The production on two successive nights of two plays so violently
contrasted in method as Mr. Harwood’s _Grain of Mustard Seed_ and Mr.
Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_—the first a play mainly of talk, the second a
play entirely of action—sets one thinking. According to the orthodox
canons, the second is the right, nay, the only method. Drama, we are
told, is a conflict of wills and all the interest is in the action, the
external manifestation of the conflict. There should be just enough talk
to carry that on and not an idle word should be spoken. Diderot, indeed,
professed to think that words were almost superfluous, and went to the
play with cotton-wool in his ears in order to judge its merits on the
dumb show; yet he wrote the most wordy and tedious plays. And there is,
or was, a certain school of theatrical criticism which forever quotes
the old Astley maxim, “Cut the cackle and come to the ’osses”—which was
no doubt a most appropriate maxim, for quadrupeds. Others have mistaken
action for physical, preferably violent action—Maldonado sweeping the
crockery off the chimney-piece or Lady Audley pushing her husband down
the well—and have ignored the fact that talk also may be action, “and
much the noblest,” as Dryden says. “Every alteration or crossing of
a design, every new-sprung passion, and turn of it, is a part of the
action, and much the noblest, except we perceive nothing to be action,
till they come to blows; as if the painting of the hero’s mind were
not more properly the poet’s work than the strength of his body.” How
often we were told in the old days that Dumas _fils_ and Ibsen were too
“talky,” when their talk was mainly psychological action.
But this demand for action and nothing but action, so persistently
uttered of late years, would deprive the world of much of its best
entertainment. Apply it to Congreve, “cut the cackle” of his plays, and
you come to the ’osses, spavined hacks, of plots childishly complicated
and perfunctorily wound up. Would any one of taste suppress the “cackle”
of Sheridan’s scandalous college? Is not, in short, much of the pleasure
of comedy in resting from the action, in getting away from it, in the
relief of good talk? Yes, and often enough the pleasure of tragedy, too.
There is a bustling, melodramatic action in _Hamlet_. But with what
relief Hamlet gets away from his revenge “mission” at every moment, puts
it out of sight, forgets it! His interview with the players and advice to
them on histrionics, his chat with the gravedigger, what else are these
but the sheer delight of good talk? For him the joy of living is the joy
of talking, and with the chance of these before him his revenge-mission
may go hang!
Obviously we never get so near Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s natural
temperament, as in these moments of talk for its own sake, talk
unfettered by the exigencies of the plot. For that talk wells up
spontaneously and is not turned on to order; the poet has something
interesting in his mind which he is bursting to say, and if to say it
will keep the plot waiting, why, so much the worse for the plot. And
here is a reason, I think, in favour of plays of talk. We get nearer
the author in them; in good talk the author is expressing a pleasure so
strong as to override the objection of irrelevance, and in sharing that
pleasure we get the best of him, the spontaneous element in him, the man
himself. On the other hand, mere yarn-spinning, mere plot-weaving, may
be an almost mechanical exercise. Not necessarily, of course. I should
be sorry to call Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_ a mechanical bit of work.
The will-conflict there has an intense reality and is fought tooth and
nail. Irrelevant talk in such a white-hot play would obviously be fatal.
Everybody speaks briefly, plainly, and to the point. Artistic work of
any kind gives pleasure, and it is possible to be as delighted with Mr.
Galsworthy’s kind as with Mr. Harwood’s. I am not comparing two artists
of two different kinds, which would be absurd. I am only pleading for a
kind which is not what a vain people supposeth, and which is apt to be
stupidly condemned.
Not that it would be fair, either, to call Mr. Harwood’s brilliant task
irrelevant. It helps to paint character. Thus, parents expect their
son to have returned from the war a compound of Sir Galahad and Mr.
Bottomley, and instead of that he is only a good bridge-player, after
four hours’ bridge a day for four years. These witticisms help to tell
you something about the young man whose family reputation gives rise
to them in the family circle. When the old Parliamentary hand compares
government to ’bus-driving, seeking to get through the traffic with the
minimum of accident, or remarks on the reputation Canute would have
made had he only waited for high tide, he is telling us something about
himself and his political principles. But primarily these things are
enjoyable for their wit and not for their relevance. In a play of fierce
will-conflict they would have been impossible. These plays of brilliant
talk belong to the quiet _genre_, and quiet in the theatre, as in art
generally, is perhaps an acquired taste. “Punch,” we are constantly being
told by the natural unsophisticated man, is what is wanted—the word
itself is the invention of an unquiet people. Well, give me wit, and let
who will have the “punch.”
The occasional tendency in the theatre to revolt against the restraint of
the action and to play lightly round it has its counterpart in criticism.
What is it gives so peculiar a charm to the criticism of Dryden? Is it
not his discursiveness, his little descriptive embellishments—as, for
example, in the “Essay of Dramatic Poesy,” the river trip, the listening
for the distant thunder of the Dutch guns “on that memorable day,” the
moonlight on the water, the landing at Somerset Stairs among the crowd of
French dancers? I have elsewhere said how Hazlitt’s theatrical criticisms
lose in readableness by their strict attention to business, compared
with his miscellaneous essays, where he permits himself to wander “all
over the place.” George Henry Lewes’s theatrical criticisms can still be
read with pleasure for the very reason that they were diversified with
deliberate, almost frivolous irrelevancies. And then there was Jules
Lemaître with his perpetual “moi,” which provoked the austere Brunetière
to quote Pascal’s “_le moi est haïssable_.” Yet where will you find more
enjoyable criticism than Lemaître’s? But I must keep off Lemaître and the
charm of him, or I shall become, what he never was, tiresome. Even as it
is, I may resemble the parson who said he had aimed at brevity in order
to avoid tediousness, and was answered, “You _were_ brief, and you _were_
tedious.”
“THE BEGGAR’S OPERA”
One of Boswell’s projected works was a history of the controversy over
_The Beggar’s Opera_. The best known of the works he actually did
write contains several references to this controversy. Reynolds said
it afforded a proof how strangely people will differ in opinion about
a literary performance. Burke thought it had no merit. Johnson thought
very much the opposite, but said characteristically, “There is in it
such a labefactation of all principles as may be injurious to morality.”
Gibbon suggested that it might refine the manners of highwaymen, “making
them less ferocious, more polite—in short, more like gentlemen.” It is
noteworthy that the work was half a century old when these observations
were made about it. It had become a classic. And later generations
treated it as a classic—that is to say, kept on refashioning it to the
taste of their own time. The version, for instance, that Hazlitt was so
fond of writing about (in the second decade of the last century) was a
sad mangling of the original. Even so, it represented for Hazlitt the
high-water mark of theatrical enjoyment, just as the original did for
Boswell, who said, “No performance which the theatre exhibits delights
me more.” You cannot take up a volume of Swift’s correspondence, or
Horace Walpole’s or Arbuthnot’s, without mention of _The Beggar’s Opera_.
It even got into Grimm. It was the _H.M.S. Pinafore_ of the time.
And that reminds me. As I sat at the Hammersmith Lyric listening to the
dialogue between Peachum and Mrs. Peachum on the question whether Polly
was Macheath’s wife or his mistress, the thing seemed strangely modern,
and not only modern, but Gilbertian. (I am speaking, of course, of the
tone, not of the sentiment—Gilbert was a very Victorian of propriety.)
Peachum is Gilbertian. “Do you think your mother and I should have liv’d
comfortably so long together if ever we had been married? Baggage!” Mrs.
Peachum is Gilbertian. “If you must be married, could you introduce
nobody into our family but a highwayman? Why, thou foolish jade, thou
wilt be as ill-used and as much neglected as if thou hadst married a
lord!” Again, “If she had only an intrigue with the fellow, why the
very best families have excus’d and huddled up a frailty of that sort.
’Tis marriage, husband, that makes it a blemish.” Once more. “Love him!
Worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better bred.” Polly herself
is Gilbertian. “Methinks I see him already in the cart, sweeter and
more lovely than the nosegay in his hand! I hear the crowd extolling
his resolution and intrepidity! What volleys of sighs are sent from
the windows of Holborn, that so comely a youth should be brought to
disgrace! I see him at the tree! The whole circle are in tears! Even
butchers weep!” Lucy is Gilbertian. When Macheath is at the “tree,”
her comment is, “There is nothing moves one so much as a great man in
distress.” And not only the tone, but the very principle of the play is
Gilbertian. Gilbert took some typical figure of the social hierarchy—a
Lord Chancellor, a First Lord of the Admiralty—and set the Chancellor
capering and the First Lord singing about the handle of the big front
door. He put a familiar figure in unfamiliar postures. Gay took a typical
figure of his own time—the highwayman—and showed him, not at work on the
highway, but enjoying an elegant leisure, behaving like a Chesterfield or
one of Congreve’s fine gentlemen. It was the realism, the actuality of
the subject, combined with the burlesque of the treatment, that delighted
the London of 1728 as it delighted the London of a century and a half
later. At each date it was a new experiment in opera libretto. Boswell
specified the attraction of Gay’s realism—“the real pictures of London
life.” Johnson singles out the “novelty” of the treatment.
But it is time that I said something about Mr. Nigel Playfair’s revival.
This is a remarkable success, from every point of view. For the original
attraction of realism is, of course, no longer there. We have to take
it all historically. And the revival has been particularly careful
of historical accuracy. Just as Gay’s dialogue prompts you to say
“Gilbert,” so Mr. Lovat Fraser’s scenery and costumes prompt you to
exclaim “Hogarth!” By the way, on one of Hazlitt’s visits he records the
exclamation of an old gentleman in the pit, after the scuffle between
Peachum and Lockit, “Hogarth, by G—d!” This was, no doubt, a tribute to
the grim, ugly squalor of that particular scene. But the whole _décor_
and atmosphere of the present affair are Hogarthian—the stiff, flattened
hoops of the women, the tatterdemalion aspect of Macheath’s rabble,
Peachum’s dressing-gown (which I suppose is “documentary”), Macheath’s
scarlet coat and flowing wig. And the dresses are accurately simple. The
women wear plain stuffs; Polly alone is allowed a little finery. Indeed,
there is an almost austere simplicity about the whole affair. One scene,
with just the alteration of a few accessories, serves for Peachum’s
house, for a tavern, and for Newgate. There is an orchestra of five
strings, a flute, an oboe, and a harpsichord. It seems to me that their
playing has the delicate charm of chamber music rather than the power and
colour of orchestral—but I must not stray out of my province.
Hazlitt indulged in raptures over Miss Stephens, the first Polly
he heard, and never failed to contrast with her her less pleasing
successors. He had evidently lost his heart to her—a somewhat susceptible
heart, if you think of the “Liber Amoris.” I have no Miss Stephens to
compare Miss Arkandy with, and can only say the songstress is quite
sweet enough for my taste and the actress a charming little doll. Miss
Marquesita, the Lucy, is a good contrast, a voluptuous termagant. Boswell
says of Walker, the original Macheath, that he “acquired great celebrity
by his grave yet animated performance of it.” Mr. Ranalow’s Macheath
is decidedly more grave than animated, is in fact a little solemn—long
before he gets to the Condemn’d Hold. There is an almost Oriental
impassiveness about him, something of the jaded sultan—which, after all,
is not an inappropriate suggestion, surrounded as the poor man is by his
seraglio of town-ladies. Miss Elsie French bravely makes a thorough hag
of Mrs. Peachum; the Peachum and Lockit of Mr. Wynne and Mr. Rawson are
properly, Hogarthianly, crapulous; and Mr. Scott Russell makes a good,
vociferous Filch, leading with a will the fine drinking-song “Woman
and Wine” and the still finer “Let us take the Road” (to the tune of
Handel’s march in _Rinaldo_). Altogether a delicious entertainment: gay,
despite the solemn deportment of Macheath, and dainty, despite the sordid
_crapule_ of Newgate. Yes, my final impression of the affair is one of
daintiness. Even the women of the town are dainty. They might almost be
Dresden china shepherdesses (which would be bearing out the original
suggestion of a Newgate “pastoral” very literally). For the sordid
_milieu_ is so remote from us as to have become fantastically unreal;
the Peachums and the Lockits are no longer ugly men, but have been
turned into grotesque gargoyles; the rabble round Tyburn Tree has lived
to see a Russian ballet and learnt to move in its elegant arabesques. It
is a Hogarth retouched by a Shepperson—or rather, to speak by the card,
by a Lovat Fraser.