[_17 Feb. '10_]
I foresee a craze in this country for Brieux. I first perceived its coming
one day during an intellectual meal in a green-painted little restaurant
in Soho. Whenever I go into Soho I pass through experiences which send me
out again a wiser man. On this occasion I happened to speak lightly of
Brieux to a friend of mine, a prominent and influential member of the
Stage Society--one of those men in London who think to-day what London
will think to-morrow, and what Paris thought yesterday. He was visibly
shocked by my tone. His invincible politeness withstood the strain, but
the strain was terrible. From this incident alone I was almost ready to
prophesy a Brieux craze in London. And now a selection of Brieux's plays
is to be published in English in one volume, with a preface by Bernard
Shaw. Within a fortnight of the appearance of the book the Brieux craze
will exist in full magnificence. Leading articles will contain learned
off-hand allusions to Brieux, Brieux and Shaw will be compared and
differentiated, and Brieux will be the most serious dramatist in France. I
doubt not that Mr. Shaw's preface will be a witty and illuminating
affair, and that it will show me agreeable aspects of Brieux's talent
which have hitherto escaped me; but if it persuades me that Brieux is an
artistically serious dramatist worth twopence, then I will retire from
public life and seek a post as third sub-editor on the _British Weekly_.
* * * * *
Brieux is a man with moral ideas. I will admit even that he is dominated
by moral ideas, which, if they are sometimes crude, are certainly
righteous. He is a reformer and a passionate reformer. But a man can be a
passionate reformer, with a marked turn for eloquence, and yet not be a
serious dramatist. Dr. Clifford is a reformer; Mr. Henniker Heaton is a
passionate reformer; and both are capable of literature when they are
excited. But they are not dramatists. We still await Mr. Henniker Heaton's
tragic fourth act about the failure of the negotiations for a penny post
with France. Brieux is too violent a reformer ever to be a serious
dramatist. Violent reformers are unprincipled, and the reformer in Brieux
forces the dramatist in him to prostitution. The dramatist in him is not
strong enough to resist the odious demands of the reformer: which fact
alone shows how far he is from being a first-rate dramatist. As a
dramatist Brieux is no stronger, no more sincere, no less unscrupulous, no
less viciously sentimental, than the fashionable authors of the boulevard,
such as Capus, Donnay, and the ineffable Bernstein, so adored in London.
And it is as a dramatist that he must be judged. Of course, if you wish to
judge him as a reformer, you must get some expert opinion about his
subjects of reform. I fancy that you will end by discovering that as a
reformer he must be considered just a little crude.
* * * * *
I have seen most of Brieux's plays, and I have seen them produced under
his own direction, so that I can judge fairly well what he is after on the
stage. And I am bound to say that, with the exception of "Les Trois Filles
de Monsieur Dupont" (which pleased me pretty well so far as I comprehended
its dramatic intention), I have not seen one which I could refrain from
despising. Brieux's plays always begin so brilliantly, and they always end
so feebly, in such a wishwash of sentimentalism. Take his last play--no,
his last play was "La Foi," produced by Mr. Tree, and I have not yet met
even an ardent disciple of the craze who has had sufficient effrontery to
argue that it is a good play. Take his last play but one, "Suzette"--or
"Suzanne," or whatever its girl's name was--produced at the Paris
Vaudeville last autumn. The first act is very taking indeed. You can see
the situation of the ostracized wife coming along beautifully. The
preparation is charming, in the best boulevard manner. But when the
situation arrives and has to be dealt with--what a mess, what falseness,
what wrenching, what sickly smoothing, what ranting, and what terrific
tediousness! It is so easy to begin. It is so easy to think of a fine
idea. The next man you meet in an hotel bar will tell you a fine idea
after two whiskys--I mean a really fine idea. Only in art an idea doesn't
exist till it is worked _out_. Brieux never (with the possible exception
above mentioned) works an idea _out_. Because he can't. He doesn't know
enough of his business. He can only do the easy parts of his business.
Last autumn also, the Comédie Française revived "La Robe Rouge." The
casting, owing to an effort to make it too good, was very bad; and the
production was very bad, though Brieux himself superintended it. But, all
allowances made for the inevitable turpitudes of this ridiculous national
theatre, the was senile; it was done for! Certainly it exposes the abuses
of the French magistrature, but at what cost of fundamental truth! The
melodramatic close might have been written in the Isle of Man.
* * * * *
Take the most notorious of all his plays, "Les Avariés." It contains an
admirable sermon, a really effective sermon, animated by ideas which I
suppose have been in the minds of exceptionally intelligent men for a
hundred years or so, and which Brieux restated in terms of dramatic
eloquence. But the sentimentality of the end is simply base. The
sentimentality of another famous play, "Maternité," is even more
deplorable.
* * * * *
It is said that Brieux's plays make you think. Well, it depends who you
are. No, I will admit that they have several times made me think. I will
admit that, since I saw "Les Avariés," I have never thought quite the same
about syphilis as I did before. But what I say is that this has nothing to
do with Brieux's position as a dramatist. Brieux could have written a
pamphlet on the subject of "Les Avariés" which would have impressed me
just as much as his play (I happened to read the play before I witnessed
it). Indeed, if he had confined himself to a pamphlet I should have
respected him more than I do. Brieux has never sharpened my sense of
beauty; he has never made me see beauty where I had failed to see it. And
this is what he ought to have done, as a serious dramatist. He is
deficient in a feeling for beauty; he is deficient in emotion. But that is
not the worst of him. Mr. Shaw is deficient in these supreme qualities.
But Mr. Shaw is an honest playwright. And Brieux (speaking, of course, in
a sense strictly artistic) is not. That he is dishonest in the cause of
moral progress does not mitigate his crime. Zealots may deny this as
loudly as they please. Nothing can keep Brieux's plays alive; they are
bound to go precisely where the plays of Dumas _fils_ have gone, because
they are false to life. I do not expect to kill the oncoming craze, but I
will give it no quarter.