He wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette; that is how we know he
is a villain. In real life it is often difficult to tell a villain from
an honest man, and this gives rise to mistakes; but on the stage, as we
have said villains wear clean collars and smoke cigarettes, and thus all
fear of blunder is avoided.
It is well that the rule does not hold off the stage, or good men
might be misjudged. We ourselves, for instance, wear a clean
collar--sometimes.
It might be very awkward for our family, especially on Sundays.
He has no power of repartee, has the stage villain. All the good people
in the play say rude and insulting things to him, and smack at him,
and score off him all through the act, but he can never answer them
back--can never think of anything clever to say in return.
"Ha! ha! wait till Monday week," is the most brilliant retort that he
can make, and he has to get into a corner by himself to think of even
that.
The stage villain's career is always very easy and prosperous up to
within a minute of the end of each act. Then he gets suddenly let in,
generally by the comic man. It always happens so. Yet the villain is
always intensely surprised each time. He never seems to learn anything
from experience.
A few years ago the villain used to be blessed with a hopeful and
philosophical temperament, which enabled him to bear up under these
constantly recurring disappointments and reverses. It was "no matter,"
he would say. Crushed for the moment though he might be, his buoyant
heart never lost courage. He had a simple, child-like faith in
Providence. "A time will come," he would remark, and this idea consoled
him.
Of late, however, this trusting hopefulness of his, as expressed in the
beautiful lines we have quoted, appears to have forsaken him. We are
sorry for this. We always regarded it as one of the finest traits in his
character.
The stage villain's love for the heroine is sublime in its
steadfastness. She is a woman of lugubrious and tearful disposition,
added to which she is usually incumbered with a couple of priggish and
highly objectionable children, and what possible attraction there
is about her we ourselves can never understand; but the stage
villain--well, there, he is fairly mashed on her.
Nothing can alter his affection. She hates him and insults him to an
extent that is really unladylike. Every time he tries to explain his
devotion to her, the hero comes in and knocks him down in the middle
of it, or the comic man catches him during one or the other of his
harassing love-scenes with her, and goes off and tells the "villagers"
or the "guests," and they come round and nag him (we should think that
the villain must grow to positively dislike the comic man before the
piece is over).
Notwithstanding all this he still hankers after her and swears she shall
be his. He is not a bad-looking fellow, and from what we know of the
market, we should say there are plenty of other girls who would jump at
him; yet for the sake of settling down with this dismal young female as
his wife, he is prepared to go through a laborious and exhaustive course
of crime and to be bullied and insulted by every one he meets. His love
sustains him under it all. He robs and forges, and cheats, and lies, and
murders, and arsons. If there were any other crimes he could commit to
win her affection, he would, for her sweet sake, commit them cheerfully.
But he doesn't know any others--at all events, he is not well up in any
others--and she still does not care for him, and what is he to do?
It is very unfortunate for both of them. It is evident to the merest
spectator that the lady's life would be much happier if the villain did
not love her quite so much; and as for him, his career might be calmer
and less criminal but for his deep devotion to her.
You see, it is having met her in early life that is the cause of all the
trouble. He first saw her when she was a child, and he loved her, "ay,
even then." Ah, and he would have worked--slaved for her, and have made
her rich and happy. He might perhaps even have been a good man.
She tries to soothe him. She says she loathed him with an unspeakable
horror from the first moment that her eyes met his revolting form. She
says she saw a hideous toad once in a nasty pond, and she says that
rather would she take that noisome reptile and clasp its slimy bosom to
her own than tolerate one instant's touch from his (the villain's) arms.
This sweet prattle of hers, however, only charms him all the more. He
says he will win her yet.
Nor does the villain seem much happier in his less serious love
episodes. After he has indulged in a little badinage of the above
character with his real lady-love, the heroine, he will occasionally try
a little light flirtation passage with her maid or lady friend.
The maid or friend does not waste time in simile or in metaphor. She
calls him a black-hearted scoundrel and clumps him over the head.
Of recent years it has been attempted to cheer the stage villain's
loveless life by making the village clergyman's daughter gone on him.
But it is generally about ten years ago when even she loved him, and her
love has turned to hate by the time the play opens; so that on the whole
his lot can hardly be said to have been much improved in this direction.
Not but what it must be confessed that her change of feeling is, under
the circumstances, only natural. He took her away from her happy,
peaceful home when she was very young and brought her up to this wicked
overgrown London. He did not marry her. There is no earthly reason why
he should not have married her. She must have been a fine girl at that
time (and she is a good-looking woman as it is, with dash and go about
her), and any other man would have settled down cozily with her and have
led a simple, blameless life.
But the stage villain is built cussed.
He ill-uses this female most shockingly--not for any cause or motive
whatever; indeed, his own practical interests should prompt him to treat
her well and keep friends with her--but from the natural cussedness to
which we have just alluded. When he speaks to her he seizes her by the
wrist and breathes what he's got to say into her ear, and it tickles and
revolts her.
The only thing in which he is good to her is in the matter of dress. He
does not stint her in dress.
The stage villain is superior to the villain of real life. The villain
of real life is actuated by mere sordid and selfish motives. The stage
villain does villainy, not for any personal advantage to himself, but
merely from the love of the thing as an art. Villainy is to him its own
reward; he revels in it.
"Better far be poor and villainous," he says to himself, "than possess
all the wealth of the Indies with a clear conscience. I will be a
villain," he cries. "I will, at great expense and inconvenience to
myself, murder the good old man, get the hero accused of the crime,
and make love to his wife while he is in prison. It will be a risky and
laborious business for me from beginning to end, and can bring me no
practical advantage whatever. The girl will call me insulting names when
I pay her a visit, and will push me violently in the chest when I get
near her; her golden-haired infant will say I am a bad man and may even
refuse to kiss me. The comic man will cover me with humorous opprobrium,
and the villagers will get a day off and hang about the village pub and
hoot me. Everybody will see through my villainy, and I shall be nabbed
in the end. I always am. But it is no matter, I will be a villain--ha!
ha!"
On the whole, the stage villain appears to us to be a rather badly used
individual. He never has any "estates" or property himself, and his
only chance of getting on in the world is to sneak the hero's. He has
an affectionate disposition, and never having any wife of his own he is
compelled to love other people's; but his affection is ever unrequited,
and everything comes wrong for him in the end.
Our advice to stage villains generally, after careful observation of
(stage) life and (stage) human nature, is as follows:
Never be a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is too
harassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the risks
and labor.
If you have run away with the clergyman's daughter and she still clings
to you, do not throw her down in the center of the stage and call her
names. It only irritates her, and she takes a dislike to you and goes
and warns the other girl.
Don't have too many accomplices; and if you have got them, don't keep
sneering at them and bullying them. A word from them can hang you, and
yet you do all you can to rile them. Treat them civilly and let them
have their fair share of the swag.
Beware of the comic man. When you are committing a murder or robbing a
safe you never look to see where the comic man is. You are so careless
in that way. On the whole, it might be as well if you murdered the comic
man early in the play.
Don't make love to the hero's wife. She doesn't like you; how can you
expect her to? Besides, it isn't proper. Why don't you get a girl of
your own?
Lastly, don't go down to the scenes of your crimes in the last act. You
always will do this. We suppose it is some extra cheap excursion down
there that attracts you. But take our advice and don't go. That
is always where you get nabbed. The police know your habits from
experience. They do not trouble to look for you. They go down in the
last act to the old hall or the ruined mill where you did the deed and
wait for you.
In nine cases out of ten you would get off scot-free but for this
idiotic custom of yours. Do keep away from the place. Go abroad or to
the sea-side when the last act begins and stop there till it is over.
You will be safe then.