THE DRAMATIC CRITIC
His Duty to be Tolerant
Some remarks which appeared in a popular weekly paper concerning Mrs
Patrick Campbell's _Deirdre_ and _Electra_ deserve a little
consideration. One of the critics attached to the paper spoke of the
affair as being an "indifferent performance of indifferent tragedies,"
and then said it was "a simple affectation to profess to enjoy it," and
that it was not, "as some people seem to think, a mark of culture, but
only of insufficient culture not to acknowledge that one is bored by
this kind of thing."
An affronted critic wrote to the paper, complaining of the charge of
affectation and insufficient culture, and was promptly rebuked as a
"bumptious correspondent," and told that his letter convinced the critic
that he was one of those affected persons whose misdirected zeal the
writer deplored. This attitude is not a novelty. Many of the critics, at
one period, charged the professed admirers of Wagner with being
impostors or imbeciles; later on, anyone who professed to like the
pictures of Whistler or Rossetti or Burne-Jones, or of any of the
Impressionists, was accused of affectation. When Ibsen was introduced to
England the conservative critics raved, and alleged that the Ibsenites
(or "Obscenites"--the word was considered very witty) were humbugs;
this was one of the least offensive charges. The same kind of thing
happened in the case of Maeterlinck. Many other instances might be
cited.
It is a curious form of attack. Why should a critic who alleged that he
had much pleasure and certainly no boredom from Mr Yeats' play and Mrs
Campbell's beautiful acting, be charged with affectation and also with
insufficient culture? Of course, the critics are insufficiently
cultured. There are thousands of plays and books that they ought to have
read, of dramas they ought to have witnessed, of pictures they ought to
have seen, masses of music they ought to have heard--and have not--and,
therefore, they are persons of very insufficient culture. But the writer
in question should offer some evidence of his own sufficiency of culture
before alleging that the critic's opinion concerning the play and the
performance was due to a lack of culture.
After all, one would seem entitled to express an opinion on a question
of art or pleasure without being called a liar by someone who takes a
different view. The matter is one of some importance because the attack
is insidious and dangerous. The deadliest weapon in the hands of the
critic is the allegation of boredom. You can say that a piece is vulgar,
indelicate, inartistic, indecent, full of "chestnuts," old-fashioned,
"melodramatic," ill-constructed or unoriginal, without doing fatal
injury, but if you allege that you and everybody else suffered from
boredom your attack may be fatal. This is the reason why the charge is
so often made by people with strong prejudices.
There is something to be said on both sides. No doubt the lovers of the
severer form of drama, the worshippers of Shaw, the playgoers who
supported the societies of which the Independent Theatre was the first
and regarded the Court Theatre for a while as a kind of Mecca, are not
always judicious when talking about musical comedy and comic opera, and
some of them have been very narrow-minded. They have refused to admit
the merit of any comic operas, except those of Gilbert and Sullivan,
they have lavished indiscriminating abuse upon almost all others, have
looked upon Daly's Theatre and the Gaiety and the Prince of Wales' as so
many Nazareths. This, of course, has caused a great deal of annoyance to
the lovers of musico-dramatic work.
Moreover, some of the austere folk have denounced melodrama and farce,
and the so-called romantic comedy, without drawing nice distinctions.
This indiscriminate denunciation has naturally caused annoyance and
reprisals. Because some critics disliked _A Chinese Honeymoon_
enormously, because wild motor 'buses could not drag them to see _The
Scarlet Pimpernel_, they do not doubt, or pretend to doubt, that
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people have enjoyed these
pieces. Without for one moment believing in the phrase "De gustibus non
est disputandum" as ordinarily interpreted, one must fully recognise
that palates differ. If M. Steinheil chose to dine upon cold pork-pie,
sausage, cold veal and lobster as the papers allege, it is not
surprising that he died, only a little amazing that the French police
were puzzled as to the cause of his death, but there was no reason for
charging him with affectation in eating such a meal or insufficient
culture, though it was hardly the banquet of a gourmet. One may pull a
wry face at a costly _Bouillabaisse chez_ Roubillon at Marseilles
without doubting that poor old "G.A.S.," and Thackeray too, loved the
dish. Some prefer homely beer to any of the white wines of the Rhine,
yet many people honestly enjoy those high-priced varieties of
weak-minded vinegar; and no doubt it is not affectation which causes
some people to allege that they like black pudding and tripe and onions.
The matter has its serious aspect. The attacks made, very unfairly, upon
the novel forms of drama by conservative critics, when they take this
form of alleging that not only the critic but the audience was bored,
and that professed admirers are insincere, undoubtedly are very
effective, and certainly are sometimes made in good faith.
There are people so foolish as to think that nobody can like what they
do not; also so fatuous as to consider that no one ought to like what
they do not; but to jump from this to alleging that the professed
admirers of ambitious works are humbugs is outrageous. The butcher boy
enjoys _Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street_: why should he
disbelieve my statement that others get pleasure from a performance of a
_Hedda Gabler_, which would hardly appeal to him?
Large numbers of playgoers have been kept away from able and ambitious
dramas, written by dramatists with a true artistic aim, because of the
oft-repeated allegations by newspaper writers, who did not like them,
that everybody was bored; also the wholesale denunciation of the lighter
forms of dramatic and musico-dramatic forms of entertainment by some of
the critics has weakened their influence, has led the man in the street
to think that if Mr X. or Y. or Z. can find no pleasure in what he likes
that he will get no entertainment from what they admire. One supposes,
at least hopes, that dramatic critics of all kinds and grades have an
honest desire for the advance and success of British Drama. They will
hardly be successful in their wishes unless on each side a little more
tolerance is shown for the opinions professed by members of the other.
His Sympathies when Young
In some criticisms on certain demi-semi-private performances given in
London by a well-known French actress and her company there seemed to be
a note not often discoverable in English articles dealing with the
theatre. It appeared as if several of the writers had a kind of fierce
exultation in the thought that the play represented was likely to shock
a good many people--people presumably entitled to have their feelings
considered seriously. In the annals of English art there has been rather
a scanty exhibition of the desire to do what may be most easily
described by two French phrases, "_épater le bourgeois_" or "_ébouriffer
le bourgeois_."
It is, in fact, noticeable that we possess no recognised English set
phrase, such as "to startle the Philistine" or "to ruffle the hair of
the Philistine." Indeed, before Matthew Arnold imported the term
Philistine from Germany, as equivalent in art matters to the French "_le
bourgeois_" or the later expression "_l'épicier_," we really had nothing
at all to correspond with these terms. For to shock "Mrs Grundy" is
quite off the point. This is the more remarkable because the _bourgeois_
feeling--treated, by the way, admirably in Balzac's short story "Pierre
Grassou"--has long been the curse of English art, and, as represented by
the Royal Academy, still remains a paramount power for evil.
It cannot be said that the desire to "_ébouriffer le bourgeois_" often
leads to valuable results so far as the works intended to accomplish the
feat are concerned, although it is possible that some of them have
otherwise had a beneficial result. Another French phrase, "_pour activer
la digestion_," contains a hint that such an attempt may indirectly
render service to art. Our popular ideas of medical treatment have never
adopted the theory suggested by the foreign phrase, which is that when
the digestive apparatus is sluggish it is advisable to eat something
violently indigestible so that the stomach, summoning all its forces to
deal with the intruder, may be aroused to a state of activity. This is a
kind of theory to be tried on the dog--not your own dog, of course.
Yet it may be that an occasional slap in the face of the public in
respect of artistic matters awakens it from the complacent state of
lethargy in which it lies with regard to most questions of art.
The young English dramatist has very few opportunities of making the
hair of the Philistine stand on end or activating his digestion; he is
worse off than the youthful British painter who, as those that have
haunted the English studios and the ateliers on the Surrey side of the
Seine well know, can give a kind of birth to his insults to the taste of
the churchwarden. Once down upon canvas a picture is at least
half-alive, whilst nothing is more pitifully dead than the audacious
play in manuscript.
The Théâtre de l'Oeuvre gave to French revolutionaries in dramatic art
the chance of setting the Seine on fire, but the Censor has allowed our
playwrights little scope. The evasion of his authority by means of
nominally private performances has brought into brief life on the boards
very few pieces in my time in which one can really see evidence of the
youthful desire to shock the Philistine. In _Ghosts_, _Les Trois Filles
de M. Dupont_, and _Monna Vanna_, though all three were prohibited by
the authority, there is no sign of the particular element in question.
The first two are serious, sober studies of social problems, not
intended to shock or startle but to educate the orthodox. The
prohibition of the third was simply an official blunder in relation to a
dignified work of art.
On the other hand there is a trace of the spirit in _Mrs Warren's
Profession_, and _Salome_ seems full of it. Curiously enough, in some of
the permitted dramas by Mr Bernard Shaw there is evidence of this
desire. Mr Shaw often seems to be saying, "I'm going to make your flesh
creep." He is a brilliant dramatist, and also, desperately in earnest,
and it may well be that they are right who think that his plays will
live along after the death of most English works produced since the
public and critics were bewildered at the first performance of
_Widowers' Houses_, and he certainly appears to adopt as a policy the
theory of stirring up into activity the lethargic stomach of the British
playgoer by devices carefully calculated to make him howl.
_Salome_ stands in another category: the author had no lesson to teach.
As a work of art his play would not be invalidated or even weakened if,
instead of the biblical characters and phrases, he had invented his
prophet, slightly altered time and place, and left out the quotations;
but to have done this would have been to avoid shocking people. Of
course it is not always easy to be certain whether an audacity is
employed with the desire to "_ébouriffer le bourgeois_" that may be
excusable, or with the object of beating the big drum and calling
attention, ignobly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means
of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of _Salome_ it
is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the
choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who illustrated
the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of _The
Times_ in his work "The Insanity of Genius."
Such audacities often deceive the youthful critic, and, in some of the
notices referred to, the signs of youth are manifest in the ill-balanced
enthusiasm, as well as in the employment of phrases of praise which the
old hand shirks with a curious kind of bashfulness.
In criticism there is a difficulty analogous to that which is supposed
to beset the performance of the part of Juliet; it is rather nicely put
in the title of one of Béranger's poems--and also of a rather dreary,
once popular, novel, "Si Jeunesse Savait, si Vieillesse Pouvait." In
youth one has intense sympathy with the lost causes, or, rather, with
those that have not yet been found, and superb contempt for the
conventional, without possessing the judgment to distinguish the tares
from the wheat; every novelty attracts, every audacity appeals, and we
introduce obscure artists of alleged genius by the dozen to an
unsympathetic world; as age and judgment come enthusiasm wanes, till at
last the inevitable crystallization begins and new ideas beat vainly at
the doors of our minds.
Even before the crystallization has become serious it is very hard to
appreciate the rare novelties of idea offered in our theatres; weariness
of stale conventions which affects the young critic in a less degree
than the old, does not easily induce one to accept mere outrages upon
them. _Salome_, indeed, has some outrages upon stale conventions, but
they are rather stale outrages.
Certain French comedies have reduced unconventionality in morals to a
kind of spurious conventionality; in some of them the idea of marriage
as a preliminary to connubial relations is regarded as rather shocking.
Some day Madame Granier will hide her face in her hands, shameful at the
insult of "married woman" hurled at her; and our youthful critic will
admire the audacity. Caution requires the statement that it was not
Madame Granier who gave the semi-demi-private performances: honesty
compels one to admit that these remarks constitute a moan about lost
youth, and are full of envy, hatred and malice towards those blessed
with splendidly indiscreet enthusiasm for flaunting audacity in artistic
matters.
The Jaded Critic
At this, the season of the country cousin, the gift and sometimes
receipt of game, the abandonment of autumn underclothing and the
overhauling of pike tackle, a question is often put to the critic. It
comes from the country cousin, and is generally in these words or
thereabouts: "What piece ought we to take tickets for?" which generally
has an under-surface suggestion, and might be translated into: "For what
theatre are you going to get us seats?" Of course we are dense enough
not to notice that the inquiry is more than skin-deep; the question of
"paper" for the critics is not one concerning which it is necessary or
desirable to write. The answer to the surface inquiry generally provokes
a discussion. In a guarded way the critic makes a reply containing the
formula "I think you would like ----" which does not altogether please
the inquirer. For the country cousin suspects the existence of a lurking
insult to him upon the point of taste or intelligence.
The end of it is always, or nearly, the same, and to the effect that of
course we "jaded critics" do not really care about any pieces at all,
and only visit the theatre because we are paid to go, and that it is
awfully unfair that such "jaded"--one cannot help insisting upon the
word "jaded"--people should be allowed to act as critics. It has been
suggested bluntly that we ought to be dismissed after fifteen years'
labour, and of course, if there were a pension--but then we are no
better off in that respect than county-court judges.
Yet even the cleverest country cousin cannot suggest any useful
employment for superannuated, middle-aged dramatic critics.
No doubt we have been advising our cousins quite wisely as to what is
likely to please them, for if we learn nothing else by our labour we
certainly get to know what kind of play and performance is to the taste
of other people.
Sometimes one asks oneself what truth there is in the jaded critic
theory. It cannot be pretended that a man who goes to the theatre three
times or so a week pays each visit in the hopeful state of mind or with
the expectation of intense enjoyment possible to those who only
patronize the playhouse now and then and pick their pieces. Indeed, he
very often sets out with the knowledge that he is going to pass a dull
evening. If he is unable to guess that, his experience will have told
him little and his capacity is small. Moreover, he cannot be expected to
take such pleasure in the average play as if his visits were rare, and
what has been said about the play necessarily applies to the acting.
Sometimes when watching a work of common quality, a painful idea comes
into one's mind, and we wonder how people, compelled to see it night
after night perhaps for half-a-year, can endure the strain. What, for
instance, must be the sufferings of the conductor or of a member of the
orchestra at a successful second-rate musical comedy; of a stage manager
compelled for months, one after another, to direct a brainless farce? Of
course the people lumped together in the technical term as "the front of
the house" have a remedy, and after the first night or two only appear
in the auditorium when the curtain is down, or, to be more accurate,
just before it descends, when all hands are expected to be on deck.
There are critics that resemble the person who denied that any beer
could be bad, and would sooner pass an evening in a theatre watching a
mediocre play acted in a style no better than it deserves than at home
in a well-stocked library. They resemble the journalist in a story by
Balzac who, when blind, haunted a newspaper office and revelled in the
smell of printers' ink, and they have been known for their own pleasure
to pay a second visit to a piece on which they wrote a condemnatory
criticism. In fact, they have the curious mania for the theatre which
induces many people with no talent for acting to abandon comfortable
careers and starve on the stage--or at the stage door.
That the critic's sufferings in the playhouse are considerable is
incontestable, and they are keener at the performance of works of
mediocrity than when watching very bad plays. Fortunately there are two
sides to every hedge. When the play has any touch of originality, or
even novelty, our pleasure is far keener than that of the
unsophisticated, and we often perceive originality or novelty where the
public notices none. A whole field of enjoyment is open to us in the
triumphs of technique which is almost untrodden by the general public.
Our poles of pain and pleasure are farther apart than those of the Man
in the Street. There have been pieces and performances concerning which
the praise of the critics, or some of them, has seemed mere raving to
the ordinary playgoer. Several actors and actresses whom we prefer to
some of the popular favourites have been banished from London by the
indifference of Londoners, and there are "stars" beloved in the theatres
who irritate the observant because they have never learnt their art, and
nevertheless triumph by mere force of personality.
No doubt the critics, so far as acting is concerned, often--very
often--fall into an error and censure acting which does not move them
yet impresses the audience, forgetting that it is the advantage and
disadvantage of the actor that he need only affect, and must affect,
those before him, and that to move only a minority of a normal audience
is to act badly. One may write but cannot act for posterity, and
therefore the actor, the pianist, the violinist, and the like should not
be grudged their noisy, obvious demonstrations of admiration.
Does the critic really get jaded? Is it unfair that the "jaded" critic
should deal with the average play? In answering the latter question one
should consider whether the notices of the younger critics, too fresh to
have become jaded, are more valuable than those of the veterans. Perhaps
the two questions should be treated together.
Most critics do get jaded. The critic is jaded when he is saturated with
theatrical impressions and cannot take up any more, when new pieces
merely recall memories of old pieces or are disliked and distrusted
because they do not. After a certain age, varying with the individual,
all, or almost all, of us gradually move towards a condition of
repugnance to new ideas--a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are
inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of
ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has
gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas;
we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting
based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard progress. In
youth, having few theories of our own or that have cost us enough labour
in acquirement to seem very precious, we tend to be over-hospitable to
new ideas and accept dangerous guests.
The notices of the veterans, even of the jaded, upon the average work
are sounder, as a rule, than those of the young hands, because the
latter very often mistake things merely new to them for things actually
new, and they are kinder for the reason that the writers know how great
are the difficulties in the way of writing plays from a novel standpoint
and of getting them produced when written. There is less violence in
their views.
Happy the critic during the years when he is old enough to be cautious
about accepting new ideas and young enough to be enthusiastic concerning
them after careful consideration, when he is so mature as not to desire
to stagger the orthodox by the impudence of his opinions, and
sufficiently youthful to be willing to shock the conservative by the
audacity of his views. He may then seem jaded because he is not easily
moved, but will be quicker to give encouragement to sincere effort, to
perceive talent imperfectly manifested, and to appreciate technical
triumphs than when he was younger and yet able to welcome novel ideas
even if they assail cherished theories.
His Unpaid Labours
Probably many of the craft have wasted a good deal of the last few
first-nightless weeks in the trying task of reading plays, not the
printed plays by dramatists of reputation, but the manuscripts with
which we, or some of us, are flooded. It is hard to guess why strangers
should assume that we are willing to spend our time in reading their
plays, but they do. Some apparently deem it to be part of our duties,
and even believe that there exists a Government fund which pays our
expenses of postages and stationery, for many of the amateur authors
make no provision for the return of their work. Occasionally there comes
a suggestion that we are really conferring no favour because the
pleasure of reading the play will pay for our pains. Some imagine us to
be agents for the managers. Even the proposal to pay a commission if we
place the piece is not rare; now and then it is wrapped up gracefully,
but frequently is expressed in the bluntest fashion.
Upon consideration of the batch lately waded through several things
stand out. Firstly, most of them exhibit no trace of cleverness; so far
as one can see the writers are people without any gift at all for
writing--for writing anything--but are ordinary commonplace people who,
unless their conversation is more brilliant than their written matter,
would not be considered clever by their friends in everyday life.
They write farces or comedies, in an orthodox form, which contain a
surprisingly small number of jokes or efforts at wit and humour. Their
works have the air of being mere preliminary plays--the playwrights
apparently have set out scenes and written dialogue intended to indicate
the nature of the proposed piece with the view afterwards not, indeed
of polishing, for there is nothing to polish, but of rewriting, putting
in the vital passages during the process. One cannot offer any useful
advice to these people, save that of suggesting they should turn their
attention to gardening or golf. They have only one fault, and it is that
they have no quality. Such writers, as a rule, have at least one small
quite useless virtue--their pieces are not ridiculously unsuitable in
point of form for the stage.
A more interesting class consists of authors who possess some talent and
no idea how to use it. They write comedies which have some clever
passages, some lines witty enough to deserve a laugh, and exhibit
capacity in character-drawing, but are not at all in an acceptable form.
A comedy in six acts, with twenty scenes, would not be considered for a
moment by a modern manager.
We have returned in a curious way to something like the ideas underlying
"the unities"; perhaps that statement is incorrect, but, at least, we
have put upon our dramatists certain working laws almost as embarrassing
as the unities. The average playgoer has no idea of the skill involved
in writing the ordinary successful comedy of the present time.
The modern dramatist has nothing approaching the licence of his
predecessors. Construction was comparatively easy in the time of a
Sheridan or a Goldsmith; not only were they allowed to use explanatory
dialogue, in which A told B a number of things which B knew already,
because the author desired the audience to learn them; but they were
permitted to give direct statements of fact in soliloquies. Such licence
has gone: asides are dead, statements of fact in soliloquies are only
permitted in formal tragedies. Moreover, having the right to make almost
an unlimited number of changes of scenery, they were enabled to present
in action the facts which in our days have to be told to the audience in
dialogue--dialogue written under severe limitations. In consequence, the
mechanical difficulties of construction were then very small. Nowadays,
except in the case of melodrama, complicated stories have to be told in
three or four acts, with no change of scenery during an act.
Let anyone who doubts whether this creates a difficulty take an ordinary
famous old comedy and rewrite it in a form in which it would be accepted
as a new play by a London manager, and he will find the difficulty
enormous. To the youthful dramatist this exercise is very valuable means
of studying the art of construction. When, unassisted by the work of
former adapters, he has succeeded in converting half-a-dozen
eighteenth-century comedies into three or four act comedies, without any
changes of scenery during an act, and has used all the matter of the old
comedies in his versions and yet avoided the employment of the
soliloquy, or the aside, or the explanatory dialogue in which A tells B
what B knows already, he will have learnt a great deal of his craft.
This explanatory dialogue is the sort of passage in which a son reminds
his mother of the date of his birth, and the profession of his father,
and of the period when she sent him to school and so on.
It may be doubted confidently whether a change of style, which has
increased so enormously the practical difficulties of writing acceptable
plays, has been beneficial to drama. There are writers with wit and a
sense of character who under the freer system of old days might have
produced successful plays, but are never able to acquire the mechanical
skill now demanded, and are kept off the stage by artificial
regulations, some of them not based upon essential ideas of drama but in
reality upon questions connected with scenery.
One cannot have many changes of the elaborate scenery nowadays employed
in comedy, and the illusion sought and to some extent obtained by these
costly, complicated sets makes the very useful carpenter's scene
impossible. It often happens that incongruities and absurdities in
modern plays are due to desperate efforts to overcome these
difficulties. Scenes take place in the drawing-room that ought to have
been out of doors; things are said that should have been done; and there
are long passages of dialogue where short scenes of action would be
preferable.
In a large number of cases the manuscripts we read are unacceptable
because the authors have not complied with these requirements of the
modern stage; and it is impossible for us, with the best will in the
world, to reconstruct the works. We can only point out, regretfully,
that they do not comply with these modern regulations, and we know quite
well that the dramatists will be unable to make the necessary changes.
The modern system has had the great disadvantage of putting out of the
range of the average writer of comedy a good many subjects that deserve
treatment, but can only be handled with success by writers of great
experience or those who possess remarkable gifts for the semi-mechanical
work of construction, which are not necessarily allied to the higher
qualities needed by the dramatist.
Of course, some of the manuscripts are ridiculous: five-act plays that
would not last an hour and a half upon the stage and three-act comedies
which would require an evening per act; tragedies in rhymed verse not
up to the standard of cracker poetry. It is difficult to understand how
such things come to be written. The authors must sometimes go to the
theatre or read plays, and therefore ought to know that their works are
unsuitable, and that they are wasting money in getting their stuff
typewritten. Presumably the phenomenon is somehow connected with the
curious glamour of the stage. The person who would not dream of trying
to cook a chop without some little study of the methods of the kitchen
will try to write farce or comedy or tragedy and not deem it necessary
seriously to consider the elementary laws governing such works.
His Letter Bag
Possibly the editor sometimes looks with curiosity at the envelopes of
letters addressed to a dramatic critic at the editorial office. Let us
trust that in the case of those envelopes obviously bearing a lady's
handwriting curiosity is not tinged with suspicion. Letters directed to
"The Dramatic Editor" are generally American, and contain statements of
tremendous importance concerning, as a rule, people of whom one has
never heard and requesting the critic to publish them in the next issue
of "his" paper.
The documents forwarded by the office are only a tithe of those which
come to the critic officially, there being several ways of ascertaining
addresses. Many consist of requests to read plays, and exhibit pitifully
the strange blindness of parents. A number are almost according to a
pattern and run about thus: "DEAR SIR,--Having been a constant reader of
your admirable criticisms and sharing sincerely your views about the
drama, now, alas! in such a deplorable condition, I feel that there is
sufficient sympathy between us for you to be anxious to read the MS.
that I enclose and give me your _candid_ opinion about it ["candid" is
generally underlined], and if you share the opinion that my friends
entertain concerning its merits you will perhaps be of assistance to me
in getting it brought to the attention of the managers." With this there
arrives, unaccompanied by stamps for its return, some work of a hopeless
character, often an indifferent specimen of the sort of mechanical farce
which, even when good, amuses us little.
Occasionally a romantic drama is received. Once there came a really
touching letter from a lady in great trouble on account of want of
money, such trouble that she not only failed to enclose stamps for
return of her MS. but did not use half enough to frank the heavy packet.
She felt sure that the novelty of her plot would make up for any
trifling defects due to inexperience. The drama, which was full of
"Gadzooks!" and the like, and Roundheads and Cavaliers, concerned Oliver
Cromwell and Charles I., and included a plot to rescue the unhappy
monarch on the scaffold, which was only frustrated by the direct
intervention of "Old Noll," who, after a struggle, used the axe with his
own hands. It had seven acts and thirty-three scenes.
We read scores of these pieces, and in most cases our "candid" criticism
is not well received. Ere now the reward for the unpaid labour of five
or six hours has been a postcard explaining that the author can well
understand the deplorable condition of our drama, seeing how incompetent
the critics are. There is, of course, another side to the matter. A few
pieces--a very small proportion, alas!--have merit, and a few of the
authors of the few pieces accept the unpaid critic's remarks reasonably.
Another crop consists of letters from indignant authors or players,
which contain argument or abuse, or both. The epistles from authors in
some cases are so interesting that it is sad to think we are too obscure
to have a biographer who might use them. Those of the players have their
humours, particularly when from the aggrieved actresses. One deserves to
be mentioned; it stated that, reading between the lines, the lady
understood the critic to suggest she was too old for the part of Juliet,
and therefore sent a copy of her birth certificate.
It was only a _copy_--there was only _her_ word to show that it was a
copy of _her_ certificate; in the law courts they will not accept your
own evidence that you are a minor, even if you bring a certificate
issued by Somerset House; they want proof of your being the person named
in the certificate. If the letter had contained a photograph it would
have shown that, although alleged to be only twenty-two years old, the
lady weighed about 200 lbs., and had a large, flat face, with an
inadequate pug-nose.
In a number of cases one is implored to come to the Pier Concert Hall at
Flushington-on-Sea, or the like, because, "owing to your appreciative
remarks about my performance as the Second Gravedigger in _Hamlet_, I am
sure you would like to see my King Lear." These give a good deal of
trouble, because it is difficult to decline without hurting feelings.
Another branch lies in the simple request from people with whom one is
unacquainted for introduction to managers whom one does not know.
Fortunately there is another and a pleasanter side. There are letters
that we prize, and unfortunately cannot quote, from authors, generally
young authors, with thanks for words of encouragement, particularly in
relation to unsuccessful work that seemed to have been unlucky; and
there are letters from actors and actresses, speaking with
gratitude--gratitude unearned, since only duty has been done--for words
of praise which have helped to get an engagement or at least to give
courage where hope had grown faint. They must be difficult letters to
write, since it is clear that the writers generally feel doubtful
whether they ought to be written. An ingenious phrase from one of them
may be quoted: "I can hardly be taking a liberty in giving a harmless
pleasure to a stranger, and I am sure from what I have read of your
criticisms that it will be a pleasure to you to know that you have given
great comfort and encouragement to one whom you deem worthy of praise."
Last of all are letters from persons who are or profess to be impartial
critics of our criticisms, and desire to cause us to change our
opinions. An unimportant article--a second-hand article borrowed from
Charles Lamb--concerning the effect, on the stage, of Shakespeare's
dramas has brought in a respectable revenue to the Post Office, whilst
correspondence concerning the wickedness of praising problem plays,
however interesting, must have substantially helped some stationers to
pay their rent. Fewer but far more exasperating are the epistles in
which people express their hearty agreement with opinions which we have
never expressed, and give praise and encouragement to us for attacking
institutions that we do not think undesirable or defending conduct
really deplored by us. Even the obscure are often misunderstood.