was a certainty of such plays being produced few authors could be
expected to go on writing them. For that reason the new movement was
forced to be mainly critical. Its chief material objects of attack were
the dominance of the actor manager and his demand for plays written
around himself, and the general theatrical custom of seeking only plays
that promised a “long run.” These two conditions stood in the way of a
new drama because the modern drama, being impressionist and realist,
did not see life as an episode dominated by an attractive personality
more or less resembling some popular actor manager; it only offered
such eminence by accident, as in the case of Dr Stockmann in _An
Enemy of the People_, which was produced with considerable popular
success, and the minimum of Ibsenism, by Beerbohm Tree, in 1893. And,
secondly, the only chance of promoting variety of plays of the new
type, actors in sufficient numbers to perform them, and audiences of
sufficient intelligence and sufficient interest to maintain them, was
by a return to the repertory system. Abnormal rents for theatres,
abnormal salaries for principal actors, and the absence of small
and convenient theatres were also among the first obstacles to the
realisation of these ambitions.
But these were not all the seemingly insurmountable difficulties;
the greatest stumbling block was the creation of an audience large
enough to make the newer plays a financial possibility. This was no
easy matter. At no time are there many people in this or perhaps any
country who can be relied upon to show much enthusiasm for ideas and
psychological and social problems, especially in a theatre which has
for generations been looked upon as a place of idle amusement. The
advocates of the higher drama were serious and purposeful persons. With
the exception of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, there was no laughter
in them. They and their followers could laugh, but they preferred the
mental smile. Their demand was for dramatic literature: dramas which
represented a personal point of view, expressed in impressionistic
terms revealing the play of temperament in conflict with convention,
and will in conflict with circumstance, and always indicating by
implication the ideas underlying the theme. Such plays were not only
to be playable; they were to be readable as well--they were to combine
the good stage play and the good book. As we know, the higher dramatic
movement did produce plays answering these demands. But it was not
always so easy to reveal the idea behind the play. Bernard Shaw had to
write _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_ to show what Ibsen’s plays
meant, and long prefaces and appendices to show what his own plays
meant. Endless were the discussions as to the meaning of _The Master
Builder_ (Israel Zangwill called it “The Master Bewilderer”); and
intellectuals of all kinds yearned for the prefaces Ibsen might have
written but didn’t. But the old Norwegian dramatist let them yearn.
With the plays of Shaw the higher drama became a drama of discussion.
It was realistic only incidentally; in inception it was problematic,
and in effect argumentative, without any definite conclusion. Ideas
were generally left very much in the air until the play was printed,
when the author told you all about his aims in a long, idea-laden and
entertaining preface. This argumentative tendency developed in his art
until the action of his later plays became entirely conversational; and
to prevent any illusions as to his intentions he called these plays
discussions.
Out of the discussion of plays and ideas the new drama ultimately
came. Translations of good foreign plays began to appear frequently,
and they were read by a select but ever-growing public. Interest
also was aroused in the older dramatists, and both Henry Irving and
Beerbohm Tree drew large audiences to their highly decorated revivals
of Shakespeare; a still more genuine enthusiasm was created by the
excellent Shakespearean Repertoire Company of F. R. Benson, in the
provinces. But with all this activity the main line of the modernist
advance was diverted by a characteristic compromise on the part of the
public. Ibsen did not pay; but it was felt that realism in a modern
setting, if the themes in themselves were likeable and capable of a
sentimental response, might be popular. Obviously, the game would be
to hearten realism with a dash of sentimentalism; in short, to water
down Ibsen; not to declare that “it is right to do something hitherto
regarded as infamous” (_vide_ G.B.S.), but to treat seriously,
in a play with no specific purpose, something hitherto considered
as naughty and therefore only deserving of facetious comment, and
to call it a “problem play.” And if you could provoke a tear at the
naughtiness out of which a Labiche would have raised a laugh, so much
the better--you would be both modern and popular.
This actually happened. Oscar Wilde did it with _A Woman of No
Importance_; Henry Arthur Jones did it with _The Case of
Rebellious Susan_, and Arthur Wing Pinero did it with _The Second
Mrs Tanqueray_. It is not to be doubted that these playwrights were
pioneers of the new movement, but it should not be forgotten that they
were pioneers by compromise. Henry Arthur Jones was an upholder of
realism, but his plays of this time do not approximate to the realism
of Ibsen or Tolstoy or Strindberg; they are realistic only in so far
as realism is consistent with the conviction that the artist is an
interpreter of dreams, a translator of real life into imaginative
concepts. Quite seriously, logically and successfully, Wilde, Pinero
and Jones worked along these lines, and by so doing placed themselves
in the direct tradition of the established drama, upon which they
succeeded in doing little more than graft some new branches. Now Ibsen
possessed only the most elementary connection with traditional drama.
He was as distinct from the current trend of European drama that had
preceded him as Euripides was from the Greek drama, as Molière was
from the French drama, and as Shakespeare was from the English drama,
which had preceded them. Ibsen discovered theatrical reality, and he
made it so real that half the opposition to his drama was due to the
discomfort most people experience when brought face to face with a
new revelation of facts or ideas. Those who compromised achieved no
such effect; they were merely illusionists, using reality to further
illusion, rather than illusion to further reality.
Bernard Shaw was not deceived by this quasi-modernism. In 1895 he
wrote: “The unfortunate new dramatist has ... to write plays so
extraordinarily good that, like Mozart’s operas, they succeed in spite
of inadequate execution. This is all very well for geniuses like Ibsen;
but it is rather hard on the ordinary purveyor of the drama. The
managers do not seem to me yet to grasp this feature of the situation.
If they did, they would only meddle with the strongest specimens of
the new drama, instead of timidly going to the old firms and ordering
moderate plays cut in the new style. No doubt the success of _The
Second Mrs Tanqueray_ and _The Case of Rebellious Susan_ seemed
to support the view that the new style had better be tried cautiously
by an old hand. But then _Mrs Tanqueray_ had not the faintest
touch of the new spirit in it; and recent events suggest that its
success was due to a happy cast of the dice by which the play found an
actress[5] who doubled its value and had hers doubled by it.” William
Archer took a more lenient view of the situation. He referred to the
play in 1893 as “the one play of what may be called European merit
which the modern English stage can yet boast,” and he went on to advise
Pinero’s fellow-craftsmen to follow the lead set by _The Second Mrs
Tanqueray_, because Pinero had “inserted the thin end of the wedge,”
and “I firmly believe,” he said, “that not only the ambition but the
material interests of our other dramatists will prompt them to follow
his lead, and that, therefore, we are indeed on the threshold of a new
epoch.”
That proved to be true. _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_, although it
was not of the “advanced movement,” was really a part of the movement.
It was the first effect on the English stage of the influence of Ibsen
and the propagandists of the modern drama. And even its faults as a
play are faults only in comparison with the Ibsen standard. It is a
play possessing both intelligent idea and problem, but above all it
possesses a masterly stage technique which alone makes it worthy to
be considered with the works of great modern masters. There is little
doubt again that the modernist plays of Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones,
and certain productions of R. C. Carton and Sydney Grundy, did tone up
the moribund popular stage, and so aided the revolutionists by teaching
the average playgoer to tune his brain to a higher seriousness than had
hitherto been his habit.
But the real expression of the new movement, the main tendency, did not
find an outlet during the Nineties. That was not possible until the
close of the decade, when, in the person of H. Granville Barker, the
Stage Society found the medium for the realisation of the decade-old
dreams of the leaders of the modern movement. Dramatist, actor and
producer, Granville Barker was the man whom the moment and the movement
required, and after several successes within the Stage Society he took
a daring leap on to the regular stage by engaging, with C. E. Vedrenne
as business partner, the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. By doing
so he proved that the plays of Bernard Shaw had immense popular and,
as a natural outcome, financial possibilities of success; that it was
also possible, within certain limits, to run a repertory theatre, and,
perhaps most important of all, that we had a growing native school of
modern dramatists of power and distinction. This new school included
John Galsworthy, St John Hankin, John Masefield, Frederick Fenn, and
Granville Barker himself, whose play, _The Voysey Inheritance_,
stands among the finest products of the dramatic renaissance. These
plays have since been performed, along with others which follow in the
new tradition, at modern repertory theatres in Glasgow, Manchester and
Liverpool, and by touring companies appealing to just such audiences
as the men of the Nineties desired to create.
The development of the movement on the regular stage as patronised by
the average playgoer is not so marked. But even here the new spirit
has had its effect, for though melodrama, facetious comedy and musical
farce still maintain preposterously long “runs,” showing that their
place, as it is bound to be, is as secure as ever, it is no longer
impossible to find intelligent entertainment at any time of the year
in one or another of the London theatres. The higher dramatic activity
born in the last decade of the old century has lived thus far into the
new, justifying the energy which supported its inception.