"PYGMALION."
The original Pygmalion took a block of dead ivory and made of it so fair a
figure of a woman that he fell in love with his own creation, and
Aphrodite, at his request, brought it to life. Mr. SHAW'S _Pygmalion_ takes
a live flower-girl, turns her into a lifeless wax figure fit for a
milliner's shop-window, and flatters himself, as an artist, on the result,
but, as a man, proposes to take no interest in it, moral or physical. So
you can easily see why almost any other proper name you can think of would
have done better for the title.
The play itself shows the same typical inconsequence, the same freedom from
the pedantry of logic. _Eliza Doolittle's_ ambition is to become fitted for
the functions of a young lady in a florist's shop. _Henry Higgins_,
professor of phonetics, undertakes for a wager to teach her the manners and
diction of a duchess--a smaller achievement, of course, in Mr. SHAW'S eyes,
but still a step in the right direction. And he is better than his word.
After six months she has acquired a mincing speech, from which she is still
liable to lapse into appalling indiscretions; but after another six months
the product might pass muster in any _modiste's_ showroom. And then she
turns on him and protests that he has spoilt her life. As a flower-girl,
she tells him, she used to earn her living honestly; now there is nothing
she is good for.
Of course, you say, her contact with refined society--"we needs must love
the highest when we see it"--has unfitted her for mixing with inferior
people. On the contrary. She has, it is true, passed the final test of a
series of social functions; but meanwhile all this time of her
apprenticeship in manners she has been living her daily life, doing
half-menial duties, in the house of _Higgins_, who happens to have no
manners at all. One trembles, indeed, to picture the figure that he
himself, the master, must have cut when he took his pupil to the halls of
the great.
[Illustration: We venture to suggest a new attitude to illustrate the ease
of manner which one expects from a Master of Phonetics and Deportment.
_Henry Higgins_ Sir HERBERT TREE.]
Then perhaps, you say, she has fallen into an unrequited passion for him,
and this accounts for her peevishness? Well, if she has, we have only Mr.
SHAW'S word for it, and she gets no sympathy from us for her deplorable
taste in men. There was another man who was always about the house, a man
with a habit of courtesy, but this gallant soldier left her cold. Such is
the perversity of women--and Mr. SHAW. _Higgins's_ one act of civility to
his _protegee_, on which we had to base our hopes of a happy issue, was to
throw a bunch of flowers at her from a balcony in Chelsea--not perhaps a
very tactful reminder of her origin. But he was only just in time. Another
two seconds of delay and the final curtain would have cut off this tardy
and inadequate effort of conciliation.
[Illustration: FROM FLOWER-GIRL TO PERFECT LADY.
(_Showing middle stage in course of lessons in Polite Conversation._)
_Eliza Doolittle_ (Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL) to _Mrs. Eynsford-Hill_ (Miss
CARLOTTA ADDISON). "An aunt of mine died of in-flu-en-za: but it's my
be-lief they done h-her in."]
However, nobody goes to a production of Mr. SHAW'S with the idea of seeing
a play. We go to hear him discourse on just anything that occurs to him
without prejudice in the matter of his mouthpiece. This time he was
represented by a dustman; and for once Mr. SHAW consented to temper his
wisdom to the limitations of its repository. His _Alfred Doolittle_ (father
of the flower-girl) threw off a little cheap satire on the morality of the
middle-classes, yet admitted the drawbacks of unauthorised union (as
practised by himself), since a man's wife is there to be kicked, whereas a
mistress is apt to be more exigent of the amenities; you must adopt a more
lover-like attitude if you want to retain her. He also argued brightly in
defence of his proposal to sell his own daughter to any man for a fiver;
let fall a platitude or two in praise of the lot of the undeserving poor;
and (having come in for a fortune) found that charity had lost its
blessedness--that the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin was
only admirable when you did the "touching" yourself. Not bad for a dustman,
but Mr. SHAW has done better.
For the rest the attraction lay in the performance of individual actors
rather than in the stuff of the play. Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL was delicious,
both in her unregenerate state, and even more during the middle phase of
the refining process. She made the Third Act a pure delight. Later, when
she became tragic, she sacrificed something of her particular charm to the
author's insincerity.
Sir HERBERT TREE, always at his best in comedy, was an excellent _Higgins_
in his lighter moods. As for Mr. EDMUND GURNEY, he was far the best dustman
I have ever met. His freedom from scruples, combined with a natural gift
for unctuous and persuasive rhetoric, commanded admiration. _Higgins_,
indeed, who could read potentialities at a glance, considered that he
might, under happier conditions, have gone far toward attaining Cabinet
rank or filling a Welsh pulpit.
Of the others, Mr. PHILIP MERIVALE played the too subsidiary part of
_Colonel Pickering_ with admirable self-repression; and Miss ROSAMOND
MAYNE-YOUNG, as the mother of _Higgins_, was a very gracious figure.
The play was curiously uneven. If one might be permitted to enter and leave
at one's pleasure I would advise you to miss out the desultory First Act.
But if you insist on seeing it then take care to read your programme before
the lights go down and find out that the scene is the porch of a church. I
thought all the time that it was the porch of a theatre. Make sure in the
same way about the Chelsea flat, or you may mistake it for a charming
country cottage. The Second and Third Acts are not to be missed on any
account, but I shouldn't worry about the Fourth. In the Fifth you should go
away for good the moment that the dustman makes his exit. The tedium that
follows is most distressing, and can only be explained as the author's
revenge for your laughter. It was a cruel thing to do.
But I forgive him. I take away many delightful memories of my evening with
_Pygmalion_, and, best of all, the picture of Sir HERBERT'S frank and
childlike pleasure at having discovered Mr. BERNARD SHAW.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Jones_ (_selecting a uniform for his chauffeur_). "I LIKE
THIS ONE BEST, BUT IT'S RATHER EXPENSIVE."
_Expert Salesman._ "THEN I SHOULD HAVE IT. AFTER ALL, THE GUV'NOR PAYS!"]
* * * * *
"POTASH AND PERLMUTTER."
If you have ever been to an American commercial drama, you will know the
opening scene of this one before the curtain goes up. The business
interior; the typewriter on the left; the head of the firm opening cryptic
correspondence and dictating unintelligible answers; spasmodic incursions
of cocksure buyers and bagmen; a prevailing air of smartness, of hustle, of
get-on-or-get-out. In _The Melting Pot_ Mr. ZANGWILL has been creating a
diversion with an Hebraic theme, his hero being a refugee from Kieff, where
his family had perished in a pogrom. This new variation has
occurred--independently, no doubt--to the author of _Potash and
Perlmutter_, who has grafted it (including the detail of the immigrant from
Kieff) on the old commercial stock, and done very well indeed with his
blend.
His two protagonists in the Teuton-American-Semitic firm of "cloak and
suit" manufacturers that gives its title to the play are extraordinarily
alive. I am but imperfectly acquainted with this racial variety, but I can
easily recognise that Messrs. AUGUSTUS YORKE and EGBERT LEONARD, who
represent the two partners, are gifted with the most amazing powers of
observation and reproduction.
The pair are alike in their mercenary tastes and in that loyalty which is
so fine a feature of the Jewish race, and is here found in frequent
conflict with their commercial instincts. The cruel wrench that their
generosity always costs them is a true measure of its excellence. They
quarrel alike over details of business policy; but they always stand
together where profit is obviously to be made by a common attitude, or
where they find themselves in a tight corner. Yet the author has preserved
a nice distinction between them. It is _Potash_, the elder of the two, and
encumbered by fetters of domestic affection, who is the weaker vessel, and
commits the indiscretions with whose issue he is impotent to cope; it is
_Perlmutter_, with the quicker brains, contemptuous but devoted, who throws
all the blame where it is due, yet stands by to share the punishment.
I found their language and accent rather hard to follow, a difficulty not
shared by the strong Jewish element in an audience that was extremely quick
to appreciate the humour that kept one always on the alert. It is
profitless to ask how much of the fun was due to the things said and how
much to the manner of saying them. The essential matter is that actors and
author between them gave us an unusually good time, and I am much obliged
to them.
Apart from the leading characters, the _Mrs. Potash_ of Miss MATILDA
COTTRELLY was a most delightful study, and the breezy methods of Mr.
CHARLES DICKSON as a buyer and Mr. EZRA MATTHEWS as a salesman were
effective of their kind.
The plot, as usual in such plays, was rather elementary. So, too, with the
love interest; but the right kind of sentiment was not wanting in the very
human characters of _Potash_ and _Perlmutter_. For a rare moment or two
there was a break in our laughter and tears were not far away.