Our Stage and Its Critics Part 7

unlawful to the dramatist, but it is generally looked upon as illegitimate in serious drama. The word "supernatural" is used in its popular sense, which is well enough understood, but indefinable.

Naturally the dramatist is tempted the more when he sees the novelist using the supernatural effectively.

No wonder the playwright has tried to adapt _Frankenstein_; he has merely succeeded in presenting a grotesque unterrible figure where Mrs Sh.e.l.ley gave a thrill of horror. We have had several plays on the boards which overstep bounds. One can read Mr Jerome's tale "The Pa.s.sing of the Third Floor Back" without being oppressed by a sense of the inadequacy of his machinery, but when Mr Forbes Robertson is supposed on the stage to "blarney" eight or nine people who have ugly souls into righteousness we are not only unconvinced but actively incredulous. Possibly to simple minds the affair would be more impressive if the lodger wore a halo supposed to be invisible to the people on the stage, or produced an occasional flash of lightning or growl of thunder.

Take that dear old crusted melodrama _The Corsican Brothers_. The story was thrilling enough when merely read; it was easy to believe that the Dei Franchi had a special brand of const.i.tution which enabled them to see the family ghost whilst the more sceptical could talk of brain waves and suggestions and of subjective phenomena. That is where the modern novelist gets out of all hobbles; if you will not accept his spook as a genuine, old-fashioned spook, you can hardly refuse to swallow it as a subjective phenomenon. The blessed word "subjective" extricates him from all troubles.

The poor dramatist has no such refuge. Occasionally he can work his plot by means of a vision; and the hypnotic trance has served, as in the case of _The Polish Jew_; but his ghosts have to be strictly objective. In fact, using a technical term frivolously, his ghosts expect the ghost to walk regularly on Fridays. There is no humbug about them; no "Pepper"--but they have to be taken with a ton of salt!

This difficulty was, perhaps, of no great importance at a time when most people had faith in ghosts; when the most sceptical did not go further than Madame de Stael, who alleged that she did not believe in them but was afraid of them. It is not recorded what Benjamin Constant, her unhappy lover, thought about them. Nowadays things have changed and ghosts and the personal devil have joined the ranks of the unemployed, or only obtain employment with Mr Stead and his Julia.

There is, of course, the spook of the spiritualist, who demands serious consideration; but plays dealing with spiritualism are not common.

Perhaps because such playgoers as will accept the more or less material ghost are even more sceptical than the scientific as to the objective phenomena of the spiritualist. No doubt managers try to rise to the occasion and to make a steady advance in ghosts, devils and angels, but the mechanical improvements seem small. Indeed, in a sense there has been no advance since the days when Pepper's ghost terrified us at the poor old Polytechnic, and unfortunately the system of Pepper can only be used to a limited extent. There were moments of thrill in _Ulysses_ at His Majesty's.

The stage angels are the worst of the supernaturals. Because angels are supposed to dwell off the earth it is a.s.sumed that they must fly.

Furthermore, it is imagined that as fliers they belong to the heavier-than-air order, the monoplane variety, and so must have gigantic wings; no one makes provision for the working of the wings, which would involve tremendous muscular energy. You may answer that they have miraculous energy wherewith to flap them. If, however, the miraculous enters into the matter, why not imagine a miraculous method of flying which does not demand wings--by so doing you would avoid the necessity of making the angels look like ill-constructed birds. Something "smart"

might be done in the way of a "dirigible balloon" species of angel!

Fiends are modelled as flying-machines on the lines of the bat--this may be taken from the latest Mephisto. The contrivers of stage effects are not to be blamed because they cannot overcome the difficulties offered by the playwrights. Yet they have not exhausted their means. They seem to be working on wrong lines, and so, too, are our scene-painters generally; but that is raising a very large question demanding separate treatment.

Certainly some years ago Mr Gordon Craig experimentally, in a curious piece called _Sword or Song_, presented at the Shaftesbury, gave suggestions in the supernatural that deserved attention, and in a broad way showed the possibility of arriving at striking stage effects by suggestion rather than actual depiction. It is, indeed, the fault of our play-mounters that they are too precise about dotting "i's" and crossing "t's," and like the pet photographers of amateurs they show too much detail.

Years ago, on the first night of _Hansel und Gretel_ at Daly's--what a delightful first night!--for a while the effect of the troops of angels on the stairs was quite charming--for a while--but, alas! the stage grew lighter, gauzes were raised, and then we saw plainly the young women of the chorus, with big wings, and could identify face after face, recollecting this young lady as formerly a peasant boy in one comic opera, and that as a village maiden in another, and so on. What a "give away," to use a common effective phrase!

The last prodigious production of _Faust_? Well, what thinking person can swallow the devil and the electric sparks from the sword, the wine drawn from the table, the comicalities of the witches' kitchen, or be moved by the Brocken scenes? It is very well to say that Goethe intended and expected his drama to be put on the stage, though this can hardly apply to the second part. Even if he did he cannot have expected such material matters to be treated as of serious importance--of such importance that, as represented, his great drama seems chiefly contrived to lead up to spectacular effects, plus a seduction story occasionally hurt by needlessly plain phrases.

It may be said that this is the jam used to induce us to swallow the powder; but really there is so much jam and so little powder that the benefit of the dose is doubtful. To be just to Sir Herbert Tree--his _Faust_ sinned no more in the matter than did the Lyceum setting; perhaps even a little less. Certainly there is rather more Goethe in the matter than Wills introduced.

It may be said that Shakespeare's plays were intended for the stage, and that he introduced "ghosts," as in _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_ and _Richard III._; possibly he believed in them. Yet, so far as one can judge from such knowledge as we have of the stage as he knew it and its resources, the treatment of his ghosts must have been really quite conventional and scenically unimpressive. There was some gain in this, for the more directly the ghost business is effective the more the attention of the audience is drawn to it; though the interest of the scene is not in the ghost but the effect it produces on the other characters; the case is one that may be summed up in the phrase quoted for us by Bacon--the better the worse.

CHAPTER V

PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES

Unsentimental Drama

It was suggested long ago that all the conceivable tunes would soon have been written, and possibly, if for "conceivable" one subst.i.tutes the word "obvious," there was truth in the suggestion. On the other hand experience breeds in us the belief that composers of genius could go on inventing novel melodies for centuries to come. Things have been happening lately, and threaten soon to occur again, which appear to show that our popular dramatists imagine that there are no new plots or subjects open to them. It is said that one playwright is busily engaged upon a novel version of _La Dame aux Camellias_ which is to be distinguished from Dumas' novel and drama by the fact that the heroine is chaste and does nothing worse than "a bit of flirting." It is to be hoped that Dumas will never hear of this astounding impudent perversion of his play. Perhaps ere now he has become hardened by the fact that the Duse has represented Marguerite as a creature of exquisite purity.

Moreover, it is alleged that somebody is going to write another version of _Faust_--presumably the pantomime edition by Wills is copyright. In addition, it appears that Mr Stephen Phillips has concocted an adaptation of _The Bride of Lammermoor_ in which the story and characters are vastly improved. Alas, poor Scott! On top of all this we hear of countless adaptations on the market, so that the ignorant wonder whether our dramatists are played out.

Perhaps the secret is to be discovered in some pa.s.sages that occurred during the trial of an action a little while ago, between two publishers, in which there was evidence to the effect that a book could not be a novel unless it had a love-story.

Of course, if upon our playwrights is imposed the limitation that all their plays must contain a love-story, the difficulty of the position is very great, and the greater still because they are not allowed to tell naughty love-stories unless they force upon them a moral ending, and they are very rarely permitted to indulge in a love-story which does not end in a wedding or the reconciliation of respectably wedded citizens.

No wonder that as a body they seem to be getting bankrupt in imagination; they appear to be in the position of a cook who is never allowed to handle anything but sweets.

The state of things is rather curious. It may be often a.s.serted truthfully of the West End theatres that there are as many love-stories as playhouses. Of late years, notwithstanding the evidence referred to, some of our novelists have shown a tendency to break away from the tradition; also some of the unfashionable playwrights exhibit signs of revolt; but the managers are timid, very timid, in the matter, and this is curious, because one has only to turn to Shakespeare to see that we have had modern successes with plays in which the love-story is trifling when it exists at all--_Hamlet_, for instance, and _Macbeth_, _Julius Caesar_, _King Lear_, _Henry VIII._, and other historical pieces.

Indeed, as soon as one begins to enumerate it appears that in most of the Shakespearean plays presented of late years the love interest, if any, has been a minor matter. Our managers might learn something from this.

There is mighty little sentimental love in the plays of "G.B.S." that have, or have had, a perilously disturbing vogue. And, indeed, when that ferocious dramatist does handle love it is in an intensely unsentimental fashion.

Moreover, love in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas is treated with cruel levity. Turn, by the way, to another great social satirist, Moliere; one finds again that love sometimes is ignored, and when handled at all often treated dryly, or as a matter of little moment. Our most popular comedy, _The School for Scandal_, though it has a reconciliation business, is quite independent of any sentimental matter of importance.

In several of the works of Mr Barrie, our most original popular dramatist, the sentimental interest is slight where it exists at all.

It seems needless to multiply instances; enough has been said to show that it is quite possible to make money with plays that are not at all sentimental. What a pity, then, that the dramatists who aim at general popularity should feel themselves constrained to be more or less sentimental, and also that managers should fight shy of the works of those dramatists, other than Mr Barrie, who have the courage to write unsentimental plays! For it is to be noticed that in the last ten years a great many unsentimental English plays have been written and produced by non-commercial managements. It does not from this follow that all of them ignore love and the relation of the s.e.xes, or even avoid actual love-stories; but as a cla.s.s they eschew the sentimental treatment which is and for a long time has been the distinguishing feature of British Drama.

A particular instance of the effect of the modern tradition may be mentioned. _The Beloved Vagabond_ had a great success as a novel; it enjoyed a London run as a play of about two months only. In the book the love-story is a minor matter, treated mainly with a sub-acid humour, and the author wisely avoids an absurd happy-ever-after conclusion. The play was supersaturated with sentiment, with a sentiment which drove out nearly all the humour and, roughly speaking, all the plausibility. Is it easy to doubt that it is the sentimental treatment which has caused the history of the play to be so different from that of the novel?

There are signs that the public is growing rather tired of mola.s.ses, which in fact is ceasing to be "golden" syrup. The main effect, apart from purely technical matters, of the new drama, that practically speaking began with the production of _The Doll's House_ at the Great Queen Street Theatre, has been destructive; the outcome has included some brilliant plays, the drawing power of which has never been fairly and fully tested; but the most important result has been the discontentment of the ordinary playgoer with the fare which once would have delighted him. Many bubbles have been p.r.i.c.ked; many conventions killed; many plays ridiculed by houses that once would have accepted them eagerly.

Numerous causes have contributed to the fact that during the last few years the total sum lost in the London playhouses has been enormous, despite some big successes, several of which have been of unsentimental plays--such as _Little Mary_--and it seems to be time for the managers and playwrights to begin to consider the question whether they cannot go farther afield and handle themes from which they have held aloof hitherto. Gorgeousness of mounting has ceased to help managers; even the maidens in their teens have grown sophisticated, and jeer at the bread-and-b.u.t.ter love-stories; and successful modern French drama offers a much smaller proportion of adaptable plays than used to be the case.

There must be a bottom to the deepest purse, and things can hardly go on in the legitimate playhouses as they have during the last few years; so it seems to be almost time for the managers to try to get out of a groove and look about for the unsentimental drama.

Since this was written the Phillips-Comyns Carr version of _Faust_ was produced and not accepted by the critical, whilst the Phillips version of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, called _The Lost Heir_, was a failure and deserved its fate. Also it may be added Mr Frohman has produced _Strife_, _Justice_, _Misalliance_ and _The Madras House_.

The Second-hand Drama

For some time past people have been seeking an explanation of the weakness of our modern drama, of the fact that except in the byways of the theatre, and with rare instances on the highways, it is sadly unoriginal. Numerous causes have been suggested, and probably many have played their part. There is one element in the matter the importance of which has been overlooked--it is the mania for making adaptations. No one will deny that most of the adaptations make bad plays, and that a large proportion prove unsuccessful; and the making of them has an evil effect upon the makers. The matter under discussion is not adaptations for the English stage of foreign plays--a topic of great importance, for the lack of protection to the foreign dramatists during a long period was a great cause of the sterility of British drama; and the habit of importing has not ceased merely because the foreigner acquired the right to payment. Many a playwright who might have become an original dramatist had all his power of imagination and invention atrophied through disuse.

Nowadays we import less than formerly, but our playwrights still produce the second-hand drama, getting their material ready-made from novels, and they suffer in the same way as their predecessors, and injure their natural gifts. This is not an entirely new thing. It may be suggested that Shakespeare was one of the most persistent of adapters. He may very well be left out of the question. Such genius as his has its own laws and privileges, and cannot very well be brought in as an element when discussing the procedure of much lesser men, and yet few critics will deny that in some instances his plays were injured by his following too closely the course of his original. Perhaps in his case the gifts of imagination and invention were sometimes dulled because he was to such a great extent an adapter.

The idea of the novelist may inspire a dramatist with an idea for a play, but the novelist's treatment of his idea hardly ever supplies the dramatist with useful materials. We have had scores of radically bad plays adapted by clever men from good novels. At first sight it looks as if the playwright would gain an advantage from using ready-made materials, but careful consideration and experience show that this is not the case; he is overwhelmed by excess of material, and his task of selection is appallingly difficult.

Moreover, his material is all in the wrong form, and has to be transformed--and the process of transformation requires great skill.

For it must be remembered that the methods of the dramatist and the novelist as a broad proposition are entirely different; and when the playwright is dealing with a long, finely-written, complex novel he can hardly expect his adaptation to bear a greater resemblance to the original than that of an easy pianoforte transcription to one of the later operas of Wagner.

One need only consider any of the novels of d.i.c.kens and the stage version that impudently bears its name to see how entirely crushed the dramatist has been by excess of material--like a Tarpeia by the gifts of the enemy--by difficulty in selection, and in transformation, and recollect that the product has almost always been an inconsecutive story, unintelligible to those unacquainted with the book, dest.i.tute of the peculiar atmosphere of d.i.c.kens, irritating to lovers of the novel because pet characters have been entirely suppressed or cut down nearly to nothing, and only recognisable in many cases as a version of the original on account of costumes, names, make-up, sc.r.a.ps of eccentric dialogue, and general trend of the mutilated story.

Now, seeing that there are upon record a vast number of adaptations that have failed, a number that bears a proportion to the successful far higher than the proportion of failures in original works, it seems worth while to consider for a little what is at the bottom of the matter, since to do so may prevent some playwrights from wasting their time and other people's money.

First, one may ask why so many dramatists indulge in the rather inglorious work of adaptation. No doubt there is one great advantage in producing an adaptation of a successful novel. A large ma.s.s of ready-made advertis.e.m.e.nt exists: of the thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands who read a popular novel, a very large proportion feel curious to see it upon the stage. Consequently the adaptation starts with the enormous aid of having been advertised very effectively on a big scale. This element alone is not sufficient to command success; for if the piece is indifferent, if the critics condemn it, if the reception is unfavourable and the unofficial opinion of playgoers is hostile, it can do little to save the work, since the readers of the book get the idea that the dramatist has made a mess of it and they keep away, and so of course does the general public.

It is, however, commonly believed that it is easier to manufacture a play from a book than to write an original drama. People imagine that the playwright, finding characters, plot and incidents ready-made in the novel, can produce the piece with less trouble and difficulty than if he has to look for them at large. This is a delusion founded upon the failure to perceive the radical difference between the technique of the novelist and the dramatist. It is true that in some cases adaptations have had enormous success: one might take two modern instances, _The Little Minister_ and _Sherlock Holmes_. The latter really confirms these remarks. The general public would fancy that in the stories of "Sherlock Holmes" there are plenty of effective plots. The ingenious authors of the play were shrewd enough to perceive this was not the case; consequently they merely used certain characters from the tales and invented an entirely new story. Later on Sir Arthur did find one story suitable, and _The Speckled Band_ has been successful as a lurid melodrama at the Adelphi and the Globe.

In _The Little Minister_ success was achieved by entirely vulgarising a charming book, by throwing away all that distinguished it, and converting what might be called a delicately sentimental comedy into a farce. We are not, however, dealing with the question from the point of view of the novelist's credit; incidentally it must be observed that there are few modern cases on record where the play has not borne to the novel the relation of a crude black-and-white copy to a picture.

The difficulties are two: objective and subjective. The second is the subtler, therefore the more dangerous. The adapter, being well acquainted with the novel, rarely succeeds in forgetting that the general public is not, and he almost invariably a.s.sumes that the audience will supply from memory matters that he has left out. In the case of most adapted plays events that appear utterly improbable to those ignorant of the novel seem quite likely to the people who have read it and can supply the missing facts which explain the improbable matters. To the adapter, particularly when he is also the novelist, the characters and events have a real existence, and his task, unlike that of the original playwright, does not seem to be that of bringing them into existence but merely of exhibiting them. Naturally, then, he takes comparatively little pains to prove what to him is axiomatic.

The main objective difficulty is due to the fact that a play is a very short thing--though, alas! this does not always seem to be the case--and a novel is relatively long and often has many characters. In some cases, the playwright attempts to deal with this difficulty by ignoring the existence of half the people who figure in the original. Even then, a ma.s.s of explanations has to be jettisoned. There is worse trouble than this: the characters built up in the novel by hundreds of fine touches have to be presented in the play by a few bold strokes. An extraordinary art is necessary in what is not a work of mere transcription, but almost a work of reconception.

There is the further vast difficulty that whilst in most cases the novelist's procedure is to work on a system of exciting curiosity, it is an unwritten law of drama, almost universally true, that there must be no surprises for the audience, except, it may be, in farcical plays that do not pretend to represent life truly and in matters of detail. No doubt, unconscientious readers often commit an act of treason to the author, and cheat him by beginning at the end. One may urge that no one expects a play to do full justice to the novel, and that it is permissible to leave out much. The important fact, however, is that the much necessarily left out in the case of good novels as a rule is exactly that which distinguishes them from the bad. The atmosphere vanishes; secondary characters, often the most pleasing, have to be eliminated or rendered shadowy; thrilling incidents must be cut for want of s.p.a.ce, and the remainder is almost inevitably the bare bones of the book, which never, however, really const.i.tute anything like a complete skeleton.

Plays with a Purpose

During one season we had a comparatively large number of plays with a purpose--for instance, _An Englishman's Home_, _The Head of the Finn_, _Strife_, and _The House of Bondage_.