Our Stage and Its Critics Part 6

This brings us not unnaturally to a matter in which there has been some change of taste. A fearful exhibition of a man in a fit, given with horrible power by that admirable actor Mr Pateman in a melodrama called _Master and Man_, would perhaps not be condemned in our days, but probably we would not endure, and certainly there would be little praise for, some of the death scenes once famous in drama. The critics nowadays would apply to the actress the phrase of the auctioneer to his wife, and implore her to "get on with her dying."

There was the famous Mlle. Croizette in _Le Sphinx_, by that detestable dramatist Octave Feuillet; she squirmed horribly after taking poison from a ring; and it was alleged that she had studied the death of patients in hospitals--a brutal, horrible thing to do. There is a good deal too much dying in _Frou-Frou_, _La Dame aux Camellias_ and _Adrienne Lecouvrer_. Without going back to the traditions of the Greek theatre, one may say confidently that, if death on the stage is permissible, dying is almost illegitimate, and trick falls, exhibitions of agony, and the like are mere pandering to a very vulgar taste.

Occasionally the dying is so handled that, though somewhat prolonged, such a vigorous phrase ought not to be applied to it. For instance, one may refer to _In the Hospital_, once presented at the Court, where Mr Beveridge, in an admirable performance, gave a very tactful, restrained exhibition of approaching death and actual decease. Another objection exists to any exhibition upon the stage of dying as compared with death. The symptoms often call up terrible memories to some members of the audience which are not evoked by the simple fact of death itself. It cannot be pretended that these references to instances of the horrible and the trifling comments upon them establish the existence of the distinction indicated, but they may be of some a.s.sistance to those who endeavour to explore the matter. It is at least pleasant to note that there is a modern tendency to obtain effects of the horrible by appeals to the imagination rather than to the senses.

It should be added that Mr F.R. Benson presented a Frankenstein play written by Mr Stephen Phillips, but the question of the horrible appearance was discreetly avoided.

The Immorality Play

The summer visit to London of foreign players generally gives birth to discussions upon several topics. Of course the question as to the relative merits of French and English acting is raised. Upon this, one may give a warning to the thoughtless not to accept as universal the vague proposition that the French are a nation of born actors. Of course everybody each year points out that it is absurd there should be several foreign companies at a time in London cutting the throats of one another, as to which one may say that the matter is far more complicated than most people suppose.

The point worth nothing is the choice of plays by our visitors. Some of them no doubt are wise; Bernhardt, for instance, recognizes the fact that a showy piece with a big part for her is exactly the right thing provided that it is easily understood by the Berlitzians and Ollendorffians. There are others, however, such as Madame Rejane, more ambitious, who in their selection of plays do some disservice to their country.

The humour of Mr Gilbert's line "The not too French French bean" appeals irresistibly to the English.

There has long been a vague idea in British bosoms that our neighbours in s.e.xual matters are far more immoral than ourselves. This is not the occasion upon which to examine the causes and origin of such a decidedly erroneous view. One may, however, single out one of them. It is largely the fault of writers of fiction that we remain in ignorance, or rather--and this is worse--in error concerning the character of our amiable neighbours.

In former days, putting aside the naughty farces not supposed to present a picture of actual life, most French dramas were quite sound in conventional morality. Augier presented some wicked people, such as Olympe, concerning whom he invented the phrase _la nostalgie de la boue_; but he was unequivocably moral in his aims, and preached the sanct.i.ty of marriage and maternity. Dumas _fils_, putting aside one indiscretion, was equally vigorous in his desire to support accepted views of morality. His ill.u.s.trious father, it may be admitted, occasionally propounded startling propositions, but without prejudice, I fancy, to a sound belief in the idea that exceptional cases must be regarded as exceptions.

None, however, of these writers, however artificial their views of life, ever offered pictures of society based upon the proposition that the chast.i.ty of woman is of no importance.

Many of the present school of French dramatists write plays--unfortunately chosen for presentation in England--which a.s.sume the existence in society of a large cla.s.s of people, otherwise amiable, who act upon the proposition that in Paris as in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Unmarried men and women live together, the males paying for the board and lodging, etc., of the females without there being any pretence that the intimacy of their relations is radically immoral under normal circ.u.mstances. They do not even indulge in fireworks in such plays. You do not have parodies of the famous phrase "Property is theft"; for the heroines fail to justify themselves by remarking that marriage is immorality. There is simply a business of union and disunion, _collage_ and _decollage_, coupled with what one may call cross-unions, all of them apparently free from the embarra.s.sment of children and none of them involving any of the more dignified of the human emotions. One of the worst of the number was _L'Age d'Aimer_, by M. Pierre Wolff, a piece so cynically immoral, and written with such an air of truth, that it might well cause some of us to shrink in horror from the idea of an _entente cordiale_ with a people which, if truly represented by its fashionable dramatists, has no concept of cleanliness of life. Without posing as a champion of orthodox morality and certainly without taking objection to the study of s.e.x questions on the stage, one may protest against works in which it is a.s.sumed there is no s.e.x question, because every form of union, on any basis, except perhaps that of marriage, is permissible.

By-the-by, why was the press that was so indignant about the so-called problem play almost silent concerning these French dramas? Where were the phrases, such as miasmatic putrescence or putrescent miasma--I forget which it was--that used to greet the dramas of Ibsen? Where are the splendid Puritans who howled about _A Wife without a Smile_? Could it be--the thought is painful--that they did not quite understand _L'Age d'Aimer_ and imagined that all the people were married? This idea is simply humiliating to one of the craft. "Ne rien comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" is a very novel view of a famous phrase.

Madame Rejane, it was stated in the papers, has expressed herself shocked by _A Wife without a Smile_, and alleged that she would never act in such a piece; but it may well be that her horror lay in the fact that the parties concerned in the farce had been through a ceremony of marriage, and that she would have accepted it as permissible if it were correctly ent.i.tled _A Cocotte without a Leer_. The point is, not that those who understand these plays or those who do not are affected in their moral ideas by them, but that they give a deplorable picture of French life and in such a guise as to suggest that it is a picture of normal French life; unfortunately _L'Age d'Aimer_ is only one of many.

It is a great pity to use such a powerful vehicle as the stage for slandering a nation. That there is a certain amount of truth in works of the _Zaza_, _Sapho_, _Les Demi-Vierges_ and _L'Age d'Aimer_ type is incontestable; yet so far as they are true to general life one can find their parallel in this holy island. Unfortunately, whilst the fast society of Paris is no bigger than that of London, and whilst Paris is infinitely less in relation to France than London in relation to England, the great French nation is generally judged over here by flashy pictures of the fast section of Paris society, drawn, very often, if not always, from the outside, by clever people too indolent to know that the psychology of decent people is quite as interesting and dramatic as that of the gutter-creatures of mere pa.s.sion who dignify their cynical desires with n.o.ble names, and, so far as the latest school is concerned, fail even to reach the humblest concept of free love.

Scripture Plays

There have been some complaints about the att.i.tude of several of the dramatic critics concerning Mr Jerome's drama _The Pa.s.sing of the Third Floor Back_. It has been suggested that they have not welcomed with sufficient warmth a sincere attempt "to broaden the basis," a phrase apparently borrowed from the Tariff Reformers, to enlarge the boundaries of the British drama, but have treated the production of the piece as an everyday affair, confining their remarks to criticism concerning the workmanship.

In _The Third Floor Back_ a character is introduced who is called "The Stranger," but known by everybody in the theatre to represent Jesus Christ; and "The Stranger" visits a somewhat remarkable boarding-house in which all the boarders and the landlady are vile, and after his visit all of them are fit for immediate translation to heaven.

Certainly, many of us are anxious to broaden the basis of our drama. A little while ago an important foreign paper contained a article saying that the object of the London stage is "to introduce living pictures to say pretty things for young girls," and that "of the social, religious, economic or intellectual struggles which agitate our time no trace is observable in the English stage literature of the day," and that English stage literature "has become nothing more than an insipid and dying study of the doings of the aristocratic and the rich." How sickening to know that in the main the charges are true, and that our drama, with, fortunately some exceptions, is merely a kind of Pap and Puppet affair.

On the other hand, the broadening effect of a play such as Mr Jerome's is not obvious. The Censor has been dodged, just as he was dodged many years ago, when Verdi's opera _Nebuchadonozor_ was called _Ninus_ or when _Ben Hur_ was presented or _The Daughters of Babylon_. That official has already permitted the performance of _Everyman_ and _Hannele_. Consequently, it is not easy to see that the suggested broadening of the basis has taken place.

Moreover, there are many who doubt whether broadening, so as to admit a free trade in what could be called religious or Scripture drama, is desirable. We do not pretend that the office of Censor ought to be maintained merely to keep back a flood of plays introducing Scriptural characters. The office, no doubt, does good as well as harm, but the harm far outweighs the good. Would it be beneficial if this particular restriction--this working rule that characters bearing the names of personages of the Old and New Testament are not to be presented on the stage--were relaxed. There are enthusiastic persons who desire a closer union between Church and the Stage, and wish to have the theatre employed as a kind of pulpit, who believe that Scripture plays would be beneficial. It is conceivable that under certain circ.u.mstances the att.i.tude of these persons would be sound, but not under the present circ.u.mstances.

Most of our theatres are run as a mere commercial speculation by people who care little enough about art, and probably nothing about religion.

We have had one instance of the sort of thing that might be expected, _The Sign of the Cross_, in which a commonplace melodrama was mixed up with hymns and pseudo-religious talk and miracles, and a ballet as immodest, as pulse-disturbing, as any given in the theatres or the halls. Many visited the play who had never been to a theatre before, since they believed that it was really a religious drama outside their ban. Some were horrified, and from being potential playgoers became rapidly adverse to the stage and all its works; others were shocked and disturbed and delighted by the exhibition of female flesh in the ballet, with a result which can easily be guessed. No doubt a number of persons believed that the piece did good to them and other folk--some people will believe anything.

The people of taste and sensibility, who, whatever their state of religious belief, would regard with abhorrence the exhibition on the ordinary commercial stage of the Christ whom they were brought up to regard as Divine, have a t.i.tle to consideration. The traffic in blasphemy that would immediately follow the suggested enlargement of the boundary of the theatre is horrible to contemplate. Such abominations as a combination of Christ and semi-naked women doing more or less mitigated _danses du ventre_, would be justified as giving an Oriental colour.

There is another side. It may be taken that our laws against blasphemy have moved a good deal since Lord Coleridge's famous summing-up concerning the essential mutability of the Common Law about blasphemy which he gave in Regina _v._ Ramsey and Foote; if the restriction were removed what power would prevent the atheists from producing distinctly anti-Christian plays which might very well cause riots, which certainly would prove a serious counterblast, if discreetly handled, to the efforts of the Church and Stage enthusiasts. One can conceive every kind of crank with money producing a play to advocate his particular brand of religion.

We could not expect all the actors chosen to represent Christ to be gentlemen of fine sensibility, high character, and sincere feeling for art, like Mr Forbes Robertson; it is hardly pleasant to think of the character in the hands of some members of the profession. One can imagine a feeling of revulsion if any of the actresses who have made history--in the Divorce Court--were chosen for the part of the Virgin Mary.

This is said without for one moment suggesting that the players are one whit the worse in their way of living than the rest of us, or that managers of theatres are wickeder or more unscrupulously commercial than anyone else. Yet, speaking of the managers, one is forced to admit that the majority consult the taste of the majority, that many are willing enough to pander to vulgar cravings, and it is not imaginable that, unless our stage can be put upon a new basis, a freedom to produce religious or Scriptural drama would fail to cause great scandals.

As the matter stands, the att.i.tude of the Censor, though not logical, is not wholly unsatisfactory; it is ludicrous enough that he should have adopted an ostrich policy towards Mr Jerome's piece, yet no harm has been done by the production of this sincere and respectful drama.

Indeed, some good may have come from it. In an ideal world, no doubt, we should all be severely logical; in England we are radically illogical, and we carry out most of our affairs on a basis of compromises.

If you do not call your leading character Christ in the theatre you may call him Christ outside, seems the proposition implied in the licence for _The Pa.s.sing of the Third Floor Back_, but the very basis of the authority of the Lord Chamberlain is such that one cannot apply logic to his decrees and say that because he has permitted this he must sanction that. Some of these remarks may seem to suggest that it is advisable the office should be retained, which is not the case. We pay too high a price for it since it tends to paralyse the drama; on the other hand it is to be hoped that so long as the office exists the holders of it will be very careful concerning any efforts to exploit the Scriptures for the profit of the theatres.

The success of the St James's play will cause a rush of people, anxious to go "one better"--or worse--than Mr Jerome. No harm--possibly some good--may come from the present piece, but the circ.u.mstances should be regarded as exceptional. We have few playwrights so earnest as Mr Jerome, few actors or managers with such high ideals as those of Mr Forbes Robertson. It seems permissible and advisable to add that this article is not written from the point of view of one who professes to be "on the side of the angels," but merely as a protest against what in the long run would be one more blow to our staggering stage.

Anecdotal Plays

It appears that "Percival" of _The Referee_ has made a great discovery.

He has found out the reason why French plays are better than English, is able to put his "finger on the real difference which exists between French plays and English," he now knows why "many more plays are successfully adapted from French into English than _vice versa_." This sounded thrilling, but after finishing his article the reader was about in the humour of a person who has been promised "an awfully rippin' new story" and receives a feeble "chestnut."

Mr "Percival" is really like the American who discovered on going home very late at night the fact that the sun rises in the east, and cackled as much about his discovery as a hen over her first egg. His explanation is that, "with one exception--Pinero--the English playwright invents a plot and then writes in characters to carry that plot out. Your French playwright does not do this.... He takes an idea and works it out with dramatic action instead of taking a dramatic action and working it out with such incident ideas as may happen along. And sometimes your French dramatist just takes people with characteristics and lets them work their own play out for him."

There is no need to seek deeply to find out why "many more plays are successfully adopted from French into English than _vice versa_." The explanation is that owing to Parisian prejudice hardly any English plays of any merit, Shakespeare's excepted, have been adapted, and there is a ferocious hostility in France to foreign drama.

The modern French drama may be better than the English; perhaps "Percival" hardly a.s.serts that it is, unless in the pa.s.sage already quoted and in this phrase: "There is something about three plays in four in France which is lacking at home, and that something is something good." No doubt, if we take the past fifty years as a basis for comparison of the two dramas, the French is the better; but during the last fifteen there has been a change, and one could not make any sweeping a.s.sertion upon the subject as regards the plays of this period, unless it be limited to the plays produced in the ordinary way of theatrical commerce.

If the alleged superiority exists, one can offer two reasons for it without relying upon the brilliant discovery of "Percival." The first is the greater freedom of the French dramatist in choice of subject, and also in treatment; this gives him an enormous advantage.

The second is that, whilst there are almost as many people in Paris who will welcome rubbish as there are in London, there can also be found a large number of playgoers with a good deal of intellectual curiosity, whilst the intelligent amateur--using the phrase in its French sense--is comparatively rare in London. Consequently, the French dramatist has not only more freedom in subject and treatment than the English, but in addition a greater public of playgoers who bring their intellect into the auditorium. Probably "Percival" will claim that this second ground of explanation enters into his, and there is some truth in this.

On the other hand, his statement of fact that our dramatists, with the exception of Pinero, are mere story-tellers, and that the French authors write plays based upon ideas, is quite inaccurate.

Roughly, one may put dramas into three categories--the play of anecdote, the play of idea, and the play of character. "Percival" recognises the third category by his remark that "sometimes your French dramatist just takes people with characteristics and lets them work out their own play for him." As a matter of fact, few plays belong exclusively to any one of these categories. In which would "Percival" place Shakespeare's? He began to write a play by borrowing the plot from somebody, and primarily all his pieces may be regarded as anecdotal, but, in the pa.s.sage of the story through his mind to the pen, in some cases it became the vehicle for an idea, and, in all, the story grew to be of infinitely less importance than the characters.

Take _Oth.e.l.lo_. You may give an account of it as a story in which it is merely an adaptation of another man's work. You may treat it as a study of the idea of jealousy, and be uncertain whether suspicion is not more correct as a definition than jealousy, or you may consider it as an amazing gallery of pictures of character. It may be put into each category, and belongs to all.

Probably the question whether a drama belongs primarily to this, that, or the other of the categories is as otiose as the discussion whether the hen or the egg came first. No play lives that does not belong to the second and third category, and it cannot be put upon the boards without some reliance upon the first. On the other hand, whatever may be the belief of individual dramatists, it is doubtful whether any dramas are produced primarily based upon "taking people with characteristics and letting them work out their own play." It is obvious that people, even people with strongly marked characteristics, can live for years in juxtaposition without their relation to one another resulting in anything dramatic, or even theatrical. Paula Tanqueray and her husband might have lived and died unhappily together without offering any materials to the playwright, and so indeed might any of the characters in any of the plays by the brilliant author. Only when facts exterior to them begin to play upon the characters dramatically is there room for drama. There is an enormous amount of plot, psychological or physical, in every play.

Next to the first, the second category produces the plays most clearly defined. One might take the plays of Brieux, and some of the dead-and-gone dramas of Charles Reade. Here we have dramas of idea, more accurately of subject, still more accurately of problem. They are works in which the dramatist tries to prove something, or, at least, present some problem of social life, leaving to the audience the task of coming to a conclusion.

However, even M. Brieux cannot get on without category number one, whilst he puts as much of category number three in his work as he can.

He invents a story, and he chooses and endeavours to display characters as a vehicle for exhibiting his subject. Sometimes, to be just, he gets along--in a fashion--with a surprisingly small amount of plot, as in _Les Bienfaiteurs_. Even then the necessity of having some sort of form makes a good deal of story necessary. Jean Jullien, the inventor of the phrase "Une tranche de la vie," endeavoured to give plays without formal beginning or end, unconsciously, perhaps, tried to carry out a desire of Merimee's to write a play in respect of which the audience needs no knowledge of antecedent facts; but his success--in more senses than one--was only partial.

The English dramatists of what one might call the Independent Theatre, Stage Society, and Court Theatre management have struggled to avoid the anecdotal play, sometimes with a brilliant result, as in _The Voysey Inheritance_, _John Bull's Other Island_, or _Strife_; Mr J.M. Barrie in several successful works has minimised the story as much as possible.

Why does "Percival" ignore them? Has he overlooked the fact that most of the French dramas successfully adapted belong primarily to the category he condemns, and nearly all the rest to a subdivision of number three, ignored by him. This subdivision consists of star plays--that is, of dramas of theatrical character--in the manufacture of which the French dramatists excel. Many of the dramas by Dumas _fils_ show an ingenious combination of this subdivision with the anecdotal play. And Pinero--our exception--how would "Percival" cla.s.sify _His House in Order_, which has a strong story? In reality it is a very adroit mixture of story, idea, and comedy of character, this is the case with the other works of our leading dramatist.

The fact is that "Percival" has mistaken treatment for conception. All dramatists try to combine the three categories, but the worst cla.s.s attaches too much importance to the mere story; unfortunately our audiences are like the bad dramatist in this respect: hence the almost purely anecdotal play, like the anecdotal picture, is the most popular.

The Supernatural

That the forbidden is attractive is a commonplace and true. The third party in the divorce case is often less beautiful than the pet.i.tioner, the length of water beyond our own always promises better sport, the mushrooms seem to grow more thickly in the fields of others. In drama we see the same law in operation. No canon of art makes the "supernatural"