THE MODERN SCHOOL
We have noted that Ibsen's plays began to get a hearing in England in
the eighteen nineties. In fact, it was in 1889 that Mr. J. T. Grein had
the temerity to produce at his Independent Theater in London _A Doll's
House_, and followed it shortly afterward by the more drastic _Ghosts_.
The influence in arousing an interest in and knowledge of a kind of
drama which entered the arena for the purpose of social challenge and
serious satiric attack was incalculable. Both Jones and Pinero,
honorable pioneers in the making of the new English drama, and still
actively engaged in their profession, had begun to write plays some
years before this date; but it may be believed that the example of
Ibsen, if not originating their impulse, was part of the encouragement
to let their own work reflect more truthfully the social time spirit
and to study modern character types with closer observation, allowing
their stories to be shaped not so much by theatric convention as by
honest psychologic necessity.
Jones began with melodrama, of which _The Silver King_ (1882), _Saints
and Sinners_ (1884) and _The Middle Man_ (1889) are examples; Pinero
with ingenious farces happily associated with the fortunes of Sir Squire
Bancroft and his wife, _The Magistrate_ (1885) being an excellent
illustration of the type. The dates are significant in showing the
turning of these skillful playwrights to play-making that was more
serious in the handling of life and more artistic in constructive
values; they are practically synchronous with the introduction of Ibsen
into England. Both authors have now long lists of plays to their credit,
with acknowledged masterpieces among them. Pinero's earlier romantic
style may be seen in the enormously successful _Sweet Lavender_, a style
repeated ten years later in _Trelawney of the Wells_; his more mature
manner being represented in _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, the best of a
number of plays which center in the woman who is a social rebel, the
dramatist's tone being almost austerely grim in carrying the study to
its logical conclusion. For a time Sir Arthur seemed to be preoccupied
with the soiled dove as dramatic inspiration; but so fine a recent play
as _The Thunderbolt_ shows he can get away from it. Jones' latest and
best work as well has a tendency to the serious satiric showing-up of
the failings of prosperous middle-class English society; this, however,
in the main, kept in abeyance to story interest and constructive skill
in its handling: _Mrs. Dane's Defense_, _The Case of Rebellious Susan_,
_The Liars_, _The Rogue's Comedy_, _The Hypocrites_, and _Michael and
His Lost Angel_ stand for admirably able performances in different ways.
At the time when these two dramatists were beginning to produce work
that was to change the English theater Bernard Shaw, after writing
several pieces of fiction, had begun to give his attention to plays so
advanced in technic and teaching that he was forced to wait more than a
decade to get a wide hearing in the theater. His debt to the Norwegian
has been handsomely acknowledged by the Irish dramatist, wit and
philosopher who was to become the most striking phenomenon of the
English theater: with all the differences, an English Ibsen. A little
later, in the early eighteen nineties, another brilliant Irishman, Oscar
Wilde, wrote a number of social comedies whose playing value to-day
testifies to his gift in telling a stage story, while his epigrammatic
wit and literary polish gave them the literary excellence likely to
perpetuate his name. For the comedy of manners, light, easy, elegant,
keen, and with satiric point in its reflection of society, nothing of
the time surpasses such dramas as _Lady Windermere's Fan_ and _A Woman
of No Importance_. The author's farce--farce, yet more than farce in
dialogue and characterization--_The Importance of Being Earnest_, is
also a genuine contribution in its kind. And the strange, somber,
intensely poetic _Salome_ is a remarkable _tour de force_ in an unusual
field.
The tendency to turn from fiction to the drama as another form of story
telling fast coming into vogue is strikingly set forth and embellished
in the case of Sir James Barrie, who, after many successes in novel and
short story, became a dramatist some twenty years ago and is now one of
the few men of genius writing for the stage. His _Peter Pan_, _The
Little Minister_, _The Admirable Crichton_, and _What Every Woman Knows_
are four of over a dozen dramas which have given him world fame.
Uniquely, among English writers whose work is of unquestionable literary
quality, he refrains from the publication of plays; a very regrettable
matter to countless who appreciate his rare quality. He is in his droll
way of whimsy a social critic beneath the irresponsible play of a poet's
fancy and an idealist's vision. His keen yet gentle interpretations of
character are solidly based on truth to the everlasting human traits,
and his poetry is all the better for its foundation of sanity and its
salt of wit. One has an impulse to call him the Puck of the English
theater; then feels compelled to add a word which recognizes the loving
wisdom mingling with the pagan charm. Sir James is as unusual in his way
as Shaw in his. Of late he has shown an inclination to write brief,
one-act pieces, thereby adding to our interest in a form of drama
evidently just beginning to come into greater regard.
For daring originality both of form and content Bernard Shaw is easily
the first living dramatist of England. He is a true son of Ibsen, in
that he insists on thinking in the theater, as well as in the
experimental nature of his technic, which has led him to shape for
himself the drama of character and thesis he has chosen to write. To the
thousands who know his name through newspaper publicity or the vogue of
some piece of his in the playhouse, Shaw is simply a witty Irishman,
dealer in paradox and wielder of a shillelah swung to break the heads of
Philistines for the sheer Celtic love of a row. To the few, however, an
honorable minority now rapidly increasing, he is a deeply earnest,
constructive social student and philosopher, who uses a popular
amusement as a vehicle for the wider dissemination of perfectly serious
views: a socialist, a mystic who believes in the Life Force sweeping man
on (if man but will) to a high destiny, and a lover of fellow man who in
his own words regards his life as belonging to the community and wishes
to serve it, in order that he may be "thoroughly used up" when he comes
to die. He has conquered as a playwright because beneath the sparkling
sally, the startling juxtaposition of character and the apparent
irreverence there hides a genuinely religious nature. Shaw shows himself
an "immoralist" only in the sense that he attacks jejune, vicious
pseudo-morals now existent. For sheer acting values in the particulars
of dialogue, character, scenic effectiveness, feeling for climax and
unity of aim such plays as _Candida_, _Arms and the Man_, _Captain
Brassbound's Profession_, _The Devil's Disciple_, _John Bull's Other
Island_, _Man and Superman_, _The Showing Up of Blanco Posnett_, and
others yet, are additions to the serious comedy of England likely to be
of lasting luster, so far as contemporary vision can penetrate.
One of the most interesting developments of recent years has been the
Irish theater movement, in itself part of the general rehabilitation of
the higher imaginative life of that remarkable people. The drama of the
gentle idealist poet Yeats, of the shrewdly observant Lady Gregory and
of the grimly realistic yet richly romantic Synge has carried far beyond
their little country, so that plays like Yeats' _The Land of Heart's
Desire_ and _The Hour Glass_, Lady Gregory's _Spreading the News_ and
Synge's _Riders to the Sea_ and _The Playboy of the Western World_ are
heard wherever the English language is understood, this stage literature
being aided in its travels by the excellent company of Irish Players
founded to exploit it and giving the world a fine example of the success
that may come from a single-eyed devotion to an ideal: namely, the
presentation for its own sake of the simple typical native life of the
land.
It should be remembered that while these three leaders are best known,
half a dozen other able Irish dramatists are associated with them, and
doing much to interpret the farmer or city folk: writers like Mayne,
Boyle, McComas, Murray, and Robinson.
Under the stimulus of Shaw in his reaction against the machine-made
piece and the tiresome reiteration of sex motives, there has sprung up a
younger school which has striven to introduce more varied subject-matter
and a broader view, also greater truth and subtler methods in
play-making. Here belong Granville Barker, with his _Voysey Inheritance_
(his best piece), noteworthy also as actor-manager and producer; the
novelists, Galsworthy and Bennett; and Masefield, whose _Tragedy of Nan_
contains imaginative poetry mingled with melodrama; and still later
figures, conspicuous among them the late Stanley Houghton, whose _Hindle
Wakes_ won critical and popular praise; others being McDonald Hastings
with _The New Sin_; Githa Sowerby, author of the grim, effective play,
_Rutherford and Son_; Elizabeth Baker, with _Chains_ to her credit;
Wilfred Gibson, who writes brief poignant studies of east London in
verse that in form is daringly realistic; Cosmo Hamilton, who made us
think in his attractive _The Blindness of Virtue_; and J. O. Francis,
whose Welsh play, _Change_, was recognized as doing for that country the
same service as the group led by Yeats and Synge has performed for
Ireland.
A later Synge seems to have arisen in Lord Dunsany, whose dramas in book
form have challenged admiration; and since his early death St. John
Hankin's dramatic work is coming into importance as a masterly
contribution to light comedy, the sort of drama that, after the Wilde
fashion, laughs at folly, satirizes weakness, refrains from taking
sides, and never forgets that the theater should offer amusement.
Of all these playwrights, rising or risen, who have got a hearing after
the veterans first mentioned, Galsworthy seems most significant for the
profound social earnestness of his thought, the great dignity of his art
and the fact that he rarely fails to respect the stage demand for
objective interest and story appeal. Some of these new dramatists go too
far in rejecting almost scornfully the legitimate theater mood of
amusement and the necessity of a method differing from the more analytic
way of fiction. Mr. Galsworthy, however, though severe to austerity in
his conceptions and nothing if not serious in treatment, certainly puts
upon us something of the compelling grip of the true dramatist in such
plays as _The Silver Box_, _Strife_ and, strongest of them all and one
of the finest examples of modern tragedy, Justice, where the themes are
so handled as to increase their intrinsic value. This able and
high-aiming novelist, when he turns to another technic, takes the
trouble to acquire it and becomes a stage influence to reckon with. _The
Pigeon_, the most genial outcome of his dramatic art, is a delightful
play: and _The Eldest Son_, _The Fugitive_ and _The Mob_, if none of
them have been stage successes, stand for work of praiseworthy strength.
On the side of poetry, and coming a little before the Irish drama
attracted general attention, Stephen Phillips proved that a poet could
learn the technic of the theater and satisfy the demands of reader and
play-goer. Saturated with literary traditions, frankly turning to
history, legend, and literature itself for his inspiration, Mr. Phillips
has written a number of acting dramas, all of them possessing stage
value, while remaining real poetry. His best things are _Paolo and
Francesca_ and _Herod_, the former a play of lovely lyric quality and
genuinely dramatic moments of suspense and climax; the latter a powerful
handling of the Bible motive. Very fine too in its central character is
_Nero_; and _Ulysses_, while less suited to the stage, where it seems
spectacle rather than drama, is filled with noble poetry and has a last
act that is a little play in itself. Several of Mr. Phillips' best plays
have been elaborately staged and successfully produced by representative
actor-managers like Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Sir George Alexander.
Still with poetry in mind, it may be added that Lawrence Binyon has
given evidence of distinct power in dramatic poetry in his _Attila_,
and the delicate Pierrot play, _Prunella_, by Messrs. Housman and
Granville Barker is a success in quite another genre.
Israel Zangwill has turned, like Barrie, Galsworthy and Bennett, from
fiction to the play, and _The Children of the Ghetto_, _Merely Mary
Ann_, _The Melting Pot_, _The War God_ and _The Next Religion_ show
progressively a firmer technic and the use of larger themes. Other
playwrights like Alfred Sutro, Sidney Grundy, W. S. Maugham, Hubert
Davies, and Captain Marshall have a skillful hand, and in the cases of
Maugham and Davies, especially the latter, clever social satire has come
from their pens. Louis R. Parker has shown his range and skill in
successful dramas so widely divergent as _Rosemary_, _Pomander Walk_ and
_Disraeli_.
It may be seen from this category, suggestive rather than complete, that
there is in England ample evidence for the statement that drama is now
being vigorously produced and must be reckoned with as an appreciable
and welcome part of contemporary letters. In the United States, so far,
the showing is slighter and less impressive. Yet it is within the facts
to say that the native play-making has waxed more serious-minded and
skillful (this especially in the last few years) and so has become a
definite adjunct to the general movement toward the reinvestiture of
drama.
In the prose drama which attempts honestly to reproduce American social
conditions, elder men like Howard and Herne, and later ones like Thomas,
Gillette and Clyde Fitch, have done worthy pioneer work. Among many
younger playwrights who are fast pressing to the front, Eugene Walter,
who in _The Easiest Way_ wrote one of the best realistic plays of the
day, Edward Sheldon, with a dozen interesting dramas to his credit,
notably _The Nigger_ and _Romance_; and William Vaughan Moody, whose
material in both _The Great Divide_ and _The Faith Healer_ is
healthfully American and truthful, although the handling is romantic and
that of the poet, deserve first mention.
Women are increasingly prominent in this recent activity and in such
hands as those of Rachel Crothers, Ann Flexner, Marguerite Merrington,
Margaret Mayo and Eleanor Gates our social life is likely to be
exploited in a way to hint at its problems, and truthfully and amusingly
set forth its types.
Moody, though he wrote his stage plays in prose, was essentially the
poet in viewpoint and imagination. A poet too, despite the fact that
more than half his work is in prose, is Percy Mackaye, the son of a
distinguished earlier playwright and theater reformer, author of _Hazel
Kirke_ and _Paul Kauvar_. Mr. Mackaye's prose comedy _Mater_, high
comedy in the best sense, and his satiric burlesque, _Anti-Matrimony_,
together with the thoughtful drama _Tomorrow_, which seeks to
incorporate the new conception of eugenics in a vital story of the day,
are good examples of one aspect of his work; and _Jeanne d'Arc_, _Sapho_
and _Phaon_, verse plays, and the romantic spectacle play, _A Thousand
Years Ago_, illustrate his poetic endeavor. Taking a hint from a short
story by Hawthorne, he has written in _The Scarecrow_ one of the
strongest and noblest serious dramas yet wrought by an American. He has
also done much for the pageant and outdoor masque, as his _The
Canterbury Pilgrims_, _Sanctuary_ and _St. Louis, A Civic Masque_,
presented in May of 1914 on an heroic scale in that city, testify. A
poet, whether in lyric or dramatic expression, is Josephine Preston
Peabody. Her lovely reshaping of the familiar legend known best in the
hands of Browning, _The Piper_, took the prize at the Stratford on Avon
spring Shakespeare festival some years ago, and has been successful
since both in England and America. Her other dramatic writing has not as
yet met so well the stage demands, but is conspicuous for charm and
ideality.
In the imaginative field of romance, poetry and allegory we may also
place the Americanized Englishman, Charles Rann Kennedy, who has put the
touch of the poet and prophet upon homely modern material. His beautiful
morality play, _The Servant in the House_, secured his reputation and
later plays from _The Winter Feast_ to _The Idol Breaker_, inclusive of
several shorter pieces, the one act form being definitely practiced by
this author, have been interesting work, skillful of technic and
surcharged with social sympathy and significance. Edward Knoblauch, the
author of _The Faun_, of _Milestones_ in collaboration with Mr. Bennett,
and of the fantastic oriental divertissement, _Kismet_; and Austin
Strong, who wrote _The Toymaker of Nuremberg_, are among the younger
dramatists from whom much may yet be expected.
In this enumeration, all too scant to do justice to newer drama in the
United States, especially in the field of realistic satire and humorous
perception of the large-scaled clashes of our social life, it must be
understood that I perforce omit to mention fully two score able and
earnest young workers who are showing a most creditable desire to depict
American conditions and have learned, or are rapidly learning, the use
of their stage tools. The purpose here is to name enough of personal
accomplishment to buttress the claim that a promising school has arisen
on the native soil with aims and methods similar to those abroad.
And all this work, English or American, shows certain ear-marks to bind
it together and declare it of our day in comparison with the past. What
are these distinctive features?
On the side of technic, a greater and greater insistence on telling the
story dramatically, with more of truth, to the exclusion of all that is
non-dramatic, although preserved in the conventions of the theater for
perhaps centuries; the elimination of subplot and of subsidiary
characters which were of old deemed necessary for purposes of
exposition; the avoidance of the prologue and such ancient and useful
devices as the aside and the soliloquy; and such simplification of form
that the typical play shall reduce itself most likely to three acts, and
is almost always less than five; a play that often has but one scene
where the action is compressed within the time limits of a few hours,
or, at the most, a day or two. All this is the outcome of the influence
of Ibsen with its subtlety, expository methods and its intenser
psychology. In word, dress, action and scene, too, this modern type of
drama approximates closer to life; and inclines to minimize scenery save
as congruous background, thus implying a distinct rebellion from the
stupidly literal scenic envisagement for which the influence of a
Belasco is responsible. The new technic also has, in its seeking for an
effect of verisimilitude, adopted the naturalistic key of life in its
acting values and has built small theaters better adapted to this
quieter, more penetrating presentation.
In regard to subject matter, and the author's attitude to his work, a
marked tendency may be seen to emphasize personality in the character
drawing, to make it of central interest (contrasted with plot) and a
bold attempt to present it in the more minute variations of motive and
act rather than in those more obvious reactions to life which have
hitherto characterized stage treatment; and equally noticeable if not
the dominant note of this latter-day drama, has been the social sympathy
expressed in it and making it fairly resonant with kindly human values:
the author's desire to see justice done to the under-dog in the social
struggle; to extend a fraternal hand to the derelicts of the earth, to
understand the poor and strive to help those who are weak or lost; all
the underlings and incompetents and ill-doers of earth find their
explainers and defenders in these writers. This is the note which sounds
in the fraternalism of Kennedy's _The Servant in the House_, the
arraignment of society in Walter's _The Easiest Way_ and Paterson's
_Rebellion_, the contrast of the ideals of east and west in Moody's _The
Great Divide_, and the democratic fellowship of Sheldon's _Salvation
Nell_. It is the note abroad which gives meaning to Hauptmann's _The
Weavers_, Galsworthy's _Justice_ and Wedekind's _The Awakening of
Spring_, different as they are from each other. It stands for a
tolerant, even loving comprehension of the other fellow's case. There is
in it a belief in the age, too, and in modern man; a faith in democracy
and an aspiration to see established on the earth a social condition
which will make democracy a fact, not merely a convenient political
catch-word.
Some authors, in their obsession with truth on the stage, have too much
neglected the fundamental demands of the theater and so sacrificed the
crisp crescendo treatment of crisis in climax as to indulge in a tame,
undramatic and bafflingly subtle manipulation of the story; a remark
applicable, for example, to a writer like Granville Barker.
But the growth and gains in both countries, with America modestly
second, are encouraging. In these modern hands the play has been
simplified, deepened, made more truthful, more sympathetic; and is now
being given the expressional form that means literature. The bad, the
cheap, the flimsy are still being produced, of course, in plenty; so has
it always been, so ever will be. But the drama that is worthy, skillful,
refreshing in these different kinds--farce, comedy light, polite, or
satiric; broad comedy or high, melodrama, tragedy, romance and
morality--is now offered, steadily, generously, and it depends upon the
theater-goer who has trained himself to know, to reject and accept
rightly, to appreciate and so make secure the life of all drama that is
worth preservation.
* * * * *
This survey of the English theater and the drama which has been produced
in it from the beginning--a survey the brevity of which will not
detract, it may be hoped, from its clearness, may serve to place our
play-goer in a position the better to appreciate the present conditions;
and to give him more respect for a form of literature which he turns to
to-day for intelligent recreation, deeming it a helpfully stimulating
form of art. From this vantage-point, he may now approach a
consideration of the drama as an artistic problem. He will be readier
than before, perhaps, to realize that the playwright, with this history
behind him, is the creature of a long and important development, in a
double sense: in his treatment of life, and in the manner of that
treatment.
Naturally, the theater-goer will not stop with the English product. The
necessity alone of understanding Ibsen, as the main figure in this
complex modern movement, will lead him to a study of the author of _A
Doll's House_. And, working from center to circumference, he will with
ever increasing stimulation and delight become familiar with many other
foreign dramatists of national or international importance. He will give
attention to those other Scandinavians, Strindberg, Drachman and
Bjoernson; to the Russians, Tolstoy, Tchekoff and Gorky; to Frenchmen
like Rostand and Maeterlinck, Becque, Hervieu, Lavedan, Donnay and
Brieux; to the Germans and Austrians, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Wedekind,
Hofmansthal and Schnitzler; to the Italian, D'Annunzio, and the Spanish
Echgeragay,--to mention but a few. It may even be that, once aroused to
the value of the expression of the Present in these representative
writers for the stage, he will wish to trace the dramatic history behind
them in their respective countries, as he has (supposedly) already done
with the dramatists of his own tongue. If he do so, the play-goer will
surely add greatly not only to his general literary culture but to his
power of true appreciation of the play of the moment he may be
witnessing. For all this reading and reflection and comparison will tend
to make him a critic-in-the-seat who settles the fate of plays to-day
because he knows the plays of yesterday and yesteryear.