PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES
The Pseudo-Historical
A play running at the Savoy in March 1905, concerning Madame du Barri,
called forth the usual complaints about inaccuracy in detail and
undesirability of subject. The latter point is not our theme, and may be
dismissed with the remark that there was nothing in the life of the
creature as presented upon the stage to serve as an excuse for requiring
us to spend an evening with such a worthless baggage.
At an early stage of his career the critic welcomes this class of
pseudo-historical drama--but his welcome takes an unamiable form. He
likes to have it produced on a Saturday evening, so that he may pass a
happy Sunday. The inaccuracies fascinate him. They offer such a splendid
chance of showing the knowledge possessed by him--and his library. When
very young he deals with the matter in a straightforward fashion, and
trounces the author for every unwitting solecism and willing
falsification that is discovered.
He writes a learned little disquisition headed by a remark, in the
Macaulay vein, as to matters of common knowledge, and shows from direct
authority that the dramatist is quite wrong in mixing up the Du Barri
who married the heroine with the Du Barri who took her away from the
milliner's shop, and gives a facetious touch of lightness to his
remarks by pointing out that neither of the scoundrels was connected
with a certain much-advertised proprietary food.
The more obscure the blunder the greater the writer's joy in it, for he
will be able to introduce observations beginning "That little known but
elegant author," etc., and if the subject is earlier than the Du Barri
period he will present some quotations in the uneconomically spelt old
French.
A little later in his career his method changes: he relies upon his
_batterie de cuisine_ as much as ever, but uses some art to conceal the
employment of his apparatus. There will be mere hints about the errors;
an adjective between two commas will sometimes represent a severe
correction. The books are not referred to, the corrections are made in a
fashion which suggests that no greater authority is needed than that of
the critic.
A time arrives when he comes to the conclusion that it is no part of his
duties to deal with the historical aspect of the matter; but, of course,
the habit is upon him, and he excuses himself by saying, after he has
pointed out all the errors which he has noticed, that they would not
matter in the least if the play were meritorious in other respects.
It is difficult to defend his attitude, which, however, is due to his
appreciation of the fact that nowadays a little knowledge is a well-paid
thing. Moreover, he does not wish it to be thought that his knowledge of
history--and books--is less than that of his rivals. Of course the
inaccuracies do not matter very much unless they are so gross as to
shock the great half-literate.
There is, however, a more valid objection to the historical play than
that it is certain to be inaccurate; the historical drama is rarely a
good drama.
The author is compelled by his matter to present it in a conventional
fashion, for to give a Du Barri or a Napoleon, a Nelson or a Wellington,
not in accordance with the popular concept of such personages would be
to seek failure. Moreover, the writer is necessarily forced to belittle
the subject if not bold enough to take a simple episode in the life of
his hero or heroine, and even then, unless the miracle-working power of
genius is employed, the great figure comes out as a small puppet.
The player may be made to look up like Napoleon, may follow traditions
as to his gestures and mode of speech, but in none of the vast number of
plays concerning the wonderful monster has he ever appeared to be a
person of genius: whether handled facetiously, as in Mr Shaw's ingenious
play _The Man of Destiny_, or _Madame Sans-Gene_, pathetically as in the
play presented by Mr Martin Harvey, or formidably as in most works, he
never seems at all different from any commonplace man put into the like
circumstances. Exactly that in which he differed from all others is
exactly what cannot be put upon the stage. We have had Nelson, and of
course it was quite impassible to get any suggestion of the qualities
that made him Nelson.
The modern tendency in the matter seems to be to choose the
reprehensible--such, for instance, as Mlle. Mars, Madame de Pompadour,
Madame du Barri, and La Montansier, women in the career of whom no doubt
there were many dramas, similar, however, to the dramas in the lives of
other women of their class less famous and infamous. When, however, they
are put upon the stage they cease to be remarkable, and the characters
introduced to support them have the same fate; for instance, the Louis
XV. at the Savoy does not give the faintest idea of the ineffably vile
monarch, whilst no glimpse is shown of the quality which enabled a Du
Barri to obtain her tremendous power.
It is always a case of mountain and mouse in these plays; take as an
example the Sardou _Dante_ play produced with prodigious drum-beating a
while ago at Drury Lane. Who, if names had been altered, would have
guessed that the hero of the piece was the author of the immortal poems?
There has been hardly a historical play in modern times in which the
identity of the famous personages could be guessed except from the
names, the make-up, the costumes, and the specific facts; at the best
the pieces are _tableaux vivants_.
Perhaps there is nothing illegitimate in the ambition of the player to
pose as one of the mighty dead, and it is rather humility in the author
which urges him to seek adventitious interest than vanity that causes
him to believe himself really able to give a true idea of a Napoleon.
Into such delicate questions it is needless to inquire. The point is
that the lives of the great are not more dramatic than the lives of the
small. Napoleon at St Helena was not more unhappy than were millions of
people of his day. There is a drama as poignant in the history of César
Birotteau as in that of Marie Antoinette, as big a tragedy in the career
of Whitaker Wright as in that of Napoleon III.
There was a reason, which exists no longer, why the authors of the
Middle Ages chose characters of great social status for their principal
parts, and even this reason was not altogether well founded. It would be
wrong to assert that historical plays ought not to be written, for,
whilst not recommending the use of the stage instead of history
classes, one can see that a historical play may illustrate ideas that
could hardly be presented otherwise.
There is a noteworthy instance in the work of the much-abused Ibsen.
_The Pretenders_ is a historical drama amazingly rich in idea; whether
the idea of kingship superbly handled in it is an anachronism it is hard
to say, or to tell whether the dramatist chose his subject to illustrate
his idea or the idea to embellish his subject; but in it, though
obviously there is scope for magnificent mounting and interesting
detail, one feels that the genius of the author has prevented him from
making any sacrifice of the dramatic aspect. He has not chosen a popular
historical personage and made him into the hero of the melodrama, as
happens in the case of nine out of ten of the so-called historical
plays, but has written a drama that demands a royal atmosphere, which he
handles admirably.
What a pity that the money lavished upon the Du Barri play--and lavished
very cleverly, it must be admitted, so far as the production of
beautiful stage-pictures is concerned--was not spent in the mounting of
a great drama like _The Pretenders_, rich in strong acting parts,
magnificent in presentation of character, and really illuminated by
ideas!
The Horrible in Drama
It has been alleged that _The Monkey's Paw_, a clever one-act play by
Messrs Jacobs and Barker, formerly presented at the Haymarket Theatre,
is too horrible for the stage. The part complained of is confined to the
last scene of three.
A young man has been killed in a factory, and his body was so mangled
by the fatal wheels that even his father was not allowed to see it. Late
at night the father, by means of a diabolical talisman--the Monkey's
Paw--succeeds in recalling his son to life, and the audience hears a
knocking at the door. What is knocking? The mother is making frantic
efforts to pull back the bolts. Her son is there, returned from the
grave. The father, aware that the talisman, which promised the
fulfilment of three wishes, is of a fiendish malignity, guesses that if
the door be opened his son will stand before them alive, but fearfully
mangled and mutilated, so he is groping upon the floor for the Monkey's
Paw, and the audience feels that on the other side of the door is an
obscene horror fresh from the grave. There was a sigh of relief in the
theatre when the father found the talisman, and, using the last wish,
prayed successfully that his son might be dead and at peace.
The knock, knock, was decidedly impressive, like the knocking at the
door in _Macbeth_, which greatly affected Charles Lamb. Is this matter
too horrible for the stage? One may compare it with another horror given
not long ago, _The Soothing System_, which Mr Bourchier adapted cleverly
from a story by Edgar Poe and produced at the Garrick, showing the
terrible adventures of two visitors to a lunatic asylum, the inmates of
which had overpowered their keepers. This was very powerful and
horrible, and perhaps would have given a shiver to the hero of a famous
tale in the collection of goblin stories by the Brothers Grimm.
Nevertheless it was not legitimate, partly because the circumstances are
rare when it is permissible to present madness on the stage, partly
because some of the mad people were repulsive to the eye, and partly
because horror was the sole means and end of the piece. Many condemned
_The Monkey's Paw_, yet a line can be drawn between it and _The Soothing
System_--not a nice sharp line, but one of those blurred lines so faint
and so uncertain, that even if their existence be admitted, there is
always room for a fight on the question whether a work lies on this or
that side of it.
Speaking roughly, one may say that _The Monkey's Paw_ is legitimate
because there is nothing in it repulsive to the eye, and for the reason
that horror is not the sole means and end of it: the story, like its
prototype folk-lore tale, "The Three Wishes," has an obvious moral. It
belongs to art because the emotion caused is due to a stimulus to our
imagination by the force of an idea and not of a thing exhibited. If an
effort were made to show us any ghastly creature knocking, the work
would be out of court.
To illustrate the line of definition already indicated, a few instances
of the horrible presented on the stage in our time may be given
usefully; it must be added that most appear to lie on the wrong side.
Shakespeare's adventures in the horrible are legitimate, with an
exception in the case of one play of doubtful authenticity, _Titus
Andronicus_. On the other hand, _Sweeney Todd; or, The Barber of Fleet
Street_, would probably find no defender; whilst a historical drama I
once saw in the South of France, where the hero was put upon the rack in
front of the footlights and squirmed and screamed, was quite
unendurable; and this is rather a pity, since there is a very powerful
dramatic scene in Balzac's _Notes sur Catherine de Medicis_, which in
consequence of this objection should not be used. There is a mitigated
form of the torture business in _La Tosca_ that caused great discussion.
Perhaps those who deem it illegitimate are somewhat supersensitive; it
would be more polite, and perhaps accurate, to call them hyper-modern.
_Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ presented a very difficult case. I can remember
nothing so "creepy" and "shuddery" as the first appearance of Mr
Mansfield at the Lyceum in the character of the evil doctor; the house
gasped at the half-seen image of a sort of obscene beast at the
conservatory window, and there was the silence of breathless horror when
it bounded into the room and seized its victim. Until the impression
wore off the Mansfield Hyde was almost as horrible as the fantastic
things born of the cruel imagination and brilliant pencil of Mr S.H.
Sime, whose work is sometimes so richly embellished by imagination as
well as by superb technique that one cannot deny its claim to be
regarded as art.
Something of the distinction here discussed can be seen by comparing Mr
Sime's drawings with the pictures of the mad painter Wirtz, whose
abominable gallery at Brussels is a chamber of unimaginative horrors. It
may be remembered that Mr Mansfield had a competitor in Mr Bandman
Palmer, who, however, missed horror by the simple vulgarity of his
horrors, and, though he may have impressed the simple-minded, was
ludicrous to the thoughtful.
Returning for a moment to the clearly unpermissible, one might take a
book like "Frankenstein." Certainly any presentation on the stage of the
man-monster as described by the talented authoress would fall under the
censure of being disgusting. This term may be used concerning several
needless exhibitions of blood on the stage, and of such a matter as
_Nana_, once presented in Paris. When the hapless heroine appeared in
the last act with wax spots to indicate the pustules of smallpox, she
very nearly "took a lot out of us," if one may borrow a phrase from "Mr
Hopkinson." Obviously anything that reminds one of the ghastly horrors
at the Royal College of Surgeons or the Polyclinic Institute is quite
unforgivable.
This brings us not unnaturally to a matter in which there has been some
change of taste. A fearful exhibition of a man in a fit, given with
horrible power by that admirable actor Mr Pateman in a melodrama called
_Master and Man_, would perhaps not be condemned in our days, but
probably we would not endure, and certainly there would be little praise
for, some of the death scenes once famous in drama. The critics nowadays
would apply to the actress the phrase of the auctioneer to his wife, and
implore her to "get on with her dying."
There was the famous Mlle. Croizette in _Le Sphinx_, by that detestable
dramatist Octave Feuillet; she squirmed horribly after taking poison
from a ring; and it was alleged that she had studied the death of
patients in hospitals--a brutal, horrible thing to do. There is a good
deal too much dying in _Frou-Frou_, _La Dame aux Camellias_ and
_Adrienne Lecouvrer_. Without going back to the traditions of the Greek
theatre, one may say confidently that, if death on the stage is
permissible, dying is almost illegitimate, and trick falls, exhibitions
of agony, and the like are mere pandering to a very vulgar taste.
Occasionally the dying is so handled that, though somewhat prolonged,
such a vigorous phrase ought not to be applied to it. For instance, one
may refer to _In the Hospital_, once presented at the Court, where Mr
Beveridge, in an admirable performance, gave a very tactful, restrained
exhibition of approaching death and actual decease. Another objection
exists to any exhibition upon the stage of dying as compared with
death. The symptoms often call up terrible memories to some members of
the audience which are not evoked by the simple fact of death itself. It
cannot be pretended that these references to instances of the horrible
and the trifling comments upon them establish the existence of the
distinction indicated, but they may be of some assistance to those who
endeavour to explore the matter. It is at least pleasant to note that
there is a modern tendency to obtain effects of the horrible by appeals
to the imagination rather than to the senses.
It should be added that Mr F.R. Benson presented a Frankenstein play
written by Mr Stephen Phillips, but the question of the horrible
appearance was discreetly avoided.
The Immorality Play
The summer visit to London of foreign players generally gives birth to
discussions upon several topics. Of course the question as to the
relative merits of French and English acting is raised. Upon this, one
may give a warning to the thoughtless not to accept as universal the
vague proposition that the French are a nation of born actors. Of course
everybody each year points out that it is absurd there should be several
foreign companies at a time in London cutting the throats of one
another, as to which one may say that the matter is far more complicated
than most people suppose.
The point worth nothing is the choice of plays by our visitors. Some of
them no doubt are wise; Bernhardt, for instance, recognizes the fact
that a showy piece with a big part for her is exactly the right thing
provided that it is easily understood by the Berlitzians and
Ollendorffians. There are others, however, such as Madame Réjane, more
ambitious, who in their selection of plays do some disservice to their
country.
The humour of Mr Gilbert's line "The not too French French bean" appeals
irresistibly to the English.
There has long been a vague idea in British bosoms that our neighbours
in sexual matters are far more immoral than ourselves. This is not the
occasion upon which to examine the causes and origin of such a decidedly
erroneous view. One may, however, single out one of them. It is largely
the fault of writers of fiction that we remain in ignorance, or
rather--and this is worse--in error concerning the character of our
amiable neighbours.
In former days, putting aside the naughty farces not supposed to present
a picture of actual life, most French dramas were quite sound in
conventional morality. Augier presented some wicked people, such as
Olympe, concerning whom he invented the phrase _la nostalgie de la
boue_; but he was unequivocably moral in his aims, and preached the
sanctity of marriage and maternity. Dumas _fils_, putting aside one
indiscretion, was equally vigorous in his desire to support accepted
views of morality. His illustrious father, it may be admitted,
occasionally propounded startling propositions, but without prejudice, I
fancy, to a sound belief in the idea that exceptional cases must be
regarded as exceptions.
None, however, of these writers, however artificial their views of life,
ever offered pictures of society based upon the proposition that the
chastity of woman is of no importance.
Many of the present school of French dramatists write
plays--unfortunately chosen for presentation in England--which assume
the existence in society of a large class of people, otherwise amiable,
who act upon the proposition that in Paris as in heaven there is neither
marrying nor giving in marriage. Unmarried men and women live together,
the males paying for the board and lodging, etc., of the females without
there being any pretence that the intimacy of their relations is
radically immoral under normal circumstances. They do not even indulge
in fireworks in such plays. You do not have parodies of the famous
phrase "Property is theft"; for the heroines fail to justify themselves
by remarking that marriage is immorality. There is simply a business of
union and disunion, _collage_ and _décollage_, coupled with what one may
call cross-unions, all of them apparently free from the embarrassment of
children and none of them involving any of the more dignified of the
human emotions. One of the worst of the number was _L'Age d'Aimer_, by
M. Pierre Wolff, a piece so cynically immoral, and written with such an
air of truth, that it might well cause some of us to shrink in horror
from the idea of an _entente cordiale_ with a people which, if truly
represented by its fashionable dramatists, has no concept of cleanliness
of life. Without posing as a champion of orthodox morality and certainly
without taking objection to the study of sex questions on the stage, one
may protest against works in which it is assumed there is no sex
question, because every form of union, on any basis, except perhaps that
of marriage, is permissible.
By-the-by, why was the press that was so indignant about the so-called
problem play almost silent concerning these French dramas? Where were
the phrases, such as miasmatic putrescence or putrescent miasma--I
forget which it was--that used to greet the dramas of Ibsen? Where are
the splendid Puritans who howled about _A Wife without a Smile_? Could
it be--the thought is painful--that they did not quite understand _L'Age
d'Aimer_ and imagined that all the people were married? This idea is
simply humiliating to one of the craft. "Ne rien comprendre, c'est tout
pardonner" is a very novel view of a famous phrase.
Madame Réjane, it was stated in the papers, has expressed herself
shocked by _A Wife without a Smile_, and alleged that she would never
act in such a piece; but it may well be that her horror lay in the fact
that the parties concerned in the farce had been through a ceremony of
marriage, and that she would have accepted it as permissible if it were
correctly entitled _A Cocotte without a Leer_. The point is, not that
those who understand these plays or those who do not are affected in
their moral ideas by them, but that they give a deplorable picture of
French life and in such a guise as to suggest that it is a picture of
normal French life; unfortunately _L'Age d'Aimer_ is only one of many.
It is a great pity to use such a powerful vehicle as the stage for
slandering a nation. That there is a certain amount of truth in works of
the _Zaza_, _Sapho_, _Les Demi-Vierges_ and _L'Age d'Aimer_ type is
incontestable; yet so far as they are true to general life one can find
their parallel in this holy island. Unfortunately, whilst the fast
society of Paris is no bigger than that of London, and whilst Paris is
infinitely less in relation to France than London in relation to
England, the great French nation is generally judged over here by flashy
pictures of the fast section of Paris society, drawn, very often, if not
always, from the outside, by clever people too indolent to know that the
psychology of decent people is quite as interesting and dramatic as that
of the gutter-creatures of mere passion who dignify their cynical
desires with noble names, and, so far as the latest school is concerned,
fail even to reach the humblest concept of free love.
Scripture Plays
There have been some complaints about the attitude of several of the
dramatic critics concerning Mr Jerome's drama _The Passing of the Third
Floor Back_. It has been suggested that they have not welcomed with
sufficient warmth a sincere attempt "to broaden the basis," a phrase
apparently borrowed from the Tariff Reformers, to enlarge the boundaries
of the British drama, but have treated the production of the piece as an
everyday affair, confining their remarks to criticism concerning the
workmanship.
In _The Third Floor Back_ a character is introduced who is called "The
Stranger," but known by everybody in the theatre to represent Jesus
Christ; and "The Stranger" visits a somewhat remarkable boarding-house
in which all the boarders and the landlady are vile, and after his visit
all of them are fit for immediate translation to heaven.
Certainly, many of us are anxious to broaden the basis of our drama. A
little while ago an important foreign paper contained a article saying
that the object of the London stage is "to introduce living pictures to
say pretty things for young girls," and that "of the social, religious,
economic or intellectual struggles which agitate our time no trace is
observable in the English stage literature of the day," and that English
stage literature "has become nothing more than an insipid and dying
study of the doings of the aristocratic and the rich." How sickening to
know that in the main the charges are true, and that our drama, with,
fortunately some exceptions, is merely a kind of Pap and Puppet affair.
On the other hand, the broadening effect of a play such as Mr Jerome's
is not obvious. The Censor has been dodged, just as he was dodged many
years ago, when Verdi's opera _Nebuchadonozor_ was called _Ninus_ or
when _Ben Hur_ was presented or _The Daughters of Babylon_. That
official has already permitted the performance of _Everyman_ and
_Hannele_. Consequently, it is not easy to see that the suggested
broadening of the basis has taken place.
Moreover, there are many who doubt whether broadening, so as to admit a
free trade in what could be called religious or Scripture drama, is
desirable. We do not pretend that the office of Censor ought to be
maintained merely to keep back a flood of plays introducing Scriptural
characters. The office, no doubt, does good as well as harm, but the
harm far outweighs the good. Would it be beneficial if this particular
restriction--this working rule that characters bearing the names of
personages of the Old and New Testament are not to be presented on the
stage--were relaxed. There are enthusiastic persons who desire a closer
union between Church and the Stage, and wish to have the theatre
employed as a kind of pulpit, who believe that Scripture plays would be
beneficial. It is conceivable that under certain circumstances the
attitude of these persons would be sound, but not under the present
circumstances.
Most of our theatres are run as a mere commercial speculation by people
who care little enough about art, and probably nothing about religion.
We have had one instance of the sort of thing that might be expected,
_The Sign of the Cross_, in which a commonplace melodrama was mixed up
with hymns and pseudo-religious talk and miracles, and a ballet as
immodest, as pulse-disturbing, as any given in the theatres or the
halls. Many visited the play who had never been to a theatre before,
since they believed that it was really a religious drama outside their
ban. Some were horrified, and from being potential playgoers became
rapidly adverse to the stage and all its works; others were shocked and
disturbed and delighted by the exhibition of female flesh in the ballet,
with a result which can easily be guessed. No doubt a number of persons
believed that the piece did good to them and other folk--some people
will believe anything.
The people of taste and sensibility, who, whatever their state of
religious belief, would regard with abhorrence the exhibition on the
ordinary commercial stage of the Christ whom they were brought up to
regard as Divine, have a title to consideration. The traffic in
blasphemy that would immediately follow the suggested enlargement of the
boundary of the theatre is horrible to contemplate. Such abominations as
a combination of Christ and semi-naked women doing more or less
mitigated _danses du ventre_, would be justified as giving an Oriental
colour.
There is another side. It may be taken that our laws against blasphemy
have moved a good deal since Lord Coleridge's famous summing-up
concerning the essential mutability of the Common Law about blasphemy
which he gave in Regina _v._ Ramsey and Foote; if the restriction were
removed what power would prevent the atheists from producing distinctly
anti-Christian plays which might very well cause riots, which certainly
would prove a serious counterblast, if discreetly handled, to the
efforts of the Church and Stage enthusiasts. One can conceive every
kind of crank with money producing a play to advocate his particular
brand of religion.
We could not expect all the actors chosen to represent Christ to be
gentlemen of fine sensibility, high character, and sincere feeling for
art, like Mr Forbes Robertson; it is hardly pleasant to think of the
character in the hands of some members of the profession. One can
imagine a feeling of revulsion if any of the actresses who have made
history--in the Divorce Court--were chosen for the part of the Virgin
Mary.
This is said without for one moment suggesting that the players are one
whit the worse in their way of living than the rest of us, or that
managers of theatres are wickeder or more unscrupulously commercial than
anyone else. Yet, speaking of the managers, one is forced to admit that
the majority consult the taste of the majority, that many are willing
enough to pander to vulgar cravings, and it is not imaginable that,
unless our stage can be put upon a new basis, a freedom to produce
religious or Scriptural drama would fail to cause great scandals.
As the matter stands, the attitude of the Censor, though not logical, is
not wholly unsatisfactory; it is ludicrous enough that he should have
adopted an ostrich policy towards Mr Jerome's piece, yet no harm has
been done by the production of this sincere and respectful drama.
Indeed, some good may have come from it. In an ideal world, no doubt, we
should all be severely logical; in England we are radically illogical,
and we carry out most of our affairs on a basis of compromises.
If you do not call your leading character Christ in the theatre you may
call him Christ outside, seems the proposition implied in the licence
for _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_, but the very basis of the
authority of the Lord Chamberlain is such that one cannot apply logic to
his decrees and say that because he has permitted this he must sanction
that. Some of these remarks may seem to suggest that it is advisable the
office should be retained, which is not the case. We pay too high a
price for it since it tends to paralyse the drama; on the other hand it
is to be hoped that so long as the office exists the holders of it will
be very careful concerning any efforts to exploit the Scriptures for the
profit of the theatres.
The success of the St James's play will cause a rush of people, anxious
to go "one better"--or worse--than Mr Jerome. No harm--possibly some
good--may come from the present piece, but the circumstances should be
regarded as exceptional. We have few playwrights so earnest as Mr
Jerome, few actors or managers with such high ideals as those of Mr
Forbes Robertson. It seems permissible and advisable to add that this
article is not written from the point of view of one who professes to be
"on the side of the angels," but merely as a protest against what in the
long run would be one more blow to our staggering stage.
Anecdotal Plays
It appears that "Percival" of _The Referee_ has made a great discovery.
He has found out the reason why French plays are better than English, is
able to put his "finger on the real difference which exists between
French plays and English," he now knows why "many more plays are
successfully adapted from French into English than _vice versa_." This
sounded thrilling, but after finishing his article the reader was about
in the humour of a person who has been promised "an awfully rippin' new
story" and receives a feeble "chestnut."
Mr "Percival" is really like the American who discovered on going home
very late at night the fact that the sun rises in the east, and cackled
as much about his discovery as a hen over her first egg. His explanation
is that, "with one exception--Pinero--the English playwright invents a
plot and then writes in characters to carry that plot out. Your French
playwright does not do this.... He takes an idea and works it out with
dramatic action instead of taking a dramatic action and working it out
with such incident ideas as may happen along. And sometimes your French
dramatist just takes people with characteristics and lets them work
their own play out for him."
There is no need to seek deeply to find out why "many more plays are
successfully adopted from French into English than _vice versa_." The
explanation is that owing to Parisian prejudice hardly any English plays
of any merit, Shakespeare's excepted, have been adapted, and there is a
ferocious hostility in France to foreign drama.
The modern French drama may be better than the English; perhaps
"Percival" hardly asserts that it is, unless in the passage already
quoted and in this phrase: "There is something about three plays in four
in France which is lacking at home, and that something is something
good." No doubt, if we take the past fifty years as a basis for
comparison of the two dramas, the French is the better; but during the
last fifteen there has been a change, and one could not make any
sweeping assertion upon the subject as regards the plays of this period,
unless it be limited to the plays produced in the ordinary way of
theatrical commerce.
If the alleged superiority exists, one can offer two reasons for it
without relying upon the brilliant discovery of "Percival." The first is
the greater freedom of the French dramatist in choice of subject, and
also in treatment; this gives him an enormous advantage.
The second is that, whilst there are almost as many people in Paris who
will welcome rubbish as there are in London, there can also be found a
large number of playgoers with a good deal of intellectual curiosity,
whilst the intelligent amateur--using the phrase in its French sense--is
comparatively rare in London. Consequently, the French dramatist has not
only more freedom in subject and treatment than the English, but in
addition a greater public of playgoers who bring their intellect into
the auditorium. Probably "Percival" will claim that this second ground
of explanation enters into his, and there is some truth in this.
On the other hand, his statement of fact that our dramatists, with the
exception of Pinero, are mere story-tellers, and that the French authors
write plays based upon ideas, is quite inaccurate.
Roughly, one may put dramas into three categories--the play of anecdote,
the play of idea, and the play of character. "Percival" recognises the
third category by his remark that "sometimes your French dramatist just
takes people with characteristics and lets them work out their own play
for him." As a matter of fact, few plays belong exclusively to any one
of these categories. In which would "Percival" place Shakespeare's? He
began to write a play by borrowing the plot from somebody, and primarily
all his pieces may be regarded as anecdotal, but, in the passage of the
story through his mind to the pen, in some cases it became the vehicle
for an idea, and, in all, the story grew to be of infinitely less
importance than the characters.
Take _Othello_. You may give an account of it as a story in which it is
merely an adaptation of another man's work. You may treat it as a study
of the idea of jealousy, and be uncertain whether suspicion is not more
correct as a definition than jealousy, or you may consider it as an
amazing gallery of pictures of character. It may be put into each
category, and belongs to all.
Probably the question whether a drama belongs primarily to this, that,
or the other of the categories is as otiose as the discussion whether
the hen or the egg came first. No play lives that does not belong to the
second and third category, and it cannot be put upon the boards without
some reliance upon the first. On the other hand, whatever may be the
belief of individual dramatists, it is doubtful whether any dramas are
produced primarily based upon "taking people with characteristics and
letting them work out their own play." It is obvious that people, even
people with strongly marked characteristics, can live for years in
juxtaposition without their relation to one another resulting in
anything dramatic, or even theatrical. Paula Tanqueray and her husband
might have lived and died unhappily together without offering any
materials to the playwright, and so indeed might any of the characters
in any of the plays by the brilliant author. Only when facts exterior to
them begin to play upon the characters dramatically is there room for
drama. There is an enormous amount of plot, psychological or physical,
in every play.
Next to the first, the second category produces the plays most clearly
defined. One might take the plays of Brieux, and some of the
dead-and-gone dramas of Charles Reade. Here we have dramas of idea,
more accurately of subject, still more accurately of problem. They are
works in which the dramatist tries to prove something, or, at least,
present some problem of social life, leaving to the audience the task of
coming to a conclusion.
However, even M. Brieux cannot get on without category number one,
whilst he puts as much of category number three in his work as he can.
He invents a story, and he chooses and endeavours to display characters
as a vehicle for exhibiting his subject. Sometimes, to be just, he gets
along--in a fashion--with a surprisingly small amount of plot, as in
_Les Bienfaiteurs_. Even then the necessity of having some sort of form
makes a good deal of story necessary. Jean Jullien, the inventor of the
phrase "Une tranche de la vie," endeavoured to give plays without formal
beginning or end, unconsciously, perhaps, tried to carry out a desire of
Merimée's to write a play in respect of which the audience needs no
knowledge of antecedent facts; but his success--in more senses than
one--was only partial.
The English dramatists of what one might call the Independent Theatre,
Stage Society, and Court Theatre management have struggled to avoid the
anecdotal play, sometimes with a brilliant result, as in _The Voysey
Inheritance_, _John Bull's Other Island_, or _Strife_; Mr J.M. Barrie in
several successful works has minimised the story as much as possible.
Why does "Percival" ignore them? Has he overlooked the fact that most of
the French dramas successfully adapted belong primarily to the category
he condemns, and nearly all the rest to a subdivision of number three,
ignored by him. This subdivision consists of star plays--that is, of
dramas of theatrical character--in the manufacture of which the French
dramatists excel. Many of the dramas by Dumas _fils_ show an ingenious
combination of this subdivision with the anecdotal play. And Pinero--our
exception--how would "Percival" classify _His House in Order_, which has
a strong story? In reality it is a very adroit mixture of story, idea,
and comedy of character, this is the case with the other works of our
leading dramatist.
The fact is that "Percival" has mistaken treatment for conception. All
dramatists try to combine the three categories, but the worst class
attaches too much importance to the mere story; unfortunately our
audiences are like the bad dramatist in this respect: hence the almost
purely anecdotal play, like the anecdotal picture, is the most popular.
The Supernatural
That the forbidden is attractive is a commonplace and true. The third
party in the divorce case is often less beautiful than the petitioner,
the length of water beyond our own always promises better sport, the
mushrooms seem to grow more thickly in the fields of others. In drama we
see the same law in operation. No canon of art makes the "supernatural"
unlawful to the dramatist, but it is generally looked upon as
illegitimate in serious drama. The word "supernatural" is used in its
popular sense, which is well enough understood, but indefinable.
Naturally the dramatist is tempted the more when he sees the novelist
using the supernatural effectively.
No wonder the playwright has tried to adapt _Frankenstein_; he has
merely succeeded in presenting a grotesque unterrible figure where Mrs
Shelley gave a thrill of horror. We have had several plays on the boards
which overstep bounds. One can read Mr Jerome's tale "The Passing of the
Third Floor Back" without being oppressed by a sense of the inadequacy
of his machinery, but when Mr Forbes Robertson is supposed on the stage
to "blarney" eight or nine people who have ugly souls into righteousness
we are not only unconvinced but actively incredulous. Possibly to simple
minds the affair would be more impressive if the lodger wore a halo
supposed to be invisible to the people on the stage, or produced an
occasional flash of lightning or growl of thunder.
Take that dear old crusted melodrama _The Corsican Brothers_. The story
was thrilling enough when merely read; it was easy to believe that the
Dei Franchi had a special brand of constitution which enabled them to
see the family ghost whilst the more sceptical could talk of brain waves
and suggestions and of subjective phenomena. That is where the modern
novelist gets out of all hobbles; if you will not accept his spook as a
genuine, old-fashioned spook, you can hardly refuse to swallow it as a
subjective phenomenon. The blessed word "subjective" extricates him from
all troubles.
The poor dramatist has no such refuge. Occasionally he can work his plot
by means of a vision; and the hypnotic trance has served, as in the case
of _The Polish Jew_; but his ghosts have to be strictly objective. In
fact, using a technical term frivolously, his ghosts expect the ghost to
walk regularly on Fridays. There is no humbug about them; no
"Pepper"--but they have to be taken with a ton of salt!
This difficulty was, perhaps, of no great importance at a time when
most people had faith in ghosts; when the most sceptical did not go
further than Madame de Staël, who alleged that she did not believe in
them but was afraid of them. It is not recorded what Benjamin Constant,
her unhappy lover, thought about them. Nowadays things have changed and
ghosts and the personal devil have joined the ranks of the unemployed,
or only obtain employment with Mr Stead and his Julia.
There is, of course, the spook of the spiritualist, who demands serious
consideration; but plays dealing with spiritualism are not common.
Perhaps because such playgoers as will accept the more or less material
ghost are even more sceptical than the scientific as to the objective
phenomena of the spiritualist. No doubt managers try to rise to the
occasion and to make a steady advance in ghosts, devils and angels, but
the mechanical improvements seem small. Indeed, in a sense there has
been no advance since the days when Pepper's ghost terrified us at the
poor old Polytechnic, and unfortunately the system of Pepper can only be
used to a limited extent. There were moments of thrill in _Ulysses_ at
His Majesty's.
The stage angels are the worst of the supernaturals. Because angels are
supposed to dwell off the earth it is assumed that they must fly.
Furthermore, it is imagined that as fliers they belong to the
heavier-than-air order, the monoplane variety, and so must have gigantic
wings; no one makes provision for the working of the wings, which would
involve tremendous muscular energy. You may answer that they have
miraculous energy wherewith to flap them. If, however, the miraculous
enters into the matter, why not imagine a miraculous method of flying
which does not demand wings--by so doing you would avoid the necessity
of making the angels look like ill-constructed birds. Something "smart"
might be done in the way of a "dirigible balloon" species of angel!
Fiends are modelled as flying-machines on the lines of the bat--this may
be taken from the latest Mephisto. The contrivers of stage effects are
not to be blamed because they cannot overcome the difficulties offered
by the playwrights. Yet they have not exhausted their means. They seem
to be working on wrong lines, and so, too, are our scene-painters
generally; but that is raising a very large question demanding separate
treatment.
Certainly some years ago Mr Gordon Craig experimentally, in a curious
piece called _Sword or Song_, presented at the Shaftesbury, gave
suggestions in the supernatural that deserved attention, and in a broad
way showed the possibility of arriving at striking stage effects by
suggestion rather than actual depiction. It is, indeed, the fault of our
play-mounters that they are too precise about dotting "i's" and crossing
"t's," and like the pet photographers of amateurs they show too much
detail.
Years ago, on the first night of _Hansel und Gretel_ at Daly's--what a
delightful first night!--for a while the effect of the troops of angels
on the stairs was quite charming--for a while--but, alas! the stage grew
lighter, gauzes were raised, and then we saw plainly the young women of
the chorus, with big wings, and could identify face after face,
recollecting this young lady as formerly a peasant boy in one comic
opera, and that as a village maiden in another, and so on. What a "give
away," to use a common effective phrase!
The last prodigious production of _Faust_? Well, what thinking person
can swallow the devil and the electric sparks from the sword, the wine
drawn from the table, the comicalities of the witches' kitchen, or be
moved by the Brocken scenes? It is very well to say that Goethe intended
and expected his drama to be put on the stage, though this can hardly
apply to the second part. Even if he did he cannot have expected such
material matters to be treated as of serious importance--of such
importance that, as represented, his great drama seems chiefly contrived
to lead up to spectacular effects, plus a seduction story occasionally
hurt by needlessly plain phrases.
It may be said that this is the jam used to induce us to swallow the
powder; but really there is so much jam and so little powder that the
benefit of the dose is doubtful. To be just to Sir Herbert Tree--his
_Faust_ sinned no more in the matter than did the Lyceum setting;
perhaps even a little less. Certainly there is rather more Goethe in the
matter than Wills introduced.
It may be said that Shakespeare's plays were intended for the stage, and
that he introduced "ghosts," as in _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_ and _Richard
III._; possibly he believed in them. Yet, so far as one can judge from
such knowledge as we have of the stage as he knew it and its resources,
the treatment of his ghosts must have been really quite conventional and
scenically unimpressive. There was some gain in this, for the more
directly the ghost business is effective the more the attention of the
audience is drawn to it; though the interest of the scene is not in the
ghost but the effect it produces on the other characters; the case is
one that may be summed up in the phrase quoted for us by Bacon--the
better the worse.