Produced by Douglas Levy
TOUCH AND GO
A Play in Three Acts
By D. H. Lawrence
PREFACE
A nice phrase: "A People's Theatre." But what about it? There's no
such thing in existence as a People's Theatre: or even on the way to
existence, as far as we can tell. The name is chosen, the baby isn't
even begotten: nay, the would-be parents aren't married, nor yet
courting.
A People's Theatre. Note the indefinite article. It isn't The People's
Theatre, but A People's Theatre. Not the theatre of Plebs, the
proletariat, but the theatre of A People. What people? Quel peuple
donc?--A People's Theatre. Translate it into French for yourself.
A People's Theatre. Since we can't produce it, let us deduce it.
Major premise: the seats are cheap. Minor premiss: the plays are
good. Conclusion: A People's Theatre. How much will you give me for my
syllogism? Not a slap in the eye, I hope.
We stick to our guns. The seats are cheap. That has a nasty proletarian
look about it. But appearances are deceptive. The proletariat isn't
poor. Everybody is poor except Capital and Labour. Between these upper
and nether millstones great numbers of decent people are squeezed.
The seats are cheap: in decency's name. Nobody wants to swank, to sit
in the front of a box like a geranium on a window-sill--"the cynosure
of many eyes." Nobody wants to profiteer. We all feel that it is as
humiliating to pay high prices as to charge them. No man consents in
his heart to pay high prices unless he feels that what he pays with his
right hand he will get back with his left, either out of the pocket of
a man who isn't looking, or out of the envy of the poor neighbour who IS
looking, but can't afford the figure. The seats are cheap. Why should A
People, fabulous and lofty giraffe, want to charge or pay high
prices? If it were THE PEOPLE now.--But it isn't. It isn't Plebs, the
proletariat. The seats are cheap.
The plays are good. Pah!--this has a canting smell. Any play is good
to the man who likes to look at it. And at that rate Chu Chin Chow is
extra-super-good. What about your GOOD plays? Whose good? PFUI to your
goodness!
That minor premiss is a bad egg: it will hatch no bird. Good plays? You
might as well say mimsy bomtittle plays, you'd be saying as much. The
plays are--don't say good or you'll be beaten. The plays--the plays of
A People's Theatre are--oh heaven, what are they?--not popular nor
populous nor plebian nor proletarian nor folk nor parish plays. None of
that adjectival spawn.
The only clue-word is People's for all that. A People's---Chaste word,
it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are
People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays about people.
It doesn't look much, at first sight. After all--people! Yes, People!
Not THE PEOPLE, _i.e._ Plebs, nor yet the Upper Ten. People. Neither
Piccoli nor Grandi in our republic. People.
People, ah God! Not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops
nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adultresses nor uncles
nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People.
Men who are somebody, not men who are something. Men who HAPPEN to be
bishops or co-respondents, women who happen to be chaste, just as they
happen to freckle, because it's one of their innumerable odd qualities.
Even men who happen, by the way, to have long noses. But not noses on
two legs, not burly pairs of gaiters, stuffed and voluble, not
white meringues of chastity, not incarnations of co-respondence. Not
proletariats, petitioners, president's, noses, bits of fluff. Heavens,
what an assortment of bits! And aren't we sick of them!
People, I say. And after all, it's saying something. It's harder to be
a human being than to be a president or a bit of fluff. You can be a
president, or a bit of fluff, or even a nose, by clockwork. Given
a role, a PART, you can play it by clockwork. But you can't have a
clockwork human being.
We're dead sick of parts. It's no use your protesting that there is a
man behind the nose. We can't see him, and he can't see himself. Nothing
but nose. Neither can you make us believe there is a man inside the
gaiters. He's never showed his head yet.
It may be, in real life, the gaiters wear the man, as the nose wears
Cyrano. It may be Sir Auckland Geddes and Mr. J. H. Thomas are only
clippings from the illustrated press. It may be that a miner is a
complicated machine for cutting coal and voting on a ballot-paper. It
may be that coal-owners are like the _petit bleu_ arrangement, a system
of vacuum tubes for whooshing Bradburys about from one to the other.
It may be that everybody delights in bits, in parts, that the public
insists on noses, gaiters, white rabbits, bits of fluff, automata and
gewgaws. If they do, then let 'em. Chu Chin Chow for ever!
In spite of them all: A People's Theatre. A People's Theatre shows men,
and not parts. Not bits, nor bundles of bits. A whole bunch of roles
tied into one won't make an individual. Though gaiters perish, we will
have men.
Although most miners may be pick-cum-shovel-cum-ballot implements,
and no more, still, among miners there must be two or three living
individuals. The same among the masters. The majority are suction-tubes
for Bradburys. But is this Sodom of Industrialism there are surely ten
men, all told. My poor little withered grain of mustard seed, I am half
afraid to take you across to the seed-testing department!
And if there are men, there is A People's Theatre.
How many tragic situations did Goethe say were possible? Something like
thirty-two. Which seems a lot. Anyhow, granted that men are men still,
that not all of them are bits, parts, machine-sections, then we have
added another tragic possibility to the list: the Strike situation. As
yet no one tackles this situation. It is a sort of Medusa head, which
turns--no, not to stone, but to sloppy treacle. Mr. Galsworthy had a
peep, and sank down towards bathos.
Granted that men are still men, Labour _v_. Capitalism is a tragic
struggle. If men are no more than implements, it is non-tragic and
merely disastrous. In tragedy the man is more than his part. Hamlet is
more than Prince of Denmark, Macbeth is more than murderer of Duncan.
The man is caught in the wheels of his part, his fate, he may be torn
asunder. He may be killed, but the resistant, integral soul in him is
not destroyed. He comes through, though he dies. He goes through with
his fate, though death swallows him. And it is in this facing of fate,
this going right through with it, that tragedy lies. Tragedy is not
disaster. It is a disaster when a cart-wheel goes over a frog, but it is
not a tragedy, not the hugest; not the death of ten million men. It is
only a cartwheel going over a frog. There must be a supreme STRUGGLE.
In Shakespeare's time it was the people _versus_ king storm that was
brewing. Majesty was about to have its head off. Come what might, Hamlet
and Macbeth and Goneril and Regan had to see the business through.
Now a new wind is getting up. We call it Labour _versus_ Capitalism. We
say it is a mere material struggle, a money-grabbing affair. But this
is only one aspect of it. In so far as men are merely mechanical,
the struggle is one which, though it may bring disaster and death to
millions, is no more than accident, an accidental collision of forces.
But in so far as men are men, the situation is tragic. It is not really
the bone we are fighting for. We are fighting to have somebody's head
off. The conflict is in pure, passional antagonism, turning upon the
poles of belief. Majesty was only _hors d'oevres_ to this tragic repast.
So, the strike situation has this dual aspect. First it is a
mechanico-material struggle, two mechanical forces pulling asunder
from the central object, the bone. All it can result in is the pulling
asunder of the fabric of civilisation, and even of life, without any
creative issue. It is no more than a frog under a cart-wheel. The
mechanical forces, rolling on, roll over the body of life and squash it.
The second is the tragic aspect. According to this view, we see more
than two dogs fighting for a bone, and life hopping under the Juggernaut
wheel. The two dogs are making the bone a pretext for a fight with each
other. That old bull-dog, the British capitalist, has got the bone in
his teeth. That unsatisfied mongrel, Plebs, the proletariat, shivers
with rage not so much at the sight of the bone, as at sight of the great
wrinkled jowl that holds it. There is the old dog, with his knowing look
and his massive grip on the bone: and there is the insatiable mongrel,
with his great splay paws. The one is all head and arrogance, the other
all paws and grudge. The bone is only the pretext. A first condition of
the being of Bully is that he shall hate the prowling great paws of the
Plebs, whilst Plebs by inherent nature goes mad at the sight of Bully's
jowl. "Drop it!" cries Plebs. "Hands off!" growls Bully. It is hands
against head, the shambling, servile body in a rage of insurrection at
last against the wrinkled, heavy head.
Labour not only wants his debt. He wants his pound of flesh. It is a
quandary. In our heart of hearts we must admit the debt. We must admit
that it is long overdue. But this last condition! In vain we study our
anatomy to see which part we can best spare.
Where is our Portia, to save us with a timely quibble? We've plenty of
Portias. They've recited their heads off--"The quality of mercy is not
strained." But the old Shylock of the proletariat persists. He pops up
again, and says, "All right, I can't have my pound of flesh with the
blood. But then you can't keep my pound of flesh with your blood--you
owe it to me. It is your business to deliver the goods. Deliver it
then--with or without blood--deliver it." The Portia scratches her head,
and thinks again.
What's the solution? There is no solution. But still there is a choice.
There's a choice between a mess and a tragedy. If Plebs and Bully hang
on one to each end of the bone, and pull for grim life, they will
at last tear the bone to atoms: in short, destroy the whole material
substance of life, and so perish by accident, no better than a frog
under the wheel of destiny. That may be a disaster, but it is only a
mess for all that.
On the other hand, if they have a fight to fight they might really drop
the bone. Instead of wrangling the bone to bits they might really go
straight for one another. They are like hostile parties on board a ship,
who both proceed to scuttle the ship so as to sink the other party. Down
goes the ship, with all the bally lot on board. A few survivors swim and
squeal among the bubbles--and then silence.
It is too much to suppose that the combatants will ever drop the
obvious old bone. But it is not too much to imagine that some men might
acknowledge the bone to be merely a pretext, and hollow _casus belli_.
If we really could know what we were fighting for, if we if we could
deeply believe in what we were fighting for, then the struggle might
have dignity, beauty, satisfaction for us. If it were a profound
struggle for something that was coming to life in us, a struggle that
we were convinced would bring us to a new freedom, a new life, then it
would be a creative activity, a creative activity in which death is a
climax in the progression towards new being. And this is tragedy.
Therefore, if we could but comprehend or feel the tragedy in the great
Labour struggle, the intrinsic tragedy of having to pass through death
to birth, our souls would still know some happiness, the very happiness
of creative suffering. Instead of which we pile accident on accident,
we tear the fabric of our existence fibre by fibre, we confidently look
forward to the time when the whole great structure will come down on our
heads. Yet after all that, when we are squirming under the debris, we
shall have no more faith or hope or satisfaction than we have now. We
shall crawl from under one cart-wheel straight under another.
The essence of tragedy, which is creative crisis, is that a man should
go through with his fate, and not dodge it and go bumping into an
accident. And the whole business of life, at the great critical periods
of mankind, is that men should accept and be one with their tragedy.
Therefore we should open our hearts. For one thing we should have a
People's Theatre. Perhaps it would help us in this hour of confusion
better than anything.
HERMITAGE,
June, 1919.
CHARACTERS
GERALD BARLOW.
MR. BARLOW (his father).
OLIVER TURTON.
JOB ARTHUR FREER.
WILLIE HOUGHTON.
ALFRED BREFFITT.
WILLIAM (a butler).
CLERKS, MINERS, etc.
ANABEL WRATH.
MRS. BARLOW.
WINIFRED BARLOW.
EVA (a maid).
TOUCH AND GO
ACT I