"THE PACIFISTS."
As a reasonable jusquaboutist I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY
ARTHUR JONES'S farce--parable, _The Pacifists_. Assume _Market
Pewbury's_ afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart
cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting
people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their
crumpets, kissing their wives in the market square and proposing to
abduct them to seaside resorts, and none so bold to do him violence and
make him stop it; the police being ill or absent, the Mayor and his
friend, chief victim of the butcher's aggression, unwilling on account
of principles to do anything but talk and get up leagues to deal with
the trouble in general, and in a final ecstasy of disapproval to write a
strong letter; only uncle _Belcher_, a truculent old sea-dog with a
natural lust for whisky and blood, organising an opposition, valiantly
hiring a notable pugilist to deal with the butcher, and becoming
desperately anxious lest the matter should be peaceably settled because
the basher, having been engaged, _must_ find something to bash or there
will be trouble. Well, if we must have forged for us the sword of a
three-Act parable, we should like it with one edge, not two.
Mr. JONES was evidently bursting with the desire to give some irritating
people a very hard knock--witness the barbed dedication with which the
normally peaceful theatre-announcement columns have bristled some little
time past; and I think I dare say that we were interested in his first
Act. He did really work out his analogies with some skill. But we soon
came to feel that he was essentially doing something between flogging a
dead horse, so far as we were concerned, and shooting a sitting rabbit.
I suspect too that we realised the issues were too tragic for this kind
of buffoonery. The tribute of our applause was a tribute of loyalty to
one who has often deserved well of the republic, and partly the desire
to show that our hearts were in the right place. I don't see _The
Pacifists_ as a pamphlet making many converts. As a kick on the shins it
has points.
I confess the thing that pleased me most was a gay little piece of
burlesque by Mr. ARTHUR CHESNEY as the red-haired shop assistant who was
_not_ a pacifist. Mr. CHARLES GLENNEY so thoroughly enjoyed the
robustious sea-captain that we had to enjoy it too--a sound notion of
entertainment, that. Mr. SEBASTIAN SMITH played chief rabbit with
considerable skill and point; Mr. LENNOX PAWLE amused with his plump
dundrearyed mayor; Mr. SAM LIVESEY'S offensive was, I am sure, as
Hunnish as its author could possibly have desired. Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS
appeared in the first Act as a very plausible imitation of a prominent
tradesman's wife in an eighth-rate provincial town, with some quite
excellent moments. But she was evidently labouring under severe strain,
and I amused myself by speculating how long she would keep out of a
really well-cut skirt and a sophisticated air of Mayfair. Just an Act.
And surely she is mistaken in thinking that an effect of extreme
agitation is best conveyed, by very rapid quasi-cinematographic
progression up and down the stage? But I saw no reason to complain of
the bold bad butcher's taste in the matter of a subject for abduction.