Shakespeare in the Theatre Part 12

THE REPERTORY THEATRE.

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY.

SHAKESPEARE AT EARL'S COURT.

THE STUDENTS' THEATRE.

THE MEMORIAL SCHEME.

IV

A NATIONAL THEATRE

THE REPERTORY THEATRE.[14]

The anxiety of dramatic critics to explain "the scant success" of Mr.

Frohman's Repertory Theatre has created a large amount of paper argument, of more or less doubtful value, and now Mr. William Archer has added his view to that of others, and concludes his remarks with some practical advice to those who, in his opinion, are ent.i.tled to be regarded as "some of our ablest dramatists." The nature of this advice, however, is not only curious, but startling, when we recall the reception that was given to Ibsen's plays on their first appearance in this country, and remember that Mr. Archer was their warmest defender. Regardless of this defence, he now contends that "it is a grave misfortune for any writer, but it is a disaster for the dramatist, to get into the habit of despising popular taste and thinking that he has only himself to please in his writings."[15] But those who take their dramatic art seriously, and who wish their plays to have more than an ephemeral existence, cannot possibly accept this advice. They will recognize that the highest aim of a dramatist is to create a work valuable for all time, and that the most intimate knowledge of the moods and vagaries of playgoers cannot outweigh the smallest fault in the art of dramatic construction or character drawing. The conscientious artist repudiates the interference of public opinion with the expression of his art; he does not try to follow popular taste, but seeks to control and direct it. "The public," says George Sand, "is no artist; I will not tell you that we must please it, but we must win it. It winces, but gets over it." This is the advice Mr. Archer should have tendered to English playwrights, and let us hope it is the advice he meant to tender them. Nature has nowhere resigned her prerogative to the demands of popular taste, nor should the artist abandon his privileges.

There is no record of a poet or musician having created a masterpiece through pandering to the "groundlings." Mozart, on completing an opera, would say: "I shall gain but little by this, but I have pleased myself, and that must be my recompense." It was Schiller who wrote: "My submission to the public convenience does not extend so far that I can allow any holes in my work and mutilate the characters of men." And Goethe exclaimed: "Nothing is more abhorrent to a reasonable man than an appeal to the majority." Lessing has said: "I have no objection to criticism condemning an artist, but it must not contaminate him. He must continue his work knowing that he is happier than his detractors." And Lessing points the moral in adding: "Genius is condemned to utter only absurdities when it is unfaithful to its mission." Bernard Shaw and Granville Barker, two of the able dramatists to whom Mr. Archer tenders his advice, have won "the ear of their contemporaries" equally with the more popular writers, Barrie and Maugham, and this they have done by the production of one or two plays which did not reach their hundredth performance. Euripides was none the less famous, as a dramatist, because the Athenian playgoers disliked his opinions and banished him from their midst. In fact, a dramatist is only great when he is able to dispense with the requirements of popular taste; nor will he be satisfied with the knowledge that his play leaves some definite impression upon an audience unless it be that particular impression which belongs to tragedy, or comedy, or history, or pastoral drama, or conversational comedy.

Let it be, then, frankly admitted that a dramatist cannot both live in advance of the opinions of his audience and also reflect them. It is very well for Mr. Archer to talk about the vessel which does not float, but his ill.u.s.tration is surely less obvious than he imagines. A Noah's Ark will float on the ocean to-day as easily as it did in the days of the Flood, but no modern shipbuilder now would risk his reputation in constructing such a boat on the plea that it remains above water. Will the vessel weather the storms? Will it outlive its compet.i.tors? These are the vital questions in the art of both shipbuilding and playwriting.

Mr. Archer seems to forget that there is a prejudice among audiences as well as among individuals, and that every period of life has its own peculiar notions. Sometimes playgoers will receive an author's brightest comedy with coldness. The burden of Charles Lamb's reflections was--that the audience of his day came to the theatre to be complimented on its goodness. "The Stranger," "The Castle Spectre," and "George Barnwell," are specimens of the dramatic bill of fare which then found favour. On the other hand, the comic dramatists tried to disparage purity in men and women, and the sparkle of their comedies is unwholesome. In the opinion of many sober minds the dramatic literature of the Restoration is a blot upon our national history, while the gloomy productions that delighted the sentimental contemporaries of Charles Lamb are offences against dramatic art. At neither period was the drama national, in so far as it was representative of the tastes of all cla.s.ses. Congreve and Wycherly wrote for the fashionable, while the admirers of Lillo's and Lewis's moral dramas were chiefly respectable shopkeepers. It was in Shakespeare's day that the n.o.bility and groundlings together resorted to the playhouse, const.i.tuting themselves at once the patrons and pupils of the drama. The Elizabethan playgoer had no desire to bias the judgment of the dramatist.

It left him free to represent life vividly and truly. It even encouraged him to be studious of the playgoer's profit as well as of his pleasure.

But the playgoers of the Restoration, and of the period that immediately succeeded it, were intolerant of all views but their own. They regarded with disfavour plays which did not uphold their notions of amus.e.m.e.nt and morality. They called upon the dramatist to accept the opinion of his public, in these matters, as being superior to his own. As a consequence, the drama suffered in the attempt made to reconcile principles that are in themselves inconsistent, and the judgment of the audience was in no sense a criterion of merit in a play. This explains why some good plays have been coldly received on their first appearance. "She Stoops to Conquer" would have failed but for the presence in the theatre of Dr.

Johnson and his friends; Sheridan's "Rivals," an even more brilliant comedy, did not secure a fair hearing on its first performance. Of Diderot's comedy, the "Pere de Famille," its author gives us the following information:

"And why did this piece, which nowadays fills the house before half-past four, and which the players always put up when they want a thousand crowns, have so lukewarm a welcome at first?"

"... If I did not succeed at first it was because the style was new to the audience and actors; because there was a strong prejudice, still existing, against what people call tearful comedy; because I had a crowd of enemies at court, in town, among magistrates, among Churchmen, among men of letters."

"And how did you incur so much enmity?"

"Upon my word, I don't know, for I have not written satires on great or small, and I have crossed no man on the path of fortune and dignities. It is true that I was one of the people called Philosophers, who were then viewed as dangerous citizens, and on whom the Government let loose two or three subalterns without virtue, without insight, and, what is worse, without talent....

"To say nothing of the fact that these philosophers had made things more difficult for poets and men of letters in general, and that it was no longer possible to make oneself distinguished by knowing how to turn out a madrigal or a nasty couplet."[16]

This argument applies as forcibly to what goes on in the theatre in London to-day as it did in Paris nearly two hundred years ago. Perhaps, however, enough has been said to discount the suggestion that popular opinion is in any way responsible for the making of a good play.

M. Claretie once expressed a doubt if Englishmen quite understood the limitations of the French National Theatre; because when the Comedie Francaise visited London in 1893, the Press (including Mr. Archer) ridiculed the intention of the director to give a more cla.s.sical programme than English taste demanded, presumably forgetting that the selection of plays should be judged by an academic standard. The Comedie Francaise visited the Metropolis with a repertory apparently designed to ill.u.s.trate the whole range of French dramatic literature, and yet, at the bidding of an exacting and ignorant public, it was called upon, without a protest from the critics, to withdraw the masterpieces of Moliere and Racine in favour of the modern drama; nor was it to the dignity of the Theatre Francaise that its members consented to humour the caprices of playgoers, and condescended to bid for popularity when popularity meant bad taste and a craving for "stars." But the director, having entered into an arrangement with commercial gentlemen for commercial purposes, unexpectedly found himself compelled to forfeit his academic position, and to place his theatre on a level with a commercial playhouse. Fortunately the surrender did not serve its purpose. General dissatisfaction was expressed with the visit of the Comedie Francaise. The speculator lost his money, the playgoer did not see his "star," and the student heard no masterpieces.

Now, presumably, there is this difference between a National Theatre and a Repertory Theatre, that the object of the former is to keep before the public the best plays of the country, and those of other countries, and to give occasional performances of new plays of rare excellence and dignity. The Repertory Theatre, on the other hand, as we understand it in England, has for its task the exploiting of the new school of dramatists; of those men who have advanced ideas about their art and of the purpose it should serve. It is essentially, therefore, a theatre of experiment. If this is the case, and a manager such as Mr. Frohman cares to finance the undertaking, he can hardly be credited with considering the scheme in the light of a business speculation, nor would those dramatists who were invited to provide plays for this Repertory Theatre be expected to supply Mr. Frohman with the same cla.s.s of work that they would submit to the ordinary theatrical manager. Here, evidently, is the opportunity, and the only opportunity a dramatist can get in this country, of providing a bill of fare capable of nourishing the weak intellects and the weaker susceptibilities of an audience. Looked at from this standpoint, it may be contended that no new play was produced under the Frohman Repertory management which did not advance the cause of dramatic art by adding to the knowledge of its author, to the experience of its actors, and to the education of the audience. "Misalliance" was a brilliant satire on modern society, one of the ripest conversational plays that Mr. Shaw's genius has yet produced; one in which the dramatist's observation probes deeper, and his wisdom and philosophy, as revealed in the play of character, are as subtle and less personal than anything Mr. Shaw, perhaps, has achieved hitherto in domestic drama. Why, then, are we now told that this play failed to attract, and with whom does the fault rest--is it with the author or his public? There was no insufficiency of "go," of wit, of raillery, of originality, or novelty; but there was, none the less, one thing wanting that to a modern audience is an unpardonable omission, and that is flattery. Society, as it lives to-day, under the maternal wing of the old lady in Stable Yard, expects to be humoured at the theatre, and to be complimented, not on its goodness, but on its vices. "Paint us as black as the devil," it says to the dramatist, "but don't dare to admit that we are a penny the worse because we are black!" And this menace is equivalent to demanding that an author shall take men and women at their own valuation, and ignore the hidden motives and forces which control human conduct. A very few strokes of the pen, a little falsification in character-drawing, and "Misalliance" could have been made an acceptable play; but there was a writer holding the pen who was inexorable. Mr. Shaw drew life as he saw it, and left the public to approve or not as it liked.

But if London rejected "Misalliance," this did not kill the play; it is no more dead than Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" is dead because on its first appearance Vienna sneered at the work of one whose talent outshone that of its own musicians. The Viennese winced and got over their dislike; in the same way Londoners will come to think well of "Misalliance." It is true that we are indebted to its author for at least one popular success, which future historians of the stage will declare was an epoch-making play, being the first of its kind to arrest the attention of the man-in-the-street, and bring him into the theatre to listen to nothing more exciting than a "talk." But the success of "John Bull's Other Island," so far as the public was concerned, had less to do with the merits of the play than the demerits of the audience. The City man woke up one morning to find himself famous, as he thought, and hugely enjoyed his notoriety. What did it matter if a company promoter was silly and cunning so long as he was always amusing and successful! This, as they thought, was the profound wisdom that Mr. Shaw meant to preach to the world! What a strange instance of egotistical vanity! And when the same play was performed in Dublin, the enjoyment of the audience was no less marked, but with this difference--that the laughter was all against Broadbent and not with him. Whether the Englishman was successful or not, he was a "fathead," because no Irishman was silly enough to put his pocket before his politics or to prefer his neighbour's omniscience to his own. Yet this play is not the less virile and wholesome because company-promoters think themselves flattered by it. It is not Mr. Shaw pandering to his audience, but vanity looking at itself in the looking-gla.s.s.

Of that other "failure," "The Madras House," Mr. Archer admits that he found a good deal in the play to interest him, and it is difficult to believe that the author of "The Voysey Inheritance" had not something fresh and inspiring to tell his audience. There are some subjects which do not admit of being treated in drama in a way to enlist general favour. No thinker would argue that "Troilus and Cressida" was written by Shakespeare with a view to its surpa.s.sing the popularity of "Hamlet." It is sufficient if the author has treated his subject in a way consistent with the laws of nature and probability. For the critics to a.s.sume, as they do, that the author is not conscious of the dramatic limitations imposed upon him by the choice of his subject is an impertinence. As Voltaire once said in defence of a play: "We cannot do all that our friends advise. There are such things as necessary faults. To cure a humpbacked man of his hump we should have to take his life. My child is humpbacked, but otherwise it is quite well." Indeed, Mr. Barker's time will be better employed in educating his critics than in re-writing his play. Nor must it be forgotten that Mr. Barker was hardly out of his teens when he wrote "The Marrying of Ann Leete," a comedy that has not yet received the attention it deserves. Fortunately it has been printed and published, and will undoubtedly again be seen on the stage; for the play has unusual possibilities for a stage-manager with constructive imagination and poetic sensibility, and there is not now wanting in London an audience capable of appreciating a work of the kind in the spirit in which it is conceived.

This comedy was undoubtedly inspired by the art of Maeterlinck at the time when the Belgian dramatist was writing such plays as "The Interlude." But where Maeterlinck fails Mr. Barker succeeds. With the poet the disjointed dialogue and constant repet.i.tion of the monosyllable becomes a mannerism, and is never convincing. Mr. Barker's method is a nearer approach to reality. He has chosen his characters with more care to give point to their abrupt method of speech, and with no little art. In a country house remote from the world, among people who are well bred if not well read, who give more time to sport and cards than to books, and who have little power to express themselves except in unfinished sentences, is unfolded a domestic tragedy of wonderful power and sadness. And in this lies the weirdness and fascination of the play--that no word of the story is related by the characters, and only from fragments of conversation, apparently trivial and unimportant, does the spectator gradually bit by bit piece together and arrange for himself the puzzle of these people's existence. This comedy, then, is an experiment to try and show the inner life of a family exactly as it might be learnt by a neighbour who was not personally known to any of its members, and it is a very remarkable achievement.

To sum up. Let us be honest with ourselves and to others over this question of the Repertory Theatre, and drop the business side of the matter, which is not the vital one. Let us admit that we can easier spare from the ranks of our dramatists men like Barrie and Maugham than Shaw and Barker; for while the former seek to amuse us (for which we are grateful), the latter hold forth a hand to help us out of the ditch. Nor is it better for us to laugh with Messrs. Barrie and Maugham than to accept the proffered hand, leap out, and walk forward with the preachers.

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY.

The Elizabethan Stage Society was founded with the object of reviving the masterpieces of the Elizabethan drama upon the stage for which they were written, so as to represent them as nearly as possible under the conditions existing at the time of their first production--that is to say, with only those stage appliances and accessories which were usually employed during the Elizabethan period. "Everything," said Sir Walter Scott, "beyond correct costume and theatrical decorum" is foreign to the "legitimate purposes of the drama," and it is on this principle that the work of the Society is based.

Although the actual life of the Elizabethan Stage Society began in 1895 it may be said to have had its origin as far back as 1881, when a performance of the first quarto of "Hamlet" was given in St. George's Hall, London, in Elizabethan costume, and without scenery. The play was acted continuously, and lasted two hours. Here, then, probably for the first time since Shakespeare's day, was reality given to Shakespeare's words: "The two hours' traffic of our stage." The success of this performance fully justified the experiment. It was generally admitted by those present that the absence of scenery did not lessen the interest, and that with undivided attention being given to the play and to the acting, a fuller appreciation and keener enjoyment of Shakespeare's tragedy became possible.

This performance was followed by others of a similar nature, and with the same results, and the advantage of representing the Elizabethan drama under the conditions it was written to fulfil being thus demonstrated, the idea was suggested of building a stage after the Elizabethan model, yet it was not until 1893 that this long cherished scheme was carried into effect. In the autumn of that year the interior of the Royalty Theatre, Soho, was converted into as near a resemblance of the old Fortune Playhouse as was possible in a roofed theatre. The play acted was "Measure for Measure," and in commenting upon this revival the _Times_ said: "The experiment proved at least that scenic accessories are by no means as indispensable to the enjoyment of a play as the manager supposes"; and a professor of literature at one of our London colleges wrote: "I don't think I was ever more interested--nay, fascinated--by a play upon the stage, and now I shall ever think the cutting up into scenes and acts a useless cruelty and an utter spoiling of the story." A regularly const.i.tuted society was now formed, and among the first to subscribe were Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Gosse, Sir Walter Besant, Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Com. Walter Crane, Professor Israel Gollancz, Professor Hales, Sir Sidney Lee, W. H. Th.o.r.n.ycroft, Esq., R.A., Miss Swanwick, the Hon. Lionel Tollemache, and Lady Ritchie. At the performance of "Twelfth Night" at the Middle Temple in 1897 His Majesty King Edward, then Prince of Wales, was present as a Bencher of the Inn.

At the annual meeting of the Society in 1899, Sir Sidney Lee, the Chairman, said: "Speaking as one who has studied the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries with some attention, both on and off the stage, I have never witnessed the simple, unpretentious representation of a great play by this Society without realizing more of the dramatic spirit and intention than I found it possible to realize when reading it in the study."

Of the Society's more recent revivals, the interest aroused by the old morality play, "Everyman," both in London and in many towns throughout the country, and in America, was very marked. The last play given by the Society under the present direction was "Troilus and Cressida."

LIST OF THE SOCIETY'S PERFORMANCES.

1893. "Measure for Measure" Royalty Theatre, London.

1895. "Twelfth Night" Burlington Hall.

" "Comedy of Errors" Gray's Inn Hall.

1896. Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" St. George's Hall.

" "Two Gentlemen of Verona" Merchant Taylors' Hall.

1897. "Twelfth Night" Middle Temple Hall.

" Scenes from "Arden of Feversham" and "Edward III." St. George's Hall.

" "Tempest" Egyptian Hall, Mansion House.

" " Goldsmiths' Hall.

1898. Beaumont and Fletcher's "c.o.xcomb" Inner Temple Hall.

" Middleton and Rowley's "Spanish Gipsy" St. George's Hall.

" Ford's "Broken Heart" St. George's Hall.

" Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd" Courtyard, Fulham Palace.

" "Merchant of Venice" St. George's Hall.

1899. Ben Jonson's "Alchemyst" Apothecaries' Hall.

" Swinburne's "Locrine" St. George's Hall.

" Calderon's "Life's a Dream" St. George's Hall.

(Edward Fitzgerald's translation)