Our Stage and Its Critics Part 19

Paris, insatiable in craving for novelty, is said to have grown tired of her, but her place as the greatest of singers in the variety theatres cannot be gainsaid. It is alleged that she intends to go upon the stage, and imaginable that her search for suitable plays has caused her outburst against playwrights. Whether she will be successful as actress or not is a question of interest concerning which _a priori_ reasoning is futile. Certainly she must be a difficult person for whom to write a play.

Apparently she has gone to some fashionable dramatist and given him a commission to write a drama as a vehicle for the exhibition of her histrionic gifts, and is dissatisfied by the result. One is justified in making the guess by her theories concerning the future of drama when the "arenas" are again opened, and "histrionic" art is rejuvenated. "Let the actors enter," she says, "with their ideas boiling over, their nerves strung to the highest pitch, and let the public suggest to each the action or character to be mimicked. Let a dozen different ideals be impersonated, then real, true and original talent will be revealed, new ideas will be discovered which will no longer be guided by the author and stage manager and theatrical director, but which will be free, untrammelled, and no longer ready-made emotions."

This sounds rather daring, and the lady, before kicking the dramatists out of the theatre, might consider carefully what is to become of the players who have not sufficient brains in their skulls for there to be any "boiling over." Some actors, no doubt, are intellectual men, but not a few of the best possess no ideas of their own. This quotation and others that follow come from a translation which appeared in _The Daily Telegraph_ of a letter written by Yvette Guilbert to _The Figaro_.

It is noteworthy that this idea of dispensing with dramatists is not new. Efforts were made in the days of _Le Chat Noir_ to evolve a new kind of drama, in which the playwright had little concern. Moreover, Mr Gordon Craig, one of the forces of the future--and of the present--has revolutionary ideas on the subject.

Let us now see what the great _diseuse_ thinks of dramas and dramatists.

Here is a strong sentence by her: "The author ignores, or will not admit, that, despite all his efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and att.i.tudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the dramatic art is concerned."

To antic.i.p.ate an obvious objection she says, "Of course I know there were a Shakespeare, a Racine, a Moliere, and some others.... What a pity they had no descendants!" It is permissible to wonder whether the lady has read much drama. Possibly she would ask why she should spend time in reading mere "souls," and admit that her acquaintance with plays is almost confined to works witnessed by her; and, indeed, seeing that, according to her, "the _role_ of the comedian is superior to that of the author," she may believe that a play only exists when it is acted, and be quite unaware that an imaginative, intelligent person can get a high degree of pleasure from reading a play.

The dramatist may well rest content with the suggestion that his work is the soul, the immortal, n.o.ble part of drama, and that the players form only the gross, corporeal element.

There may be some truth in Guilbert's remarks: "The dramatic is the most inferior of all arts. The play pa.s.ses through too many channels, and comes before the public as a cramped, crushed and faded form. The writer ... sees his play in one light, the theatrical manager receives it and sees it in another, the stage-manager adds his own way of understanding it, the actor takes it up according to his own temperament and talents, and the public sees it from a fifth point of view. Add to this ten or twelve subsidiary characters. How can an author claim, under such circ.u.mstances, to remain the absolute master of his work?"

The term "subsidiary characters" to some extent explains the att.i.tude of the actress. It is a suggestion of the famous "_moi-meme et quelques poupees_" which exhibits the clash of ideas that forms the basis of the ineradicable antagonism between the original author and the actor. Each naturally thinks himself the master.

To the true dramatist the players are as the colours on the palette, the instruments in the orchestra--or, perhaps, the players of them--the stone of the sculptor; their task is to give bodily form to his ideas, clothes and flesh to the "soul" of his drama, and, as far as possible, to efface themselves in doing their duty.

The player, on the other hand, regards the dramatist as someone intended to write splendid parts for him--parts in which, to use the stock phrase, he "sees himself"--sees _himself_. Unfortunately the dramatists have, on the whole, been the sufferers, the slaves.

Sardou enslaved himself to Bernhardt; there are grounds for thinking that but for this slavery he might have been a great dramatist and not merely a rich, supremely skilful play fabricator. For a long time the players have had the upper hand, mainly because of the servility of the dramatists, but there are signs of a change. Already the "ten or twelve subsidiary actors" phrase is becoming out of date. We have seen play after play at the Court with parts of different degrees of importance, but hardly any "subsidiary" characters in the sense in which Yvette Guilbert uses the term.

There are moments when the letter of Guilbert seems a joke or a hoax.

One does not like to think that she said, "The true comedian finds his success in himself, and can do without the dramatic author. He easily utilizes his own comic or tragic gifts, as is witnessed in Shakespeare, Moliere, and a hundred others." To think that we do not know whether Shakespeare was "a true comedian," and that it is not unlikely that he was a poor actor! The lady is wise not to attempt to name the "hundred others" presumably _ejusdem generis_ with Shakespeare and Moliere.

"There have always been, since the beginning of the ages, mimics and improvisators who did without the text of others." Possibly this is true but it does not follow that there are many players who could hold an audience by their mimicry or improvisations; not a few of the greatest actors and actresses might starve if they had to rely upon their own ideas. It is even notorious that some of our most ill.u.s.trious actors have had their brilliant after-dinner impromptu speeches written for them.

After reading the whole letter one may hint that Guilbert's own ideas might not serve her very well if she tried to appear as improvisator.

CHAPTER XIII

MISCELLANEOUS

Finance in Plays

It is to be hoped that the t.i.tle will not be misunderstood. The finance _of_ plays is quite another story, often an ugly story, sometimes with a comic aspect, and frequently disclosed in a bankruptcy or a winding-up.

Occasionally in pieces supposed to be quite modern we are told, incorrectly, a good deal about the way in which plays are financed, which does not mean the mode of spending money on the production and performance of dramas and in keeping theatres open--or closed--but the method of raising money for theatrical enterprises. Certainly, the subject is worthy of consideration, and some day we hope to handle it almost adequately. The remarks, however, concern the ideas of general finance exhibited by authors. Mr Sutro's drama _The Perfect Lover_ set us thinking. No doubt the t.i.tle does not suggest money, nor, indeed, does it give an idea of the real subject of the drama. In his new work the author preaches a sermon about the corrupting influence of wealth and the desire for it. As business men, in a sort of second-hand way, most of us were interested in the talk concerning money.

Everything turns upon the fact that Willie, the wicked solicitor, wishes to buy the Cardew estates, which (though the property of a n.o.ble family) happen to be unsettled, because he has discovered that there is coal under them, and therefore scents a fortune in the purchase. The moment that the word "coal" is mentioned to the persons in the play everything is understood--by them. All a.s.sume that the property is multiplied in value by its existence. Joe is to be offered 5000 to bring about the sale. A simple practical person, such as a dramatic critic, is inclined to ask whether Willie is not buying a pig in a poke. He can hardly have had shafts sunk surrept.i.tiously on the Cardew estates in order to ascertain whether the coal-mines would be a curse or a blessing to the owner; and if the property adjoined valuable collieries, the Cardews would have made some investigation.

For it by no means follows that a coal-mine is a source of wealth, since the "black diamonds," concerning our available quant.i.ty of which Professor Jevons scared our fathers when some of us were agreeably younger, may be indifferent in quality or lie with such faults and in a manner so inconvenient that it can only be worked at a ruinous cost.

Nevertheless, whenever the magic word "coal" is whispered the characters are thrilled, like housewives reminded by their husband that they have forgotten to order it at the "lowest summer prices." No doubt the author will say that after all coal is coal, and may be reminded of the plaintive retort by the little girl in _Punch_ that "mother said the last lot was nearly all slates." Willie talks of making a million out of the purchase; he is fortified in his views by the fact that the Great Central Railway is going to run through part of the property. Writers of fiction are apt to believe that in these times land-owners receive on compulsory purchase the extravagant sums that used to be awarded in past days and by their magnitude have hampered the railway companies and the general public ever since; juries or arbitrators have come to their senses, and compensation no longer spells unmerited fortune, except by the reaping of a large crop of "unearned increment." And now there are the new taxes.

It may be suggested that we do not demand exact finance or correct law in our fiction nowadays. A few, indeed, are meticulous in the matter, but it is generally a.s.sumed that the public would be bored by correct details. No one has ventured to dramatize Laurence Oliphant's brilliantly humorous "Autobiography of a Joint Stock Company"--apologies if by slip of memory the t.i.tle is given at all incorrectly.

Occasionally, it is true, our plays treat financial matters with some particularity; one may cite _Mammon_ and _A Bunch of Violets_, both versions of Feuillet's drama _Montjoie_, and Mr Arthur Jones's clever piece _A Rogue's Comedy_, and _Business is Business_, the adaptation of _Les Affaires sont les Affaires_. Moreover, there was a melodrama given at the Opera Comique which, despite the care of the Censor, contained caricatures of several notorious living financiers. They were financiers touching whom one may record the story, perhaps unpublished, of an American who a.s.serted vaingloriously that we have no great financiers in England such as are to be found in the United States, and on being answered that we have, and thereupon inquiring scornfully where they could be found, received the curt reply, "In gaol." Unfortunately, the finances of the Opera Comique production were almost as unsubstantial as the finance in the other plays, and it did not last long.

Mr Cecil Raleigh also, in some of the Drury Lane dramas which used to give us vast entertainment, handled company matters in a broad, generous, comic fashion which baffled criticism.

Would a public so abominably engrossed as ours in money, a people that is exchanging the ascendency of an aristocracy for the despotism of a plutocracy, a nation a large proportion of which gambles on the Stock Exchange whilst another plays bridge for shocking stakes, really reject a drama turning on financial matters and containing a moderate amount of accurate detail? If there is little poetry in Throgmorton Street, at least there is plenty of romance, and more imagination is exhibited in the average prospectus than in the ordinary play. It would not be impossible to introduce a touch of sentiment, a.s.suming, sadly, that the playgoers cannot be happy without a little bit of sugar; whilst the fierce clash of men in the mad pursuit for wealth--a pursuit, after all, more engrossing than that of love--is often terribly dramatic. There was a piece called _The Wheat King_, an adaptation of one of the few books by the powerful American novelist Norris, who died too young. The version, made by two ladies, very nearly fulfilled the conditions suggested, and it almost achieved success.

Doubtless everybody connected with theatres believes that love in some form or another is the only possible basis for a successful drama, although we are well aware that romantic love such as the dramatists trade in is only an episode in the lives of a minority of the nation, and does not come at all to the rest. Apparently it is presumed that those who have never felt it wish to hear about it, and that those who have, desire to revive their memories. Indeed, many experts imagine there are very few topics which will lure the public to the box-office.

There is before us at the moment a letter from Henry Irving, in answer to a suggestion that Ibsen's great drama _The Pretenders_ was worthy of production by him, and he says, "Of the power of Ibsen's _Pretenders_ I am quite sensible, but unfortunately there are considerations which prevent me from accepting the suggestion. In the first place, I believe the theme of ambition has no great dramatic hold, or a very slender one, on the playgoing public of to-day.... I am compelled as a manager to take these things into account. Were I conducting an endowed theatre, the case would be different." Many things have happened in Stageland since April 1897, when this letter was written by Irving, and it is by no means improbable that the scope of the theatre has been somewhat extended. After all, it is fantastic that money, the element which plays the greatest part in the lives of most of us, should generally be treated superficially if at all, and, as a rule, when not neglected, should be handled without accuracy or even verisimilitude of detail.

One might refer to _Macbeth_ as a successful play with ambition as its theme. Since Irving's letter was written a fair number of unsentimental plays have been produced and well received, such, for instance, as _Strife_ and _The Silver Box_ and _The Voysey Inheritance_, all works of great quality.

Some Unsuccessful Dramatists

When considering some of the criticisms upon _Becket_, and accepting them as accurate, one is inclined to ask why Tennyson failed as a dramatist. That he did, judged by the ordinary standard, can hardly be denied, nor could any degree of success with _Becket_ disprove the statement, since the acted work is a bold, free adaptation of the printed play. He was anxious for success as a playwright, and in fact no fewer than five of his plays have been presented on the stage--all of them published after he was sixty-six years old. Now, Tennyson, undoubtedly, from every point of view that one can cla.s.sify exactly, was far better equipped for playwriting than hundreds of successful dramatists--yet he failed. Why?

The puzzle does not end nor begin with him. One can name a number of literary men of great rank who have written vainly for the stage, to say nothing of others who are authors of works in the form of drama, but nevertheless, like a Sh.e.l.ley, Swinburne or Longfellow, may not have been stagestruck.

As conspicuous modern instances Balzac, Byron and Browning may be selected, and a writer who, if hardly of the same cla.s.s, has written at least one masterpiece. This is Charles Reade, whose delightful book "The Cloister and the Hearth" seems likely to attain immortality. Reade, we know, was absolutely stagestruck, and wrote dozens of plays and spent a great deal of money over them; indeed, it is not too much to say that his mania for the theatre seriously injured his work as a novelist. Yet who will pretend that any of the pieces that he concocted alone or in conjunction with others is worth the least valuable of his novels?

Balzac, though not stagestruck in the same degree as Charles Reade, had a great desire for success as a playwright; part of the desire may have been due to eagerness to make money with which to pay off those terrible debts. Yet in one biography of him no mention is made of his dramas.

Nevertheless, he sweated hard over _Vautrin_, _La Maratre_, _Les Ressources de Quinola_ and _Mercadet_; none of them helped substantially to pay off the debts, nor can any be rated equally with the poorest of his novels. _Mercadet_, certainly, has one brilliant scene of comedy in it, and under the name of _A Game of Speculation_ proved a trump-card with Charles Mathews. G.H. Lewes was author of the version which, according to a popular story, was written and rehea.r.s.ed between Sat.u.r.day and Monday. The original, with the full t.i.tle of _Mercadet ou Le Faiseur_ was not acted till after the death of Balzac, when it was reduced to three acts by D'Ennery and given with success at Le Gymnase.

Everybody knows that Browning wrote a number of plays. _A Soul's Tragedy_ was lately presented by the Stage Society, an interesting hardly successful experiment. _A Blot on the 'Scutcheon_ was produced at Drury Lane in 1842 and revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells, and also in 1893 by the Independent Theatre, when Miss May Harvey gave an admirable performance as Mildred; whilst _Strafford_, _Colombe's Birthday_ and _In a Balcony_ have all seen the footlights and achieved at the most a _succes d'estime_. Few, however, even putting aside the vulgar, fallacious test of the box-office, would say that these works are really valuable stage dramas, despite the superb qualities obvious in them.

Some of Lord Byron's plays have been given upon the boards; but the real Byron of the stage is the author of _Our Boys_ and goodness knows how many more successful works, all as dead to-day as the dramas of Sheridan Knowles. It has been said that _The Cenci_, when produced privately by Sir Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, with Miss Alma Murray as heroine, acted very well. Has the Stage Society ever considered the question of a revival?

How, then, did it happen that Balzac, Byron, Browning and Reade failed as dramatists, despite the eager desire of three of them, at least, to win success on the boards? It is undeniable that the three--one may put aside Byron--are intensely "dramatic" writers. _Les Chouans_ reads almost as if it were a play converted into a novel, and has been adapted successfully, and like _Le Pere Goriot_, which someone has called the French _King Lear_, has been used for the stage after the time when the long-desired marriage with Madame Hanska was ended by the premature death of the author of the fine phrase, "_Vierges de corps nous etions hardis en paroles_." Indeed, in half the works composing the prodigious _Comedie Humaine_ are pa.s.sages of immense dramatic force. Clearly, too, the author of "The Cloister and the Hearth" could paint character and was a splendid storyteller into the bargain. It would be impossible to say this without certain qualifications in the case of Browning; yet who that has been fascinated by that colossal work "The Ring and the Book"

can deny it? Why, then, should Balzac and Browning have failed where Shakespeare and Sardou have succeeded?

The question brings forward another, and it is this: whether Shakespeare, if he were writing nowadays, would be a successful dramatist. At first sight it seems an absurd question, but it is permissible because one must recognize the fact that what perhaps prevented Balzac and Browning from being successful has not proved an impediment to the triumph of Shakespeare. The dramas of our national dramatist are the most heavily thought-burdened plays that have had popular success in modern times, and in the works of Browning there are so many ideas that it is often difficult to see the idea. To the modern writer of anything like Shakespeare's calibre, or Browning's, the simple joy in the story is no longer possible, and probably Shakespeare, if born forty years ago, and if content to work for such a medium as the stage, would, like an Ibsen, have chosen themes that do not appeal to our people. But was Shakespeare, "Shakespeare"?

It is not merely a want of the knack of playwriting--a vulgar, useful term--that kept Browning or Tennyson from success on the stage. No one ever had such a prodigious "knack" as Ibsen, and _Rosmersholm_ is the most amazing _tour de force_ of craftmanship. Yet despite his influence upon modern drama, Ibsen--a great poet, a great thinker, a great observer, and the greatest of craftsmen--has been unpopular as a dramatist in England.

One begins to see that an element in the answer to be given to the question is the fact that some of the great writers who have failed upon the stage owe their want of success in part to their over-estimation of the power of the acting play to convey ideas, and consequently to their putting so much more into their work than the average audience can get out that the public shirks the task of grappling with them at all.

Shakespeare, under peculiar circ.u.mstances, was grappled with before our time, and has been predigested for us; but the others have had no such fortune. Moreover, much of the national dramatist's finest work is cut when his works are produced and some are rarely given, others never.

Several able writers, such as Robert Buchanan, have rushed to the opposite extreme and obtained ephemeral success by empty plays injurious to their reputation as men of letters, and a few of us think that one of our most successful and brilliant novelist-playwrights has a dangerous tendency in this direction. It is, of course, given to few to judge so perfectly as Pinero what is the extreme quant.i.ty of thought that can be put into a play without frightening the public, and he has had more than one splendid failure from taking too hopeful a view of the intelligence of playgoers.

The Ending of the Play

A large number of readers begin a novel at the wrong end, particularly those of the s.e.x many members of which are threatened with moustaches, according to the latest hysterical shriek of certain medicine-men, because of their weakness for putting cigarettes between their dainty lips. They look at the last chapter before reading the first; the practice is indefensible, criminal. Authors take an immense amount of trouble in working up logically to a conclusion and preparing the minds of their readers for it, and most of this trouble goes by the board if you begin by reading the last chapter. In the case of the humbler cla.s.ses of fiction the injury to the writer is even greater: he has endeavoured by manoeuvres, limited in character by certain laws of the game, to spring a surprise upon the reader by puzzling her as to the ending of the story and she, instead of "playing the game" and trying to unravel it, "cuts the Gordian knot," the most hackneyed _cliche_ in the _repertoire_ of the journalist. This grossly unfair treatment of novelists ought to be punished, or at least be subject to procedure in the Chancery Division for breach of confidence.

The really honest reader shrinks from such an offence as if it were eavesdropping. It is well known that many novels actually begin with the last chapter. The Irishism represents the fact that the author starts by exhibiting people in a dramatic position and then proceeds to show how they came to be there.

There is always something of this method in a play. One cannot conveniently begin, like Sterne, with the birth of the hero--and even a little before--and work steadily forward. "Tristram Shandy," it may be, is a poor example, since "steadily" is perhaps the worst adjective in the dictionary to describe the progress of that novel. Of course there are plays in which a prologue is employed, but the device is clumsy; and in these instances, when the real drama is reached, an explanation of what has happened during the gap between the prologue and the first act is necessary.