And as Stevenson might have taken warning from the sad fate of Lamb, so
he might have found his profit in considering the happy fortune of
Victor Hugo, who also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of the
French romanticists felt that it was incumbent upon him to conquer the
theater which the classicists held as their last stronghold, he was
swift to consider the state of the art. He sought immediate success upon
the stage, and the most successful plays of that period in France were
the melodramas of Pixerecourt, and of his followers, and therefore Hugo
sat himself down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made himself
master of their methods, and he put together the striking and startling
plots of 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas' in strict accord with their formulas,
certain that he could varnish with literature their melodramatic
actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was his metrical
rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses, that he blinded the
spectators and kept the most of them from peering beneath at his
arbitrary and artificial skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure.
To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it is that Hugo did;
and his plays, superb as they are in their lyric adornment, stand
revealed as frank melodramas, lacking sincerity of motive and veracity
of character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they were in Kemble's
phrase "consonant with the taste of the age," and the best of them have
not yet worn out their welcome in the theater.
Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and he did not profit by the
example of Hugo. 'Deacon Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral
Guinea'; and all the varnish of literature which the two collaborators
applied externally and with loving solicitude availed naught. It is due
to his entanglement in the strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson
did not take the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it as
something to be tossed off lightly to make money in the interstices of
honest work. In his stories, long and short, he strove for effect, no
doubt, but he was bent also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his
plays he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so far at
least as his plot was concerned; and he thought he could lift these
concoctions to the level of literature by the polish of his dialog, and
by qualities applied on the outside instead of being developed from the
inside. He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least, he could
attain beauty by constructing his ornament instead of by ornamenting his
construction, ignoring or ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the
construction, if only it be solid enough, and four square to all the
winds that blow, needs no ornament and is most impressive in its stark
simplicity.
In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy theater, and it was a
puppet-show piece which first called his attention to the mighty theme
of his supreme poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he may
have been by his youthful experience, was able in his manhood to free
himself from its shackles. He came in time to have a profound insight
into the principles of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft. In
his old age he talked about the theater freely and frequently to
Eckermann; and there are few of his utterances which do not furnish food
for reflection. Here is one of them:
Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who does
not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one thinks
that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the
boards--nothing of the kind! Things may be very pretty to read,
and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are put
upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which
has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the
boards.... Writing for the stage is a trade that one must
understand, and requires a talent that one must possess. Both
are uncommon, and where they are not combined, we have scarcely
any good result.
That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist is undisputable, and
Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture was able to make this clear. But
"writing for the stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when
Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself to Skelt not to
Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not to Augier and Dumas.
(1914.)
[Illustration: Grindoff and banditti carousing. Lower half of Plate No.
5, Pollock's characters in the 'Miller and His Men']
P.S.--After the publication of this paper in _Scribner's Magazine_, a
friendly reader in Great Britain was kind enough to copy out for me this
Skeltian lyric, which appeared in the London _Fun_ in 1868, and which
was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh: