Our Stage and Its Critics Part 2

Some while ago--it was in 1902-1903--the critics were aghast--editors, too, perhaps. Mr Justice Ridley had permitted a jury to give 100 as damages for libel in respect of a dramatic criticism less severe than dozens that most of us have written: it was said that some critics consulted their solicitors as to the best means of rendering their property "judgment proof"--a picturesque term that comes from America.

Later on the Court of Appeal interfered effectively, though possibly many actions were begun and settled before the appeal was heard; and it was held that in a libel action founded upon a criticism written concerning a work of art, unless there is some evidence of malice it is the judge's duty to consider whether the criticism can fairly be construed as being outside the range of fair comment, and if he thinks that the comments lie within the range of criticism he should decide the case in favour of the defendant, and not let it go to the jury. Then the critics breathed again, and the story goes that Fleet Street laid in a large stock of vitriol.

The next, and at present last, act in the matter was the recovery by Mr Frederick Moy Thomas of 300 damages for a libel which appeared in _Punch_ upon his book called "Fifty Years of Fleet Street." Although the matter related to a book, and not to a play, the dramatic critics felt anxious again, because no distinction could be drawn between criticisms upon the two kinds of work. The case was peculiarly interesting to the dramatic critics because the plaintiff, who had been one of our craft for some length of time, enjoyed the reputation of being very learned in matters connected with the drama, as well as sound and conscientious.

Moreover, his father, William Moy Thomas, whose name was introduced into the case, was for many years past one of the most esteemed and admired of our profession, owing to his knowledge, fairness, judgment and excellence of style. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict, and _Punch's_ record of long existence without a verdict against it for libel is spoilt. Its licence, the licence of a nation's jester, has been endorsed.

It may be asked whether this is not a mere matter for the craft: in reality the public is concerned. The letter written by one friend to another, gossiping about a play or a book or a picture, exposes the writer to an action for libel unless it can be protected on the ground of truth, privilege or fair comment; and casually written remarks concerning any matter of public interest may result in damages and costs. Indeed, to put the matter simply, the professional critics have no greater rights or privileges of criticism than any member of the public. It is therefore very important to all of us to know how the matter stands, and since the judgment of the Master of the Rolls is rather technical, it seems worth while briefly to state the law in unscientific phrases.

The written opinion upon any matter of public interest--a play, a book, a piece of music, a picture, the speech of a politician, the sermon of a parson, the behaviour of a general, the conduct of an admiral, the methods of a judge, etc.--must fulfil two conditions. It must be honest and it must be expressed fairly in the point of form. In the "Ridley"

action the honesty of the opinion was admitted, and the question arose whether the opinion was fair in form. In the famous Whistler _v._ Ruskin cause there was no doubt about the critic's honesty--fancy doubting Ruskin's honesty! However, the jury thought that he went too far in his phrase "nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture," and probably the word "c.o.xcomb" was fatal, for it was irrelevant.

It might almost be said that relevancy is the test of fairness in the form of a criticism. It was irrelevant as well as inaccurate to speak of a "naughty wife" in a criticism upon _The Whip Hand_, because there was "no naughty wife" in the play, and therefore the jury gave one shilling damages and the Court of Appeal upheld the verdict.

In criticism of a book, play, picture, etc., the private life and character of the author are irrelevant; even his character as author, except in relation to the particular work or works criticized, is irrelevant. If you think that a book or play is immoral or indecent, say so, say so strongly, and if the criticism, though unsound, represents your honest opinion you will escape; but it is irrelevant to say that the author caused it to be immoral or indecent in order to obtain a _succes de scandale_, and you must prove that charge to be true or be punished. There is a distinction between alleging that Smith's book, "The Biography of Brown," is dull, and that Smith is a writer of dull books--_ex pede Herculem_ would not be a valid plea.

If honest and discreet in language you may be abominably incorrect in opinion. You are at liberty to say that a composition by Strauss is a mess of hideous sounds, that one of Sargent's pictures is ridiculous, that a novel by Meredith is tiresome, but you must be very careful, when criticizing a particular work, if you make general allegations concerning the author. Nevertheless, it is permissible to criticize the works of a dramatist generally upon a reasonable opportunity; yet there is a danger of your getting into trouble on the point of honesty, for it is not honest to comment upon his works generally unless you are well acquainted with them.

To sum up: if the opinion expressed is honest and relevant, then mere unsoundness of judgment will not hurt you. The opinion of the jury, or even of the judge, is not to be subst.i.tuted for yours, otherwise we should have to burn our pens. There is sense in this. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and even the learned judge, may have less knowledge of art, or less taste in music, than the starving critic of Fleet Street.

Honesty is the other element. Yet it has been suggested, though unsuccessfully, that honesty is not a necessary ingredient in the defence of "fair comment." It was argued that a criticism, defensible if written by an honest critic, could not be indefensible because written by one whose motive was malicious--in other words, that the matter was objective, not subjective. Certainly, at first sight, it seems strange that A can say with impunity that Smith's book is dull and B may have to pay damages for saying the same thing in the same words. Clearly the injury to the author may be the same in each case, might be greater in A's if he wrote for a paper of larger circulation than the one which published "B's" criticism.

On the other hand, few acts can be regarded in law from the point of view of their consequences only. Smith may be killed by "A" or "B," and the former, on account of the circ.u.mstances, may commit non-culpable homicide, the latter murder.

To eliminate the ingredient of malice or, and it is the same thing, to say that a criticism need not be honest might lead to shocking consequences. The skilful craftsman would be able to write a fiendish criticism with impunity and boast of the gratification of his hatred.

There is no half-way house. A plaintiff must be ent.i.tled to offer evidence to a jury that the so-called critic has stated that, although he called the plaintiff's book dull and clumsy, he really thought it a delightful masterpiece; or he must be limited to inviting judge and jury to study the defendant's article. Who would be satisfied that justice had not slept if such evidence were excluded?

If, then, you dislike the author, dip your pen in honey rather than in vinegar or, wiser still, leave his work alone. You must be more than human not to be bia.s.sed and if, to contradict the bias, you praise the book against your judgment, you act wrongly as a critic. What is honesty? There is the crux. Courts of law are but man-made machinery and very imperfect, juries are often very stupid, even judges--but perhaps we ought to pause here. Consequently, if the author has any grounds for suggesting that you are ill-disposed towards him, and yet you must act as critic (amateur or professional), be scrupulously relevant and decidedly colourless. At present the honesty has not been a.n.a.lysed by the courts; some day the question will be raised whether competence is not a necessary ingredient. Could a Gautier who hated music _honestly_ criticize a symphony; could a blind man _honestly_ criticize a picture?

These are extreme cases, and a line must be drawn somewhere. Still, some day the courts may require the defendant to give evidence of his fitness to act as a critic if his fitness be challenged. To these remarks one obvious matter should be added. All statements of fact in a criticism must be accurate. The line between matters of fact and matters of opinion is sometimes fine, but the law is clear. An allegation of fact is not comment, and all such allegations, if injurious, must be justified--that is--proved to be true, if the defence of fair comment is pleaded.

CHAPTER II

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

His Duty to be Tolerant

Some remarks which appeared in a popular weekly paper concerning Mrs Patrick Campbell's _Deirdre_ and _Electra_ deserve a little consideration. One of the critics attached to the paper spoke of the affair as being an "indifferent performance of indifferent tragedies,"

and then said it was "a simple affectation to profess to enjoy it," and that it was not, "as some people seem to think, a mark of culture, but only of insufficient culture not to acknowledge that one is bored by this kind of thing."

An affronted critic wrote to the paper, complaining of the charge of affectation and insufficient culture, and was promptly rebuked as a "b.u.mptious correspondent," and told that his letter convinced the critic that he was one of those affected persons whose misdirected zeal the writer deplored. This att.i.tude is not a novelty. Many of the critics, at one period, charged the professed admirers of Wagner with being impostors or imbeciles; later on, anyone who professed to like the pictures of Whistler or Rossetti or Burne-Jones, or of any of the Impressionists, was accused of affectation. When Ibsen was introduced to England the conservative critics raved, and alleged that the Ibsenites (or "Obscenites"--the word was considered very witty) were humbugs; this was one of the least offensive charges. The same kind of thing happened in the case of Maeterlinck. Many other instances might be cited.

It is a curious form of attack. Why should a critic who alleged that he had much pleasure and certainly no boredom from Mr Yeats' play and Mrs Campbell's beautiful acting, be charged with affectation and also with insufficient culture? Of course, the critics are insufficiently cultured. There are thousands of plays and books that they ought to have read, of dramas they ought to have witnessed, of pictures they ought to have seen, ma.s.ses of music they ought to have heard--and have not--and, therefore, they are persons of very insufficient culture. But the writer in question should offer some evidence of his own sufficiency of culture before alleging that the critic's opinion concerning the play and the performance was due to a lack of culture.

After all, one would seem ent.i.tled to express an opinion on a question of art or pleasure without being called a liar by someone who takes a different view. The matter is one of some importance because the attack is insidious and dangerous. The deadliest weapon in the hands of the critic is the allegation of boredom. You can say that a piece is vulgar, indelicate, inartistic, indecent, full of "chestnuts," old-fashioned, "melodramatic," ill-constructed or unoriginal, without doing fatal injury, but if you allege that you and everybody else suffered from boredom your attack may be fatal. This is the reason why the charge is so often made by people with strong prejudices.

There is something to be said on both sides. No doubt the lovers of the severer form of drama, the worshippers of Shaw, the playgoers who supported the societies of which the Independent Theatre was the first and regarded the Court Theatre for a while as a kind of Mecca, are not always judicious when talking about musical comedy and comic opera, and some of them have been very narrow-minded. They have refused to admit the merit of any comic operas, except those of Gilbert and Sullivan, they have lavished indiscriminating abuse upon almost all others, have looked upon Daly's Theatre and the Gaiety and the Prince of Wales' as so many Nazareths. This, of course, has caused a great deal of annoyance to the lovers of musico-dramatic work.

Moreover, some of the austere folk have denounced melodrama and farce, and the so-called romantic comedy, without drawing nice distinctions.

This indiscriminate denunciation has naturally caused annoyance and reprisals. Because some critics disliked _A Chinese Honeymoon_ enormously, because wild motor 'buses could not drag them to see _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, they do not doubt, or pretend to doubt, that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people have enjoyed these pieces. Without for one moment believing in the phrase "De gustibus non est disputandum" as ordinarily interpreted, one must fully recognise that palates differ. If M. Steinheil chose to dine upon cold pork-pie, sausage, cold veal and lobster as the papers allege, it is not surprising that he died, only a little amazing that the French police were puzzled as to the cause of his death, but there was no reason for charging him with affectation in eating such a meal or insufficient culture, though it was hardly the banquet of a gourmet. One may pull a wry face at a costly _Bouillabaisse chez_ Roubillon at Ma.r.s.eilles without doubting that poor old "G.A.S.," and Thackeray too, loved the dish. Some prefer homely beer to any of the white wines of the Rhine, yet many people honestly enjoy those high-priced varieties of weak-minded vinegar; and no doubt it is not affectation which causes some people to allege that they like black pudding and tripe and onions.

The matter has its serious aspect. The attacks made, very unfairly, upon the novel forms of drama by conservative critics, when they take this form of alleging that not only the critic but the audience was bored, and that professed admirers are insincere, undoubtedly are very effective, and certainly are sometimes made in good faith.

There are people so foolish as to think that n.o.body can like what they do not; also so fatuous as to consider that no one ought to like what they do not; but to jump from this to alleging that the professed admirers of ambitious works are humbugs is outrageous. The butcher boy enjoys _Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street_: why should he disbelieve my statement that others get pleasure from a performance of a _Hedda Gabler_, which would hardly appeal to him?

Large numbers of playgoers have been kept away from able and ambitious dramas, written by dramatists with a true artistic aim, because of the oft-repeated allegations by newspaper writers, who did not like them, that everybody was bored; also the wholesale denunciation of the lighter forms of dramatic and musico-dramatic forms of entertainment by some of the critics has weakened their influence, has led the man in the street to think that if Mr X. or Y. or Z. can find no pleasure in what he likes that he will get no entertainment from what they admire. One supposes, at least hopes, that dramatic critics of all kinds and grades have an honest desire for the advance and success of British Drama. They will hardly be successful in their wishes unless on each side a little more tolerance is shown for the opinions professed by members of the other.

His Sympathies when Young

In some criticisms on certain demi-semi-private performances given in London by a well-known French actress and her company there seemed to be a note not often discoverable in English articles dealing with the theatre. It appeared as if several of the writers had a kind of fierce exultation in the thought that the play represented was likely to shock a good many people--people presumably ent.i.tled to have their feelings considered seriously. In the annals of English art there has been rather a scanty exhibition of the desire to do what may be most easily described by two French phrases, "_epater le bourgeois_" or "_ebouriffer le bourgeois_."

It is, in fact, noticeable that we possess no recognised English set phrase, such as "to startle the Philistine" or "to ruffle the hair of the Philistine." Indeed, before Matthew Arnold imported the term Philistine from Germany, as equivalent in art matters to the French "_le bourgeois_" or the later expression "_l'epicier_," we really had nothing at all to correspond with these terms. For to shock "Mrs Grundy" is quite off the point. This is the more remarkable because the _bourgeois_ feeling--treated, by the way, admirably in Balzac's short story "Pierre Gra.s.sou"--has long been the curse of English art, and, as represented by the Royal Academy, still remains a paramount power for evil.

It cannot be said that the desire to "_ebouriffer le bourgeois_" often leads to valuable results so far as the works intended to accomplish the feat are concerned, although it is possible that some of them have otherwise had a beneficial result. Another French phrase, "_pour activer la digestion_," contains a hint that such an attempt may indirectly render service to art. Our popular ideas of medical treatment have never adopted the theory suggested by the foreign phrase, which is that when the digestive apparatus is sluggish it is advisable to eat something violently indigestible so that the stomach, summoning all its forces to deal with the intruder, may be aroused to a state of activity. This is a kind of theory to be tried on the dog--not your own dog, of course.

Yet it may be that an occasional slap in the face of the public in respect of artistic matters awakens it from the complacent state of lethargy in which it lies with regard to most questions of art.

The young English dramatist has very few opportunities of making the hair of the Philistine stand on end or activating his digestion; he is worse off than the youthful British painter who, as those that have haunted the English studios and the ateliers on the Surrey side of the Seine well know, can give a kind of birth to his insults to the taste of the churchwarden. Once down upon canvas a picture is at least half-alive, whilst nothing is more pitifully dead than the audacious play in ma.n.u.script.

The Theatre de l'Oeuvre gave to French revolutionaries in dramatic art the chance of setting the Seine on fire, but the Censor has allowed our playwrights little scope. The evasion of his authority by means of nominally private performances has brought into brief life on the boards very few pieces in my time in which one can really see evidence of the youthful desire to shock the Philistine. In _Ghosts_, _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_, and _Monna Vanna_, though all three were prohibited by the authority, there is no sign of the particular element in question.

The first two are serious, sober studies of social problems, not intended to shock or startle but to educate the orthodox. The prohibition of the third was simply an official blunder in relation to a dignified work of art.

On the other hand there is a trace of the spirit in _Mrs Warren's Profession_, and _Salome_ seems full of it. Curiously enough, in some of the permitted dramas by Mr Bernard Shaw there is evidence of this desire. Mr Shaw often seems to be saying, "I'm going to make your flesh creep." He is a brilliant dramatist, and also, desperately in earnest, and it may well be that they are right who think that his plays will live along after the death of most English works produced since the public and critics were bewildered at the first performance of _Widowers' Houses_, and he certainly appears to adopt as a policy the theory of stirring up into activity the lethargic stomach of the British playgoer by devices carefully calculated to make him howl.

_Salome_ stands in another category: the author had no lesson to teach.

As a work of art his play would not be invalidated or even weakened if, instead of the biblical characters and phrases, he had invented his prophet, slightly altered time and place, and left out the quotations; but to have done this would have been to avoid shocking people. Of course it is not always easy to be certain whether an audacity is employed with the desire to "_ebouriffer le bourgeois_" that may be excusable, or with the object of beating the big drum and calling attention, ign.o.bly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of _Salome_ it is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who ill.u.s.trated the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of _The Times_ in his work "The Insanity of Genius."

Such audacities often deceive the youthful critic, and, in some of the notices referred to, the signs of youth are manifest in the ill-balanced enthusiasm, as well as in the employment of phrases of praise which the old hand shirks with a curious kind of bashfulness.

In criticism there is a difficulty a.n.a.logous to that which is supposed to beset the performance of the part of Juliet; it is rather nicely put in the t.i.tle of one of Beranger's poems--and also of a rather dreary, once popular, novel, "Si Jeunesse Savait, si Vieillesse Pouvait." In youth one has intense sympathy with the lost causes, or, rather, with those that have not yet been found, and superb contempt for the conventional, without possessing the judgment to distinguish the tares from the wheat; every novelty attracts, every audacity appeals, and we introduce obscure artists of alleged genius by the dozen to an unsympathetic world; as age and judgment come enthusiasm wanes, till at last the inevitable crystallization begins and new ideas beat vainly at the doors of our minds.

Even before the crystallization has become serious it is very hard to appreciate the rare novelties of idea offered in our theatres; weariness of stale conventions which affects the young critic in a less degree than the old, does not easily induce one to accept mere outrages upon them. _Salome_, indeed, has some outrages upon stale conventions, but they are rather stale outrages.

Certain French comedies have reduced unconventionality in morals to a kind of spurious conventionality; in some of them the idea of marriage as a preliminary to connubial relations is regarded as rather shocking.

Some day Madame Granier will hide her face in her hands, shameful at the insult of "married woman" hurled at her; and our youthful critic will admire the audacity. Caution requires the statement that it was not Madame Granier who gave the semi-demi-private performances: honesty compels one to admit that these remarks const.i.tute a moan about lost youth, and are full of envy, hatred and malice towards those blessed with splendidly indiscreet enthusiasm for flaunting audacity in artistic matters.

The Jaded Critic

At this, the season of the country cousin, the gift and sometimes receipt of game, the abandonment of autumn underclothing and the overhauling of pike tackle, a question is often put to the critic. It comes from the country cousin, and is generally in these words or thereabouts: "What piece ought we to take tickets for?" which generally has an under-surface suggestion, and might be translated into: "For what theatre are you going to get us seats?" Of course we are dense enough not to notice that the inquiry is more than skin-deep; the question of "paper" for the critics is not one concerning which it is necessary or desirable to write. The answer to the surface inquiry generally provokes a discussion. In a guarded way the critic makes a reply containing the formula "I think you would like ----" which does not altogether please the inquirer. For the country cousin suspects the existence of a lurking insult to him upon the point of taste or intelligence.

The end of it is always, or nearly, the same, and to the effect that of course we "jaded critics" do not really care about any pieces at all, and only visit the theatre because we are paid to go, and that it is awfully unfair that such "jaded"--one cannot help insisting upon the word "jaded"--people should be allowed to act as critics. It has been suggested bluntly that we ought to be dismissed after fifteen years'

labour, and of course, if there were a pension--but then we are no better off in that respect than county-court judges.

Yet even the cleverest country cousin cannot suggest any useful employment for superannuated, middle-aged dramatic critics.