THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PLAY
We have now surveyed the chief elements involved in the making of a play
and suggested an intelligent attitude on the part of the play-goer
toward them. Primarily the aim has been to broaden and sharpen the
appreciation of a delightful experience; for the sake of personal
culture. But, as was briefly suggested in the chapter on the play as a
cultural possibility, there is another reason why the student and
theater attendant should realize that the drama in its possibilities is
a work of art, and the theater, the place where it is exhibited, can be
a temple of art. This other reason looks to the social significance of
the playhouse as a great, democratic people's amusement where stories
can be heard and seen more effectively, as to influence, than anywhere
else or under any other imaginable conditions. It is a place where the
great lessons of life can be emotionally received and so sink deep into
the consciousness and conscience of folk at large. And so the question
of the theater becomes more than the question of private culture,
important as that is; being, indeed, a matter of social welfare. This
fact is now coming to be recognized in the United States, as it has long
been recognized abroad. We see more plainly than we did that when states
like France and Germany or the cities of such countries grant
subventions to their theaters and make theater directors high officials
of the government they do so not only from the conviction that the
theater stands for culture (a good thing for any country to possess) but
that they feel it to have a direct and vital influence upon the life of
the citizens in general, upon the civilization of the day. They assume
that the playhouse, along with the school, library, newspaper and
church, is one of the five mighty social forces in suggesting ideas to a
nation and creating ideals.
The intelligent theater-goer to-day, as never before, will therefore
note with interest the change in the notions concerning this popular
amusement that is yet so much more, based upon much that has happened
within our time; the coming back of plays into literary significance and
acceptance, so that leaders in letters everywhere are likely to be
playwrights; the publication of contemporary drama, foreign and
domestic, enabling the theater-goer to study the play he is to see or
has seen; and the recognition of another aim in conducting this
institution than a commercial one looking to private profit: the aim of
maintaining a house of art, nourished by all concerned with the pride in
and love of art which that implies, for the good of the people. The
observer we have in mind and are trying to help a little will be
interested in all such experiments as that of the Little Theaters in
various cities, in the children's theaters in New York and Washington,
in the fast-growing use of the pageant to illuminate local history, in
the attempts to establish municipal stock companies, or competent
repertory companies by enlightened private munificence. And however
successful or unsuccessful the particular ventures may be, he will see
that their significance lies in their meaning a new, thoughtful regard
for an institution which properly conducted can conserve the general
social welfare.
He will find in the growth within a very few years of an organization
like the Drama League of America a sign of the times in its testimony to
an interest, as wide as the country, and wider, in the development and
maintenance of a sound and worthy drama. And he will be willing as lover
of fellow-man as well as theater lover to do his share in the
movement--it is no hyperbole to call it such--toward socializing the
playhouse, so that it may gradually become an enterprise conducted by
the people and in the interests of the people, born of their life and
cherished by their love. Nor will he be indifferent to the thought that,
thus directed and enjoyed, it may in time come to be one of the proudest
of national assets, as it has been before in more than one land and
period.
And with the general interests of the people in mind, our open-eyed
observer will be especially quick to approve any experiment toward
bringing the stimulating life of the theater to communities or sections
of the city which hitherto have been deprived of amusement that while
amusing ministers to the mind and emotions of the hearers in a way to
give profit with the pleasure. Catholic in his view, he will just as
warmly welcome a people's theater in South Boston or on the East Side in
New York, or at Hull House in Chicago, as he will a New Theater in upper
New York, or a Fine Arts Theater in Chicago, or a Toy Theater in Boston;
believing that since the playhouse is in essence and by the nature of
its appeal democratic, it must neglect no class of society in its
service. He will prick up his ears and become alert in hearing of the
Minnesota experiment, where a rural play, written by a member of the
agricultural school, was given under university auspices fifty times in
one season, throughout the state. He will rejoice at the action of
Dartmouth College in accepting a $100,000 bequest for the erection and
conductment of a theater in the college community and serving the
interests of both academic and town life. And he will also be glad to
note that the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in Pittsburgh, has
initiated a School of Drama as an organic part of the educational life.
He will see in such things a recognition among educators that the
theater should be related to educational life. And, musing happily upon
such matters, it will come to him again and again that it is rational to
strive for a people's price for a people's entertainment, instead of a
price for the best offerings prohibitive to four-fifths of all
Americans. And in this fact he will see the explanation for the enormous
growth of the moving picture type of amusement, realizing it to be
inevitable under present conditions, because a form of entertainment
popular in price as well as in nature, and hence populously frequented.
And so our theater-goer, who has now so long listened with at least
hypothetic patience to exposition and argument, will be willing, indeed,
will wish, as part of his watchful canniness with respect to the plays
he sees and reads, to judge the playwright, among other things,
according to his interpretation of life; and especially the modern
social life of his own day and country.
I have already spoken of the need to have an idea in drama; a
centralizing opinion about life or a personal reaction to it--something
quite distinct from the thesis or propaganda which might change a work
of art into a dissertation. Let it now be added that, other things being
equal, a play to-day will represent its time and be vital in proportion
as it deals with life in terms of social interest. To put it another
way, a drama to reflect our age must be aware of the intense and
practically universal tendency to study society as an organism, with the
altruistic purpose of seeing justice prevail. The rich are attacked, the
poor defended; combinations of business are assailed, and criminals
treated as our sick brothers; labor and capital contest on a gigantic
scale, and woman looms up as a central and most agitating problem. All
this and more, arising from the same interest, offers a vast range of
subject-matter to drama and a new spirit in treating it on the stage.
Within the last half century the two great changes that have come in
human life are the growth in the democratic ideal, with all that it
suggests, and the revolutionary conception of what life is under the
domination of scientific knowledge. All art forms, including this of the
theater, have responded to these twin factors of influence. In art it
means sympathy in studying fellow-man and an attempt to tell the truth
about him in all artistic depictions. Therefore, in the drama to-day
likely to make the strongest claim on the attention of the intelligent
play-goers, we shall get the fullest recognition of this spirit and the
frankest use of it as typical of the twentieth century. This is what
gives substance, meaning and bite to the plays of Shaw, Galsworthy, and
Barker, of Houghton, and Francis and Sowerby, of Moody and Kennedy and
Zangwill, at their best. To acknowledge this is not to deny that
enjoyable farce, stirring melodrama and romantic extravaganza are not
welcome; the sort of play which simply furnishes amusement in terms of
good story telling, content to do this and no more. It is, however, to
remind the reader that to be most representative of the day the drama
must do something beyond this; must mirror the time and probe it too;
yes, must, like a wise physician, feel the pulse of man to-day and
diagnose his deepest needs and failings and desires; in a word, must be
a social drama, since that is the keynote of the present. It will be
found that even in the lighter forms of drama which we accept as typical
and satisfactory this social flavor may be detected, giving it body, but
not detracting from its pleasurableness. Miss Crother's _Young Wisdom_
has the light touch and the framework of farce, yet it deals with a
definite aspect of feminism. Mr. Knoblauch's _The Faun_ is a romantic
fantasia, but is not without its keen social satire. Mr. Sheldon's _The
Havoc_ seems also farcical in its type; nevertheless it is a serious
satiric thrust at certain extreme conceptions of marital relations. And
numerous dramas, melodramatic in form and intention, dealing with the
darker economic and sociological aspects of our life--the overworked
crime play of the day--indefinitely swell the list. And so with many
more plays, pleasant or unpleasant, which, while clinging close to the
notion of good entertainment, do not refrain from social comment or
criticism. The idea that criticism of life in a stage story must of
necessity be heavy, dull and polemic is an irritating one, of which the
Anglo-Saxon is strangely fond. The French, to mention one other nation,
have constantly shown the world that to be intellectually keen and
suggestive it is not necessary to be solemn or opaque; in fact, that one
is sure to be all the more stimulating because of the light touch and
the sense for social adaptability. This view will in time, no doubt,
percolate through the somewhat obstinate layers of the Anglo-Saxon mind.
From these considerations it may follow that our theater-goer, while
generally receptive and broad-minded in his seat to the particular type
of drama the playwright shall offer, will incline to prefer those plays
which on the whole seem in some one of various possible ways to express
the time; which drama that has survived has always done. He will care
most for the home-made play as against the foreign, if equally well
made, since its problem is more likely to be his own, or one he can
better understand. But he will not turn a cold shoulder to some European
drama by a D'Annunzio, a Sudermann, a Maeterlinck or a Tolstoy, if it be
a great work of art and deal with life in such universal applications
and relations as to make it quite independent of national borders. One
of the socializing and civilizing functions of the theater is thus to
draw the peoples together into a common bond of interest, a unit in that
vast community which signifies the all-embracing experience of being a
human creature. Yet the theater-goer will have but a Laodicean regard
for plays which present divergent national or technically local
conditions of life practically incomprehensible to Americans at large;
some of the Gallic discussions of the French menage, for instance.
Terence taught us wisely that nothing human should be alien from our
interest; true enough. There is however no good reason why interest
should not grow as the matter in hand comes closer to us in time and
space. And still more vigorously will he protest against any and all of
the wretched attempts to change foreign material for domestic use to be
noted when the American producer (or traducer) feels he must remove from
such a play the atmospheric color which is of its very life,
transferring a rural setting of old England to a similar setting in New
England. Short of the drama of open evil teaching, nothing is worse than
these absurd and abortive makings over of drama from abroad. The result
is neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. They destroy every object
of theater enjoyment and culture, lying about life and losing whatever
grip upon credence they may have originally possessed. Happily, their
day is on the wane. Even theater-goers of the careless kind have little
or no use for them.
That the stage of our day, a stage upon which it has been possible to
attain success with such dramas as _The Blue Bird_, _The Servant in the
House_, _The Poor Little Rich Girl_, _The Witching Hour_, _Cyrano de
Bergerac_, _Candida_, _What Every Woman Knows_, _The Great Divide_ and
_The Easiest Way_ (the enumeration is made to imply the greatest
diversity of type) is one of catholic receptivity and some
discriminating patronage, should appear to anyone who has taken the
trouble to follow the discussion up to this point, and whose theater
experience has been fairly large. There is no longer any reason why our
drama-going should not be one of the factors which minister to rational
pleasure, quicken the sense of art and invite us fruitfully to
participate in that free and desirable exchange of ideas which Matthew
Arnold declared to be the true aim of civilization. Let us grant readily
that the stage story which shows within theater restrictions the life of
a land and the outlying life of the world of men has its definite
demarcations; that it may not to advantage perform certain services more
natural, for example to the church, or the school. It must appeal upon
the basis of the bosom interests and passions of mankind and its common
denominator is that of the general emotions. Concede that it should not
debate a philosophical question with the aim of the thinker, nor a legal
question as if the main purpose were to settle a matter of law; nor a
religious question with the purposeful finality of the theologian, or
the didactic eloquence of the pulpit. But it can and should deal with
any question pertinent to men, vital to the broad interests of human
beings, in the spirit of the humanities and with the restraints of its
particular art. It should be suggestive, arousing, not demonstrative or
dogmatic. Its great outstanding advantage lies in its emotional
suggestibility. To perform this service, and it is a mighty one, is to
have an intelligent theater, a self-respecting theater, a theater that
shall purvey rational amusement to the few and the many. And whenever
theater-goers, by majority vote, elect it, it will arrive.
It was suggested on an earlier page and may now be still more evident
that intelligent theater-going begins long before one goes to the
theater. It depends upon preparation of various kinds; upon a sense of
the theater as a social institution, and of the renewed literary quality
of the drama to-day; upon a knowledge of the specific problems of the
player and playwright, and of the aids to this knowledge furnished by
the best dramatic criticism; upon familiarity too with the printed
drama, past and present, in a fast multiplying library that deals with
the stage and dramatic writing. The last statement may be amplified
here.
A few years ago, there was hardly a serious publication either in
England or America devoted to the legitimate interests of the stage from
the point of view of the patron of the theater, the critic-in-the-seat
whom we have so steadily had in mind. Such periodicals as existed were
produced rather in the interests of the stage people, actors, producers,
and the like. This has now changed very much for the better. Confining
the survey to this country, the monthly called _The Theater_ has some
value in making the reader aware of current activities. The two
monthlies, _The American Playwright_ and _The Dramatist_, edited
respectively by William T. Price and Luther B. Anthony, are given to the
technical consideration of contemporary drama in the light of permanent
principles, and are very useful. The quarterly, _The Drama_, edited and
published under the auspices of The Drama League of America, is a
dignified and earnest attempt to represent the cultural work of all that
has to do with the stage; and a feature of it is the regular appearance
of a complete play not hitherto in print. Another quarterly, _Poet
Lore_, although not given over exclusively to matters dramatic, has been
honorably conspicuous for many years for its able critical treatment of
the theater and play; and especially for its translations of foreign
dramas, much of the best material from abroad being first given English
form in its columns. At Madison, Wisconsin, _The Play Book_ is a monthly
also edited by theater specialists and often containing illuminating
articles and reviews. And, of course, in the better class periodicals,
monthly and weekly, papers in this field are appearing nowadays with
increasing frequency, a testimonial to the general growth of interest.
Critics of the drama like W. P. Eaton, Clayton Hamilton, Arthur Ruhl,
Norman Hapgood, William Winter, Montrose J. Moses, Channing Pollock,
James O'Donnell Bennett, James S. Metcalf, and James Huneker are to be
read in the daily press, in periodicals, or in collected book form.
Advanced movements abroad are chronicled in _The Mask_, the publication
founded by Gordon Craig; and in _Poetry and Drama_. It is reasonable to
believe that, with the renewed appreciation of the theater, the work of
the dramatic critic as such will be felt to be more and more important
and his function will assume its significance in the eyes of the
community. A vigorous dramatic period implies worthy criticism to
self-reveal it and to establish and maintain right standards. Signs are
not wanting that we shall gradually train and make necessary in the
United States a class of critic represented in England by William Archer
and A. B. Walkley. Among the publishers who have led in the movement to
place good drama in permanent form in the hands of readers the firms of
Macmillan, Scribner, Mitchell Kennerley, Henry Holt, John W. Luce,
Harper and Brothers, B. W. Huebsch and Doubleday, Page & Company have
been and are honorably to the fore. In the way of critical books which
study the many aspects of the subject, they are now being printed so
constantly as plainly to testify to the new attitude and interest. The
student of technic can with profit turn to the manuals of William
Archer, Brander Matthews, and William T. Price; the studies of Clayton
Hamilton, W. P. Eaton, Norman Hapgood, Barrett Clark, and others. For
the civic idea applied to the theater, and the development of the
pageant, he will read Percy Mackaye. And when it comes to plays
themselves, as we have seen, hardly a week goes by without the
appearance of some important foreign masterpiece in English, or some
important drama of English speech, often in advance of or coincident
with stage production. The best work of the day is now readily
accessible, where, only a little while ago, book publication of drama
(save the standard things of the past) was next to unknown. It is worth
knowing that The Drama League of America is publishing, with the
cooeperation of Doubleday, Page & Company, an attractive series of Drama
League Plays, in which good drama of the day, native and foreign, is
offered the public at a cost which cuts in two the previous expense. And
the Drama League's selective List of essays and books about the theatre,
with which is incorporated a complete list of plays printed in English,
can be procured for a nominal sum and will give the seeker after light a
thorough survey of what is here touched upon in but a few salient
particulars.
In short, there is no longer much excuse for pleading ignorance on the
ground of inadequate aid, if the desire be to inform oneself upon the
drama and matters pertaining to the theater.
The fact that our contemporary body of drama is making the literary
appeal by appearing in book form is of special bearing upon the culture
of the theater-goer. Mr. H. A. Jones, the English playwright, has
recently declared that he deemed this the factor above all others which
should breed an enlightened attitude toward the playhouse. In truth, we
can hardly have a self-respecting theater without the publication of the
drama therein to be seen. Printed plays mean a claim to literary
pretensions. Plays become literature only when they are preserved in
print. And, equally important, when the spectator may read the play
before seeing it, or, better yet, having enjoyed the play in the
playhouse, can study it in a book with this advantage, a process of
revaluation and enforcement of effect, he will appreciate a drama in all
its possibilities as in no other way. Detached from mob influence, with
no confusion of play with players, he can attain that quieter, more
comprehensive judgment which, coupled with the instinctive decision in
the theater, combines to make a critic of him in the full sense.
For these reasons, the well wisher of the theater welcomes as most
helpful and encouraging the now established habit of the prompt printing
of current plays. It is no longer a reproach from the view of literature
to have your play acted; it may even be that soon it will be a reproach
not to have the printed play presented on the boards. The young American
man of letters, like his fellow in France, may feel that a literary
_debut_ is not truly made until his drama has been seen and heard, as
well as read. While scholars are raking over the past with a fine-tooth
comb, and publishing special editions of second and third-rate
dramatists of earlier times, it is a good thing that modern plays, whose
only demerit may be their contemporaneity, are receiving like honor, and
that the dramas of Pinero, Jones, Wilde, Shaw, Galsworthy, Synge, Yeats,
Lady Gregory, Zangwill, Dusany, Houghton, Hankin, Hamilton, Sowerby,
Gibson, acted British playwrights; and of Gillette, Thomas, Moody,
Mackaye, Peabody, Walter, Sheldon, Tarkington, Davis, Patterson,
Middleton, and Kennedy, acted American playwrights (two dozen to stand
for two score and more) can be had in print for the asking. It is good
testimony that we are really coming to have a living theater and not a
mere academic kow-towing to by-gone altars whose sacrificial smoke has
dimmed our eyes sometimes to the clear daylight of the Present.
Preparation for the use of the theater looks before and after. At home
and at school the training can be under way; much happy preliminary
reading and reflection introduce it. By making oneself aware of the best
that has been thought and said on the subject; by becoming conversant
with the history, theory and practice of the playhouse, consciously
including this as part of education; and, for good citizenship's sake,
by regarding sound theater entertainment as a need and therefore a right
of the people; in a word, by taking one's play-going with good sense,
trained taste and right feeling, a person finds himself becoming a
broader and better human being. He will be quicker in his sympathies,
more comprehensive in his outlook, and will react more satisfactorily to
life in general. All this may happen, although in turning to the
theater his primary purpose may be to seek amusement.
Is it a counsel of perfection to ask for this? Hardly, when so much has
already occurred pointing out the better way. The civilized theater has
begun to come; the prepotent influence of the audience is recognized.
Surely the gain made, and the imperfections that still exist, are
stimulants to that further bettering of conditions whose familiar name
is Progress.
In all considerations of the theater, it would be a good thing to allow
the unfortunate word "elevate" to drop from the vocabulary. It misleads
and antagonizes. It is better to say that the view presented in this
book is one that wishes to make the playhouse innocently pleasant,
rational, and sound as art. If by "elevate" we mean these things, well
and good. But there is no reason why to elevate the stage should be to
depress the box office--except a lack of understanding between the two.
Uniting in the correct view, the two should rise and fall together. In
fact, touching audience, actors, playwrights, producers, and the
society that is behind them all, intelligent cooeperation is the open
sesame. With that for a banner cry, mountains may be moved.
NOTES:
[A] A fact humorously yet keenly suggested in Bernard Shaw's clever
piece, _The Dark Lady of the Sonnets_.
[B] When our theater has become thoroughly artistic, plays will not, as
at present, be stretched out beyond the natural size, but will be
confined to a shorter playing time and the evening filled out with a
curtain raiser or after piece, as is now so common abroad.
[C] For a good discussion of this, see "The Genesis of Hamlet," by
Charlton M. Lewis (Houghton, Mifflin & Company).
[D] Gordon Craig's book on _The Art of The Theatre_ may be consulted for
further light upon a movement that is very significant and likely to be
far-reaching in time, in its influence upon future stage and dramatic
conditions.
* * * * *
etext transcriber's note:
The following typographical errors have been corrected ...
departure from theme follow => departure from theme follows
it is well if the intermediate act do not => it is well if the
intermediate act does not
dedelivered his curtain speech => delivered his curtain speech
leigitimate => legitimate