GIFT OF MICHAEL RE£;§ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/abouttheatreessaOOarchrich ABOUT THE THEATRE ABOUT THE THEATRE ESSAYS AND STUDIES WILLIAM ARCHER AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAV," ETC. Sontfon T FISHER UNWIN 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCLXXfVI Vi!^^ 1.T '^^i^ j^o-j^^ PREFATORY NOTE. The greater part of the first paper in this volume is hitherto unpublished, but some por- tions of it have appeared in the Theatre and other magazines. The second essay is re- printed from the Westminster Review ; the third from the Nineteenth Centtiry ; the fourth and tenth from the Dramatic Review ; the fifth, sixth, and eighth from Time ; the seventh from the National Review; and the ninth from the Magazine of Music. To the editors of these periodicals I beg to express my thanks for their courteous sanction of this republication. All the papers, I may add, have been carefully revised, and some in a measure re-written. W. A. V ; CONTENTS. PACK I, ARE WE ADVANCING? (1882-1886) . . I II. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE . . loi III. THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM 1 72 IV. CRITICS* ENGLISH 203 V. A STORM IN STAGELAND . . . .211 VI. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC . . 239 VII. THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. . . 257 VIII. THE PLAYS OF VICTOR HUGO . . 287 IX. HUGO AND WAGNER 32 1 X. THE REALIST'S DILEMMA .... 329 / ARE WE ADVANCING? (1882-1886.) In seeking to estimate progress, material, Whence and . . X o whit/urf moral, or artistic, we must first answer two questions which may be summed up in the words Whence ? and Whither ? Unless we exactly know our starting - point, and have clearly ascertained the direction, at least, in which our goal is to be sought, movement, not progress, is the most that we can prove. If we have not made up our minds whether our destination be New York, or Melbourne, or Valparaiso, our ship may do her fifteen knots an hour and yet we shall have made no pro- gress whatever. Her speed, in fact, may merely be prolonging the voyage or hastening a catastrophe. The destination, the goal, or, in other words, .i/.///r n:,r , . « . vu:nv vu'u.. . the ideal of the drama, is a subject of unceasing controversy. Shall we steer for Realism or for Idealism, for culture or merely for amusement? 2 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Some would have us reverse the engines, put on full speed astern, and try back to the spacious times of great Elizabeth. Others are for ploughing steadily forward in the good old course laid down by Scribe. Some would put the helm a - starboard and make for rhythmic regions of Neo-Shakespeareanism ; others would fain deviate in the opposite direction, eschewing poetry for photography. Browningism has its adherents ; so has Zola- ism ; even Ibsen, in these latter days, is the god of a few fanatics. The great majority, bound to no sect or clique, is ready to dash off towards any point of the compass which promises pastime — " Zeitvertreib " — whether in the form of laughter or of excitement. Pro- gress, then, means a score of different things to a score of different factions ; at which point of view are we to take our stand in the present inquiry ? The questions \ propose to adopt, for the nonce, a broad proposed. . » . . definition of progress. Is the theatre at- tracting, and does it deserve to attract, more and more attention from the educated and thoughtful portion of the community ? If it is, it matters little in what direction the development is taking place ; indeed it is almost certain to manifest itself in several ARE WE ADVANCING? directions at once. Where there is life there is hope; and when the better minds of a nation are occupying themselves sympathetically with the drama of the day, I think we may take it as a sign of more or less healthy vitality. The period I propose to review is short, but The period sufficiently eventful to be instructive. About four 3'ears ago I published a collection of essays,^ in which I attempted a bird's-eye view of the English theatre as it then existed. '* The Romany Rye," first presented on the loth of June, 1882, was the latest production which came within my ken, and this may serve to date the volume. Over these four years, then, I wish to cast a rapid glance, noting a few of their salient features in so far as they bear upon the question above stated : /s the theatre attracting^ and docs it deserve to attract, more and more attention front the educated and ihoughtfid portion of the community ? We have here two separate inquiries, one simple, the other difficult ; one a question of fact, the other a question of opinion. The question of fact necessarily comes first. That the theatre is attracting more and (i) Tiuqtustion of foci: iH- more" attention may almost be called a matter creasing x'ogvt ■ .____ — of the stage, ' "English Dramatists of To-day." London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington. 1882. ABOUT THE THEATRE. of common knowledge. The proofs meet us on every hand. Four years ago the production of a novelty at the Lyceum was a social event of some magnitude, but in this respect no other theatre could for a moment vie with Mr. Irving's. Now, while a Lyceum first- night has grown into a solemn function which peers, millionaires, and honourable women intrigue to see, and see not, two or three other theatres may almost be said to rival the home of the poetic drama in the matter of The vppcr ten. social voguc. The superior attraction of the theatre is certainly one reason, though not the only one, for the decline of Italian opera. The Prince of Wales, never remiss as a theatre- goer, has become an assiduous first-nighter, and many leaders of society are as devoted amateurs of the play-house as of the racecourse. The fact, however, that the drama holds a place beside Goodwood and Redcar in the affections of the British barbarian — *' something cheaper than his horse, a little lower than his dog " — proves nothing as to its claim to rank as an element in the intellectual life of the nation. But the world of art and letters is setting- towards the theatre as strongly as the world of fashion. Statesmen, painters and poets, men of law, men « of science, soldiers and ARE WE ADVANCING .^ divines, all follow with more or less attention the movements of things theatrical. The theatre is now a stock topic of discussion in intellectual circles in which, a few years ago, the prize-ring was scarcely more loftily ignored Not only " le monde ou Ton s'amuse," but " it monde ou Ton s'ennuie," has become more or less stage-struck. The Universities no longer taboo, but rather encourage, the acted drama. Cambridge has not as yet officially counten- anced performances in the vernacular; but at Oxford, only the other day, the Vice-Chancellor graced by his presence the opening of a new theatre, and listened to a prologue written by a proctor ! Mr. Gladstone's presence at the play PremUrs, on one memorable, but by no means isolated, occasion, has been blazoned by his opponents to all the world. Lord Salisbury was among the brilliant company who assembled to bid farewell to the Bancrofts on their retirement from man- agement. Lord Tennyson has added to his Poets^ poetical plays a drama in prose, written specially for stage representation. Strenuous efforts are being made to place Mr. Browning's tragedies on the list of living plays, and even ** The Cenci " is soon to be attempted on the stage — so completely have men of culture abandoned the theory that the highest drama ABOUT THE THEATRE. and Prophets, should be read, not acted. Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and Lord Lytton have all appeared as dramatic critics in their several w^ays, and even Lord Wolseley has been in- duced to blow a blast on the trumpet of Mr. The press and Augustus Harris. Still more significant is the tlie stage. , . , treatment accorded to theatrical matters by the leading periodicals of the day. Four years ago I stated, in the first of the aforesaid essays, that *'the higher criticism despised and ignored" the theatre, meaning by "the higher criticism " that of the leading reviews, monthly or quarterly. The statement passed unchal- lenged, and was then literally accurate ; repeated now it would be absolutely false. Almost without exception the serious maga- zines take frequent cognizance of the acted drama. Several of them scarcely ever appear without one or two theatrical articles. Before long, perhaps, we shall have some English review imitating the Revue des Deux Mondes, and chronicling, issue by issue, the important events of the stage. Already the two most widely read of weekly papers — Punch and the Saturday Review — may almost be called theatri- cal journals, so minute is the attention they devote to dramatic doings. There cannot be a more convincing proof of the growth of ARE WE ADVANCING? public interest in the theatre. "A paper's laws a paper's patrons give," and when we find Punch and the Saturday Review treating in detail of the smallest events where a few years ago they gave only a condescending attention to the greatest, we may be sure that Englishmen all over the world no longer think these trifles despicable. It may be said that the present editor of Punch is himself a man of the theatre, and consequently apt to keep an alert eye on the affairs of Stageland. But, oddly enough, his predecessors in the editorial chair were each and all playwrights as well as he, and there can be no doubt that had they found an equal demand for theatrical comments they would have responded to it with equal alacrity. It would be absurd to maintain that the Engiandcom- theatre holds as large a place in the enlight- ened national consciousness of England as it holds in that of France ; but it has gained ground immensely within the past four years. In Switzerland, several seasons ago, I was living at a remote " Kurort," where the supply of newspapers was very scanty. One Sunday morning the doctor of the establishment, with a face as white as bismuth, brought a number of the Evaiemcnt which had just arrived, and pared ivilh ABOUT THE THEATRE. asked if I had heard of the terrible catastrophe in Paris. He pointed to an article signed M. SchoUs " Aurelien Scholl," and I can recall to this day little joke. "^ the thrill of horror with which I read it. The Vaudeville, so it stated, had been burnt to the ground on the first night of a new play by Sardou. All Paris — " le tout Paris des pre- mieres" — had perished in the flames. The leaders of the Senate and of the Chamber, half the world of fashion, of art, and of letters, lay buried in the ruins. Some fifteen or twenty of the forty Immortals had proved their mor- tality. Almost all the newspapers appeared with blank columns, their critics and chroni- clers having died at their posts. Name by name, the writer gravely set forth the list of victims in this holocaust of genius. There were one or two touches of grotesque humour, such as an account of the escape of Francisque Sarcey from the burning building ; but though the taste of these episodes was execrable, the caricature was not sufficiently marked to dis- prove the genuineness of the report. Among the visitors at the Bath were several Parisians, who were as far as any of us from seeing through the hoax. We tried, indeed, to believe the whole affair a bad pleasantry, but there was nothing impossible about it, nothing ARE WE ADVANCING? even improbable, and till the next day's mail brought other French and Swiss papers all was consternation and anxiety. In England — and this is my reason for mentioning the circum- — impoaibu stance — such a hideous hoax would be impos- sible. The point of M. SchoU's little joke lay in the fact that in naming all the most famous names of contemporary Paris he named the very persons who were certain to be present on the first night of a play by Sardou. No such representative company has ever yet been collected within the walls of an English theatre. If an English Scholl — which heaven forfend ! — should be moved to attempt a similar pleasantry, he would have to content himself with a decimation rather than a positive massacre of the intellectual world of London. Yet, if he chose the Lyceum, the Princess's, or the St. James's as the scene of his catastrophe, he might make out a tolerably appalling list of victims without reducing the matter to an absurdity ; and a list which would have been laughed to scorn in 1876, and received with scepticism in 1882, might quite well pass muster in the present year of grace as by no means transgressing the limits of the probable. So much for the matter of fact : now for the f}J,%lt^;^ question of opinion. Does the stage deserve i^;^;,;^^ ABOUT THE THEATRE. this increased attention ? Is it doing anything worthy the consideration of intelligent men ? Or is its present vogue a mere caprice of fashion, irrational and transient ? On this point there are wide divergences of opinion. Essays on *'The Theatrical Revival" and on " The Dramatic Decadence " are to be seen almost side by side in the daily, weekly, and monthly press. One writer points out by name the pioneers of the advance, while another analyzes conclusively the causes of the decline* As optimism is the inborn tendency of the race, I believe that, on the whole, the Ayes have it ; but the Noes form at least a respectable mino- rity. Let us hear one of their spokesmen, Mr. Mr. Pollock a7i Walter Herries Pollock, a critic who, from his the pohtico- theatricai position, mav be ree:arded as representing: a decadence. - o jr o more or less influential school of opinion. In a recent number of the National Review (July, 1885) Mr. Pollock takes what he calls " A Glance at the Stage." It is a very short glance, yet long enough to fill his soul with despair. He sees people laughing at " The Private Secretary," and crying over " OHvia," and, as he pathetically puts it, his "criticism reels before such a result." I am not concerned to defend Mr. Wills, the poet, or Mr. Haw- trey, the humourist, Mr. Wills being no more ARE WE ADVANCING? the one than Mr. Hawtrey is the other. If Mr. Pollock were merely critical, one would have nothing to say as to the results of his glance at the stage. Every one has a right to his opinion, even if it be that " Peril" at the Prince's was " well acted throughout." But Mr. Pollock is more than critical — he is philosophical. He traces **the decadence of English taste in stage- plays " direct to " the decadence of England's position among the nations of the world." He holds that " the love of prolonged farce on the stage is due to the prolonged tragedy of political events off the stage ; " and, lest we should take this for mere persiflage, he is careful to add that he is speaking " as seriously as one may when giving no more than a glance at a serious sub- ject." His proposition, then, falls into three parts : {a) England is in a state of national decadence ; ih) the English stage is in a state of literary decadence ; (c) the former phenome- non is the direct cause of the latter. Here, surely, is a theory worth serious examination. Its bland pessimism is a facer before which the optimistic criticism of the day reels. We hear so much of the dramatic revival, of the regene- ration of the stage, the dignity of the drama, and so forth, that this calm assertion of what Mr. Wegg would call its decline and fall off, ABOUT THE THEATRE. When did it set in f explained and classified as part and parcel of the Decline and Fall Off of the British Empire, comes upon us like the news of the capture of Khartoum just as we were throwing up our caps and huzzaing over its safety. Proposition {a) we may at once take for granted. Every one who knows anything knows that England is going to the dogs. Not to know that argues oneself a Radical, if not a Socialist. We are all agreed, then, that *' political events" are a "prolonged tragedy," and can pass in mournful unanimity to Propo- sitions (6) and (c). Now, as to this "decadence of English taste in stage-plays," one would like to know definitely when it set in. Its most deplorable symptom, we are told, is the taste for prolonged farces, for the three-act monstrosities which have expelled from the stage " the old form of farce," by which Mr. Pollock no doubt means " Betsy Baker," " The Area Belle," " The Kiss in the Dark," " Boots at the Swan," and this genus all. So far, so good ; but it is important to discover at what date this debased preference began to manifest itself. Was its rise exactly coincident with Mr. Glad- stone's advent to power in 1880 ? Or was it after any particular one of the countless catas- trophes resultant from that infaust event, that ARE WE ADVANCING? \% the British public took to drowning its sorrows in the three-act farce? Was it after the passing of the Irish Land Act ? or the surrender to the Boers ? or the German annexation of New Guinea ? or the defeat of one of the fortnightly Votes of Censure ? Which of our hundred humiliations was it that broke the camel's back and made it morbidly eager to balance matters by splitting its sides ? On these questions we await enlightenment. Irrepressible optimism, in the meantime, suggests a doubt. Decadence or no deca- dence, is it certain that we are now fonder of " prolonged farces " than we were in the good old days of England's glory, when politi- cal events, as every child can tell, marched merrily along to the tune of "Rule Britannia"? We might go back to the stirring times of good Queen Bess and point out that the public of those days had a Gargantuan taste for farces not in three but in five acts. We might glance at the reign of Queen Anne when there were no Chamberlains (except Lord Chamber- lains), and when the illustrious name of Churchill was a synonym for disinterested patriotism ; and we might ask whether, in that age of " glorious victories," there were not pro- duced shoals of so-called comedies which we. " Comedies" oj the painty days. H ABOUT THE THEATRE. to-day, would class alliteratively as filthy five- act farces. But such inquiries take us too far a-field. The times from which Mr. Pollock holds that we have declined and fallen off are evidently times within his own memory, doubt- less the six years between 1874 ^^^ 1880, when we trod the primrose path of peace with honour, when our prestige sated even the indomitable soul of Tracy Turnerelli, when, in short, "" We didn't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we did !" Now, what were the two plays whose gigantic success rendered this period illustrious in the annals of the drama ? One was ** The Pink Dominoes," a three-act farce frank and unmistakable. The other was the legendary " Our Boys," a three-act — comedy shall we say? I leave it to Mr. Pollock to decide. It appears, then, that the three-act farce is not wholly and solely a product of Liberal misrule. It flourished when Plancus was consul, and it is not certain that it would straightway cease to be even if Mr. Ashmead Bartlett were to become Premier. One cannot but suspect a fallacy in Mr. Pollock's argu- ment. Is it conceivable that he has been misled by names, and that many pieces which were called comedies in the palmy days differed ' ' Prolonged Farce" a pj-e- Gladstoniaii product. ARE IVE ADVAXCINGr from our three-act farces only in being less amusing ? I submit this suggestion as a salve to the conscience of any one who, on reading Mr. Pollock's article, may have felt remorse for having laughed at "The Private Secretary" while his country was being led to destruction. This fallacy, if it be one, has entrapped other Aff. Grunjy theorists besides Mr. Pollock. Mr. Sydney Thalia." Grundy, for instance, has bewailed the rise of farce and the decline of comedy in a pathetic lament over " Poor Thalia." ^ He too, I think, has been misled by names, and has forgotten that many of the farces of to-day would have been accepted as comedies ten, or even live, years ago ; yet his argument does not repose entirely upon this ambiguity. A certain type of play, generally and conveniently described as comedy, has in these latter days fallen into decrepitude and given up the ghost. It drew its last breath on the night of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft's retirement from the Haymarket — an event which I desire to underline as one of the most significant of the period I am reviewing. Let us look for a moment into the secret of it. The secret, I think, lies in the exhaustion of that form of art in which the Bancrofts had made their name, to suit which they had formed ^ Drainatic Review^ March 14, 1885. i6 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Moral of the their methods, and from which they could not Bancrofts , , . , . -. . retirement. depart Without a break m their traditions. The public would accept nothing but cup-and- saucer comedy at their hands, and yet it had lost all genuine appetite for cup-and-saucer comedy. In vain they poured fresh water on the old tea- leaves and handed round the beverage in more and more exquisite porcelain ; at each brew it was found more vapid. Things were even more hopeless with regard to the coffee-and-cognac which used to be served up between-whiles by way of variety. Sardou had left off producing the proper brand. He had insisted on dabbling in theology and archaeology — matters quite unfit for the tea-table. Even in "Fedora" the coffee was too bitter, the cognac too strong. More- over, the secession of the Kendals had estab- lished an irresistible competition precisely in the emotional sphere ; so that all possible influences combined to force the Bancrofts back upon their hurdy-gurdy policy — in other words, a " damnable iteration " of played-out cup-and-saucer comedies, together with the three or four classic or semi-classic pieces which could be treated by cup-and-saucer methods. A new departure became absolutely necessary, and in every new departure there is risk. Mr. Bancroft, having brought his galley safe and ARE WE ADVANCING ? ,7 well-laden into port, felt no call to venture forth again upon unknown seas. ** We value your regard too highly," he told his last Hay- market audience, " to risk for a moment a frac- tion of its decay." This, then, is the moral of the Bancrofts' —decease of retirement, and it is re-echoed to us from every '^"o^dy!^'^"'"^ quarter of the theatrical heavens ; comedy, middle-class comedy, heart-and-coronet comedy, milk-and-moonshine comedy, baronet-and-but- terman comedy, in short, original English comedy as licensed by the Lord Chamberlain and supplied to Mr. Gilbert's " young lady of fifteen," is as dead as Aristophanes. We hear its dirge on every hand, Mr. Pollock and Mr. Grundy being merely two mourners out of many. For my part, I neither weep for Thalia nor deplore a decadence. I hold that frank fantasy is better than sham observation, and that the public has done well in tiring of realistic furniture and conventional feelings. We are groping our way towards a comedy — or, if you prefer it, a drama — of observation, and meanwhile our old comedy is throwing off its shallow sentiment, its thin pretence of seriousness, and appearing in its true colours as frank farce. " In Chancery," " The Magis- trate," ''The Snowball," "The Great Pink 3 i8 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Pearl," seem to me better, because more pure- bred, works of art, than the mongrel produc- tions we have been accustomed to call come- dies. Riseofmeio- The decline, or rather the dissolution, of cup-and-saucer comedy, with the correlative development of farce — an apparent increase in quantity, a real improvement in quality — is one of the salient facts of the past four years. Another and no less significant fact is the unexampled vogue of modern and so-called > realistic melodrama. The Princess's, the Adelphi, and Drury Lane have flourished and waxed fat on the productions of Messrs. Jones, Sims, Pettitt, Buchanan, and Harris — produc- tions as to whose merit I shall have something to say when I come to speak of playwrights in- dividually. Melodrama, too, has come in for a large slice in the partition of the domains of cup- and-saucer comedy, deceased. It has annexed the Haymarket and the Prince's, while the St. James's has been handed over to French emotional drama and the Court to farce. This prevalence of melodrama seems to me a much more important, if not more staggering, fact than the popularity of the farces before which Mr. Pollock's criticism reels. I own I do not quite know what to make of it. Is it to be ARE WE ADVANCING? «9 welcomed? Is it to be deplored? At first I Tohetoticomed 1 . ,. , , r or deplored? strongly inclined to the former view. It seemed to me that modern melodrama, with all its conventional methods and pinchbeck accessories, drew its vitality from a certain amount of keen observation of real life. The writers were clearly inferior in point of mere stagecraft and inventive power to the older generation of melodramatists, French and Eng- lish, the Dennery-Boucicault school as we may call it ; but this inferiority seemed to be counterbalanced in some of them by a tendency to "go to nature," and, in certain characters and episodes at least, to paint from the life. I hoped that, as time went on^ observation and sincerity; jwpuld gradually gain the upper hand, while the pinchbeck and pasteboard framework would be held less and less essential. The course of events has somewhat shaken that hope, as I shall have to confess more at length in speaking of the later works of Mr. G. K. Sims. I cannot quite lose faith in the ulti- mate evolution of a form of drama which\ shall soberly and simply reproduce the every- V day aspects of modern life, without having / recourse to lost wills, and mysterious murders, and Enoch-Arden bigamies, and Tweedledum- Tweedledee twins ; only I am not so confident ABOUT THE THEATRE. as I once was that the germ of this form of art is to be found in modern melodrama. Decline of A third feature of the past four years, by no opera-bovffe ^ J ^ J and burlesque means to be overlooked, is the decline of opera- bouffe and burlesque. The fact of this decline is patent, though just as I write there seems to be a slight recrudescence of burlesque at one or two playhouses. A few years ago we used never to be without two, three, or even more French operettas running simultaneously at as many theatres, while the *' sacred lamp of burlesque " was assiduously tended at the Gaiety, and flared intermittently in several minor fanes. Now, to parody an often-quoted saying, opera-bouffe spells ruin and burlesque bankruptcy. The successful French operettas of the past three years could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the *' three-act burlesque dramas " of the Gaiety seemed flick- ering to the point of extinction when a little fresh oil was poured into the lamp at Christmas last. The talents of two genuine comedians, Messrs. Brough and Edouin, secured a success for "The Babes " at Toole's Theatre last year, but even these popular actors have recently suffered sad reverses at the Novelty. Some clever parodies of popular plays have had a certain vogue at Toole's, the Gaiety, and the ARE IVE ADVANCING? Strand, but these are a sign of vivid general interest in the serious productions of the day rather than any great love of burlesque for its own sake. No doubt there is still, and will always be while the present constitution of society maintains itself, a special public for mere *Meg- pieces," but the general public seems, for the moment at any rate, to have turned its back upon the flesh-pots of Egypt. Among the causes of this change two are — /- obvious, the rest obscure. The supply of French opera-bouffe, both as regards quantity and quality, has notably declined, so that even if the demand had been as strong as ever, there would have been difficulty in meeting it ; and, on the other hand, there has been a fall in the demand owing to powerful native competition in the shape of those most popular entertain- ments of the day, the Gilbert-Sullivan operettas, ji^ Here, at last, is matter for almost unmixed rejoicing. The victory of Gilbertian extrava- Savoy extrava- ganza over opera-bouffe as adapted for the London market, is the victory of literary and musical grace and humour over rampant vul- garity and meretricious jingle. These two causes, then, account in great measure for the decline of opera-bouffe ; but the decline of bur- ABOUT THE THEATRE. lesqiie drama." lesque is still unexplained. I am not optimist enough to attribute it altogether to an improve- ment in popular taste, but neither do I think it reasonable to deny that it is symptomatic of a certain reaction against mere music-hall imbe- cility. May it not be that the lower public, avid of mere laughter, has split into two sections, the one sinking to the music-halls for its recrea- tion, the other rising to the theatres of farce ? I think, at any rate, that those who deplore the Farce V. " bitr- efflorcsccnce of thrcc-act farces should remem- ber that three-act burlesque dramas have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, and that a good part of the public which flocks to the Globe was three or four years ago flocking to the Gaiety, where, I venture to maintain, their state was still less gracious. These, then, as it seems to me, are the salient points in the history of the past four years : i. The decline of cup - and - saucer comedy, with the correlative growth of farce. 2. The prosperity of modern melodrama. 3. The decadence of burlesque and opera- bouffe, balanced by the great popularity of Gilbert-Sullivan musical extravaganza. We shall find all these tendencies further illus- trated in the ensuing rapid survey of the work of individual playwrights. J^ecapit Illation. ARE WE ADVANCING? 23 Glancing down the list of those whom, four individual T -, ' playwrights: years ago, I felt justmed in describing as ** Dramatists of To-day," I find that only one blank has been caused by death. Mr. H. J. The late Mr, Byron, an amiable man and a fertile and genial humourist, has left a larger gap in theatrical society than on the stage itself. His two posthumous plays, '* Open House" at the Vaudeville, and *' The Shuttlecock" at Toole*3, showed him working his old vein of verbal quips and cranks, and showed, too, that the popularity of this style of comedy was practi- cally exhausted. Mr. Byron's decline, indeed, was involved in that of the cup-and-saucer school to which he really belonged, dispensing, instead of the aromatic tea of Robertson, a homelier brew of mild and unstimulant cocoa. Alphabetical priority places Mr. James Albery Mr. Aibery, at the head of the list of living playwrights; and, so far as talent is concerned, there is little doubt that this might have been his place in the order of achievement. Might have been ! — it is with heartfelt regret that I use this melan- choly tense. Somehow or other Mr. Albery has dropped out of the race. Since 1S82 we have only two Criterion adaptations, " Little Miss Muffet " and " Featherbrain," to place to his credit. Rumour assigns to him the function of Mr. Bucha- nan : 24 ABOUT THE THEATRE. revising and touching up many productions at that popular playhouse, but for my part I trust rumour is mistaken. It is sad enough to think of Mr. Albery as the ghost of himself, but sadder still to conceive him Mr. Wyndham's " ghost." So long as pluck and perseverance are held admirable qualities, Mr. Robert Buchanan's career as a playwright cannot fail to earn for him a certain amount of consideration. In the face of all manner of adverse circumstances he has conquered a footing on the boards. Chief among the adverse circumstances is an in- curable crudity of stagecraft, or, in other words, a total want of dramatic tact. Some of his earlier works — such as ** The Witchfinder," "A Madcap Prince," ''Corinne," and " Tlie Shadow of the Sword " — are unknown to me. The first of his plays which comes within my recollection is *' The Nine-Days' Queen," a tragedy in blank verse on the subject of Lady Jane Grey, which would probably have been highly successful — last century. Since its pro- duction Mr. Buchanan has devoted himself mainly to melodrama, in which, I cannot help fancying, he has set himself to take a grim revenge on the public for their small apprecia- tion of his poetical plays. Wliatever the cause, it is certain that a cynical contemipt for his ARE WE ADVANCING? 25 audiences seems to be the dominating force in ffiscynidsm: his theatrical inspiration. Mr. Buchanan has a certain standing as a poet and critic. He is a man of much literary faculty and some judgment. It is inconceivable that he should be unaware of the crudity of his dramatic work. I am persuaded that he must deliberately write down to what he imagines to be the taste of his audiences. It is true that a good deal of his fiction is marked by the same coarse-grained, rough-hewn mannerism, but this may be due to a similar scorn for the capacity of a certain section of the reading public. His admiration for Mr. Charles Reade, too, has clearly had a baneful influence on Mr. Buchanan's literar}^ and dramatic style. He has imitated all that is least admirable in Mr. Reade's work, and has reproduced his robustiousness without its vigour, his theatricality without its effective- ness. In some cases he has overestimated the degradation of public taste, and has written too low down to attract even the groundlings ; but in one or two instances his cynicism seems to have justified itself.^ ' Mr. Buchanan disclaims responsibility for two anony- mous plays which have been currently attributed to him — "The Exiles of Erin ; or St. Abe and his Seven Wives" at the Olympic, and " Lottie" at the Novelty— the latter an amusing little piece. 26 ABOUT THE THEATRE. His plays. '' Lady Clare," at the Globe, was a fairly workmanlike adaptation of *' Le Maitre de Forges," better than the French piece after- wards translated for the St. James's, in so far that it did not presuppose a knowledge of the novel. There was a good deal of unnecessary vulgarity in the character-drawing, but on the whole it may perhaps be called the best thing Mr. Buchanan has done. *' Storm-Beaten," at the Adelphi, was a prodigious piece of paste- board -and -size melodrama, amusing in its blusterous, bombastic, transpontinism. What chiefly impressed me in it was the audacity with which the curtain was brought down three successive times upon practically the same situation. What probably attracted the public was a grotesque scene at the North Pole or thereabouts, in which Mr. Charles Warner, Mr. Barnes, and an Aurora Borealis played some fantastic tricks before high heaven. '* A Sailor and his Lass," written in collaboration with Mr. Augustus Harris, may be shortly described as the worst of recent Drury Lane melodramas, and to have produced the worst of that sublime series is certainly a distinction. *' Bachelors," at the Haymarket, a comedy from the German, written in collaboration with Mr. Hermann Vezin, was antiquated in plot and dull in ARE WE ADVANCING? dialogue, but otherwise inoffensive. Lastly, Mr. Buchanan, collaborating with Miss Harriet Jay, has treated us to a portentous melodrama at the Olympic, entitled ** Alone in London." Though a little better than "A Sailor and his Lass," it was a mere patchwork of threadbare characters and worn-out sensations, a shambling and clumsy puppet-show. If it was really successful, Mr. Buchanan can certainly plead justification for holding in low esteem the in- telligence of the British playgoer. I have spoken my mind freely on what I Artist or shew* conceive to be Mr. Buchanan s shortcommgs, because I suspect him of the most unpardon- able sin a craftsman can commit — that of not doing his best. Nature has denied him any great share of the dramatic faculty, but it is incredible that a man of his talent and culture should be unable to turn out better work than *' Storm-Beaten," *' A Sailor and his Lass," and *' Alone in London." As it is, the gradu- ates of the Grecian write every bit as well as Mr. Buchanan, and construct a vast deal better. When we see a man striving honestly to be an artist, he commands our respect, however un- successful his efforts ; but when one who should be an artist deliberately elects to play the showman, we have no hesitation in saying with Air. Burnand . 28 ABOUT THE THEATRE. perfect frankness that he is but a poor show- man after all. Except as regards burlesque Mr. F. C. Bur- nand has almost retired from the active list of playwrights. His one serious production — was it a serious production ? — of the past four years has " left but a name " in theatrical annals. It was called " Just in Time," and was pro- duced at the Avenue Theatre, Mr. John S. Clarke playing the hero. The title and the actor would lead one to suppose it a farce, but Mr. Burnand seems to have intended it for a melodrama. Its life was short, and it would be inhuman to vex its ghost by posthumous criticism. Of the Gaiety burlesques, too, produced during this period, silence is the best epitaph. On the other hand, it would be unjust not to record the merited success of three travesties produced at Toole's Theatre — "Paw Claudian," *' Stage Dora," and "The O'Dora." These were good-humoured but. trenchant satires upon plays which seemed written to tempt the parodist. The quaintness of Mr. Toole and Miss Marie Linden's genius for mimicry rendered them irresistibly comic. The latest of the series, " Faust and Loose," was unfortunately not so entertaining. A happy knack in taking fortune at the flood ARE WE ADVANCING? 29 has brought Mr. J. Comyns Carr to the front Mr.Carrand as the adaptor of the popular novelettes of the '^' '"^'"* late ''Hugh Conway." He has shown some skill and judgment in cutting his coats ac- cording to the cloth. ** Called Back,'* by far the better story of the two, was more diffi- cult than its successor to fit to the stage, for the simple reason that the opening incident, in which lay its chief originality, had to be deprived of half its horror, whereas the strongest scene in ** Dark Days/' that of the trial, could be transferred to the boards almost unaltered, and (thanks to Mr. Pateman's admi- rable acting) produced a really thrilling effect. The two dramas, then (the former produced at the Prince's, the latter at the Haymarket), were of pretty equal merit, the greater neatness of " Dark Days " being counterbalanced by the extreme dulness of its opening acts. Neither was of the slightest importance to stage- history, for in neither was there any study of character, observation of life, or originality of method. They existed for the sake of one or two startling situations, and were therefore mere passing eddies in the current of dramatic development, as ephemeral as the booklets to which they owed their being. Mr. Carr is also the author of "A Fireside Hamlet," a one-act ABOUT THE THEATRE. trifle produced at the Prince's. It contained some excellent dialogue, but was weak in idea. Messrs. Carton A vcry remarkable fantastic farce, '' The and Raleigh : _^ ▼-»• i t-. i ?» r • •• The Great Great Pmk Pearl," secures for its authors, PinkPearir Messj-g, Carton and Raleigh, a prominent place among present-day playwrights. ■ Though it had a considerable run, I believe I am right in saying that it was not strikingly successful — a fact for which I am at a loss to account. It showed great ingenuity of construction, with a whimsical and original vein of humour. The dialogue occasionally descended to unworthy quibbles, but was, on the whole, admirably bright and ingenious. The construction was remarkable in one respect, as showing that the repetition of a situation, generally disastrous, may, if skilfully handled, produce an excellent comic effect. The arrest of the bailiff at the end of the first act was amusing enough; but when, towards the close of the second act, the audi- ence began to foresee that the unhappy officer of the law was again to be caught in his own toils, and this time under doubly irritating circum- stances, one of those irresistible thrills of amusement ran through the house, in which the art of the farce-constructor manifests itself most clearly. I cannot more strongly express the pleasure I received from " The Great Pink ARE IVE ADVANCING? 31 Pearl " than by saying that it reminded me of an adventure from Mr. R. L. Stevenson's ** New Arabian Nights," fitted for the stage, not without a touch of Mr. Stevenson's peculiar quality of humour. Its incomplete success may perhaps be attributable to the same cause which has rendered "The New Arabian Nights" less popular than much fiction of vastly inferior merit — to wit, the humorous treatment of matters which strike the British public as excessively serious. The average playgoer regards dynamite and diplomacy as things not to be trifled with, and the infusion of melodrama which, to some palates, gave the work its chief piquancy, may have contributed to make it caviare to the general. It is said that a French encyclopaedia, xfr. Da-rick. published under clerical influence, gives the following concise account of the sage of Ferney : " Voltaire, voir Enfer." In the same way I may say of the author of '* Confusion " : '* Derrick, sec Censor." Two out of the three plays of Mr. Joseph Derrick are of importance only as illustrations of the futility of our irre- sponsible censorship, and will be duly dealt with in a subsequent essay ; the third is of ^''.^^ ms- no importance whatever. Mr. Derrick has a trick of the stage which enables him to 32 ABOUT THE THEATRE. produce an occasional comic effect without the aid either of wit or of genuine humour. Its vulgarity apart, *' Confusion " (at the Vaudeville) was not without a certain extra- vagant ingenuity, but " Twins " (at the Olympic) had not even this claim to attention. " Plebeians," a so-called comedy recently produced at the Vaudeville, was like a play of Mr. Byron's without its verbal wit. Mr. Gilbert: The great and well-deserved success of his musical extravaganzas has had the effect of almost entirely diverting Mr. W. S. Gilbert's energies from the regular stage. It is pleasant to be able to say that not only the success, but the merit of these delightful pieces, has marvellously maintained itself. Taking *' The Pirates" and *' Patience" as Mr. Gilbert's high-water mark, one may, perhaps, admit a slight decline in " lolanthe " and " Princess Ida," but it is difficult to give any valid reason . for such a judgment, and, decline or no decline, they remain immeasurably superior to all com- petitors in the same field. In " The Mikado," again, Mr. Gilbert is certainly at his highest"" level. A more charming entertainment of its kind could with difficulty be conceived. Scenic- ally and musically, it is as bright and graceful as a fairy-tale, and to accuse Mr. Gilbert of ARE IVE ADVANCING/ 33 repeating himself in the libretto is merely to say that he does not invent a fresh style of humour for every new opera. Mr. Gilbert's humour is neither of the richest nor of the rarest. Sometimes (but very seldom in these operas) it is unpleasant to the point of repulsiveness. Yet, with all its flaws and limitations, it isj)ri^inal^ individual, and (unlike some sorts of so-called humour) gen uinely amusing. Moreover, it finds expression in forms which bespeak the con- scientious literary craftsman ; and when all these merits are combined I think it would be un- grateful to complain of a little mannerism. Every humourist has his mannerism, Rabelais as well as Labiche, Swift as well as Gilbert. The only non-musical piece produced by Mr. Gilbert during the past four years is " Comedy and Tragedy," a one-act trifle written for Miss Mary Anderson during her tenancy of the Lyceum. Founded on a prose sketch, also by Mr. Gilbert, it is simply a setting for a bravura passage designed to illustrate Miss Anderson's mimetic versatility. As such, it serves its pur- pose with no little ingenuity. Some of its defects are inseparable from the subject, but others are avoidable, and consequently irrita- ting. Why, in the first place, does Mr. Gilbert change the Due de Richelieu of his sketch into 4 ' ' Coined}' and Tragedy." 34 ABOUT THE THEATRE. the much more definite historic figure of the Due d'Orleans, Regent of France, thus trebling the unreaHty of the whole construction ? Why does the best stage manager in England allow the said Regent to promenade at large about the room, so that he has but to take two bounds to be with his friends in the upper storey, and laugh at the pair who have so ingeniously trapped him ? Surely the whole point of the situation is gone when D'Aulnay makes no attempt to block his passage to the stairs, by which it would be his first instinct to escape. Could not the business of the key be managed a little less clumsily? And, finally, is it not rather in- human of the whole party to drop into an elegant tableau around the victorious D'Aulnay, utterly unmindful of the unfortunate Regent of France, who is *' wounded to the death " in the back garden ? Dr. Choquart seems, indeed, to be a bit of a Jacobin, or at least of a Girondin, born out of due time ; but for the credit of his profession he could scarcely refrain from offering some assistance even to such a bloated Bourbon as the Regent, instead of calmly leaving him to welter at leisure in his blue blood. However artificial and unreal a play may be, it is always well to finish it oif neatly, and leave neither gaps nor loose ends in the fabric. ARE WE ADVANCING? 35 Last of the cup-and-saucer school, Mr. G. Mr. Godfrey. W. Godfrey is also one of the best. His dialogue is admirable as regards both wit and taste, but his plays lack substance and stamina. He was for some time playwright-in-ordinary to the Court Theatre, last stronghold of cup- and-saucerism. Here he produced "The Parvenu," a pleasant little comedy ; " The Millionaire," founded on Mr. Edmund Yates's novel, *' Kissing the Rod " ; and " The Opal Ring," an adaptation from Feuillet's " Peril en la Demeure." In *' The Millionaire" the charac- ter of Mr. Guyon was really memorable. His answer to his daughter's remonstrance on his extravagance has always struck me as a fine touch of humour. '* If I paid my debts," he says, with an air of the utmost conviction, " I should be living beyond my income, and that I will never consent to do !" At the Court, too, Mr. Godfrey's witty duologue, " My Milliner's Bill," has been received with great and deserved applause, partly due, no doubt, to the admirable playing of Mr. Arthur Cecil and Mrs. John Wood. Mr. Godfrey, I fancy, is one of those writers who would find great profit in the assistance of a judicious collaborator. One vaudeville adapted from the French, -i/>-. Crum/y, two original comic operas, one drama, and three ABOUT THE THEATRE. comedies — that is the tale of Mr. Sydney Grundy's work ^ during the period under review. I have named the items in the inverse order of their importance. The vaudeville, *' La Cosaque," at the Royalty, may be dismissed with a mere mention. Of the two operettas,. operettas. onc, *' The Vicar of Bray," at the Globe, was fairly successful ; the other, *' Pocahontas,'^ was a' failure at the Empire. Both librettos were written with a neatness worthy of Mr. Gilbert, and both contained many ingenious and amusing ideas. *' Pocahontas " was ruined by the total inability of the leading actress to put any spirit or humour into her part, the Indian princess appearing in all the blonde exuberance of the pure-bred Teuton, and indi- cating her savage nature only by an extreme scantiness of drapery. The real misfortune of both productions, however, lay in the music of Mr. Edward Solomon, a composer whose tech- nical merits are, I believe, considerable, but who possesses in a very minor degree the gift of insinuating and haunting melody, essential *^ Rachel." in comic opera. " Rachel," the one drama on Mr. Grundy's list, was written for Miss Genevieve ^ "A Novel Reader," privately performed at the Globe, is mentioned in a subsequent essay on " The Censorship of the Stage," p. 138. ARE WE ADVANCING f 37 Ward, and produced by her at the Olympic. Its prologue was a masterpiece of exposition, rapid, crisp, amusing, and interesting. In the three acts which followed there were several strong situations and much admirable dialogue, but Mr. Grundy had suffered his admiration for modern French workmanship to tempt him into over-ingenuity. The interweaving of motives was in reality logical enough, but to kdep the strands clear required a greater mental exertion than could reasonably be demanded of an average audience. Consequently some of the best situations missed their full effect. One in particular, in which a handkerchief accidentally stained with red-ink was used to make it appear that a murder had been committed, was felt to overpass the bounds of legitimate adroitness and to partake of the nature of legerdemain. It was Sardou caricatured. "The Queen's ^^ The Queens Favourite," also produced by Miss Ward at the '""'''"''' '• Olympic, was a very skilful adaptation of Scribe's "Verre d'Eau." The dialogue was entirely original, and extremely polished and witty. There was little attempt at historic truth of characterization or accuracy of diction — history and Scribe are incompatibles — but as a piece of purely intellectual comedy the play was very remarkable. 38 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Mr. Grundy's two original comedies claim more careful notice, not only on account of their originality, but of their merit. Mr. G. R. Sims had, I believe, some hand in the *' The Glass of composition of "The Glass of Fashion," pro- duced at the Globe, but as he withdrew his name from the playbills we may consider it as mainly Mr. Grundy's work. It was certainly the best social comedy, properly so called, of the period under review. It dealt forcibly and incisively wdth two of the minor abuses of modern society — the craving for publicity and the passion for play. The motives were welded together with much skill, every character was a study, and every speech went home. The end of the third act, the capital situation of the piece, was again a trifle over-ingenious. The effect was strong, but by dint of sheer clever- ness of elaboration it became unconvincing. It was an intrusion of artificial drama of in- trigue, after the Scribe-Sardou recip'e, into what ought to have been, and was in other respects, a realistic comedy of manners. In the last act, too, a serious error was committed. After leading up to what would have been a natural and charming solution of the nodus, to wit, Mrs. Trevanion's frank confession to her hus- band of her errors and frivolities, the authors ARE WE ADVANCING? 39 seem abruptly to have changed their minds and preferred a painful, theatrical, and im- possible cutting of the knot by means of an outburst of spiteful rage on the part of Borowski — an outburst which, in real life, Colonel Trevanion would promptly have checked by kicking the adventurer out of his house. This is a grave and very regrettable flaw, marring the logic of the action and detracting from our sympathy with the leading characters ; other- wise the play is an admirable specimen of satiric comedy, bright, vigorous, trenchant, and relevant at every point to the social life of the day. "The Silver Shield," though produced after "T/ieSUvcr **The Glass of Fashion," is, I believe, in reality an earlier work. It is a play of masterly dialogue but of mediocre plot. Mr. Grundy took a leaf from Moliere's book, and in his last scene (one of those pieces of daring ingenuity of which he has the secret) passed his own " Critique on * The Silver Shield,' " pleading guilty to a lack of novelty in some of the combinations. Criticism, however, does not end here. That some of his expedients happen to be old is a matter of small moment ; the trouble is that when they were new they were worth but little. There is scarcely a situ- 40 ABOUT THE THEATRE. ation in the piece which is not foreseen, and the tableaux which close the first and second acts are its weakest instead of its strongest points. The first act contains two situations — Tom Potter's recognition of the wife he supposed dead, and the announcement to Sir Humphrey Chetwynd of his son's marriage. The former is handled in a surprisingly juvenile fashion. *' How well do I remember my last glimpse of her ! It was such another sunny day as this. I saw her, as it might be, framed in yonder doorway," &c. Who does not know this time-honoured cue for a theatrical resur- rection ? Mr. Grundy might easily have invented a trick worth two of this. The concluding situation is not, I think, precisely the one of many possible situations which should have been chosen. It does not suggest the interest of the succeeding acts, or rather it suggests a wrong interest. Sir Humphrey's quarrel with his son, which is the matter emphasized, is of no importance whatever, whereas Lucy's jealousy of Alma Blake, on which the rest of the play turns, is in no way I foreshadowed. Mr. Dodson Dick's comic in- i terruption is a Pinero-ism, which seems to have strayed by m.istake into the work of a writer so orthodox in his methods as Mr. ARE WE ADVANCING? Grundy. As to the means by which, in the second act, the misunderstanding between Ned and Lucy is brought about, Mr. Dodson Dick's criticism of them in the final scene is very just. The passage in which Alma Blake soliloquizes over Lucy's cast-off wedding-ring does not come within his ken, or he would doubtless describe it/ as ** secondhand Sardou." Almost every play Secondhand . . -7.. ., ••1 Sardou, of the vivacious Victorien has a similar scene of ratiocination (as it might be called), but even the scent of Zicka's gloves is a more conceivable clue than the warmth of a wedding- ring which has lain for a quarter of an hour or so on the floor. In his anxiety to extract great effects from little causes, Mr. Grundy goes too far. The ring is made to radiate altogether too much heat and light. Here fault-finding ends. Lucy's going on the stage is a rather conventional proceeding, and one does not quite understand why, if she wishes to remain concealed from her husband, she accepts an engagement with Dodson Dick ; but such admirable scenes of comedy are built upon this foundation that one cannot look too closely into its solidity. Alma Blake's *' tantrums " are studied from the life with equal humour and good-humour ; and Dodson Dick, though not without an allowable touch 42 ABOUT THE THEATRE. of caricature, is a brilliantly amusing study of the cheesemonger-manager of the old school. The closing scene, which forms at once an apologetic epilogue and an integral part of the play, is really a masterpiece, and whatever the defects of the comedy as a whole, they are small in proportion to its merits. The character - types are keenly observed ; the dialogue glitters with that best quality of dramatic wit which springs from the friction of character with character. From first to last " there is no offence in't " ; and though the clergyman and his wife are distinctly cari- catures, puerility and buffoonery are totally absent. In vshort, it is a sterling English comedy, not all gold, but none of it mere pinchbeck. A creed out- Mr. Grundy's chief fault as a constructor is that he is too clever. Three out of the four plays here dealt with contain scenes in which he has attempted to out-Sardou Sardou, in no case with complete success. If he will accept my advice, he will study and take to heart the theatrical criticisms of M. Zola, not because they contain the whole truth, but because they present forcibly that side of the truth which is not to be found in his favourite gospel accord- ing to Scribe. He has been " suckled in a wont. ARE WE ADVANCING f 43 creed outworn," and it is time that he should recognize its obsolescence. The irony of the alphabet brings together on my list two playwrights who may be most conveniently dealt with in company with their collaborators. To put it briefly : " Harris, Mr. Augustus, see Buchanan and Pettitt ; Herman, Mr. Henry, see Jones and Wills." Whatever his powers as a dramatist, Mr. Harris is -i/>'. Han-is. certainly an admirable stage-manager. The new school of Drury Lane sensation drama owes at least half its success to his skill and efnergy as a *' drill-sergeant," to use a phrase of Macklin's which comes in very aptly in this context. Mr. Herman has given us only one Mr. Herman, work of his own unaided manufacture, " The Fay o' Fire," an operetta produced at the Opera Comique. It was a curiously amateurish piece of work, and terribly tedious withal. " Young Mrs. Winthrop," produced at the Mr. d. Hmn- Court, is the only play which Mr. Bronson Z'y^^^^ ^^^ Howard has added to his cis-Atlantic record ^Vinthrop." since 1882. It was, I understand, Bowdlerized, or rather cup-and-saucerized, to suit what the author or the management conceived to be English taste. I think this reconstruction was a mistake ; nay, I am sure it was, if we owed to- it the vapid, tasteless, and absurd concluding 44 ABOUT THE THEATRE. scene, in which a husband and wife, seriously bent on separation, are induced by the ill-timed jocosities of their family lawyer to kiss again with tears. This passage, however, was almost the only serious fault in an admirable play, simple in method, thoughtful in tone, natural yet witty and nervous in dialogue. To say that the theme is not new is no criticism. It is merely a slightly disguised statement of the fact that the world is not new, and that Mr. Bronson Howard is not the first playwright who has made studies in civilized society. Not to go further back, Sardou has shown us in " La Famille Benoiton " a husband estranged from his wife in the absorbing struggle for wealth, and has even used the illness of their child as a means of heightening the situation. Further, the immediate fulcrum of the action — a wife suspecting her husband's faith, when he has in reality been making sacrifices to save her own brother from disgrace — has been used by T. W. Robertson in " Ours," and no doubt appears in many other novels and plays. But No monopoly what of that ? A dramatic motive is not like motives. a block of marble, from which can be carved one statue and no more. Life is plastic. The same mass of raw material may be moulded in fifty different forms, some to honour and ARE WE ADVANCING? 45 some to dishonour. M. Victonen Sardou and Mr. Bronson Howard both observe a certain comrQpn social phenomenon of our commercial age. Each develops from it a series of situa- tions, Mr. Howard's quite different from M. Sardou's, and, in their way, every bit as good. The American is not to be frightened off the ground because the Frenchman happens to have been there before him. In the domain of the drama there is no such thing as private property in the actual soil ; all that the play- wright can demand is security for his improve- ments. Were tenure in fee-simple permissible, the whole cultivatable area would long ago have been occupied by a syndicate of pestilent land - grabbers named Menander, Calderon, Shakespeare & Co., and the dramatist of to- day would have had no resource save emigra- tion to some other planet. Fortunately, though the field of human nature is limited, each generation, nay, each individual, has an indefeasible right to reap a harvest from the soil. This right Mr. Bronson Howard has exercised in " Young Mrs. Winthrop " without • the slightest infringement on any just claim which can be advanced by any one else. When I published, in 1882, the above- Mr. Jones. mentioned volume of essays, several critics 46 ABOUT THE THEATRE. professed themselves greatly amazed to find the name of Mr. Henry A. Jones on the list of dramatists of the day. " Who is Mr. Jones ? " they asked ; a question which Mr. Jones him- self promptly answered by producing " The Silver King." Yet the question was not to be wondered at, for whatever may have been his promise, Mr. Jones's performance, up to that turning-point in his career, had been somewhat scant. He is the only playwright now in' the front rank whose noteworthy work falls entirely within the period at present under notice. It was his evident earnestness of purpose rather than his actual achievement which induced me to include him in my list of four years ago ; and this earnestness of purpose is still his best quality. He takes himself and his calling seriously — an excellent trait, whatever the scoffers may say. It is his desire, according to his lights, to produce good work ; and he strives after other lights than the footlights. If much of his work is of the stage, stagey, in all of it there are occasional touches of sympa- thetic observation, with here and there an eifort after imaginative vitality. The effort may sometimes be too apparent, but over- tension is better than apathy. Kin^'^^^'^'^'' " '^^^ Silver King," written in collaboration ARE WE ADVANCING? 47 with Mr. Herman, is quite the best of modern English melodramas. The initial idea, excel- lent in itself, is effectively carried out, the scene of the murder at the end of the first act being one of the strongest stage effects in recent drama. The second act is very in- teresting, and the homely pathos of the third act, though cheap enough, is honest, and deserves its popularity. The conclusion is somewhat lamely worked out, especially as regards the steps by which Wilfred Denver arrives at the knowledge of his innocence ; but in these days we cannot afford to quarrel with a play because it is unequal. The real strength of " The Silver King,'* however, the quality which attracts one to it a second and even a third time, when its mere interest of plot has evaporated, is the care with which the whole canvas, so to speak, is worked over by the artist. No corner is without some little touch of character, some amusing or sympathetic detail. The three scoundrels of the play, " the Spider," " Father Christmas," and " the Duke of New York," are novel and admirable stage-figures. Jakes, the old ser- vant, is a pleasant variation of the Caleb Balderstone type, and several minor parts are neatly touched in. I shall have something to 48 AB0U2 THE THEATRE. say later on as to the theology of the play, and Page 87. of melodrama generally; but none of its defects, whether of construction or of moral, is so great as to deprive it of its claim to consideration as an altogether healthy and creditable popular play. " Breaking. a In two othcr plays Mr. Jones has col- laborated with Mr. Herman. *' Breaking a I J Butterfly," produced at the Prince's, was an "\^'^v^^f adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's "Et Dukkehjem " . ' (^Doll's House). It falsified, or rather ignored, .the whole ethical import of Ibsen's play, dis- torted the motive by making the husband a would-be ideal character, and converted the tragedy into a commonplace comedy-drama. All this manipulation — I had almost said stulti- fication — was necessary to make Ibsen tolerable to the English theatre-goer, and even then the piece proved unattractive. Its principal merit was its easy and unpretentious yet pointed " ChaUertonr dialogue. The dialogue of " Chatterton," a one-act tragedy by the same authors, played at the Princess's, was not precisely unpretentious, but it was nervous and interesting, I am not sure that the impassioned defence of poesy, placed in the mouth of the ** marvellous boy,'^ would read as well as it declaimed, but on the stage it was certainly effective. No attempt ARE WE ADVANCING? 49 was made to reproduce or analyze the strange idiosyncrasies of the historical Chatterton. He was simply taken as an accepted type of genius at war with poverty. A *' female interest " was of course dragged in, not too adroitl}-, and tragic irony was obtained by representing the poet as succumbing to despair on the very threshold of fame and fortune. All such theatrical machinery is ludicrous enough when we analyze it in cold blood, but in its owi place — to wit, in the theatre — it serves its pu; pose of providing an action in which characte: can display itself. Taken as a whole, *' Chat- terton '* may be called a thoughtful and original little play. In "Saints and Sinners," at the Vaudeville, "Saints ami Sinners. Mr. Jones had no collaborator, and proved himself thoroughly competent to stand alone. There was no novelty in the theme he chose. We have all seen over and over again the way- ward girl placed between homely affection and seductive fascination, conquered, almost against her will, by evil, and brought back by love and forgiveness to her better self. The story is as old as human nature, or at least as the social forms in which it has for centuries clothed itself. Except in one instance, the powerful and admirable scene in the vestry of Little 5 V 50 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Bethel, Mr. Jones did not even invent any very novel situations through which to develop his plot. The attraction of the play consisted in its genuine and, so to speak, first-hand observa- tion of character, and the skill with which the story was given a local habitation in a secluded corner of modern English life. Even the characters were in a sense familiar, but that was merely because they were types, not eccen- tricities. The devoted pastor, wdiose wide heart makes us forget his narrow mind, is a familiar personage in fiction, and, we may hope, in fact. As for the Pharisee, it is eighteen centuries and more since the name became a by-word, and the thing no doubt existed as many centuries before that again. Mr. Jones dealt in well-known figures of the human comedy ; sometimes, as in the case of the rival lovers, good and evil, they were little more than lay figures; but even into these he managed to infuse some semblance of life. The chief positive fault in the characterization was a lack of subtlety in the portraiture of the hypo- crite, Hoggard. His wiles were too obvious and unskilful, and, as in the case of Sir Geoffrey Heriot in Mr. Grundy's " Mammon," it was not sufficiently clear how far he himself was the dupe of his hypocrisy. ARE WE ADVANCING ? 51 In his two plays produced since ** Saints and Sinners," Mr. Jones has had Mr. Wilson Barrett for a collaborator, and the marked in- feriority of these works suggests some reflec- tions as to the principle of actor-manager colla- boration. I say the principle, not the practice, for Mr. Actor-mamiger •^ * ^ ^ ^ ^ collaboration. Barrett has elevated his practice into a prin- ciple. " I take leave to think," he said, in a recent interview {Daily News, February 16, 1885), " that dramatic authors are mistaken in finishing off a play and expecting to direct its entire production themselves, without reference to scenic effect and many other things which go to make the success of a stage-play, together with a good plot, striking situations, and telling dialogue. I wish to urge this with all modesty, but I think that the people who do the work of production can often help the author very much after he has invented his motive or mainspring. It is quite opposed to the method I have found most successful to accept a play absolutely as it is written and subject only to the author's emendations." Have we been wrong, then, in conceiving a serious dramatic work as an or- ganic art-product, the necessary expression of a creative individuality ? Entirely mistaken, is the answer ; you may have '* a good plot, striking ABOUT THE THEATRE. V situations, and telling dialogue," but " scenic effect " is a matter beyond the ken of the mere V, author. If he thinks he can write a play fit ta \\ be acted, he is reckoning without his stage- I : carpenter and his actor-manager. The actor- ' Mr. Barrett's point of view, the actor's point ^Ingiand^* of vicw, must bc admitted to be, for the moment, the only practical one, so far, at least, as melo- drama is concerned. How many of our English authors possess enough force of character and mastery of the stage to impose their concept tions upon an autocratic actor-manager ? One, perhaps — Mr. W. S. Gilbert. Mr. Barrett re- grets that Mr. Gilbert does not do more serious work ; were he to write a poetic melodrama and take it to the Princess's, Greek would meet Greek, and there would come a tug of war in Oxford Street. Other authors put themselves in the hands of their actor-managers, by reason of their lack of what may be called authorita- tive dramatic instinct, and of the organizing genius required for good stage -management. The author- j^ France it is otherwise. What would Vic- a II toe r at m , . j<>ance. torien Sardou say to Mr. Barrett's claim to- collaborate with him ? — for nothing less than collaboration is implied in this refusal " to accept a play absolutely as it is written, and subject only to the author's emendations."' ARE WE ADVANCING .^ 53 When Sardou writes a play, he sees every scene, every grouping, every gesture in his mind's eye ; and he comes down to the theatre with the will, and the power, to have his conceptions carried out to the letter. His actors pay him willing obedience, for they recognize in him their master, and it is in human nature to accept the dictates of consummate knowledge and faculty. Sardour, as we all know, is not above cutting a part to the measure of an actor or actress ; on the contrary, in writing an important part he has always in his mind's eye the idea of the artist to whom he means to confide it. Nor, as we are given to understand, does he refuse to accept suggestions at rehearsal, and still less to modify or excise what his own judgment tells him to be ineffective or superfluous. But he has an absolute veto upon any change ; every emenda- tion must receive his sanction, and is strictly *' the author's emendation." All French authors have, theoretically, this power; in proportion to their skill and experience in stagecraft, they all claim and exercise it, several of them with an ability almost as consummate as Sardou's. But let the average English author (even with Mr. Barrett's consent) go to the Princess's and attempt to play the Sardou ! Before half a scene was rehearsed he would be the laughing- 54 ABOUT THE THEATRE. stock of every one, from the leading-lady to the call-boy. In some cases, no doubt, from lack of faculty, in all from lack of experience, the English author is forced to content himself with being the obedient humble servant of his stage-manager, who is often his manager and his leading actor as well. He is not accustomed to conceive accurately and vividly what he wants done, and even where he has any clear conception he does not know how to explain and enforce it. Mr. Wills or Mr. Sims could more easily write another " Theodora " than put it on the stage when written ; and an author of vague conceptions, with an imperfect command of the technique of the stage, neces- sarily tends to degenerate into a mere text- writer to a set of scenes and situations concocted on the joint-stock principle in which Mr. Wilson Barrett believes. '' Hood man In ^'Hoodman Blind" and "The Lord Blind" and ,, i ti r t • i i ''The Lord Harr}^, then, Mr. Jones is to be taken as '"''^' playing the text-writer to the constructions, or at any rate the conceptions, of Mr. Wilson Barrett ; and here we have an illustration of the destructive fallacy of the actor's point of view, which is, ultimately, that of personal display. The actor conceives certain situa- tions in which he thinks he would shine. ARE WE ADVAhXIXG? certain tirades which it would please him to deliver. By hook or by crook a framework of plot has to be pieced together, so as to bring in these situations and tirades, and the result is that in nine cases out of ten unity of idea, probability of plot, neatness and balance of structure, are sacrificed to what the actor, whom his personal bias often makes the worst possible judge, chooses to consider ** scenic effect." In " Hoodman Blind " the plot started from a romantic improbability, and developed through a series of inconceivable coincidences, until a crowning coincidence brought about a commonplace and ineffective sensation scene. In '* The Lord Harry** there was no plot at all, but a mere series of adventures, which towards the end became grotesquely and childishly in- credible. *' Hoodman Blind " was in a measure redeemed by the writing of certain passages, the humour of one or two episodes, and espe- cially by the wonderfully truthful acting of Miss Eastlake in the part of the waif, Jess Lendon, which made the scene in "Twite's Cosy" really memorable. The merits of one or two scenes in the earlier part of " The Lord Harry " were insufficient to save it, as a whole, from the reproach of sheer emptiness and tediousness. Even in this play, however, Mr. 56 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Jones's dialogue was written with commendable care, the chief fault being a tendency to turgid over-emphasis in passages of denunciation, which defaced one or two scenes in " Hoodman Blind " as well. Mr. Meritt. Once foremost among the East End invaders who, a few years ago, made a raid upon the melodramatic theatres of the West, Mr. Paul Meritt has latterly dropped into the rear. It may be that the cares of transpontine manage- ment have absorbed his energies ; it may be that he is merely gathering himself up for a spring. For the present, in any case, he seems to have left the harvest both of glory and gain to his quondam collaborator, Mr. Pettitt, who, as we shall see, has remained an active worker in the field. A more serious defection from the active list of playwrights is that of Mr. Herman Merivale. During the last four years — in fact, since the ill-fated " Cynic " — he has produced nothing in London, except a translation of Sardou's " Fedora," and only one or two pieces of slight importance in the provinces and America. That the author, or at least the part-author, of *' All for Her " and " Forget-me-not " should be so long silent is greatly to be regretted, and the reason is hard to conjecture. There cannot, Mr. Merivale. ARE WE ADVANCING? 57 surely, be a failure of demand for such admirable work as some of Mr. Merivale's. Mr. Henry Pettitt is one of the most popular Mr. Peititt. and prosperous playwrights of the day. He has had a hand in almost all the recent melo- dramatic successes at Drury Lane and the Adelphi. He has collaborated with Mr. Charles Reade in ** Love and Money,'* with Mr. Augustus Harris in "Pluck" and " Human Nature," with Mr. G. R. Sims in " In the Ranks" and "The Harbour Lights." He is the best and most workmanlike of stage- carpenters, and good stage-carpentry, if not a fine art, is at least a useful and reputable handicraft. Mr. Pettitt graduated from that great school of sensation drama, the late lamented Grecian Theatre. His methods are still those which made his popularity in the City Road, but where the East End managers for whom he wrote spent a hundred pounds in scenery and sensations, Mr. Harris and the brothers Gatti spend a thousand. I cannot help professing a certain esteem for Mr. Pettitt, with his railway accidents and his conflagra- tions, his barracks and troop-ships and zerebas, his precipices and his life-boats, his wicked baronets, his persecuted heroines, his gallant Tommy- Atkinses, and his jovial jack-tars. 58 ABOUT THE THEATRE. There is not much high art in all this, but " neither is there any pretence at it. Mr. Pettitt produces good, honest melodrama, its ideals conventional, its methods crude, its characters hackne3^ed, its incidents incredible ; but there is nothing particularly deleterious about his work, which is simply what it professes to be — good, honest melodrama. When men like Mr. Sims and Mr. Buchanan turn out such work, we feel that they might have done better, and we contrast the artist who might have been with the artisan who is. Mr. Pettitt, on the other hand, cannot be accused of selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, for the suffi- cient reason that he does not seem to have had a birthright to sell. He supplies a low, but not a degraded, demand, and supplies it in a skilful, workmanlike fashion. The honest labourer who does the best he can is worthy not only of his hire, but of his meed of praise. Am I guilty of an odious comparison when I say that in my opinion Mr. A. W. Pinero is the most original and remarkable of living English^ playwrights, with a possible exception in favour of Mr. Gilbert ? Other writers have done ad- mirable things which Mr. Pinero has not attempted, and very likely could not do ; but neither Mr. Grundy, Mr. Jones, Mr. Sims, nor ARE WE ADVA NCI XG? 59 Mr. MerivaleJias the peculiar gift of inventive humour and turn for elaborate (if not always successful) characterization which have led to Mr. Pinero's successes — and his failures. For hh failures: even his failures, which have been neither few nor far between, are to be attributed in great measure to a strong originality getting the bit between its teeth and galloping off into perver- sity. Of " Girls and Boys '^ (at Toole's), '' The Rector" (at the Court) and " Low Water " (at the Globe), I shall say little. "The Rector" was a melancholy, ** Low Water " an un- speakably comic, fiasco ; yet both were better worth seeing than half the successes of the day. The precise causes of their failure I can- not pretend to determine, after merely seeing them once on the stage. They are plays which the student would like to read and analyze in order to learn why such remarkable pieces of work proved so utterly impracticable in the theatre. Speaking from memory, I am inclined to attribute the failure of "The Rector" mainly to a curious obliquity of moral judgment, which deprived the hero of all sympathy precisely in the crucial scenes of the play. In " Low Water " the faults were chiefly technical — a jumbling of farce and drama not only in the same play, but absolutely in the same scenes. 'stal well, Touched by thy lips shall muddy at its source. Thy pity shall envenom what 'twould soothe ; Thy charity breed pestilence and ruin, Until that day the vaulted rocks shall split, A gulf be widened betwixt thee and me ; Then thou shalt choose either to die, or live Accurst till doom." It is all very well to say that the misery he spreads around re-acts upon himself; this may be very true, but it is small comfort to those whom he *' blights and withers," "envenoms,'* and strikes down with pestilence. The provi- dence which, to punish a man for killing a monk, makes him a sort of locomotive upas- tree, and turns him loose upon society for a whole century, may perhaps be well-meaning, but economical it certainly is not. The end is ridiculously disproportionate to the magnitude of the means. One is reminded of the test by which Tantalus tried the omniscience of the gods, when, instead of merely putting a little arsenic in the turtle soup, he fricasseed his own son Pelops. Until I saw " Claudian," this had always seemed to me the acme of reckless wastefulness in the application of means to ends. In dealing with legendary themes our aim 92 ABOUT THE THEATRE. The mills of should surely be to humanize and not to brutalize them. There is in " Claudian " a calm, nay, a reverential, acceptance of mons- trous injustice in the action of the higher powers, which we do not find in the crudest mediaeval myths. It is to be observed that Claudian has not, like Faust, sold himself to the Evil One. It is distinctl}' through the intervention of the powers above, and not of those below, that he is sent forth to carry calamity, destruction, and misery wherever he goes. The authors leave us no loophole of escape from the theory that it is " the mills of God " which grind so *' exceeding small." Claudian's redemption is the direct object of this century of agony for his innocent sur- roundings. That the world may be to him a purgatory, it is made a hell to every one else. As a railway train was roasted to save Wilfrid Denver's life, so a whole city has to be horribly destroyed for the ultimate salvation of Clau- dian's soul. At first even he is staggered by this culmination to the hundred years of horror. " Impavidum feriunt ruinae " cannot literally be said of him. But presently a light breaks in upon him. He sees in this crowning calamity 4XS worked at a crowning mercy. The "vaulted rocks have the Princess's, ^^j.^^,, ^^^ ^^ .^ ^^.^^ straight to hcavcn. ARE WE ADVANCING? 93 The fact that the chasm is filled with the bodies of men and women does not seem to give him pause. He " chooses death," and a flash of thunderless lightning promptly descends, killing him, as such miraculous electricity naturally would, after an interval of five minutes for recitation. At last he dies in the glory of limelight and the odour of sanctity, and we are given to understand that his expiation is complete. Was the game worth the candle ? is a question which does not seem to have occurred to either authors or audience. We read in the legend of St. Sylvester that Constantine, while yet a Pagan, was attacked with leprosy, and was recom- mended by the priests to try as a remedy a bath in the warm blood of three thousand babies ; but the emperor replied, ** Far better it is that I should die than cause the death of these innocents." No such weak humanitarian in truth the scruples trouble the breasts of Claudian or Messrs. Wills and Herman. They seem to say, like Albany in *' Lear" : — mills of Wills^ This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity." They accept the blight and venom, the pestilence and earthquake, as the "ways of 94 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Melodramatic optimism the grimmest pessimism. God," which need no justification to man. I think a protest is called for in the name of common sense, if not of piety. Such means to such an end are not the "ways of God,'* but merely the ways of melodramatic play- wrights. It may be said that audiences go to a spectacular play not for theology, but for spectacle, and that such a transparently non- sensical conception of the methods of provi- dence cannot affect for good or ill the action of any human being. This is true, in a sense. No one believes for a moment that such things ever happened, or ever could happen, except in the Realm of Melodrame. There they are matters of every- day occurrence. The eccen- . tricities of providence in " Claudian " are only notable for their vastness, and for the utter complacency with which the authors treat them. Without the deus ex machina, whether he arrive in the shape of an earthquake or of *' Hawkshaw the Detective," melodrama could not exist. My plea is only that he need not be treated with such superfluous respect as is shown him by Messrs. Wills and Herman. One word of rebellion — one hint that the grim pessimism of their conception is regarded by themselves as anything short of the most ARE WE ADVANCING? 9$ roseate optimism — would do much to clear the somewhat stifling moral atmosphere. Mr. Herman's strength as a constructor of drama clearly lies in his prologues. The statement of the problem in ** Claudian," as in ** The Silver King," is strong and striking ; the errors lie in the working out. " Claudian '* is full of feeblenesses — motiveless miracles, with- out even the claptrap effectiveness which in melodrama excuses such trifling with the order of nature. But the saddest error of the play is riuearth- the feebleness with which the authors work up '^Jplotutnity. to their great effect of the earthquake. It is a lost opportunity, a possibility wasted. A pro- found and impressive effect might be obtained from a vivid picture of the signs and omens, the vague unrest, the growing presentiment of a mysterious doom, said to precede these mighty catastrophes. A skilful dramatist, by the cumulative power of small touches, might have worked up his audience to a state of breathless anticipation. Messrs. Wills and Herman make no such attempt. At the beginning of the short scene in which the catastrophe occurs they introduce a young woman (else unheard-of in the play), who recites a narrative of some former earthquake, and states her conviction that another is impending. There is no gra- 96 ABOUT THE THEATRE. dation of terror, no hush of foreboding awe. When the sensation comes it is effective enough, but it lacks human interest. We feel no more sympathetic excitement than when a penny dropped through a slit sets in motion an ingenious piece of clockwork. Somewhat similar, yet very different, is the effect in *' Sardanapalus," when the courtiers, in his great banquet-hall, hail the monarch as a god. There is a crash of thunder, a flash of lightning, and in the weird semi-darkness which follows we see the revellers struck prostrate to the earth, while Sardanapalus, with Myrrha cling- ing to him, stands awe-struck yet half defiant on the lofty steps of his throne. This differs from the earthquake in " Claudian " as dra- matic poetry differs from stage -carpentry. Even if I could agree with Mr. Ruskin that Messrs. Wills and Herman's ethics are " en- tirely right," I should none the less have to maintain that their dramatic construction is entirely wrong. Summwg-7/p. Is the theatre attracting, and does it deserve to attract, more and more attention from the educated and thoughtful portion of the commu- nity ? These were the questions which, at the outset of this essay, I undertook to consider. ARE WE ADVANCING? 97 The first, a question of fact, practically answered itself in the affirmative ; and I have now tried to provide some data upon which to found a rational answer to the second, the question of taste. The reader must determine for himself what that answer shall be. If he regrets the decline of opera-bouffe; if he laments the decease of cup-and-saucer comedy; if he thinks frank farce and popular melodrama utterly hopeless and despicable forms of art; if he holds Messrs. Jones, Grundy, and Pinero inferior both as craftsmen and as artists to Messrs. Robertson, Byron, and Burnand — then he will doubtless conclude that the theatre does not deserve the increased attention it com- mands. If, on the other hand, he agrees with me in believing that the changes and develop- ments I have indicated are on the whole for the better, he will let the dead past bury its dead without too much lamentation, and will look with sympathy upon the stage of the present — and of the future. It may be asked why I have said little or "J^^P'^y^ ^ ■^ the thing" — nothing of the actors of the day. My reasons not the players. are twofold. In the first place, my survey is confined to a space of four years, during which there has been little change either for better or worse in the personnel of the stage. In the 8 98 ABOUT THE THEATRE. second place, even if I had been comparing more distant periods, I believe that the place of any given age upon the scale of development is to be determined by the plays produced, not by the actors who perform them. From the days of Betterton downwards the stage has never been without an ample complement of admirable actors. The tastes of different times force talent into different forms, but I believe that its actual amount is pretty constant. As theatres increase and " the profession " multi- plies, the average of endowment is perhaps somewhat lowered ; but, putting out of account transcendent genius like that of Garrick or I Mrs. Siddons, I do not believe that the I aggregates of histrionic talent in any two ' periods differ so much as to enable us to weigh them against each other with much hope of arriving at a profitable result. We have now one very distinguished actor, Mr. Henry Irving, one really great actress, Mrs. Kendal, and a whole host of admirable melodramatic actors, character actors, and comedians. Putting aside, as aforesaid, two, or at most three, heaven-born geniuses, I doubt if the stage has ever been richer in talent than it is at present ; but neither do I believe that it has ever been very much poorer. If this theory be correct, it ARE WE ADVANCING? 99 is clear that in estimating advance or retro- gression we must fix our attention not upon actors, but upon plays. The plays of a period shape the actors, moulding them to lower or to higher uses ; but actors can neither make nor mar a dramatic literature. M. Auguste Vitu, in the first article of his " a painting, ^^Mille et Une Nuits du Theatre," has the U^fF"^'' '"'" following pregnant saying: *' On pent discerner, dans I'ceuvre d'un obsei-vateur, d'un moraliste, tel que doit etre I'ecrivain dramatique qui n*a pas abandonne, comme Scribe et ceux de son <^cole, tout commerce avec la pensee, trois choses parfaitement distinctes, quoique se confondant sans cesse et concourant au meme but : une peinture, un jugement, un ideal.** r Until the period of what I may call, for argu- ment's sake, the dramatic revival, the English drama, belonging to the school of Scribe in this, if in this alone, had given up all attempt at thought. It was, as Mr. Arnold said, fantastic, quite out of touch with the realities of life, a sort of "chimaera bombinans in vacuo." That stage, it seems to me, we have now passed, and the public is beginning to demand more and more imperatively that the dramatist shall be, not indeed a moralist (that may come later on), but an observer, and shall ABOUT THE THEATRE. give in his work, not yet a judgment or an ideal^ but a painting. This is, in sum, my reason for believing that there is vitality in the English drama, and that, on the whole, we are advan- cing. iZth March, \ZZ6. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. For our present censorship of plays we have to thank all three estates of the realm. It was created by the Crov/n in the sixteenth century, and new life was breathed into it by the Houses of Parliament in the eighteenth. To understand its true nature, it is necessary that we should shortly trace its development. In the reign of Henry VIII. the drama began Tudor abso- to be secularized. The monks were no longer vIiT.' '"'^ the sole impresarios. The moralities, fecun- dated by germs from the Latin comedy, gave birth to plays in which real life was imitated, however rudely, no longer under the veil of symbolism. At the same time the Renascence love of pageantry penetrated to England, along with the material prosperity which it pre- supposed. The nobles, enriched by the spoils of the monasteries, took under their protection the arts which the monasteries had fostered. In 1544, and probably earlier, the amusements ABOUT THE THEATRE. of the Court were placed under the control of a " Magister jocorum, revellorum et mascorum.'* In 1549 the representation of all plays and interludes was prohibited throughout the realm for a space of three months, on account of their seditious tendencies. Three years later a special license of the Privy Council was declared necessary for any dramatic perform- ance in the English tongue. From this time forward both players and playwrights were harassed intermittently by different dominions and powers ; the players, as rogues and vaga- bonds, by the civic authorities; the playwrights, on political or religious grounds, by the Star Chamber and the Privy Council. In 1581 we find a commission issued by Elizabeth to Elizabeth's " Edmundc Tilncy, Maister of our Revells,'* cu/rJcIiI" empowering him to call before him all " plaiers with their playmakers," and to make them present or recite all ** Comedies, Trajedies, Enterludes, or what other Showes soever . . . as they shall have in readines, or meane to sett forth; " whereupon he is to ''order and reforme, auctorise and put down, as shalbe thought meete or unmeete unto himselfe," and in case of disobedience is to " commytt " the offenders " to Warde," there to remain until such time as the said Edmund Tilney shall THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 103 think their expiation sufficient. An attempt of the playwrights, eight years later, to enter into the Marprelate controversy (of course on the side of Prelates), was promptly suppressed. Throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and her successors censorship seems to have been intermittently and capriciously exercised, with no set forms or fixed principles.^ The theatre, with all its popularity, existed, in The theatre ' r r J ' existed on theory at least, upon sufferance. A general sufferance. right of interference and suppression seems to have been held so entirely a matter of course, that there was no difficulty in applying it to individual cases in the most off-hand and informal fashion. The Crown, while it some- times protected the players against the assaults of bumbledom, and the more justifiable hostility of Puritanism, took their religion and politics under the wing of its own prerogative. Court historians can tell us when the Master of the Revels merged in the Lord Chamberlain ; 2 it ' There is a short Act of 3 James I. (c. 21), by which it is provided that any one who in a stage play, interlude, show, Maygame, or pageant, shall jestingly or profanely speak or use the holy name of God, or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity, shall forfeit the sum of ten pounds, half to the king, half to the informer. ^ Probably not until the passing of the Act of 1737. The first recorded instance of interference by the Lord I04 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Charles I. : Sir H. Herbert's jiote-book. is enough for us to note that the latter's juris- diction over the drama is a survival from the good old times of Tudor absolutism. Chance has preserved to us the private note- book of Sir Henry Herbert," Master of the Revels under Charles I., which throws a curious light upon the mysteries of his art. In August, 1623, he allows *' an olde play called Winter's Tale ... on Mr. Hemmings his word that there was nothing profane added or reformed." This he does without fee. In April, 1627, he receives ^^5 from Mr. Hem- mings for forbidding the Red Bull Company to play Shakespeare's plays. A play of Massinger's, apparently lost, is prohibited in January, 1630, because it contained such dangerous matter as the deposing of a King Massiiiger. Chamberlain is in 1624, when he was ordered by the king to remit a penalty inflicted by the Privy Council on the players who had produced Middleton's " Game of Chess." (See Bullen's Middleton, vol. i. p. Ixxxi.) After this the two offices seem to have exercised concurrent jurisdiction, though the Master of the Revels was no doubt theoretically subordinate to the Lord Chamberlain. In some instances we even find the Lord Chamberlain prohibiting the publication of plays. — J. P. Collier, " Parliamentary Report," 1832, vii. ^ Prolegomena to Malone's vol. iii. 229. ' Shakespeare," Ed. 1821, THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. of Portugal. " I had my fee notwithstand- inge," adds Sir Henry, ** which belongs to me for reading itt over, and ought to be brought shirUy. always with the booke." Shirley's play of ** The Ball " comes near being prohibited in November, 1632, because in it ** there were divers personated so naturally, both of lords and others of the Court, that I took it ill." The offensive matter was promptly altered, but Sir Henry still thinks it necessary to excuse his leniency by noting " the first that offends in this kind, of poets or players, shall be sure of publique punishment." Next year, however, Shirley regains favour with his play of ** The Young Admiral." It " may serve," says the Censor, ** for a patterne to other poetts," who will be encouraged by the favour bestowed on it, "to pursue this beneficial and cleanly way of poetry." In May, 1633, the part of Vitru- vius Hoop is wholly struck out of '* The Tale Jonson, of the Tubb," as being a libel upon Inigo Jones. In the same year Sir Henry receives from Christopher Beeston, manager of the Queen's Players, £^ for the license of " an ould play called Hymens Holliday," and £1 for some alterations in it ; whereon he adds, " Meetinge with him at the ould Exchange, he gave my wife a payre of gloves, that cost him at least 105 io5 ABOUT THE THEATRE. twenty shillings." Master. Christopher Bee- ston was evidently wise in his generation ; more so, at any rate, than his brother William, who in 1640 is committed to the Marshalsey for playing a play without a license. *' The play I cald for, and forbiddinge the playinge of it, keepe the booke, because it had relation to the passages of the K.'s journey to the Northe, and was complaynd of by his M.tye to mee, with commande to punish the offenders." A royal censor. The paternal interest taken by Charles I. in the drama is curiously exemplified in this note-book. It is well known that he suggested to Shirley the plot of "The Gamester;" but it appears that if he was ready with doctrine he was at least as diligent in reproof and correction : *' This morning (says Sir Henry Herbert), being the 9th of January, 1633, the kinge was pleasd to call me into his with- drawinge chamber to the windowe, wher he went over all that I had croste in Davenants play-booke, and allowing ^i faith and diglit to bee asseverations only, and no oathes, markt Oaths or them to stande. . . . The kinge is pleased to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations, and . no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my '^ maater'^?!. judgment ; but under favour conceiveythem to be oaths, and enter them THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. ' 107 here, to declare my opinion and submission." » This entry is almost as pathetic as George Colman's scruples about the use of the word *' Angel," to be hereafter alluded to. On another occasion, however, when Charles I. deigned to take the Censor's blue pencil in his own august hand, Sir Henry's sensitive con- science went entirely with his master's judg- ment. The play was **The King and the Subject," by Massinger, and contained the ^f<^'p"scr following lines, spoken by Don Pedro, King of Spain, to his subjects : — " Monys ? Wee'le rayse supplies what ways we please, And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which We'le mulct you as wee shall thinke fitt. The Caesars In Rome were wise, acknowledginge no lawes But what iheir swords did ratifye, the wives And daughters of the senators bowinge to Their wills, as deities," &c. In the year 1638 this passage had indeed an unpleasant relevance to certain measures of finance and government nearer home than Spain. Sir Henry accordingly transcribes it at length in his note-book, "forever to bee remembered by my son and those that cast their eyes on it, in honour of Kinge Charles, ' Charles II., being reproved by a couj;tier for swearing, replied, "Your martyr swore twice moVe-iftjwvever I did." Malone, " Prolegomena," iii. 235. ^v io3 ABOUT THE THEATRE, ' ' The 7uar The Restora- tion : the two patents. my master, who, readinge over the play at Newmarket, set his marke upon the place with his owne hande, and in thes words : This is too insolent, and to hee changed J" So much for our excellent Sir Henry. I shall transcribe only two more entries, the one characteristic, the other pathetic. The first is this : " [1642, June] Received of Mr. Kirke, for a new play which I burnte for the ribaldry and offense that was in it, 2/. o. o." There is a promptitude and decision about this course of action, eminently characteristic of irrespon- sible criticism. The second entry, only two months later, runs thus mournfully : " Here ended my allowance of plaies, for the war began in Aug. 1642." . The Parliament and the Protectorate dis- pensed with a censorship by dispensing with plays. At the Restoration, matters were placed on a new footing. In the patents ^ both of Killigrew and Davenant we read that "forasmuch as manie playes formerly acted doe conteine severll prophane, obscene and scurrulous passages, and the women's part therein have byn acted by men in the habit of ' Against which the Master of the Revels (Sir H. Herbert) ineffectually protested. Malone, "Prolego- mena," iii. 246. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE, lo^ woemen," therefore the masters and governors of the respective companies are to expunge any passasres " offensive to pietie or erood manners," " P'/f'^'^'"f * *^ i o ^^^ inannen, and to see that women's parts are henceforth acted by women — a regulation to which the attention of our purveyors of burlesque might with advantage be directed. The patentees being looked upon as officers of the Court, and the players as His Majesty's or the Duke of York's servants, this ordinance again places the drama under the tutelage of the dignitary who presided over the royal amusements. It would be interesting to know how this censor- ship worked, and what passages, in the age of Sedley and Rochester, were objected to as ** prophane, obscene and scurrulous." The information, however, would be more curious than edifying or important, and as I am not writing a history of the censorship, I shall not attempt to collect it. The object of the theatre, as stated in both patents, is to provide "not only harmless delight, but useful and instructive representations of human life, to such of our good subjects as shall resort to the same." How far the Court censorship secured this nobly-stated end, is known to all who have even glanced into the dramatic literature of the period. ABOUT THE THEATRE. Cibbers *'Richardin. Jeremy Collier. In 1698 Jeremy Collier published his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage/' and succeeded in arousing, or perhaps merely in expressing, the indigna- tion of the awakening middle classes. The censorship, whose nature it is to come in " a bad second " at the tail of public opinion^ at once became moral and vigilant. In his new- born ardour the Master of the Revels even went the length of finding political tendency in Shakespeare. When Colley Gibber sent in his adaptation of " Richard III." for license, it was returned with the first act deleted at one blow ! ^ The reason stated was that the murder of Henry VI. by Richard, which Gibber had interpolated from the earlier play, might possibly awaken sympathy with the banished King James, then living at St. Germains. In vain did Gibber protest. The Gensor had no leisure to weigh particular scenes and phrases, or sift what was inoffensive from what was dangerous. " Off with his head ! — so much for Buckingham," he cried ; and for several years the play had to stagger along as best it might in this truncated condition. Gibber, however, had his revenge. In 1718 George I. granted Gibber's "Apology for his Life," cbap. viii. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. to Sir Richard Steele a patent exempting him and his assigns from the authority of the /^ ^f£ , Master of the Revels. Gibber was one of these l ^4, / V /• ^ ' assigns; and on the Censor claiming his fee of \<^ ^V- forty shillings for every play produced, whether xTb^;> '' it passed through his hands or not, the patentees ^ ^^ contested his right with complete success. Ten years later occurred the events to which Onp'* of the •' ^ ^ modern censor- the censorship in its modern form may trace its ^^'P- rise. No one who now reads Gay's " Beggar's Opera" will find in it any violently seditious tendency. It is a satiric extravaganza, re- minding us now of Gulliver, now of Mr. Gilbert, gross enough, indeed, but not more so than the taste of the time permitted.^ Nor was it the coarseness of the dialogue which made it offen- sive in high places; it was the repeated and really witty onslaughts on the venality of poli- ticians and the general corruption of the par- liamentary world. The town seized upon these ^ In 1772 Sir John Fielding wrote to Colman, then manager of Covent Garden, advising him not to perform "The Beggar's Opera," as it tended to increase the number of thieves. The answer was as follows : *' Mr. Colman's compts to Sir J. F., he does not think his the only house in Bow Street where thieves are hardened and encouraged, and will persist in continuing the repre- sentation of that admirable satire 'The Beggar's Opera.'" Genest, iii. 223. ABOUT THE THEATRE. allusions with a delight which sent them home barbed to their mark, and the success of the Newgate pastoral at Covent Garden was such as to make " Gay rich and Rich gay." The mischief was done before Walpole and his henchmen could interfere to prevent it ; but they determined that the attack should not be Gays ''Polly." repeated. Consequently, when Gay wrote a sequel under the title of " Poll^/' equally pungent in its satire, though inferior in other respects, the licenser, on a hint from the Ministry, insisted on its absolute suppression. The public, whose appetite had been whetted by " The Beggar's Opera," was very indignant, and the sale of the printed play put ^f i,ioo into Gay's pocket. Public indignation, how- ever was not so loud-voiced then as now. The time for effectual invective against political venality was not yet come, by many a year. The disease had to reach its height under another King and another Minister, when an office was opened at Whitehall for the bare- faced bribery of the " King's friends.'* One almost wonders that Walpole, in his cynical security, did not let Gay and his admirers have their laugh out in peace. For the moment, the fate of " Polly" rather encouraged than depressed the dramatic satir- THE .CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 113 ists of the day. At their head was one Henry FieUingand Fielding, the youngest but most brilliant graduate of Grub Street. In many plays, but especially in **Pasquin: a Dramatick Satire on the Times," he had favoured the town with unmistakable variations on the theme which had made *' The Beggar's Opera" so. popular. At last, in a satiric medley called " The His- torical Register for the Year 1736," he placed on the stage a personage who, under the name of "Quidam," was clearly intended for Walpole himself, and represented him distributing purses to patriotic legislators. This was not to be borne. It was even whispered that worse re- mained behind, and that it was the intention of Foote to apply his powers of mimicry to a caricature of the Minister's august person. The authority of the censorship must clearly be reasserted and defined, and scribblers taught to bridle their ** licentious" pens. At this moment a providential incident occurred. An anonymous farce, called " The Golden Rump," was sent to Giffard, the manager of Goodman's Fields, who found it so grossly treasonable and profane that he took it straight to Sir Robert Walpole. There were not wanting those who roundly asserted that the Prime Minister did not then see it for the first time, it having 9 Rump." 114 • ABOUT THE THE A TRE. been written at his instigation for the purpose of stirring up the temporary scare in St. Stephen's to which he trusted for carrying the measure he designed. Be this as it may, he compensated Giffard for the possible loss incurred through his loyalty, and nothing more was ever heard of the farce, except within the walls of Parliament, where members were treated to an alarming anthology of its seditious and profane passages. On the wave of indignation thus excited, he easily carried 10 Geo. II. c.ig. through the Act (lo Geo. II. c. 19), which established our censorship practically in its present form. It was ostensibly intended to *' explain and amend " an Act of Anne relating to "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars," with which it had in fact nothing whatever to do. At least fourteen days before the produc- tion of any theatrical entertainment or part of one, a copy was to be forwarded to the Lord Chamberlain, in whom was vested absolute and final power to suppress the whole or any part of it, while a penalty of £^0 was imposed for any breach of his orders. So far as we know, the only voice raised against this measure was that of Lord Chesterfield, in a speech which, Mr. Austin Dobson suggests, may possibly have been inspired by Fielding. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE, I15 His lordship protested against the hurrying UrdCkesUr^ through of such a questionable measure at the ^ ' very end of a session, asserted that the common law of the land supplied an ample check upon any undue freedom of the stage, dwelt upon the injustice and impolicy of gagging the most effective public censor of folly and vice, and then went straight to the heart of the whole matter in the following admirable words : ''* But granting it necessary, my lords, which I am far from thinking, to make a new law for restraining the licentiousness of the stage ; yet I shall never be for establishing such a power as is proposed by this Bill. If poets and players are to be restrained, let them be re- strained as other subjects are, by the known laws of their country ; if they offend, let them be tried, as every Englishman ought to be, by God and their country. Let us not subject them to the arbitrary will and pleasure of any one man. A power lodged in the hands of a single man, to judge and determine without limitation, control, or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, and inconsistent with •^Unhnmimto ,. , ,. '. • 1*1 J our /ari'S, in- our constitution; it is a higher and more consistent with absolute power than we trust even to the king J,"^,^""^ ' '*' himself ; I must therefore think we ought not to vest any such power in his majesty's lord chamberlain.'* ii6 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Eloquent, logical, irrefutable as it was, this protest produced no effect. The Bill became law on June 21, 1737, and " with its passing," says Mr. Dobson, " Fielding's career as a dra- matic author practically closed." Censorship at It is usclcss to Speculate whether English ^rst vexatious, •iii • ri^-ii literature lost or gamed by the gaggmgot Jbield- ing's Aristophanic muse. The loss, at any rate, cannot have been great. The time had not come for a new blossoming of the drama, but for an efflorescence of fiction. I may as well state at once my belief that during the eigh- teenth century, and, indeed, until our own day, the censorship did not seriously impede the development of the English drama. It was, as we shall see, vexatious and futile. It interfered indefensibly with freedom of speech and rights of literary property. It did no good and, in individual instances, it inflicted grave injustice. On the whole, however, it can scarcely be argued that the drama suffered greatly from its restraint. The conditions of the times were not favour- able to the development of a great and serious national drama. Had there been sufficient vitality and power of growth in the organism, it would long ago have burst the bonds imposed upon it. I believe, in short, that, until quite recently, the censorship was vexatious rather THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 117 than noxious. Now, on the other hand, the new noxious, repressive tendency which was once merely potential is becoming actual, and will grow more galling with every year that passes. There are indications, faint but surely not fallacious, that the rising flood of modern thought will one day sweep the English drama out of the eddy in which it has so long been whirling, to carry it forward on the broad cur- rent of the age. It will then need quite other pilotage than that of a Court Censor, whose dominant desire must necessarily be to get it safely anchored in the placid pool of prejudice and convention. The new Censor did not let his powers lie dor- mant. He determined to show at once that he was no house-dog in mosaic, but a real live Cerberus,^ ready to scent sedition afar off. Already, in 1739, Brooke's " Gustavus Vasa " f/^^ff^^ W2is prohibited while it was actually in rehearsal, I'asa." because, as Genest says, ** there was a good deal in it about liberty," which, in a free "■ Literally three-headed, for a play about which there is any doubt is referred by the Reader to the Head of the Department, and by him to the Lord Chamberlain him- self, who finally accepts or rejects it. See evidence of N. Macdonald before Commission of 1852-53, and of Hon. Spencer Brabazon Ponsonby before Commission of 1866. ri8 ABOUT THE THEATRE. country, was not to be endured. The pla}% with a preface, was printed by subscription, at five shillings a copy, and brought in over ;^i,ooo to the author. This was the occasion of Dr. Johnson's ironical "Vindication of the Licenser of the Stage from the malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr. Brooke," a masterly political tract, directed, however, against the Govern- ment in general rather than against the Licenser^ in particular. James Thomson, surely as in- offensive a playwright as ever lived, was the next victim. He was known to be on friendly Thomson's tcrms with the Prince of Wales, and certain " Edward and Eieanoray passagcs in *' Edward and Eleanora," a mediaeval version of the story of Alkestis, were supposed to allude to the estrangement between Frederic and his father. The suspected lines were eight in number, but they apparently leavened the mass, for it was absolutely prohibited after it had been placed in rehearsal and advertised for pro- duction. This was in 1739, and the unhappy drama did not see the stage until 1775. So evil was poor Thomson's reputation in the Lord Chamberlain's office, that a friend of his, who had copied " Edward and Eleanora," was sur- prised to find a tragedy of his own prohibited, for no better reason than that it was in the same handwriting as that incendiary production. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 1 19 This, at least, is the account of Thomson's biographer,^ but as the hero of the play was Arminius (Hermann), it, too, probably contained ** a good deal about liberty/' It would be tedious to follow the censorship through its eccentric course down to the end of last century. Among its best known vagaries Afinorin- are the maltreatment of Reed's *' Register '^^^^'"'^'^^' Office," 2 from which two of the best characters were summarily cut out, and the objection^ to Macklin's ** Man of the World," which had to be sent up for license three times before it found its way to the stage. By the beginning of the present century, propriety had become the ruling consideration of the Censor, though he still kept a watchful eye on politics. Mr. Larpent, the Censor who preceded George ^fr. Larpcnt Colman, vetoed " Wat Tyler," a comic opera by Cumberland, although, as Genest says, ** certainly no one but a dog in office could suspect Cumberland of writing anything of a bad political tendency." It was the same official who, being himself a Methodist, insisted on the ^ " Life of Thomson," p. xxvi., by Rev. Patrick Mur- doch, prefixed to his " Poetical Works." London. 1849. "^ Genest, iv. 612. 3 Again on account of satire upon political venality. Kirkman's "Life of Macklin," ii. 277. ABOUT THE THEATRE. excision of a hit at open-air preachers from and Theodore Thcodore Hook's farcc, " Killing no Murder." Hook. Hook replaced it by the following hit at the Censor himself : — Apollo Belvi., " At last we got into a sad scrape, for, having advertised the farce of * The Devil to Pay,' old Justice Carpat, who between you and I was a bit of a shoe- maker — hearing as how it contained some per- sonal reflections on the cobblering profession — stopped the performance and threatened to send us all to the stocks." The interference of the Censor stimulated public interest in the farce, and the audience night after night applied and applauded this not very brilliant lampoon, " to show their detestation," says Hook, ** of his arbitrary and strained prerogative." Even the mild Genest is moved to add that " if every person w^ho may be aggrieved by the Licenser would, like Hook, bring the circumstances of the case before the public, it might possibly bring that petty tyrant to reason." ^ Nor did Mr. Larpent allow the sanctity of private life to be invaded, for we find it recorded that he objected to the word " gammon " in a farce by T. Morton, because he had a friend in Hamp- . ^ Genest, viii. 145. Cumberland's " British Theatre," vol. xxxi. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. I2i shire of that name, whose feelings might be hurt if it were taken in vain on the stage. George Colman the younger was a model G> -r> ^ manners and Mother {pensively) — "1 suppose so. [Great decorum" at laughter.] • . . Mother — " My child, a husband ^^ " ^^^'^"' is not a mother." Father — " No, nor a father — at least, not always." [Shrieks of laughter.] . . . Mother — " Be kind to your husband, my dear, and take care of his children." Daughter — " Has Jack got any children ? " [Here the father throws himself upon the sofa in uncon- trollable paroxysms of mirth, in which the 144 ABOUT THE THEATRE. audience joins for the space of a minute or so.] There can surely be no doubt that such a passage is grossly stupid; and, but that the Censor in the exercise of the infallibility conferred upon him by Act of Parliament (lo Geo. 11. c. 19) has avouched it to be con- sistent with " good manners and decorum,'* I should be inclined to call it stupidly gross. If this be refined humour, at all events, it would be curious to know what the Censor regards as coarse. Defilement not Though the plays I havc just mentioned are all from with- q r j j *^^*- adaptations from the French, it must not be supposed that they have brought all their objectionable qualities with them across the Channel. The plot of ''A Man with Three Wives," for example, is comparatively harm- less, and might have been treated without the' least indehcacy. Some ingenuous persons have an idea that the work of an English adaptor is one of expurgation. This may have been the case twenty years ago, but now we have changed all that. Under the fostering care of an irresponsible censorship, a school of adap-- tors has grown up which understands its functions quite differently. It may expurgate plots, if it be expurgation to call a "cocotte'* an ** actress," and to describe as "flirtation'^ THE CENSORSHIP OF THE. STAGE. 145 an offence alluded to in the Decalogue and the Divorce Court under a harsher name. This is like cleaning a dirty face by daubing it with powder ; but the Censor's simple soul is satis- fied, and what more can we require ? As regards dialogue, on the other hand, the work of this school of adaptors is the opposite of expurga- tory. As most of the French filth of the Home-made original would be incomprehensible to the average British audience, it is their business to invent English ribaldry pungent enough to maintain the requisite aroma of nastiness. In this art they have acquired no little skill, though their task is lightened by the fact that the British public, unlike the French, does not demand humour along with its grossness. Latterly, too, we have developed a group of playwrights who scorn to go to France for their intrigues, holding that home-made fabrics take on the aforesaid aroma just as readily as those of foreign manufacture. They are per- fectly right, and we may point with just pride to the immodesty- market as one in which (under the system of censorial protection) we are beginning to hold our own against all the world. A husband, two months after marriage, is led " Confusion." to suspect his wife, a mere girl, of being the II 146 . ABOUT THE THEATRE. mother of a baby which (by a grotesquely impossible device) is introduced into his house. He seems also to believe, though this is not stated in so many words, that her uncle is her seducer; and he imagines that the two have plotted to get the child out of the way by drowning it. This is the merry little misunder- standing set forth, with the approbation of the Censor, in Mr. Joseph Derrick's ** eccentric comedy" of ** Confusion." A similar circum- stance forms the ground-work of Mr. T, G. "NitasFirst" Warrcu's " Nita's First," only that in this case the paternity of the infant is attributed to almost all the characters in turn, among the rest to a schoolboy in Eton jackets. Such is the charming vein of native humour which an irresponsible censorship encourages our playwrights to work ! The title of Mr. Der- rick's second production, "Twins," promised a similar elegant extract from the poetry of childhood, but did not fulfil the promise. " Tzums." The " Twins " were a Bishop and a Waiter, and though a good deal of *' aroma " was in- fused into the dialogue and stage business, the plot was not essentially objectionable. But here the Censor was up in arms. A Bishop twin brother to a Waiter ! Flat bur- glary as ever was committed ! The solemn THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE, 147 ties of fatherhood and motherhood may be made a mockery, the sanctity of childhood may be profaned, but the gaiters of a Colonial Bishop are holy things ; from these let the playwright hold aloof. At a theatre not a hundred yards distant, indeed, a curate is being held up nightly to ridicule and contempt in riu church in, ** The Private Secretary," but a curate is only '^"^'^'^' a curate, and a Colonial Bishop is a Colonial Bishop. Promptly and firmly the Censor intervenes, spreading his aegis over the Apron. *' May we make the Bishop a Professor, then ? " inquires the playwright. *' By all means," is the bland reply. ** Insult Science as much as you please, but do not ridicule the Church." And now let me beg the reader to observe what a marvellously efficient in- stitution is this irresponsible censorship of ours. The fiat has gone forth, and the Bishop has become a Professor on the playbills ; but when the curtain rises, lo ! he is a Bishop still. The Censor can alter the word "Bishop" ^,y^<^^ Professor f into ** Professor " in the manuscript, but he cannot, or at any rate he does not, prevent the Professor from dressing as Bishop, from the crown of his shovel hat to the calves of his gaitered legs! The audience knows perfectly well that he is intended for a Bishop, accepts 148 ABOUT THE THEATRE. him as one, and (such is their irreverence) laughs at him accordingly. If the Church is endangered by the holding up of a Colonial Bishop to ridicule and contempt, then the Censor, with all his autocratic power, has failed to protect it. Ni^ht after night the farce within a farce is enacted, while the Censor stands motionless by, a spectacle for gods and men. As a matter of fact, religion does not suffer one whit by this tragi-comic display of impotence on the part of its official defender. It is not the Church, but the censorship, which is held up to ridicule and contempt. Events of izze. J havc now sketched the history of the office down to the present year — a year which has already been fruitful of troubles for the eminently well-meaning functionary tiow in power. Difficulties have multiplied on every hand. His path has been so closely beset by mantraps and spring-guns that he must have acquired a vivid sympathy with his brother Autocrat, the Czar of all the Russias. These The Great two Great Irrcsponsiblcs, one of the East, the other of the West, are perhaps the mortals in all Europe most to be pitied. They are like men slipping down a glacier with crevasses on all sides, and expecting every moment to find themselves engulfed in some sudden abyss. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 149 Both in French and in English have snares been spread for the Censor. Mdlle. Magnier, a French actress playing at the Royalty, was moved to announce " La Petite Marquise " for performance. A moralized English version of ** La Petite Marquise '* having, as we have V/-'^ ^^''f'^ . ^ Aiarqutse and seen, been vetoed by the Censor, it was clearly "Divorfomi" impossible to license the unregenerate original. The performance was accordingly forbidden ; whereupon what must Mdlle. Magnier do but announce in its place Sardou's " Divor9ons ! " a play already licensed three or four years ago. The irony of circumstances could go no further. It so happens that ** Divor9ons ! " is simply a re-handling of the theme of **La Petite Marquise,'* infinitely more highly spiced. One devil being cast out, seven other devils, with The frying-pan their passport duly signed by the Censor him- ""^ self, instantly took possession of the Royalty. ** Divorgons ! '* is one of the wittiest, but at the same time one of the most unblushingly indecent of French light-comedies. Compared with it, *' La Petite Marquise " is family reading.^ ' If any one questions this statement, I can only refer him to the two books, which are easily accessible. I would especially call his attention to the passages in "Divorgons ! " (ed. 1883), of which I quote the opening and closing phrases : P. 50, " Je vous voyais jeune, beau, svelte, dldgant . . . mes chairs palpitantes." P. 86, " E. «S<5 ABOUT THE THEATRE, There are speeches and scenes in it so suggestive that I doubt whether anything more scabrous has ever been said or done on the public stage in any civilized country. If Mr. Charles Wyndham vi^ishes to do a great service to the English drama, he v^ill engage a competent playwright to make a faithful and spirited trans- lation (not an adaptation) of " Divor9ons ! " and will put it on at the Criterion. I am not sure whether it would be technically necessary to submit the play for license, seeing it has d'inspiration, je ddtache une epingle, et je me pique au- dessus de la jarretiere . . . Franchement, tu ne peux pas appeler ga une infidelite " — in this passage the delicate " Que toi ! " of Cyprienne is especially to be noted. P. 97, " Imposez silence a votre coeur . . . Ne tuezpas le diner par le lunch." P. i66, "Qu'est ce qui te fait rire? . . . (^a le serait encore." The whole of the last act, indeed, is as shameless as anything well can be. A man plying a woman with wine and aphrodisiacs until she proposes to him in so many words to *' tromper " another man whom she conceives to have a right to her fidelity — if anything much grosser than this was ever put on the stage, I have neither seen, read, nor heard of it. The fact that the " one man " is her husband, and the " other man " her lover, does not seem to me by any means to purify the situation. I saw it stated in a news- paper that the piece suffered from the excisions insisted on by the Censor. If he did insist on any excisions it is merely another proof of the futility of his office, for I can vouch for it that the actors conscientiously spoke the whole text, and went through all the " business." THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 151 already been licensed in French ; but if it were submitted, in what an exquisite dilemma would A dilemma /or the Censor be placed ! He could scarcely veto a piece which has already been played with his sanction by three different companies, and to which the Prince of Wales, trusting, we may suppose, to the official warranty of its inno- cence, has publicly conducted the young Prince George, with a view, no doubt, to perfecting his pronunciation of the French language. On the other hand, if he licensed it, I venture to predict that even a Criterion audience would rise up and hiss it off the stage — an event which would be little short of a death-blow to the censorship. Even more perilous than the French snare is '' Nadjezda.-" the English pitfall into which the Censor has recently stumbled. On January 2, 1886, a play named "Nadjezda," by Mr. Maurice Barrymore, was produced at the Haymarket Theatre. Its plot was as repulsive as it well could be, and some its plot, of its dialogue was gratuitously gross. In the prologue a woman sold her honour to a cynical seducer, and came on the stage to make public confession immediately after the fulfilment of the unholy compact. The substance of the remaining acts consisted of an elaborate and undisguised attempt on the part of the same 152 ABOUT THE THEATRE. cynical seducer to gain dishonourable possession of the daughter of the woman he had betrayed in the prologue. If any play of the Elizabethan or any other era deals with matters much more repellent than these, I have yet to become and its acquainted with it. As for the dialogue, I need dialogue. . . . only give one specimen. A young lady, im- mediately on her introduction to a young gentleman, looks him straight in the face and inquires, "Are your intentions honourable or dishonourable? " upon which he answers, "Am I to understand, madam, that I am allowed the choice ? " Scarcely had this play been licensed and produced when a malignant spirit prompted some one to suggest the formation of a Shelley Society, and then induced the Shelley Society " The Cenci." to organize a performance of " The Cenci." At once the Censor intimated that such an enormity could not be endured. Now, I shall not attempt to determine with precision the extent of sexual misdoing admissible or inadmissible on the stage. The infallibility conferred by Act of Parliament (lo George II. c. 19) upon the Censor has doubtless enabled him to draw the line to a hair's breadth ; but to my fallible judg- ment it seems a strange discrimination which leaves " Nadjezda " on the right side of the line and "The Cenci'* on the wrong. So far THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 153 as mere plot is concerned, both are in the region of horrors, and I fail to see that the one is in reality a whit more horrible than the other. But even supposing the matter of " The Cenci " to be ten times as ghastly as that straining at bhelley, of ** Nadjezda," the treatment, it must surely swallowing Bartymort, be conceded, should suffice to reverse the balance. Shelley raised his historic theme into the highest sphere of art ; Mr. Barrymore treated his modern and imaginary subject crudely and repulsively. If style is anything — and some will tell us that style is everything — *' The Cenci " has every redeeming grace, ** Nadjezda '* not one. The difference in the periods of the two plays is not unimportant. Horrors in Renascence costume do not shock us so much as brutalities in modern dress. If an Oxford or Cambridge company were to give a performance of the " (Edipus Tyrannus," the Censor would cover himself with ridicule did he think of interfering ; but a modernized version of the same story might justly be considered somewhat startling. On all these grounds, then, I maintain that to have vetoed " Nadjezda" would have been rational and defensible, so far as these terms can be applied to any action of so irrational and indefensible an office ; while to veto ** The Cenci '* is to degrade English 154 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Futility of the veto. literature and insult the English public. I do not say and I do not think that *' The Cenci " deserves to be, or is ever likely to become, a popular stage play; but I do say and I do think that the English nation should be allowed to judge for itself as to whether the works of its great poets are fit or unfit for the stage, without asking leave or license of any irresponsible official whatsoever. And now mark the futility of the whole affair. A public performance of "The Cenci" would endanger ** good manners, decorum, or the pub- lic peace," these being the things over which the Censor is deputed, by Act of Parliament, to keep watch ; but the Shelley Society can give a private representation whenever it pleases. A private representation is one to which the audience is admitted without payment ; in other words, the expenses must be defrayed, not by the sale of tickets, but by subscriptions to the Shelley Society, which then issues invitations to the performance. The practical result, as every one knows, is precisely the same. The same actors play, the same audience assembles, the same critics discuss the performance in the same newspapers. The only difference is that, the Censor's action having advertised the mat- ter, there may probably be a more eager demand Public and private per- formance identical in result. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE, 155 for "invitations." People who care nothing for Shelley or for literature may seek to be present, and failing that, may study the accounts of the performance, in the hope of finding a certain prurient or scandalous gratification — a hope, I need scarcely add, which will be grievously disappointed. "The Cenci," in short, whether publicly or privately performed, will attract none but a dilettante audience. Supposing, however, that a public representa- tion were to allure the many who would be excluded from a private performance, I see no reason why dilettanti should be privileged to dabble in indecorum (if there were any in the matter) which would be noxious to the great public. ** Such is the law ! " the Censor may say ; to which I reply that such ought not to be the law, and that thisaffair of " The Cenci " will one day prove to be a large nail in the coffin of the censorship. The tale I have just told carries its own moral. It may be summed up as follows: — Summing vp.- ■^ ^ ^ The censorship The censorship was established as an offshoot first a preroga- tive of absoiut- of the royal prerogative, when it was, so to ism, speak, at its royalest. It was confirmed under the would-be paternal rule of the Stuarts, whose theory of government necessarily fostered every 156 ABOUT THE THEATRE. form of irresponsible meddling. At the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth it had fallen almost into abeyance.^ Then came a period when a great Minister — great with all his faults — ruled the country by means of an unrepresentative and venal House of Commons. The stage ventured to give humorous expression to the people's growing iheii a shield contcmpt for their legislators, and at the for venality. lightest touch of satire the galled jades winced. Such insolence was clearly intolerable. An old weapon was rummaged out of the lumber-room of royal prerogative, provided with a statutory handle, and delivered to a Court official, who was to stand sentinel at the gates of Stageland and give no quarter to any one who should venture an excursion into the sacred domain of politics. Let it be thoroughly understood by those who believe in the censorship as a bul- wark of public morality, that it was established in its present form as a shield for political im- morality. Combining the qualities of King King stork Stork and King Log, it has been alternately tyrannical and futile, odious and ridiculous. By its own confession it is inconsistent, and ^ Lord Chesterfield refers to the time of Charles II., " when the stage was under a license," as to a bygone state of affairs. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 157 has admitted to-day what it prohibited yester- day, with no change in the circumstances to justify the change of front. By its own con- fession it is futile, having no power to enforce some of its most important directions. It can suppress a play which touches upon an ethical problem, but it cannot prevent an indecent "gag" or an immoral double-meaning con- veyed by the actor's look or gesture. It is anomalous, since it is the one irresponsible and secret tribunal in the land. It is unjust, since, like the Jedburgh judges of Border history, it first hangs the prisoner and then tries him, or rather lets him do what he can to obtain a trial elsewhere. It is destructive, since it takes out of the people's hands a power which they alone can rightly wield, and thus deadens their feeling of responsibility for the morals of the stage. The first result of its abolition would be a quickening of the moral sense of theatrical audiences. Prudery rather than license would probably be the order of the day. " Good manners, decorum, and the public The Censors peace " are placed by the statute under the '^gto^n "morals' Censor's aegis. Religipn, morals, and politics, ^° *^'"' — these are, in fact, the subjects of his care. He is a watchman to warn off the drama from the serious interests of life, swinging his fiery 158 ABOUT THE THEATRE, {\) Religion : tabooed by the public even abroad. sword in blinding circles around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Let us see what terrible results would ensue if our auto- cratic and invulnerable angel-guardian were relieved from duty. Would religion suffer ? Would the tenets of Mr. Bradlaugh, or even of Mr. Matthew Arnold, find exponents on the stage ? I think not. It is possible, on the contrary, that one or two attempts might be made to hold up these doctrines to ridicule, which would at once and signally fail. The public is as determined as any Censor can possibly be that such burning questions shall not be brought upon the stage. In France, where the censure is practically confined to politics, Sardou's " Daniel Rochat'* is the only piece in which an attempt has been made to weigh faith against unfaith, and the public would not listen to it. In America, where there is no censorship,^ the religious Exceptions : " Daniel Rochat." ^ "Public opinion," says the distinguished American critic, Mr. Brander Matthews, "compels decency. Now and again a low concert-saloon or very cheap theatre, making a special appeal to the lewd fellows of the baser sort, descends to overt acts of indecency, broad and flagrant— and then the police interfere. But this inter- ference is only with plays wholly without literary pretence, and in theatres but little better than a * penny gaff.' I know of no interference with any regular theatre." The writer then goes on to say that indecent or immoral plays. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 159 question has been entirely avoided, except in the case of the said " Daniel Rochat," which was played with some success, the balance being made to decline on the side of faith. In Germany, where the censorship would probably not interfere with the discussion of religion on the stage, and where the public mind might be supposed to be ripe for it, there has been equally little tendency to make the attempt. In Scandinavia, one great poet has recently jbsens"Gen' ventured a play in which the established ^^"^"'^' religion of the land is attacked with mordant sarcasm ; and, though there is no censorship, even his enormous reputation could scarce tempt a manager to produce it. England, I favoured land where religion and the pud peace are guarded by official omnipotence, the only country where a play has been duced of recent years in which the religious question was so crudely and rashly handled that it threatened to lead to a breach of the if by any chance attempted at theatres of the better class, are almost certain to fail. French plays are condensed and translated, not adapted and mutilated. With politics and religion the American stage has no relations what- ever. A political satire is now and then produced, but never excites any feeling. " I think our audiences are less prudish and less prurient than yours," Mr. Matthews concludes ; " they have a firmer moral tone." l6o ABOUT THE THEATRE. " The Pro- .unise of May," public peace. To do the Censor justice, it must be admitted that if " The Promise of May " had been the work of an unknown and struggling playwright, whose career, perhaps, depended upon its chance of success, he would never have thought of licensing it. As it was by a great poet, whose name appears next to his own in the list of Her Majesty's Household, he thought, perhaps, of the fate predicted for a household divided against itself, and determined to stretch a point in favour of the Laureate. The result was a stormy first night, and, at a subse- quent performance, a scene of indignant protest. This experience will probably teach managers, for some time to come, to let Agnosticism alone ; but, even if it does not, even if another *' Promise of May" were to be produced to- morrow with the same result, would there be any great harm done, any such evil as to justify the maintenance of an irresponsible official who should, but does not, prevent it? The great body of the theatre-going public is convention- ally religious — witness the watery piety which found favour in "The Silver King" — and is much less likely than the Censor to tolerate anything which endangers their religion. Mr. Boucicault tells us how, in *' Old Heads and Young Hearts," when Charles Mathews knelt The public conventionally ■pious. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. i6i to a lady and remarked, *' I came to scoff, but I remain to pray," the audience mistook Gold- smith's line for a quotation from the Bible, and promptly hissed what they considered its flippant desecration. The same spirit of re- verence is alive to this day, and the Censor's function with regard to religion can at best be to deprive certain pieces or speeches of an opportunity of being hissed, which, as before remarked, he in practice fails to do. Let us take politics next, leaving to the last (ii) Politics. the more important subject of morals. What has been said of religion applies in a less degree to politics — namely, that pieces of strong political tendency would very rarely be produced, because they would be almost certain to fail. But supposing such a play to be produced, is England a country in which it is likely to lead to revolution, serious disturb- ance, or even the much-dreaded " breach of the peace " ? We are accustomed to strong political argument and invective in the press ; but that, say the defenders of the censure, is not to the point, since an invective delivered in print to a thousand people, at their thousand breakfast-tables, does not produce the same effect as it would if delivered by a skilled actor to the same thousand people assembled in the 12 1 62 ABOUT THE THEATRE. electric atmosphere of a theatre. Perhaps not; Excitement ^^t a pubHc meeting possesses this electricity Hall, noxious of Humbcrs, and a srreat orator is a skilled in a Theatre— ° Whyf actor, using in deadly earnest the same weapons of satire and denunciation which are held so perilous in the mimic warfare of the stage. A public meeting, it may be objected, is sometimes — very rarely — riotous. True; but why should the excitement which in a public hall is considered a healthy sign of political life, be held dangerous and destructive in a theatre ? Would not the same means by which the excitement is kept within bounds in the one case apply equally well in the other? And is it worth while to maintain an irrespon- sible official on the chance that he may, once in ten years, avert from the theatre an outburst of excitement such as occurs every night in some political assembly without doing the smallest harm to any one or anything ? Aristophan- As for political persiflage after the manner of " The Happy Land," it is hard to see why it should be given extreme license in the comic papers, and should be utterly repressed on the stage. Speaking of the play in which Mr. Buckstone was to have represented Lord John Russell, Mr. Shirley Brooks said, " I do not feel sure that the Aristophanic drama would zsms. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. M^ be such a very bad thing to restore." It would surely be an excellent thing, if we had but ah Aristophanes. The only possible plea for re- pressing it is the old bugbear of the public peace, which was not in the least endangered by " The Happy Land," or on the numerous other occasions when would-be Aristophanisms have eluded the Censor's ken. John Bull's traditional phlegm is not so easily disturbed. On the music-hall stage, as we all know, Music-hail r • 1 1- • 1 -I 'It jingoism. songs of Violent political tendency are nightly sung with no fatal results. One of these, at a crisis in our history, took such hold on the public mind that it added a word to the English language. Had Mr. Macdermott been a play- wright, instead of a poet, he would have been informed that a drama of such strong tendency was calculated to arouse the angry passions of the Peace Societ}^ and consequently could not be " recommended for license." We come lastly to the great question of (m).\forais, morals. Here there is a distinction to be drawn between the different senses in which the word "immorality" is commonly used. The double T • 1- 1 ^ 1-1 -1 meaning of It IS applied on the one hand to indecency, "immor- obscenity, pruriency, and on the other to any °'^' form of thought or action, however conscien- tious, earnest, and high-principled, which trans- 1 64 ABOUT THE THEATRE. grasses the conventional rules of social decorum, or even touches upon matters which society has tacitly determined to wink at and let alone. Vulgar sensualism, and devotion to ideals more advanced than those of the crowd, are in popular parlance alike immoral. Now the policy of good government, if good government had in reality anything to do with the matter, would clearly be to repress the former and to give the latter as much currency as popular prejudice would allow. What, then, is the action of the censorship ? Precisely the re- verse. Vulgar sensualism it fails to repress, while it deadens the feeling of responsibility in that better portion of the public which other- wise should, and would, take the censorship into its own hands. Advanced ideals, nay, the mere handling of any problem of delicacy and importance, it most effectually represses, and will work more and more harm in this way as the stage becomes more serious, more cultured, better qualified to grapple with ethical ques- tions. The public mind has room for strange contradictions. On the one hand, it hankers after coarse frivolity, hovering ever on the verge of the indecent, and none the less acceptable if it take an occasional flight over the frontier ; on the other hand, it is prudish, squeamish. Vulgar sensualisvz fostered : advanced ideals re- pressed. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 165 disinclined to judge actions to which conven- '' Prudery and •* ^ prurience. tional standards do not apply, and afraid to have the veil torn from the plague-spots of society. The prurient craving is openly pan- dered to with small check from the censorship, which utterly crushes any attempt to overcome the cowardly shrinking. Pieces which Mr. Burnand has excellently described as " immo- ralities in three acts " are licensed in shoals, vulgar and meaningless to outward appearance, but full of the most piquant meaning to those who can read between the lines; "Les Lionnes Pauvres " and " Le Supplice d'une Femme " are consigned to the limbo of still-born in- decencies — " Vuolsi cosi colii dove si puote Cio che si vuole." The reader may fairly inquire as to the grounds for my belief that on the abolition of the censorship the clean-minded portion of the The public and public would use its influence to repress the ' ^ ribaldries which the prurient few at present demand. The matter is clearly incapable of present proof, but I think I can point to a strong probability ; premising, however, that my argument against the censorship does not stand or fall on this issue. These, then, are i66 ABOUT THE THEATRE. my reasons for the faith that is in me. At present the public feels little or no responsi- bility for the morals of the stage; but the deliberate abolition of the censorship by the representatives of the people would be, in effect, a formal engagement on the part of the said people to assume the charge which, rightly considered, is inalienably theirs. The mere Responsibility scusc of responsibility is in itself an education, an education, and there can be little doubt that many who now yield idly to their lower instincts and follow the lead of the corrupt few in laughing at inane and cynical indecencies, would then rally to the better side and protest against what ** insults their soul." In every audience there are surely two or three persons suffi- ciently earnest in the cause of " good manners and decorum" to take the initiative in attacking wanton impropriety ; and the protest even of two or three, it should be remembered, forces upon all the rest the onus of choosing a side, and either backing up the malcontents or actively approving the passage attacked. The right to hiss, I take it, depends upon whether the hisser does or does not express the sense of the audience, or at least of a majority; and when once the public is awakened to its respon- sibility, I am Very much deceived if, in any THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 167 average audience, there would not be a clear majority on the side of decency. A little h there a . . . c r cUan-minded courage and public spirit on the part of a few, majority f a. little common sense and good feeling on the part of the many — that is all we require to effect a great reform. As soon as " risky lines " become really risky, actors will refuse to speak them, and girl-actresses will no longer be forced to employ their grace and naivete in giving point to double-meanings which would stamp as a cad the man who should utter them in a club smoking-room. The problem is much Tfu problem simpler here than in France. The grossness of 'pmnce: our stage is always stupid and almost always gratuitous, whereas in France it is inwoven in the texture of the lighter drama, so that to suppress it would be to suppress all that is wittiest and most characteristic in the dramatic literature of the day. The works of Labiche, Gondinet, and Meilhac and Halevy contain masterpieces of humour which are yet un- speakably and incorrigibly indecent. Sardou's " Divor9ons ! " is a case in point ; it is so inimitably witty that a conclave of the sternest Puritans might well be torn two ways as to whether it should be tolerated or suppressed. In England no such difficulty arises. Looking back over the past ten years I can scarcely i68 ABOUT THE THEATRE, since "want of decency " here goes hand in hand with ''want of sense." remember a single speech, much less a whole play, whose wit could be for a moment alleged to redeem its indecency. As a rule the gross- ness is deliberately dragged in, and could be as easily cast out. It is frequently so flagrant, and at the same time so unessential to the play, that one cannot but suppose it to be a *'gag," or rather a deliberate interpolation in the text after it has passed through the Censor's hands. When this is the case, though the Censor may be blameless, the futility of his office is trebly demonstrated. Not even a Great Irresponsible can be in thirty theatres at once to see that his authority is respected; but the public, the true Censor, is always on the spot, and its authority no one can evade. In nothing that I have said do I intend any personal reflection upon the present Examiner of Plays. He simply performs with zeal and courtesy the duties of his anomalous office. He has shown at least as much tact and judgment as any of his predecessors, and at least as much as can reasonably be expected of any who may succeed him. He does not pretend to be infallible, and yet he is placed in an office which demands infallibility to balance its om- nipotence. This is the tragi-comedy of his position. He is one of the two personages in The present Censor the victim of his office. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 169 the British Empire who can do no wrong, and in these irreverent days such a constitutional fiction is apt to excite ridicule rather than awe. Unfortunately, it is much less of a fiction in the case of the Censor than in that of the Queen. In this lies the final argument against the An anomaly and an ana- censorship, an argument which should be the chronUm, strongest of all, but to the ordinary English mind is perhaps the weakest. It is an anomaly and an anachronism. The reader may think that I have harped too much upon its irrespon- sibility ; but that is the first and last word of the whole matter. Its good or evil action in any one instance or any number of instances is of no real moment; it is irresponsible, there- fore it is unwise, unsafe, unjust, un-English. So said Lord Chesterfield a century and a half chesterfield, ago, and we, to-day, can but repeat his words. So said Samuel Johnson, not, surely, a friend Johnson. of undue license. So said Sainte-Beuve, though the traditions of the French and' the spirit of their institutions are much less opposed to such an office : ** II y avait quelque chose (he Sainte-Beuve. writes) qu'on appelait autrefois la censure pour les theatres ; vilain nom, nom odieux, et qu'il faut dans tous les cas supprimer. Est-ce a dire qu'il faille supprimer toute surveillance ? 1 701 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Proposed comp7'omises% . . . Ce qui se passerait dans un bureau du ministere de I'interieur serait de nature si nette et si franche, qu'a toute heure, a la premiere interpellation, il en pourrait etre rendu bon compte au public du haut de la tribune, aux applaudissements des honnetes gens." If we could even secure this publicity which Sainte- Beuve declares indispensable, it would always be a point gained. The suggested appeal to the Home Secretary would be cumbrous and not a little absurd ; but even that would save a play from the silent annihilation to which it is now exposed. The late Mr. Shirley Brooks made a curious suggestion that a sort of theatrical Public Prosecutor should be ap- pointed, whose duty it should be to hear and examine into any complaints of the public after the production of a play, and to apply the ordinary machinery of the law to the restraint of licence. If we still shrink from the perils of liberty, some such compromise might possibly be adopted. Meanwhile the fact remains — a fact which, but for the deadening force of custom, would seem to every one incredible and monstrous — that the property, and to a certain extent the reputation, of an industrious class of literary workmen, is absolutely at the mercy of a secret tribunal, consisting of from Dehnda est censura ! THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STAGE. 171 one to three Court officials, who at one stroke of the pen can annul the labour of months or years, giving no reason and allowing no appeal. The burglar is tried by a jury of his country- men ; the merest pickpocket, whose offence is so trifling as to be treated summarily, has justice administered to him before the public eye. The dramatist, who demands nothing more than to be tried by his peers, appeals in vain to the immemorial traditions of English freedom. There is not even a Habeas Corpus Act for the drama, but rather a Bastille or an Inquisition dungeon, whereto, in the memo- rable words of the Hon. Spencer Brabazon Ponsonby, "a play is merely banished, and there is an end of it." When will the nation's care for this great branch of literature be so aroused and enlightened that we may be able to retort this phrase upon its inventors, and say of the censorship, *' It is banished, and there is an end of it ? " THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. Waiting/or Of all the incidents of a career of crime — I ihe verdict. , • i speak, as yet, without personal experience, but on the authority of many intelligent felons — the ordeal known as waiting for the verdict is one of the most unpleasant. The dramatic interest, the nervous tension, of the trial is over, and a period of torturing inactivity ensues. The irretrievable errors of the past rise in grim array before the mind's eye — arguments unurged, admissions made in inadvertence, lies unhar- monised, alibis disproved, nervous impatience to get rid of the body, rash haste in pawning the plate, and a hundred other slips into the gins and snares that beset the path of crime. In some cases remorse intervenes to pile horror on horror's head, and the unhappy wretch writhes at the thought, not only of errors after the fact, but of the fact itself, from the first conception of its possibility right on to the finishing stroke. It is done and cannot be undone. His head is THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 173 in the lion's mouth ; he feels the points of its fangs upon his throat ; will the mighty jaws open — or close ? If any one wishes to experience these interest- Thepiay- ing sensations, yet is restrained by nervousness cbck. or class-prejudice from a straightforward plunge into burglary or murder, he cannot do better than write a play and have it produced at a London theatre. In the interval between its production, say on Saturday night, and the appearance of the leading newspapers on Monday morning he will acquire the most intimate experimental knowledge of the feelings of a murderer awaiting the verdict. In the commission of the crime there may have been some pleasure ; during the trial, or, in other words, the first performance, he has at least been buoyed up by excitement ; but between the fall of the curtain and the appearance of the criticisms there is nothing but dull inaction, unavailing regret, and torturing suspense. It may be objected that the analogy breaks down, inasmuch as a play, however unsuccessful, cannot be reckoned a felony or even a grave misdemeanour. ** Not failure, but low aim, is crime," says Mr. Lowell, who, be it noted, has neither written plays nor criticized them. Had he done so he would have made an exception as i74- ABOUT THE THEATRE. Failure a crime. regards the dramatic world, where low aim is a merit, and failure, so far as its results are concerned, little less than a crime. The author of a new play, like the proposer of a new law in Thurium, appears with a halter round his neck. By rare good fortune he may be dismissed without a stain on his character, and even with a certain amount of honour and glory; but the chances are that he finds himself gibbeted in half a hundred prints, great and small, for a fortnight to come. The first night no longer decides the fate of a play, bringing with it swift damnation or assured success. The final verdict lies, in most cases, with the critics ; and though, a first-night failure always bodes ill, a first-night success is but a fallacious omen for good. Many an author who has bowed and smiled to an enthusiastic house on Saturday night, has found on Monday morning that he had reckoned Vv^ithout his critics. A glance at the three or four leading organs of opinion will often reduce to zero his hopes of honour and of profit alike. From the very nature of the case, critics of plays and acting wield much more immediate if not much greater power than critics of the other arts. A poem or a picture remains to give the lie to an unjust judgment. Time is the The theatrical critic : his power for good or evil. THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 175 court of last resort which must sustain or reverse the verdict of the passing hour. But in the theatre there is no appeal. Here judgment and execution go hand in hand, as in the vaults of the Vehmgericht. A piece of acting, and even a play on our non-literary stage, are too ephemeral to make a successful struggle against injustice. As well might a butterfly engage in a Chancery suit. The actor or author, smarting under what he conceives to be a wrong, may writhe and cry out ; the passers-by, unable or unconcerned to inquire into the case for them- selves, merely shrug their shoulders and wonder why the fellow can't take his punishment like a man, since it doubtless serves him right. Of course there are compensations in the case. Many an actor enjoys a great traditional repu- tation which would not stand the test of a new trial ; many a play has met with a favourable judgment which a less summary method of procedure would certainly have reversed. But unjust leniency in one case does not cancel unjust severity in another ; indeed, the latter is probably the less hurtful of the two. All things considered, it is no exaggeration to say that there are in the literary world few more respon- sible positions than that of the dramatic critic of an influential daily paper. He has an 176 ABOUT THE THEATRE. A dispenser of pleasui'e and ■tiain, fortune andfaihtre. The London Vehmgericlit. immense power of dealing out personal pleasure or pain to those whom he criticizes; a few strokes of his pen may involve the gain or loss of hundreds, nay, thousands, of pounds ; and thousands of people are guided by his judgment in the selection of their theatrical fare. He may guide them nobly or ignobly, to the tables of the gods or to the troughs of the beasts that perish. In the course of time he may even create in the minds of his readers a certain habitual attitude towards the stage, on which the future of the English drama may in no small measure depend. It can scarcely be superfluous, then, to inquire a little into the qualifications which this office demands, the obligations which it imposes. Society has a right to interest itself in the constitution of a court from which there is no appeal, and which holds in its hands the fortune and professional reputation of a large number of citizens. The leading London critics of the day — a dozen, or at the outside a score, in number — form such a court. It may seem an exaggeration to say that there is no appeal from their judgment, but woe to him who has to trust to such a resource ! Their verdict is well-nigh binding upon the provinces, it is heard with respect in America. Whenever they are THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 177 unanimous, as in effect is generally the case, ' they are irresistible. Their dispraise of an actor may throw him back years in his career. Only in the rarest cases does a play survive their condemnation. This power has grown with the growth and Growth of strengthened with the strength of the daily Elizabethan press. Shakespeare and Burbage knew nothing "^^' of it. They were probably but dimly acquainted with the momentary elation of success and dejection of failure which chequer the career of a playwright or actor of to-day. A little more or less applause on the first production of a play, a slight rise or fall in the receipts of subsequent performances, in these inarticulate ways did the public judgment utter itself. A play filled its place just like an average magazine article of to-day ; it might attract more or less attention, but it was impossible to predicate of it absolute success or failure. In the eighteenth century The eighteenth theatrical life had become more self-conscious, '^^"''"^• and the art of criticism had its professors and its amateurs. " The critics," however, mainly consisted of a certain section of the paying ' This may seem a startling assertion, but it will be found that, amid all differences of detail, the unanimity of the critics in their final summing-up is generally sur- prising. 13 178 ABOUT THE THEATRE. public, answering to our " first-nighters," who made it their business to be present whenever a new play or a new actor was brought forward, and either approved or incontinently damned as their humour suited, and then adjourned to the coffee-houses to talk it over. The criticism of the periodical press was short, perfunctory, stereotyped in its forms, personal in its methods, and made scarcely any pretence to impartiality. It fluctuated between the puff and the lampoon. Now and again some notable production, such as Addison's " Cato," would give rise to a war of pamphlets, laudatory and abusive. In the latter category the works of John Dennis hold a prominent place. Anything like the calmly judicial tone which criticism now endeavours to assume is scarcely to be found in the eighteenth century. That there were keen and able critics is not to be denied. A glance at the theatrical memoirs and satires of the century, at Gibber's ** Apology" and Churchill's " Rosciad," suffices to prove that they existed. But there were no specialists in the art, no men who professedly devoted a large portion of their labour and study to giving the public an impartial record and estimate of the theatrical life of the day. The theatrical journals occasionally attempted v/ere short-lived and tainted with unmistakable partizanship.. Cibber. Churchill, THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 179 About the beginning of this century news- Nineteenth century. paper criticism, as we at present know it, was born. Then do we find Leigh Hunt in the Leigh Hunt. News and the Examiner applying to the manner- ism of John Kemble such satire as, if applied to Mr. Irving, would be denounced by his devotees as scurrilous and profane. Then do we find Hazlitt in the Chronicle and the Times proclaim- HazUtt, ing the genius of Edmund Kean while analyzing his performances with rare discrimination. It is noteworthy, as showing how little cause we have to mourn over a decadence in the living drama of the day, that these two writers either contemn or ignore the dramatic authors of their time, while they devote their whole attention to the actors. Leigh Hunt has the fangs of his sarcasm for ever fixed in Reynolds, Dibdin, and Cherry, and finds no merit in anything later than Sheridan and Goldsmith. His brother critics, too, he attacks unsparingly with re- proaches very much like some which have been recently reiterated. He accuses them, among other things, of being more concerned to note ** the fashionables in the boxes " than the actors on the stage, and hints, not darkly, that their enthusiasm is apt to be stimulated by managerial chicken and champagne. Here, too, I must name with reverence the i,8o; ABOUT THE THEATRE. Charles Lamb, name of Charles Lamb, patron saint of English theatrical criticism. The few pages which he has devoted to this art may well be the despair of those that come after. With all his narrow- ness of view and taste for paradox, he had the insight, the sympathy, and the style which, could we but approach them, might transmute the journey-work of criticism into enduring literature. The middle of the century found men of great ability engaged, at least occasionally, in theatrical criticism. Two of the most instructive and delightful books ever written on the drama are . composed of studies made about this period — G.H.Lewes. Gcorge Henry Lewes's *' Actors and Acting,'* and Professor Henry Morley's *' Journal of a London Playgoer." These are in many respects models of what criticism should be, but they were produced under conditions widely different from those of the present day. Theatres were not so numerous as they are now, the theatrical public was very much smaller, theatrical enter- prise did not involve such vast interests. Moreover, without unduly glorifying our own- age, we may say that the native English drama, has made a great stride since those days, while, the Frenchdrama, with which English criticism, is so largely: concerned, has advanced from THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. i8i Scribe to Augier. As we read Professor Morley's Professor , „ 7 . . . / MorUy. Journal, interesting as it is, we cannot but reflect that, after all, the critics of thirty years since must have had a humdrum, easy time of it. A single season now brings as many ** great events" — productionsdemandingseriousthought and study — as are to be found in any five of the years chronicled by Professor Morley. To indicate the extent of the change, I may note that the opera as well as the theatres came under this genial critic's cognizance. At the present day it would be hard to find any one with the special knowledge of both subjects now considered indispensable, while no single man could possibly get through the amount of work involved in such a combination of offices. At the height of the season he would have to be in three or four theatres at once. The delightful autobiography of Mr. Edmund lohn Oxe»ford Yates contains an anecdote which aptly illus- trates the conditions of criticism thirty years ago, and the estimation in which the drama was held in the high places of journalism. Speak- ing of Mr. John Oxenford, Mr. Yates says : — ** When he first took up dramatic criticism for the Times he wrote unreservedly his opinion, •not merely of the play under notice, but of the actors. One of these, being somewhat sharply ABOUT THE THEATRE. criticized, appealed in a strong letter to the editor, which Mr. Delane showed to John Oxenford. * I have no doubt you were perfectly right in all you wrote,' said the great editor to the embryo critic ; * but that is not the question. The real fact is that these matters are of far too small importance to become subjects for discussion. Whether a play is good or bad, whether a man acts well or ill, is of very little consequence to the great body of our readers, and I could not think of letting the paper become the field for argument on the point. So in future, you understand, my good fellow, write your notices so as much as possible to avoid these sort of letters being addressed to the office. You understand ? ' Oxenford under- stood ; and in that interview the Times editor voluntarily threw away the chance of being supplied with dramatic criticism as keen in its perspicacity as Hazlitt's, as delightful in its geniality as Lamb's." Critical morality may or may not have advanced since these days, but at least editors are no longer so blind to their own interests. I cannot continue this sketch of the progress of criticism without naming contemporary workers in the field, whom it would be pre- sumption in me to mention whether with praise " Oxenford ■understood." The present day. THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITIC I SAT, 183 or blame. Suffice it to say, that as theatrical life has widened, and public interest in the drama has increased, all the leading organs of opinion have found it to their interest to devote to the theatre that careful attention which only a few used formerly to bestow upon it. Already in 1866 Professor Morley notes how " there has sprung up during the last three or four years in several of our journals a healthy little breeze of a healthy public criticism." The time is now long past cUm. ^^^^^' when a freshman on the staff of a newspaper was sent to do the dramatic criticism, with the hope of rising, by diligence and good luck, to the office of police-court reporter. Men of education and experience fill the critical stalls ; men who can rub shoulders on equal terms with the representatives of literature and art whom an important first-night now attracts to the theatre. Even the higher criticism, as I have pointed out in a previous essay, no longer pages. disdains the drama, but ranks it among the topics upon which it keeps a watchful eye. My purpose, then, is not to criticize the critics, but to state a few of the doubts and difficulties which beset their path. Speaking as a humble member of the confraternity, I wish to dwell on some of its manifold responsi- Duties and difficulties, bilities. We have duties to fulfil towards 1 84 ABOUT THE THEATRE. honesty pre- supposed. managers, authors, and actors, towards the public of the day, and towards English literature at large. What are these duties ? And what are the main obstacles to their fulfilment ? We may take for granted, in the first place, that honesty without which sound criticism is impossible. The critic who, from whatever motive, calls a thing good which he believes to be bad, or bad which he believes to be good, is clearly false to his fundamental duty — the duty towards himself. Involuntary bias, involuntary narrowness, involuntary blindness, are quite sufficiently active sources of error. I should be sorry to insult my cloth by dwelling upon voluntary falsity, whether mercenary or malevo- lent, as a thing probable or even possible. Granted this cardinal virtue, or rather this freedom from original sin, I would plead for a robuster code of critical morality than some people are prepared to sanction. For instance, we hear it spoken of as an enormity that a critic should either write or adapt plays. Why not ? Though it be a fallacy that no one can criticize an art who has not practised it, there is yet no doubt that the most valuable insight into the technique of dramatic writing is to be obtained either by original effort in the field, or by the analysis and reconstruction of foreign work Should critics be play- wrights ? Why not ? THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 185 which is involved in the act of adaptation. Why must we conclude that what the critic gains in knowledge he loses in moral fibre ? Given common honesty, he can surely resist the not very terrible temptations thus thrown in his way. A man who would virulently condemn a rival adapter or slavishly praise a manager from whom he expects an order, is of the corrupt, corruptible, and would be bribed or bought in some other way, though a law should be passed separating the professions of critic and play- wright as jealously as those of solicitor and barrister. It would be sad for English criticism did we require to sing " Lead us not into temp- tation " in this pitiful key. A much more delicate and difficult question should they is that of the extent to which a critic may wisely ^ZorTllT^^^ enter into personal relations with actors and ''"^^'''' authors. It is foolish to argue that he should shun those whom he has to criticize, as though they brought with them a contagion not to be escaped save by the disinfectant intervention of the footlights ; yet it seems to me that the air of the theatrical clubs is but moderately con- ducive to sound criticism. Involuntary bias of all sorts is only too easily contracted in these pleasant caravanserais. How far he may yield to their charms is a question upon which each i86 ABOUT THE THEATRE. critic must be a law unto himself. He will determine according to the strength or weakness of his critical judgment ; if it be strong, he may brave the danger ; if it be weak, he will do well to shun it. I may perhaps be allowed to illus- trate my meaning from my own experience. Rightly or wrongly, I have very strong opinions as to the merits of plays, and can give reasons, A personal g^ood, bad, or indifferent, for the faith that is in confession. ^ me. But on questions of acting my judgment is more or less infirm. Striking genius and utter incompetence I can recognize as well as another, but in the vast debatable land of respectable mediocrity lam very much astray. My judgment changes from time to time ; what pleased me last year may bore or shock me to-day ; and moreover I find myself at variance on questions of acting with critics to whose judgment I cannot but bow. Therefore I avoid the society of actors, while as regards authors I have no such scruple. My judgment of plays errs on the side of dogmatism ; it will formulate and express itself, rightly or wrongly, in spite of all possible friendship or enmity. In criti- cizing adversely the work of an acquaintance I may perhaps take unusual pains to be courteous, but courtesy towards friends is no fault ; on the contrary, I think with contrition of the occasions THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 187 when I may have been betrayed into discourtesy towards strangers. I believe, then, that I can resist any tendency to bias arising from personal acquaintance with authors, while with actors I am conscious that the reverse is the case. To Bias occasioned by " knowing know an actor is to render my judgment of his an actor." performances doubly undecided. I may know him so slightly as to be quite unaffected by personal regard or dislike, yet the mere familiar- ity with his looks, tones, and manners in private life unsettles my estimate of him as an artist. The bias thus created is often to his disadvan- often to his tage.' I seem to have got once for all behind "^ ^^^ '^^^' his mask, so that nothing he may do produces a perfect illusion. The result is that my praise or blame of him is thenceforth half-hearted and conventional. I feel that the mirror in which I see him is warped. The image presents a misty and blurred outline, and I have to try by a laborious effort of mind to reconstruct its true contours. Since the moment when this effect became clear to me, I have avoided, as far as possible, the company of actors, even though I thereby incurred a certain loss; for there is Ms it to this tendency that Hazlitt alludes when he says, " The only person on the stage with whom I have ever had any intercourse is Mr. Liston, and of him I have not spoken ' with the malice of a friend ' " ? ABOUT THE THEATRE.- Actors " talk- ing shop." nothing more instructive than to hear a p.arty of actors '^ talking shop." What little insight I may possess into the technique of the art has been gained from conversation with actors. Had I the advantage of knowing a veteran whom there was no chance of my ever having to criticize, I should sit at his feet with reverent attention, assured of acquiring, directly or in- directly, the most valuable knowledge of the methods of his art. In the society of players on the active list I feel that I am paying too dearly for my whistle. My only excuse for the egoism of these con- f^fssions is that they illustrate my meaning. A Weak judgment should avoid the risk of bias, a firm judgment may brave it. The critic must search his own soul, form an honest estimate of his strength and his weakness, and act loyally in accordance with that estimate. It may be mistaken, but if he has done his best he can do no more. We may take it as a general rule, that the task of criticism should, as far as possible, be kept apart from that of purveying news and Critic and gossip. The theatrical paraeraphist has his paragraphtst. or- x- o r^ distinct place in the world of journalism, since the public is from of old eager for glimpses behind the scenes. He must haunt the clubs Paris. THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 189 and coteries, sometimes, alas ! the bars and tap-rooms, and must enter into direct relations with ** the profession " at large. All this the critic should avoid, unless he is content to become a mere chronicler of dramatic events. The plan adopted by the Paris Figaro in dealing with the drama may be commended for imita- tion. It has a serious and able critic in the The practice in person of M. Auguste Vitu ; a witt^^ chronicler of first-night incidents and gossip, who writes under the signature of " Un Monsieur de rOrchestre ; " ^ and in addition to these two,^ a theatrical sub-editor, who does not attempt ' give any literary form to his daily column mere news. M. Vitu, from his stall, devoted his whole attention to the play and the acting ; the " Monsieur de I'Orchestre " flits about from the crush-room to the green-room, records the emotions and sayings of the actors, describes the dresses of the ladies, enumerates the " fashionables in the boxes," to use Leigh Hunt's phrase, and, in short, chronicles the hundred trifles which go to make up a Parisian " Soiree Theatrale." This is a wise division of labour. There is no possible reason why the ^ The original " Monsieur de I'Orchestre," Arnold Mortier, died in January, 1885, and has been succeeded by M. Emile Blavet, a writer of much less vivacity. I90 ABOUT THE THEATRE. The social event distin- ^ziishedfrom the artistic event. Truth mani- foldy public should not be gratified with an account of the incidents of a first-night, which, after all, is a social event like any other; but there is every reason why the social event and the artistic event should be kept distinct and treated of separately. The purveyor of news is always under a certain obligation to those who provide him with it ; the critic should be under no obligation to any one. So far we have been considering the means by which a critic may avoid bias and undue influence, and form an unprejudiced as well as an honest judgment. But a greater problem remains behind. Having formed his honest judgment, how is he to utter it ? " Truthfully," is the obvious answer ; but about any work of art there are many different truths to be told and many different ways of telling them. It may be strictly truthful to say of a picture that its frame is gorgeously gilt, or, like the York- shire critic, to assure the public that ** the paint must have cost a matter of five pounds, let alone the man's time a-laying of it on ; " and this is a form of truth by no means uncommon in the theatrical criticism of the day. Even when we come nearer to telling the whole truth, or rather the essential truth, we may temper it in fifty different ways. We may serve it up with THB ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 191 honey or with vinegar. We may hurl it forth and many way$ .--,,, - . .... of telling it. With Carlylean emphasis, or enunciate it with the sweet-reasonableness of Emerson. We may make it cut like a sword, sting like a whip, or soothe like a caress. There is of course a time for everything : a time to be bitter and a time to be sweet ; a time to speak, as the French say, " brutally," and a time to use conventional phrases ; a time for indignation and a time for persiflage ; a time to " slate " and a time to refrain from slating. The critic's motive-power should be enthusiasm for the best interests of the English stage, but tact must be the rudder which shapes his course. One thing is quite evident, namely, that the The critu an critic must be an opportunist. He must rarely give rein to the idealist in his composition. He must take the drama as he finds it, and give its due credit to all honest workmanship, even on a quite unideal level. It is only Beau Tibbs who demands to have his money returned because a frank farce is not " a tragedy or an epic poem, stap my vitals ! " The satyr-play has its artistic justification as well as the trilogy. Honest fooling is not to be despised ; indeed it is much more useful and respectable than pretentious heroics. It necessarily and rightly occupies a large place on any popular stage. opportunist t 192 ABOUT THE THEATRE. neither an injlexible idealist nor a fad-inonger It has its own standards by which to be tried. We must not attempt to find the height of a sugar-loaf by barometric observations, and then cry out upon its pettiness, because the atmo- sphere at the top is not sensibly rarer than at the bottom. Only when the fooling becomes dishonest is it to be absolutely condemned — when it panders to pruriency, when it vulgarizes what is beautiful and venerable, whether in human nature, or in history, or in art, and when it descends to mere witless imbecility, which, if it does nothing else, dulls the public sense for worthier humour. Even then there is a just mean to be observed in denunciation. Disproportionate ire tends to secure for the managers of the Nudity and Frivolity theatres the very successes of scandal which they most covet ; and one cannot do the drama a greater disservice. When, as is usually the case, an immoral play is dull and puerile as well, let us dwell on the dulness rather than on the im* morality ; when it happens to be clever and amusing, let us give the devil his due, and say so. Nothing can be more hurtful to a critic's influence than a moral Charles the First's head shaking its gory locks in everything he writes. People refuse to be rough-ridden day after day or week after week by a hobby, however re- THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 193 spectable. Though we be as virtuous as Malvolio, there will still be a demand for cakes and ale which will still find its supply. The —ananaiyit critic^s function is not that of the temperance Zmi/is^,'"' "" lecturer, but of the public analyst ; not to de- nounce the fare altogether, but to give people clearly to understand the true nature of what they are consuming. When we come to the higher walks of the catholicity drama, catholicity of taste is still a prime re- Tigf/riphcrJ'' quisite of good criticism. If I have a private partiality for five-act tragedies in blank verse — this, thank heaven, is a mere hypothesis — let me not therefore sneer at stirring melo- drama and pooh-pooh modern comedy. The critic must always start, indeed, from his own individual impressions. To like and dislike vividly and heartily is his first qualification. He must not be always posturing in his judg- ments, and considering what he ought to like rather than what he does like ; but neither must he make fetishes of his fads and sacrifice everything to them. Let him always dwell on the merits as well as the defects of earnest effort, however imperfect. Let him not be im- posed upon by pretentious claptrap, but stand aiovgwitk unshaken and unawed amid papier-mach^ earth- 7nait ^ ^^ ^' quakes and avalanches of blank verse, main- 14 194 ABOUT THE THEATRE. taining, as Emerson says, " that a pop-gun is a pop-gun, though the ancient and honourable of this world affirm it to be the crack of doom." When his judgment is at variance with that of the majority, let him "give full weight to the popular verdict, and tell how the piece pleased the gods though it displeased Cato — or vice versa. Let him avoid, as far as possible, critical commonplaces, such as ** the idea is not strikingly original, the characters are either lay figures or caricatures," and so forth. Such remarks may be taken for granted in the vast majority of cases. What we demand of a playwright is not to tell an absolutely new stor}?-, but to tell his old story freshly and. well. If, by chance, he does hit on a novel theme or draw a character with keen and just observation, let us point it out as a striking merit, instead of sneering at him, in other cases, for a defect which, in these days, is almost inseparable from the conditions under which he works. and alertness Above all things, let us in this sphere keep our of the moral i • i i -i atai sense. moral judgment on the alert. The no-ideals of irresponsible farce are much less injurious than the false ideals^ of would-be moral comedy and drama. An undue concession to narrow pre- judice or cowardly convention should be un- sparingly denounced because it is insidiously and subtly destructive. THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 195 That a critic should own a serious artistic ideals, pro- ideal seems to me beyond doubt, though he retrogressive. should not fall into the Quixotic monomania of attempting to chastise every one who does not do homage to his particular Dulcinea. To sit stolidly at one point of view is not a practical method of criticism. M. Zola has tried it in France, and despite his keenness of observation and vigour of style, he cannot be said either to have depicted the French stage truly, or (as a critic) to have influenced its development. This is an error, however, into which we in England are little apt to fall. The lack of a progressive ideal is our great weakness. Where we have any ideal at all, it is too apt to be retrogressive. Some of us are inclined to accept the gospel according to Shakespeare as a final revelation in which are summed up all the law and the prophets. Now the true relation of Shakespeare to our modern stage is a very delicate question not to be determined in a volume, much less in a paragraph. So much, however, is clear : to play Shakespeare worthily may be a high function of the English stage, but cannot be the highest; while to imitate Shakespeare, if it be a rational en- deavour at all, cannot be the noblest aim of ithe English dramatist. Shakespeare may be 196 ABOUT THE THEATRE. The modem ■ideal v either Aristotelian nor Shake- spearean. The technique cf criticism : Three methods. (i) The narrative. a part, but cannot be the whole, or even the greater part, of a worthy critical ideal. Lessing, if I may say it with reverence and gratitude, pinned his faith to an Aristotelian foot-rule quite inapplicable to the Teutonic drama. In the same way a Shakespearean standard is now an anachronism. It may be too long or too- short — I suspect it is both at once — but in any case it is useless and cumbersome. It does not come within my purpose to say much of what may be called the technique of theatrical criticism, the literary forms best suited for it. These must be determined by the demands of the audience whom the critic addresses. There are three well-defined methods, of dealing with a theatrical production : the narrative, the historic or anecdotic, and the analytic or critical properly so called. To tell in detail the plot of a play is a difficult and sometimes an unprofitable task. Unless the tale is told with unusual narrative power it is. almost certain to be tedious and confusing. Even if it escapes this danger, it is apt ta convey an unfair impression of the play, and to take the edge off the reader's curiosity and interest when he comes to see it. Yet this method is necessarily adopted by the critics of the daily papers, addressing a public to THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM, 197 which a new production is primarily an item of news, and only secondarily a piece of literature. The leading Parisian critics, too, incline more or less to the narrative form. Perhaps the true mean is hit by M. Francisque Sarcey, who, seizing with just instinct upon the central situation or idea of a play, gives, in a paragraph, a better insight into its plot than a less skilful writer might give in a column, and thus endows his analytic narrative, if I may call it so, with the chief attractions and advantages of both styles. The historic and anecdotic (u) t/u method is much, in vogue with writers who ''"^''''''''^• have a long memory and a gossiping style. They dwell on former revivals, on the actors who have filled this part and that since the days of Betterton, on the fortunes of this or that French original when it was produced in Paris. Even in dealing with new plays they love to discover analogies with forgotten efforts of unremembered playwrights. Of such work one can only say that though often interesting and delightful, it is not criticism. The analytic (Hi) The method has this disadvantage, that it tends to ^"'^^^^' become dry and technical, to address itself to authors and actors rather than to the great public. Conscious of this tendency, the critic should strive against it, repress what is peda- 198 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Criticism of plays more profitable than criticism of acting. gogic in his style, and remember with Hazlitt that " the insipid must at all events be avoided as that which the public abhors most." If I may hint at what seems to me a fault in English criticism, I should say that too much space is given up to phrases, more or less conventional, with regard to the actors, while the merits of the play are often superficially considered. This habit has survived from the time when English plays were merely con- temptible, while some of the greatest actors the world has ever seen afforded material for detailed criticism, neither conventional nor stereotyped ; from the time when Leigh Hunt dismissed " Reynolds, Dibdin, and Cherry," as beneath the notice of a rational man, and devoted his whole attention to John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, Elliston, and their great contemporaries. Now, the times have changed. The merit of our plays and of our acting is more nearly on a level ; and this being so, it seems to me that criticism of acting, in which individual whim and fancy, sympathy and antipathy, necessarily play a large part, is at once less fruitful and less interesting than criticism of plays. This impression may be due to my own keener interest in authorship than in acting, but it seems to be shared by the THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. 199 leading French critics, who, even in dealing with the Com^die Frangaise, make their com- ments on the actors very short indeed. I do not argue that acting should be by any means neglected, but merely that the critic need not hold it his duty to assign particular praise or blame to each individual member of a large cast. Sometimes the acting demands careful except when the one ts consideration, since the play must be seen, so bound up in . -I 1 '^^ other. to Speak, through its perlormance, and the merits and defects inherent in the one separated from the merits and defects proper to the other ; but as a general rule the play, which is, or ought to be, a piece of English literature, is of greater importance than the acting, however meritorious. The Earl of Lytton in a recent article ^ revived an old discussion as to the merits and defects of the system of first-night criticism. Its First-night defects, indeed, are patent enough. That an jt^ defects artist who has devoted months, perhaps years, to the study of a great Shakespearean part, should have to stand or fall by the impressions conveyed to the critics on one nervous evening, and that the most influential of these critics should have to formulate their impressions at ' Nineteenth Centuiy^ December, 1884. ABOUT THE THEATRE. lightning speed, with no time for reflection, and with nerves either jaded or over-stimulated, is clearly not an ideal condition of things. The merits of the system, on the other hand, are and its excuses, not positive merits but mere excuses, resolving themselves into the assertion that, for the present at any rate, no other plan is practicable. This is quite true. The public demands immediate news of an important theatrical production just as of a debate in Parliament or a dynamite explosion. Even if this were not so, the idea which has sometimes been mooted Suggested of establishing a " critics' night " (the third or remedies : . ^ . theatre. de theatre, a term which it is almost impossible to render. One might safely offer a handsome prize for any moderately available English equivalent for this phrase, which, on the other hand, is one of the most useful in the whole theatrical vocabulary. Mr. Swinburne has boldly rendered coup d'etat into ** stroke of state ; " would it be possible to represent coup de theatre by such a phrase as " stage-stroke " ? Even more necessary, and almost as hard to English (as Dr. Furnivall would say) is denouement. Sometimes, but very rarely, Denouement. " catastrophe " (a word which we have come to use very loosely) may stand in its place ; and occasionally the feeble ** conclusion " may serve for lack of a better. Some one — I think it is De Quincey — has suggested ** evolution ** or *' disentangling," but neither of these seems very satisfactory. I have sometimes been tempted to try ** unravelling," and some such word, if we could secure its general recognition, might ser\'e the purpose. One point, at least, 15 ABOUT THE THEATRE. would be gained if the word " nodus " were accepted as an English word, not requiring italics; for until the "knot" of a play is regarded under that convenient and time- honoured figure, neither denouement nor any English equivalent will convey its due significa- tion to the popular mind. Solution : Natural selection and the survival of the siii'vival of 1 1 1 1 • ihcjittest. fittest hold good m matters of language as well as in the physical world ; for are not words organisms of long descent and intricate life- history? It is impossible to force words into use which do not justify themselves as the right words to fill the right places. But it is surely an insult to our mother-tongue to suppose that no English words can be found or fashioned which shall fitly fill the places of these French theatrical terms, of which, by the way, I do not. pretend to have given an ex- haustive list. The predominant influence of the French in our theatre has made us accept their technology, just as they have adopted our jargon of the turf; but since the English stage is gradually throwing off foreign domination, it is surely time that we should either reject or completely assimilate the foreign vocabulary, and no longer deface our dramatic columns with sporadic eruptions of italics. A STORM IN STAGELAND : THE ETHICS OF ACTING. About every new country there are conflicting t/u nao Ei reports. Emigration agents represent it as an Eden, disappointed travellers declare it to be a dismal swamp, and the truth, as a rule, lies between the two extremes. Stageland is a newly-discovered country, in the sense, at least, that its capabilities as an outlet for the superfluous energies of the upper and middle classes have only recently been brought into notice. The discovery of gold in 1847 made California practically a new country, though its existence had been known and its history recorded for centuries. In the same way, gold mines have been discovered in Stage- land, a rush has set in, and, behold ! the air is full of conflicting rumours as to its climate, the manners and customs of the natives, the econo- mic and social prospects of the community. ABOUT THE THEATRE. The point at issue* and, in short, its general merits as a field for emigration. In this controversy, to drop metaphor, many irrelevancies have been put forward, and much bad logic perpetrated. The beginners of the fray were mainly concerned about words and conventions — whether acting was a "profession/* whether actors, as such, had a recognized status in society, and so forth. Not until these matters had been thrashed out v/as there any serious attempt to discuss the one point of permanent importance — namely, the inherent merits and demerits of acting as a form of human activity^ its necessary influence upon character, its ten- dency to help or hinder a healthy and worthy spiritual life. It is to be hoped that some, at least, of the young men and maidens who are crowding to the stage, are less concerned as to whether society will respect them as members of a profession, than as to whether they can respect themselves in the exercise of that pro- fession, art, calling, vocation, or what you wilL It was Mrs. Kendal, in her recklessly candid Social -Science address at Birmingham, that flung forth the apple of discord. " There is at last a recognized social position for the profes- sional player," she said. " The theatrical pro- fession is acknowledged to be a high and im- Mrs. Kendal's gauntlet. A STORM IN STAGELAND. portant one, and the society of the intelligent and cultivated actor is eagerly sought after. . . . The terms of actor and gentleman may now be regarded as synonymous." This somewhat sweeping statement aroused the ire of Mr. F. C. Mr. Bumand . . . t » takes it up. Burnand, who wrote an article m the Fortmglitly RevieWy to prove that the social status of the actor is no better than it should be, and should be no better than it is. There were heroes before Agamemnon, said Mr. Burnand, and theatrical lions and lionesses before Mr. Irving and Mrs. Kendal. The percentage of actors who are received in good society has diminished rather than increased. ** A profession *' being defined as a calling recognized and limited by law, only to be entered through a certain statutory course of training generally accompanied by examinations, it is clear that acting is not a profession. The British Philistine would not willingly have his son an actor, or an actor for his son-in-law ; and the British matron, when her daughter goes on the stage, must endure the pangs of a hen who has hatched a duckling, in seeing her child launch forth upon stormy waters, where the maternal wing can no longer protect her. This is the sum and substance of Mr. Bumand's article, — that audacious utter- His thesis a ance which spread sudden dismay through 214 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Stageland, like thunder from a clear sky,— and on examining it we find that it can be reduced to a truism, and packed in a nutshell. The barrister, the clergyman, or the soldier, is re- spected by society because of his calling, the actor in spite of his calling — that is Mr. Bur- nand's argument, and that no reasonable person will deny. Striking success is, in the eyes of the world, a patent of nobility. It will make any calling reputable that is not positively felonious. But is the unsuccessful, or even the moderately successful but undistinguished actor, received in what Jeames calls the " hupper suckles" on the mere strength of being an actor? And, on the other hand, is the briefless barrister or the undistinguished soldier excluded from these brilliant eminences by the mere fact of his professional obscurity ? ** Doctor," or *' clergyman," is conventionally held to be " sy- nonymous with gentleman," until, in any in- dividual case, the contrary is proved ; but when Mrs. Kendal asserted that *' actor" was, either conventionally or actually, synonymous with gentleman, she was speaking more in a minute than she could stand to in a month. In de- molishing such a proposition, Mr. Burnand was breaking a butterfly on the wheel. But, in refuting Mrs. Kendal, Mr. Burnand "synonymous 'with gentle- man." A STORM IN STA GELAND, 2 1 5 not only defined the attitude of British respecta- Mr. Bumand 1 M- -11 1 . .^ . . .T justifies the bihty towards the stage, but justified it. Not attitude of as concerns men, be it understood ; he showed ^'^'^^' no reason why the stage should be regarded with suspicion as a career for men. For women, on the other hand, he demonstrated its deleteri- ousness, by showing that there was every likeli- hood of their being thrown into bad company and hearing bad language, while deprived of the protecting care of a chaperon. Only those to the manner born, the daughters of theatrical families, could entirely v/ithstand the taint and pass through trial without deterioration. Now, whatever we may think of Mr. Burnand's con- clusion (which amounts to the theory that no girl should be allowed to rub shoulders with and declares for duennas, the working-day world except under the care of a duenna), the fact from which he sets forth is obvious enough, and familiar to every one. A girl who goes on the stage will certainly hear things which she would not hear in her mother's drawing-room, and become familiar with facts which are not generally mentioned (though it does not follow that they are therefore unknown) in that domestic sanctuary'. This is all that Mr. Burnand asserts, and, behold ! all Stageland is stageiand tndignanU about his ears. Some deny the allegation indig- nantly or sarcastically; some retort it upon the 2i6 ABOUT THE THEATRE. "society" which Mr. Burnand is supposed, for the nonce, to represent. "Think how charitable we are ! " cry some ; others adopt the defiant atti- tude of Mr. Gilbert's Pirate King, and say, " I don't think much of our profession, but con- trasted with respectability it is comparatively Mr. Toole. honcst ! " Mr. Toole reproaches Mr. Burnand, with tears in his eyes, for libelling the calling to which he owes so much. Mr. Sydney Mr Grundy. Gruudy, in the Dramatic Review , admits and glories in Mr. Burnand's impeachment, pro- claiming the delights of unconventional " good temper, good humour, cordiality, camaraderie, common sense, and charity" in the Bohemia of Stageland. Thus Mr. Burnand is encircled by a whole army of volunteer sharpshooters, who fire so wildly that their bullets pass over his head, and do damage only to the marksmen who happen to have taken an opposite point of view. The only shot which really penetrates his thick armour of truism is the query, " Whence this sudden enthusiasm for unpalatable plain- speaking ? Why should you, of all men, insist upon dispelling these harmless illusions? Should one who, as a popular dramatist, has certainly done nothing to elevate the stage, be the first to proclaim its degradation ? " So far, the discussion has been confined A STORM IN STAGELAND. 217 to points of small permanent importance, on Philistinism a . 1 - foe to all the which, if we only take the trouble to define our arts. terms, rational difference of opinion is scarcely possible. It is quite certain that the British Philistine has, from of old, entertained a pre- judice against all artistic pursuits whatsoever. We have but to read Thackeray to see howl painting and literature were held in suspicion^ less than half a century ago ; and that feeling, though moribund, is not yet dead. The pre- judice against acting was intensified by Puri- tanism, but it, too, is going the way of all such ignorances. The precise point at which we The prejudice . . is now have to-day arrived is aptly indicated by Mr. disappearing. Hamilton Aide when he says (in his Nineteenth Century article on " The Actor's Calling"), " A sharper distinction is drawn, in thinking of the stage, between those who help to support and those who degrade and deform it." But the man or woman who has any real vocation to- wards the stage, or any other art, will be but little concerned as to the approval or disap- proval of society. The arts (and acting not the least) will subsist and flourish when there is no *' society," in the sense of a privileged, exclusive. The true artist unconcerned as and stupidly self-sufficient clique, to despise or to "society." patronize them. If progress and enlightenment bring with them an improvement in the morals 2i8 ABOUT THE THEATRE. of the community, the morals of the stage will advance in equal degree; for the drama's patrons give the drama's moral as well as sesthetic laws, and the defilement of the stage comes not from within but from without. But even as matters stand at present, it is absurd to maintain that no virtuous woman, not to the manner born, can pass unsullied through the contaminations luenZfast, of Stageknd. The day for duennas is past, and Englishwomen must prepare, and are pre- paring, to take the world as it comes, deliberately choosing the good, and resolutely refusing the evil, but no longer pluming themselves upon an artificial or affected ignorance of its existence. Mr. Burnand argues as though the Gaiety stage- door were the one portal to Stageland, and as if the novice could only by the rarest good fortune avoid passing her apprenticeship in figuring in pink fleshings and gabbling puns for the delectation of Messieurs the ** mashers." This is not so. Gaiety burlesque and travelling opera-bouffe of the kind so ruthlessly depicted by Mr. George Moore in " A Mummer's Wife," are not the only nor even the easiest roads to the stage for a girl with any talent and educa- tion. But if they were, it is surely no more impossible for a lady to play in "three-act burlesque dramas," and remain a lady, than for A STORM IN STAGELAND. 219 a gentleman to write, rehearse, and draw and con- - . . tamination royalties from them, and yet remam a gentle- avoidable. man. A man of honour will scarcely feed his wife and daughters (if he have any) with money earned at the cost of necessary degradation to others of their sex. I believe, then, that Mr. Burnand's statements The true as to matters of fact are so obvious as to amount ^''" ^^"' to truisms, and yet that the conclusions which he draws from them need deter no one, man or woman, who has any talent for acting, from adopting the stage as a profession. But I hold that there are other considerations, untouched by Mr. Burnand, which should occur to the would-be actor and give him pause. Mr. Aide, in the article above quoted, alludes to them in passing, where he says that in Macready's life **we see the struggles and shortcomings of a high-minded man in a career which subsists from night to night on the stimulant of personal applause"; and Mrs. Lynn Linton, in an article in the National Review, goes very straight to the point in the remark that ** to us, on the outside of things, it would seem that the worst to be said against the stage as a profession is the tremendous impulse it gives to vanity and egoism." Let us pursue the train of thought Taingaffect thus suggested, and consider the effect of acting, character f ABOUT THE THEATRE. as an art, not upon the artist's morality (in the narrow sense of the word), but upon his or her self-respect, mental equipoise, and sense of human dignity. An ideal stage To eliminate from the problem all temporary presupposed, . , r and non-essential factors, we must suppose an ideal stage. From such a stage, I take it, everything would be banished which tends to *' debase the moral currency." It would give representations of life both real and ideal, both photographic and poetic. It would admit fun and frolic, but not inane irreverence towards all human ties and ideals. It would welcome humour, but not grossness, fantasy, but not buffoonery. No actor would be called upon to sing music-hall songs in dresses compared with which a clown's costume is sober and dignified ; still less would he be required to flaunt about the stage in a travesty of female attire, a grinning insult to the other sex and shame to his own. No actress would be asked to devote her pretty ingenuousness and innocence of manner to giving additional piquancy to elabor- ately veiled double-meanings or cynically un- veiled obscenities; nor would she be encouraged to rely for her popularity upon a peculiar talent for talking slang of the tap-room with in- tonations of the gutter. Such things are net A STORM IN STAGELAND. inevitable even on our actual stage; on an nudtke ideal stage they would be inconceivable. I do humiliations not wish to cast these degradations — into ^sta^tTis- which, however, many men and women of ^'^'^'''^'^ * talent have sunk, through which many of the greatest artists have passed — I do not wish to cast these temporary humiliations in the teeth of actors as a class. For the purposes of my argument I wish to conceive the art at its worthiest, as the interpreter of great literature, or at least of earnest thought, keen observation, and honest humour. I wish to imagine a theatre holding an honoured place in the intel- lectual life of a country, affording recreation of no ignoble cast to a wide and intelligent public, and then to ask whether the art which is thus, by our hypothesis, entirely beneficent to those who enjoy it, is equally beneficent to the artists who practise it ? The torture-devisers of the Middle Ages had "5 A STORM IN STAGELAND. 22r) he will very likely find his mistakes as much applauded as his achievements, but that, to a conscientious artist, must be a doubtful conso- lation. It is an old commonplace, but nevertheless a No appeal from immediate truth of very serious import, that the actor is opinion. denied that appeal to the tribunal of Time in which other artists find a refuge from the tyranny of temporary Opinion. The fact that his works do not survive him, so often insisted upon as a pathetic element in his lot, has cer- tainly its compensations. He cannot become an incubus upon future generations. The ** old masters '* of acting are but names, not objects of enervating idolatry to the few, of ignorant scorn or insincere admiration to the many. ** All this," as Juliet says, *' is comfort " ; yet his thraldom to the impressions of the hour is a grave misfortune to the actor. Other artists, if they can afford to labour and to wait, may hope to educate their public ; but it is his public which educates the actor. " The His public . educates the drama s laws the drama s patrons give, is not actor, absolutely true of the drama as a literary pro- duct ; but let us say, ** The actor's laws the actor's patrons give," and our position is un- assailable. That "those who live to please must please to live," is true not only in an 230 ABOUT THE THEATFE. economic but in an artistic sense. Immediate applause is as necessary to the artistic existence of the actor as a regular salary to his physical existence. A painter may paint, a poet may sing, in accordance with his own ideal, finding personal satisfaction in the mere exercise of his powers, and trusting that in the fulness of time his work will meet with the appreciation it deserves. To the actor no such devotion to an ideal is possible. He takes little or no pleasure in the mere exercise of his powers, apart from the attention and applause of the theatre. "Actor" and ** audience" are strictly corre- lative terms, like father and child, or husband and wife. We do not hear of Hamlets, rejected by the mob, seeking solace in giving ideal per- formances to the sad sea waves, or if we do hear of such enthusiasts we doubt their sanity ; but no one doubts the sanity of a painter who prefers poverty to *' pot-boilers," or of a poet who keeps his lyric raptures in manuscript. andits Popular applause, in short, is not only the applause ts ^ *^ ' "^ the breath of bread in the actor's mouth, but the very breath Ais nostrils. *' of his nostrils. He must seek it at all hazards, purchase it by all concessions. Not only can he not work for posterity, he cannot even work for his own pleasure and approval. Are these desirable conditions for the exercise of an art ? A STORM JN STAGELAND. 231 Or can an art thus conditioned afford a con- genial career for a man of independent mind ? Another very important effect of the perpetual J'^'iousUs and •^ * * * envy tugs. publicity of acting and its subjection to im- mediate and noisy criticism, is the multiplication and embitterment of the jealousies from which no artistic society is quite free. Painters, sculp- tors, novelists, may work side by side \vithout having odious comparisons forced upon them at every turn of their lives. They stand on an equal footing, and have even chances of distinc- tion. If one commands higher prices and more enthusiastic criticisms than another, his success does not appreciably diminish the chances of his fellows. In acting, the grades of distinction are unmistakably marked. Every one cannot play leading parts, and the man whom the public accepts as Hamlet and Romeo is evidently more distinguished than he who has to content himself with Laertes and Tybalt. The success Tkt successful of one man stops the way for others, temporarily, %iZay^' if not absolutely. In the other arts the positions M^^^'-'- of eminence are not peaks, but plateaus, with room for every one who has the strength to attain them ; the high places of Stageland are pinnacles where only one can find footing at a time, and possession is nine points of the law. Any painter has the opportunity, if he have the 232 ABOUT THE THEATRE, Comparative success and failure forced on the actor's notice. power, to paint as well as Mr. Watts; there may be actors with the power to act as well as Mr. Irving, but from the simple fact that he is there before them, they are debarred the oppor- tunity. They cannot appear, they cannot even efficiently rehearse and exercise themselves, in the great parts wherein their talent could find elbow-room. Further, the comparative success or failure of actors is constantly being forced upon their notice by the applause of the theatre and the judgments of the press. Would it not embitter and envenom the jealousies of painters if they had to make a nightly exhibition of their works, and listen to the remarks of the public, besides reading invidiously comparative criti- cisms of them in a hundred papers ? The actor has to go through twenty times as much newspaper criticism as any other artist, and it is significant of the habit of mind engendered by his art that he is twenty times as careful as any other artist to read and treasure all his *' notices." The tradition, in fine, which attributes to actors a peculiar tendency to envious egoism is justified by the facts ; and though, with the widening of the field of effort, this tendency may of late have lost something of its strength, it is inherent in the very nature of the actor's art, and can never be entirely suppressed. A STORM IN STAGELAND. 233 Let me briefly recapitulate the articles of this RecapUuia- indictment, not against actors, many of whom struggle bravely against the difficulties which their art throws in their way, but against the art itself which throws these difficulties, (i) It fosters a morbid physical self-consciousness. (2) It leaves no room for what has been called the somnambulism of genius. *' The artist," says one of Henry James's characters, "performs great feats in a dream. We must not wake him up lest he should lose his balance." But the actor never falls asleep : he is kept eagerly awake either by applause or by the expectation of it. (3) It does not allow the artist to distinguish his mistakes from his masterpieces until they have actually been exhibited to the public. (4) It admits of no appeal from the verdict of temporary opinion ; or, in other words, its very existence is dependent on a certain amount, at least, of immediate popular favour. (5) It raises to the third power that tendency to egoistic jealousy which besets all the arts. On all these counts, it seems to me, acting, not as it exists in one place or at one time, but in its very nature and essence, stands condemned to exclusion from the list of callings in which a man of self-respecting independence of mind, a man who, in Whitman's phrase, is 234 ABOUT THE THEATRE, Miftor drawbacks. Necessity for '* dressing nj>.' desirous to " dismiss whatever insults his own soul," would willingly engage. Minor drawbacks, not a few, may be alleged against acting. Charles Lamb has sufficiently demonstrated its low position in the hierarchy of the arts, and proved that it cannot be said in any sense to create, but merely to interpret the creations of others. To use an illustration which Lamb's unmusical soul would perhaps reject as not forcible enough, the greatest actor is a mere executant, a virtuoso, and Garrick himself stands to Shakespeare in the relation of Bulow to Beethoven. The necessity for traves- tying the person, sometimes in grotesque and humiliating forms (for these occur even in the highest drama) is surely a disadvantage, though perhaps a minor one. Moliere dying in harness lest those dependent on him should suffer, forms one of the most pathetic spectacles in history ; yet most of us would prefer to die in other ** harness " than the rouge of Argan. The egoism and jealous}^ again, which acting tends to foster, have their converse and complement in the habitual insincerity necessary to grease the wheels of social life in Stageland. Suppose any given theatre turned suddenly into a Palace of Truth, and all the members of the company forced to state their true opinion of each other's Insincerity of social intercourse. A STORM IN STAGELAND, performances — the Palace of Truth would be a Pandemonium. No doubt the same tendency to insincerity pervades artistic society, but in Stageland it is intensified by the fact that actors are perpetually thrown together and work under each other's eyes, so that they cannot easily take refuge in a decent reticence. In all these considerations, to conclude, I have tacitly presupposed that the actor has a certain talent, if not an absolute genius, for his art. The degraded and pitiable condition of a mummer who has mistaken his vocation is quite self- evident. It is not my purpose here to discuss the Compensations.- compensations of the actor's career. They are ^^orl7o(L so numerous, and to some minds so overwhelm- ^^^s^- ing, that there will probably always be a supply of aspirants to the stage, at least equal to the demand. Some strenuous souls will struggle against the drawbacks I have enumerated ; others, no doubt, will content themselves with the " public manners " bred by " public means," and will philosophically let their nature be subdued " to what it works in, like the dyer's hand." Not the least ingenious essay of the ingenious author of *' Obiter Dicta " is that in which he sets out to prove that the actor's calling is not ** an eminently worthy one " ; but 236 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Apparent exceptions : Shakespeare. he makes a mistake in attempting to range the testimony of actors themselves on his side. Shakespeare's evidence, on v^hich he greatly relies, does not go for much. Even if we take the two often-quoted sonnets as utterances of personal feeling, it is at best the feeling of a man by no means indifferent to worldly station at a period when the stage was in great disre- pute, when its morals were low and its manners coarse, nay, in the very reign when unlicensed players were declared by statute to be rogues and vagabonds. We must read Sonnets CX. and CXI. in the light of the subsequently-purchased armorial bearings, and of the poet's clearly- proved desire to figure as a country magnate, *' spacious in the possession of dirt." Macready, again (with the exception of Fanny Kemble, almost the only English actor who seriously reviles his profession), was a man who would have made himself unhappy in any walk of life. Mr. Birrell calls him the King Arthur of the stage ; but the comparison, however just as to morals, is a libel upon the temper of the blame- less king. Even Macready was at heart devoted to the stage ; it was in reality its social disabilities which galled and irritated him. All other actors whose memoirs are known to me, though they may indulge in occasional ebullitions Macready. A STORM IN STAG ELAND. 2yr of impatience against their daily work, just as did the husbandman and the lawyer in the days of Horace, can be seen to be, in fact, absorbed in it heart and soul. The truth is, that the No real and ... indubitable stage has a strange fascmation for its — dare I exception on say victims ? — such as few other callings possess. Every one who has any personal acquaintance with actors will corroborate this assertion. They are for the most part careless or uncon- scious of its ethical drawbacks, and are subject at worst to fits of rebellion against its physical discomforts, the precariousness of the employ- ment it affords, the partiality of managers, the density of the public, the malice of the critics. When they have an "off night," they rush to the theatre to see others act. Mr. Birrell knows little of actors if he thinks he can get the fairly successful among them, in their normal moods, to rise up in judgment against their profession. It is certain, then, that so long as the The chief . . ,......, , compensation: dramatic and mimetic instincts in human nature Acting an remain as they are, the stage will never lack its devotees. Nor am I arguing that they should be held in low esteem. On the contrary, it seems to me that in a well-ordered society, those who sacrifice themselves and incur moral or physical risk or discomfort for the greater 238 ABOUT THE THEATRE. good of the greater number, should have a right to special rewards and peculiar consideration. Among such I would include doctors, scavengers, soldiers (from the field-marshal to the private), sailors (from the lord high admiral to the cabin- boy), coal-miners, policemen, theatrical critics — and actors. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. ' If, as some believe, the salvation of the English Shakespeare the popular stage is to be found in Shakespeare, we should dramatist at now be in a state approaching beatitude. He is, unquestionably, the popular dramatist of the day. What other playwright can boast of two five-act plays running simultaneously at the two leading theatres of London ? ^ What other playwright is studied so scrupulously or mounted so sumptuously ? If he now " spells ruin " to any one, it is not to the managers who act him, * Written in December, 1884. At the present moment (March, 1886), the Shakespearean repertory is having a rest, but several revivals are looming ahead at the Lyceum, " Othello " is promised (or threatened) at the Princess's, and the return of Miss Mary Anderson from America will doubtless be signalized by a production of *' As You Like It." Therefore I think it unnecessary to modify my remarks on the superficial popularity of the poet, while the fundamental ignorance of his works, dwelt on in the sequel, is certainly unchanged. = " Hamlet " at the Princess's, and " Romeo and Juliet" at the Lyceum. the day. 240 ABOUT THE THEATRE, The chief competitor of the modern playwright. but to the modern dramatists who have to compete with him. He is once more, as poor Robert Greene spitefully called him in 1592, " an absolute Johannes factotum," and in the managers' *' conceyt, the only Shake-scene in a countrey." The purveyors of mere melodrama have still a chance, though now that Shake- speare's scenery, too, is found capable of running upon wheels, even that chance seems precarious; and as for such playwrights as Mr. Merivale and Mr. Wills, whose special gift, as Greene puts it, is to "bombast out a blank verse," they find themselves everj^where pigeon-holed, and bidden to bide a turn which is often very long of coming. The injury is perhaps more apparent than real. Blank verse, if it is to suit the modern palate, must have the aroma of anti- quity. As produced in these days, it is felt to be an artificial and somewhat flat concoction, and it is far from certain that, if the Shakespearean tap were suddenly to dry up, the public would evince an equally insatiable thirst for the modern imitation. Shakespeare has probably done yeoman's service, even to the dramatists of to-day, by playing the mediator, as it were,, between society and the stage. The present theatrical revival undoubtedly dates from Mr. Irving's historic performance of " Hamjet," by and the chief mediator between society and the stage. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC^ 24, unreasoning. which the stage was magnified and made fashionable. It was that performance, and its successors, which induced in the world of letters, art, and fashion, the habit of theatre- going, so that the Lyceum now ranks with the Grosvenor Gallery, the Princess's with the popular concerts, among the statutory topics of conversation at every well-regulated aesthetic tea. For this change we have to thank Shakespeare. A change, no doubt, on the whole beneficent. Hi; vogue yet not to be rejoiced in without certain mis- givings — a change for the better, but scarcely for the best. That Shakespeare should be popular in his native land is just and right ; but is he popular with an understanding, dis- criminating, abiding popularity, or only with a temporary, unreasoning vogue ? That his vogue is temporary I should be sorry to think ; but I fear there is no shirking the fact that it is, as yet, in the main unreasoning. The past year witnessed three great Shake- j>^ ^^., spearean revivals, " Twelfth Night " and ^f^^^-f- ** Romeo and Juliet" at the Lyceum, "Hamlet" at the Princess's. Each outbade the other in costliness and carefulness ; each drew its audiences, and evoked its share of comment and applause. Yet when we inquire into the 17 242 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Mounting magnificent acting mediocre. net gain to dramatic art from all this outlay of capital and energy, it seems pitifully small. Two plays, which every one knows by heart, have been played in novel costumes ; one play, not so well known, has been placed on the stage in a manner which went far to obscure its beauties. The whole three productions showed us only one piece of perfect acting — Mrs. Stirling's Nurse. Miss Terry's Viola was very charming, Miss Anderson's Juliet was, in many ways, a memorable performance, but one in which even its warmest panegyrist, Lord Lytton, was constrained to admit grave defects. Mr. Irving's Malvolio showed less than his usual intelligence. Mr. Wilson Barrett's Hamlet showed plenty of intelligence, but too little of the other qualities indispensable to a great Shakespearean actor. For the rest, not a single performer in the three plays rose above mediocrity, while many sank far below it. We are forced, then, to conclude that the public has not sufficient appreciation of Shakespeare to be disturbed by misrepresentations of his work, and that, intent on the spectacle, they regard the acting with eyes unobservant and ears un- sensitive. I am not sneering at the miracles of modern mounting and stage-management. They are SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. 243 the result of aa inevitable tendency, and are Sccuu . . A t I . illustrates an good in their way. As the dramatic stage irresistible learned from the lyric stage the secrets of ^" ^"^^'' movable scenery and mechanism, so the poetic drama is now borrowing from melodrama and pantomime the methods of realism and spectacle. We are, for the moment, overdoing it, indulging in expense for its own sake, and subordinating artistic effect to mere ostentation ; but that is an excess which will correct itself. We cannot go back to the old days of conventional and ludicrously inappropriate scenery, raw *' supers," and haphazard stage-management. Edwin Booth, and still more Salvini, have proved that Appropriate- not even genius can make us forget, though it Tndi%7mabie, may for the moment force us to forgive, these ^^^u^ftieou irritating deficiencies. If Shakespeare, as some ^^'^^^*^' critics hold, is necessarily distorted and obscured by appropriate, and even richly appropriate, methods of decoration, why, so much the worse for Shakespeare. But this is not the case. When the first fever of sartorial splendour and . archaeological pedantry passes away, we shall ■doubtless arrive at a happy mean of illustrative decoration. If Shakespeare presents some diffi- culties which no scenic devices can quite over- come — as in his fairy scenes and battle scenes — the great majority of the pictures he suggests 3144 ^ ABOUT THE THEATRE. are such as, with our modern resources, we can easily realize. That the public should take a vivid interest and delight in such realizations, even if a little too ostentatious, is neither to be wondered at nor to be deplored. What is to be deplored, though not to be wondered at, is that it should be content to see so little of Shake- speare, and that little so imperfectly acted. Only one ** So little of Shakcspcare ! " the reader may corner of -i • ^^ ▼▼ • i • • Shakespeare cxclaim. " Have you not just been pomtmg iheptihUc. out that Shakespeare is the most popular- dramatist of the day ? " I admit my mistake — I should have said that two or three plays of Shakespeare are used as a groundwork for the most popular entertainments of the day. The received Shakespearean canon includes some three dozen plays. Of these our great Shake- spearean manager, Mr. Irving, has given us eight in ten years: ** Hamlet," ''Macbeth,'" "Othello," "Richard III.," ''Merchant of Venice," *' Romeo and Juliet," '* Much Ado. about Nothing," and "Twelfth Night." Another actor aspires to legitimate renown ; surely he will seek it by literally " reviving " some play which has lain too long in cold obstruction. Nay, he has vowed a vow, and we shall have nothing but " Hamlet." An American actress wishes to put a crown to her popular achieve-^ SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. 245 ments, and a few more months of *' Romeo and Juliet " are the inevitable result. It is quite natural that Mr. Wilson Barrett should choose what has come to be regarded as the diploma- piece of the legitimate actor, and that Miss Mary Anderson should essay the part which, of all others, offers the greatest temptations to youth, beauty, and talent ; but the fact remains that the theatrical public of the day knows only one corner, so to speak, of Shakespeare's genius — far less than was known to the unsophisticated frequenters of Sadler's Wells twenty-five years ago. And this corner it knows superficially, un- and that lovingly, unappreciatively. It is, of course, neither to be expected nor desired that the great public should be learned in editions and readings, though they might have enough rough-and- ready criticism to reject the meaningless mis- prints of the first folio when pedantically presented as improvements on the received text. What is much to be desired is that they should, for example, have some conception of the value and beauty of Shakespearean verse. Without this how can any one have more than the faintest glimmering of the true beauty of such a poem as ** Romeo and Juliet " ? Yet it is probably no exaggeration to say that out of superficially. '24$ ABOUT THE THEATRE. Prosody a dead letter. Mr. Irving., an average audience not one man in a hundred is in the least put about when an actor mangles every third line he speaks. Our ears have lost the habit of following the poet's numbers, and we are content to have exquisite poetry spoken as bad prose. Lord Lytton scarcely goes too far when he calls the speaking of blank verse " a lost art." It is to be said to Mr. Irving's credit, that he usually secures commonplace correctness in his productions — insists, that is to say, that a ten-syllable line shall contain ten syllables, and not eight or twelve according to the whim of the actor. But not even he has any conception of the art of musical delivery, while Miss Terry chants her verses with an emphasis on every monosyllable, reminding one of Churchill's lines about Moody : — "Conjunction, preposition, adverb, join To stamp new vigour on the nervous line ; In monosyllables his thunders roll, He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul." Miss Anderson. Miss Andcrson, as a rule, comes as near a just delivery of English decasyllabics as any one on the stage, and I conclude from Lord Lytton's criticism of her Juliet that she must have corrected one or two defects into which the nervousness of the first night no doubt betrayed her; but her supporters played such pranks Miss Teriy. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC, 247 with Shakespeare's prosody as might have tortured the least sensitive ear, yet did not in the least disturb the equanimity either of the audience or of the critics. This insistence on syllables and quantities may seem petty, but in the sphere of poetry the aphorism dc minimis non curat lex has no application ; and even if the matter were smaller in itself, it would still be significant of much. An audience which can tolerate a false note in every second phrase of the Moonlight Sonata cannot be either intelli- gently familiar with it beforehand or sensitively alive to its influence as it proceeds. The fact is — and here we come to the root Two essentials of the matter — both the representation and the %farean ^' appreciation of Shakespeare require an appren- ticeship which, in the present phase of theatrical life, neither actors nor audiences have any opportunity of going through. We may or may not regret the ** palmy days " of the drama, but it is certain that the abolition of the patent theatres marked the abolition, for a time at least, of those conditions which alone could keep Shakespeare healthily alive on the stage. What, then, were those conditions ? In the first place, an infinitely narrower, or rather more concentrated public, a public habituated A trained to the theatre in the sense that it knew every " ^' 248 ABOUT THE THEATRE. and trained actor. actor in the company and every play in the repertory, yet not rendered callous and captious by the inordinate amount of theatre-going which he must endure who would keep pace with the drama of to-day ; and, in the second place, bodies of actors accustomed to play together, trained, not in long runs of farce and melodrama, but in rapid alternations of parts, principally poetic, and, in short, acclimatized from their noviciate onwards to a high Shake- spearean atmosphere, instead of being snatched up to it, breathless and bewildered, on the wings of a " special engagement." Charles Lamb may be taken as a typical playgoer of the palmy days — not, certainly, an average playgoer, but one who possessed in the highest perfection the knowledge and enthusiasm which hundreds of others shared in a minor degree. His whole mind had been given to the study of a certain school, or rather of two schools, of dramatic writing — the poetic drama of the Elizabethans, and the post-Restoration comedy. All his theatrical experience had tended to familiarize him with the methods of acting appropriate to these two schools. He knew the classic repertory scene by scene and speech by speech. A misplaced emphasis jarred on his ear like a squeaking slate-pencil, Charles Lamb a typical Shakespearean playgoer. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. 249 much more a misinterpreted scene, a miscon- ceived character. Hear the beginning of his exquisite paper ** On Some of the Old Actors," *' Some of the r , . , , . Old Actors." written in 1822 — a passage from which, makmg all possible allowance for illusions of memorjs we learn that the decadence had then already set in. ** The casual sight of an old Play Bill," he says, *' which I picked up the other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players who make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts in the * Twelfth " Twelfth Night,* at the old Drury Lane Theatre two-and- orury line, thirty years ago. There is something very '''^' touching in these old remembrances. They make us think how we onc& used to read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, singling out a favourite performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down to the very mutes and servants of the ■scene ; when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small account — had an importance beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the time's best actors. * Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore.' What a full Shakespearean sound it carries ! how fresh 250 ABOUT THE THEATRE. ''A full Shakespearean sound," for which the playgoers of to-day have no ear. to memory arise the image and the manner of the gentle actor ! " Will " Orsino, Mr. Terriss," carry a full Shakespearean sound to the ear of any man now living should he chance, thirty years hence, upon one of the elegant Lyceum programmes of to-day ? Will any one in 1914 celebrate the praises of " Malvolio, Mr. Henry Irving," with the rapturous gratitude wherewith Lamb descants on Bensley's performance of the part ? Mr. Irving, no doubt, will have his panegyrists thirty years hence, though they will scarcely single out his Malvolio to dwell upon ; but it may be doubted whether one in a thousand of the Lyceum spectators can even faintly conceive the nature of those subtle reminiscences of keen intellectual pleasure con- veyed to Lamb's mind by the full Shakespearean sound of " Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore." The playgoers of to-day do not sufficiently under- stand and love the poet of ** Twelfth Night," to know what Lamb meant by a *' full Shake- spearean sound." I am inclined to think that more of the genuine enthusiasm survives in the provinces than in London ; at least, I have often noticed in provincial audiences that alert- ness of appreciation which Mr. Edwin Booth describes as a characteristic of the American public, and the lack of which in London he SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. 251 deplored. It is not many years since the old The old Haymarket company, and one or two other company. excellent combinations, were still giving ad- mirable performances of the classic drama (Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Sheridan, &c.) in the provinces. Whoever has seen Compton as Touchstone and Chippendale as Adam, has seen the perfection of Shakespearean comedy, almost rivalled, indeed, by the same two actors' performance of the Gravedigger and Polonius, which must be remembered by many London playgoers. It is noteworthy, by the way, that the one scene in the late revival of " Much Ado about Nothing " which was played with really memorable excellence, was the quarrel of Leonato and Antonio with Don Pedro and Claudio, into which Mr. Howe, last remnant of the old Haymarket, managed, by his admirable performance of Antonio, to breathe a spark of the genuine Shakespearean spirit. The audiences of Lamb's day were, of course. The training not all Lambs; but there were so many who dgiucenth shared his enthusiasm, and in part his know- '^'^^^^'y P«bitc ledge, that they might be trusted to leaven the mass and infuse into any average audience a spirit of soundly critical appreciation. Lamb, we may be sure, was not alone in his care as to 252 ABOUT THE THEATRE. " whether Whitfield or Packer took the part of Fabian ; '* how many playgoers of to-day know who is playing Horatio at the Princess's, or even Mercutio at the Lyceum ? Of those who know, how many have taken the trouble to consider whether the part is well or ill-played ? And of those who have taken so much pains, how many have the knowledge required to form a valid opinion ? Most of us can tell a good Bob Briarley or Sam Gerridge when we see him, for we have but to compare the copy with the type as known to us in real life ; but which of us has known Mercutio, a creature of another world than ours, speaking, moving, and thinking according to laws remote from our experience ? quite in- j^q^ one of US Can really have studied and accessible to lis, ^ '' mastered these laws as did the audiences of a century ago, of whose theatrical life at least one-half was passed in an atmosphere of poetic, or would-be poetic, ideaHsm. The dullest tragedy of the veriest Grub Street poetaster afforded better training in the technique of Shakespearean drama than our generation can receive from " Fedora " or " The Silver King;'* but Shakespeare was the great professor in his own school, and by constantly listening to his numbers men acquired a true ear for their melody. I take down at haphazard a volume SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC, of Genest, and, opening it at its first page, find Shakespeare at o 1 r 1 1 • r Drury Lane that in the season 1777-78 the following four- and covent teen plays of Shakespeare were performed at 1777-8. Drury Lane :— " Hamlet," " Richard III.," ** Merchant of Venice," " Henry IV." (parts I. and II.), ** Measure for Measure," "King John," *' Twelfth Night," "Macbeth," *' Much Ado about Nothing," " Cymbeline," " Merry Wives of Windsor," *' Tempest," and ** Romeo and Juliet." Covent Garden in the same season presented ** Romeo and Juliet," " King Lear," ** Much Ado about Nothing," " Merchant of Venice," ** Othello," " Richard III.," '* As You Like it," " Macbeth," and " Henry V." Thus half the works of Shakespeare were performed in that one season, and any playgoer who attended half the Shakespearean first-nights saw more of the poet's works than he who has attended all the Shakespearean first-nights at the Lyceum for the past ten years. Must not the public of that day have stood to Shake- speare in a relation ten times more intimate and sympathetic than can be brought about by all our " sumptuous and scholarly" revivals ? I am not regretting the patent theatres, any prcp cvd loss. more than I regret the Globe and Fortune of Burbage and Alleyn. The system had its merits in its day, but in this vast London, and 254 ABOUT THE THEATRE, in our era of free competition, it would be at once anachronistic and impossible. We have gained, in my opinion, infinitely more than we have lost by the abolition of theatrical monopo- lies. But there has nevertheless been a distinct and sensible loss, mainly in the decline of the true Shakespearean spirit among actors and audiences. From homo- A ccntury ago, and less, the theatrical world ^eneity to jieterogencify. was Comparatively homogeneous. There were two or three theatres, presenting to their well- accustomed audiences two or three well-defined forms of dramatic art — tragedy or poetic melo- drama, comedy and farce. Now our heteroge- neous public is distracted between some thirty theatres which present the most heterogeneous bills of fare : tragedy, poetic melodrama, sensa- tion drama, domestic drama, comedy (French and English), farce (French and English), comedy-drama, vaudeville, burlesque, extrava- ganza, opera-bouffe, &c. What wonder that actors who generally make the round of all these forms should fail to master the principles of one very difficult phase of their art, in which they can have, at the best, only a very narrow experience ! What wonder that the public, with its attention frittered away between the melody of Offenbach, the humour of Byron, and SHAKESPEARE AND THE PUBLIC. 255 the pathos of Sardou, should fail to acquire a sensitive taste for the melody, the humour, and the pathos of Shakespeare ! But the transition from homogeneity to The process of heterogeneity is the recognized process of evo- lution. At present we are in a state of chaos, or slowly emerging therefrom. As time goes on, a new order will replace the old, and then, perhaps, Shakespeare will again find a sympa- thetic public — not the whole theatrical public, as of old, but a special public large enough to support a special school of acting. Surely it is not impossible that we should A shake- 1 • 1 • 1 r>5 1 spearean one day possess a theatre m which not Shake- theatre, speare alone, but several of his great contem- poraries, may afford a certain steady proportion, at least, of the staple entertainment ; in which all his plays which are by any means actable may stand upon the permanent repertory, reader to be revived, with careful and appropriate though not sumptuous appointments, at a few weeks' notice ; in which no unbroken runs shall be tolerated, even the most attractive production being (as at the Fran9ais) repeated not more than three or four times a week ; in which a certain number of the company shall undergo an adequate apprenticeship in poetico-romantic acting ; and, finally, in which some sacrifice of 256 ABOUT THE THEATRE. immediate pecuniary profit to an artistic ideal may not be altogether out of the question. possible or Such a theatre, were it possible, would quickly impossible f eduj^ate its public, and that no scanty one. It should carry out on a vastly greater scale what Mr. Phelps attempted so bravely in his semi- provincial corner at Clerkenwell. No private capitalist, it is clear, and least of all a modern actor-manager, is likely to make any effort of the kind ; but is it inconceivable that some larger or smaller confraternity of wealthy art- lovers might one day find in the first place pleasure, in the second place a moderate profit, in organizing such an institution ? In the following essay I have attempted an answer to this question. THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. The theatrical life of to-day throughout the splendid 1 t M -I strolling the Anglo-Saxon world may be described as an ordcrojtheday. incessant round of splendid strolling. The player has ceased to be a rogue, but he remains a vagabond. In the days of Elizabeth the servants of this or that nobleman prowled about the country, from market-town to market- town, humbly soliciting the sufferance of the authorities, and grateful if Bumble spared them the stocks and sent them on their way with a largesse of a few shillings. Now the distin- guished actor travels with a retinue Leicester himself might envy, and civic dignitaries feel honoured by his condescending notice. There have been many intermediate stages between these two extremes. In the theatrical memoirs of last century we read of the provincial **cir- The provincial " circuits." cuits " or groups of country towns, each catered for by one manager, who was obliged every now and then to pay toll of his best talents to the i8 ABOUT THE THEATRE. great patent theatres in the capital. Then came the star system, not quite extinct to this day. Each country town had its " stock company," including within itself the forces requisite for every theatrical enterprise from " Hamlet " to the Christmas pantomime, but also prepared The star to " support " the stars who, from time to time, rose in solitary splendour over the local horizon. To this system all our older artists owe their training; indeed, it subsisted in almost un- diminished vigour until within the last ten or fifteen years. Several causes combined to destroy it, and supply its place with the present system. The ''covibina- " combination " system. Foremost amone: tiofi systeffi. ° these was the growing demand for scenic sensation and realism of externals, seconded by the healthier taste for adequate presentation of minor parts, good stage management, and careful playing-together. Increased rapidity of transit, the facilities for centralization afforded by the telegraph, even such apparent trifles as the introduction of elaborate picture-posters — these and many other causes contributed to the destruction of the good old stock companies. In theatrical speculation, in short, as in all other branches of commercial enterprise, the tendency towards concentration has proved irresistible. The modern impresario plays for THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. 259 such high stakes, and on such a vast scale, as would have made his predecessor of twenty- five years ago stand aghast. Under the star system, an actor in serving stars^. , . i- 1 • 1 J J • constellations, his apprenticeship played many parts m one place ; on the present combination plan he plays one part in many places. Mr. Henry Irving, as we learn from Mr. Austin Brereton*s careful biography, has played the astonishing number of 649 parts, and of these the round 600 certainly belong to the period of • his no- vitiate. Had he gone on the stage some twenty years later, his provincial experience would have consisted of two or three characters a year, played under the supervision of a despotic stage manager, in servile imitation of the actors who ** created " the parts in London. The former method of training was not perfect, but it gave play to natural selection and the survival of the fittest ; the latter method fosters mechanical mimicry at the expense of original and creative talent. In this lies one serious ■danger for the future of the stage. There is scarcely an actor of to-day who The actor a could not write an itinerary of the United Kingdom as minute as Barnabee's if not quite as lively. But the universal strolling is not •confined to the United Kingdom. A perpetual 26o ABOUT THE THEATRE. circulation of theatrical talent is rapidly establishing itself throughout the English- speaking globe. To a modern actor a tour round the world is a less formidable affair than a tour round the Bristol, York, or Edinburgh circuit was to his grandfather. It is more comfortable and less adventurous. He is as much at home in San Francisco as in Liver- pool. He is, in the full sense of the words, a citizen of Greater Britain. Expanded England is rapidly becoming, so far as the theatre is concerned, one great Republic. ■ To this commonwealth of art America con- tributes almost as much as she receives. She has for long held her own in the matter of actors. Against Kean and Macready she could set off Forrest and Charlotte Cushman, com- parable, if not equal, in genius ; if we sent her Sothern, she gave back in Jefferson more than she got. She has until recently imported much more theatrical art than she has ex- ported, but the difference has been in quantity rather than quality. Now the balance is rapidly becoming even in both respects. The theatrical talent of the two countries is being, so to speak, shufHed and equally dealt between them. This is true of the actors, and it is rapidly becoming true of the plays as welL and expanded England a theatrical Republic. America s contributions to the commoit stock. THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. 2^>i Some of the best work in more than one line which the modern English drama can show has been done in America, and her contribu- tions to the stage-literature of Greater Britain are almost certain to go on increasing in quan- tity and improving in quality. Our market, The market both for players and plays, is thus widened competition . , . , , . - incrccLSttU enormously, while at the same time a novel element of competition is introduced. What will be the effect of these new conditions upon our stage ? And how can we best take advan- tage of our new opportunities ? London remains for the present the theatrical London stui . • AiAt . r f he theatrical capital of Greater Britain. The verdict of capital of London has an authority in New York which Britain, the verdict of New York cannot claim in London. American actors are content to carry home laurels from England. If they can harvest sovereigns too, so much the better ; but they do not consider their time misspent if the glory is greater than the gain. English actors, going to America, think more of the gain than the glory. Their laurel-wreaths must be of gold, or they care little for them. The first appearance of Mr. Irving or Mrs. Langtry is a much greater event in New York than the first appearance of Mr. Edwin Booth or Miss Mary Anderson in London. The t262 ABOUT THE THEATRE. American artists come here to confirm their reputation ; Mr. Irving and Mrs. Langtry go to America not so much to confirm as to exploit. New York he his fame, she her notoriety. So, too, with defers to i -r-s i • i t r London more plays. Enghsh successes are competed for than London .^. ••««,i* • a • to New York, With avidity by American managers ; American successes are regarded with suspicion in England. It sometimes happens, indeed, that the English verdict on a play or an actor is reversed in America, just as some plays and actors succeed in London and fail in the English provinces. Nevertheless in America, as in the provinces, the approval of London carries with it a much stronger recommend- dation than the approval of New York or Manchester can be said to carry with it in London. The former affords a strong pre- sumption of success, the latter (in the case of plays, at any rate) little or none. One leading theatre in New York has for years relied almost exclusively upon English plays, and very largely upon English actors. In spite of occasional reverses, Wallack's has on the whole been successful ; but it would be well- nigh impossible, and certainly fatal, for any* London theatre to return the compliment and rely exclusively upon American productions. It must be admitted, then, that the centre of THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. 2S3 production and distribution is still on this side of the Atlantic. Our actors and authors have brought home many more dollars from America than American actors and authors have taken from England. This is partly because the field is wider, and the pecuniary conditions of the American stage on the whole more favourable ; but it is also because the Americans pay much more respect to the London hall-mark than we pay to the stamp of American approval. It by no means follows from this that we are not because more enlightened, more refined, or in any way more "n- more truly critical than the Americans. On ^wr^^v/W, the contrary, our insular self-satisfaction, our egoism, our chauvinism, plays a large part in the matter. It may be hoped, as I shall after- wards point out, that the growing influence of America will tend to break down the parochial prejudice which precludes our taking any inte- rest in events beyond our narrow horizon, or in thoughts and emotions not directly germane to our own. Meanwhile we must note that our claim to a metropolitan position in theatrical Greater Britain does not rest upon our arrogant *narrowness alone, but has a solider foundation in the fact that London presents a much larger ^«/ because it ... presents a large public in a given space than any American city, pubUc in a and has thus advantages not shared by New j^//^^*^ •2^4 ABOUT THE THEATRE. York, Boston, or Chicago. A particular form of art has here greater space in which to strike root and develop. A London actor may be stationary; an American actor, unless he be content with a very subordinate and local reputation, must be nomadic. Thus we have here established a method in poetic drama and in comedy which the Americans may or may not admire, but which they certainly have not succeeded in rivalling on their own account. Among all the multitudinous critics who pro- nounced themselves upon Mr. Irving, from Boston to St. Louis, from Chicago to Balti- more, there was unanimity on one point, namely, that in stage -management, scenic decoration, and general completeness of pre- sentation, his enterprise taught a valuable lesson. It is because he has found in the Lyceum a local habitation, with a large, in- telligent, and steadily appreciative public, that Mr. Irving has been enabled to develop the method of presentation which so much sur- prises and delights the Americans. No city in the Union has hitherto presented the conditions which rendered this possible. Mr. Edwin Booth, an actor as intelligent as he is finely the Haymarket endowcd, made a similar attempt in New York and tit. James s •^ of comedy, somc ycars ago, which failed completely. So The Lyceum, in its way, a a school of poetic drama, THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. *6S of melodrama. too, in comedy, our Haymarket ^ and St. James's form between them a genuine school, with a manner, not always of the best, and a tradition, not quite of the loftiest, but still a manner and a tradition. In popular drama, t/u Princess's again, Mr. Wilson Barrett may be said to have formed a school. Such theatres as the Lyceum, the St. James's, and the Princess's, can flourish only in a city which is a dramatic centre in a •quite different sense from that in which any of the great towns of America can claim the title. Mr. Irving and Mrs. Kendal, however they may occasionally wander, are much more truly at home in London than Mr. Edwin Booth or Miss Mary Anderson in any one city of their native land ; and the public among which such artists can find a permanent home may fairly, 'if only in respect of its numbers, claim some- thing like a metropolitan position. But a metropolitan position has its dangers Dangers of a .. . , -rr • r i metropolitan as well as its advantages. If it favours the position material development of the stage, it also fosters a spiritual narrowness. The cockney, the ** boulevardier,*' the " achte Berliner," is a personage of conventional ideas and narrow sympathies, forgetful in his microcosm of the ^ Written before the retirement of Mr. and Mrs. Ban- croft. 266 ABOUT THE THEATRE. intensified in London, existence of a macrocosm, and inclined to resent any call for intellectual effort, any request to put aside his own prejudices, for however short a time, in order to study the prejudices of other people. We English especially, with our deficient artistic sense and our imperviousness to ideas, have always tended towards this parochialism, which has been confirmed by our inherited habit of re- garding the stage as a vehicle for mere amuse- ment. Our forefathers held it to be necessarily frivolous and sinful ; we have struck out the latter term from their definition, but have implicitly adhered to the former. An anoma- lous and vexatious Censorship has exercised its irresponsible powers in placing a premium upon frivolity. Everything has tended to intensify in relation to the stage the insular habit of thought from which all artistic and literary effort suffers so much. The London public has been reduced to a dead level of Philistinism ; and as it gives the tone to thea- trical life throughout the country, playwrights had, until recently, no chance of appealing from its verdict. The very centralization which has permitted us to develop tolerable schools of acting and admirable methods of stage-manage- ment and decoration, has cramped and stunted our dramatic production. Our insular Philistinism THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN, 267 In America, paradoxical as it may seem, the not shared by , ,. . T^ T i the Amtrican public IS more European than here. It does pubiu. not insist that everything shall be American- ized before it will look at it, as we insist that everything shall be Anglicized. It will accept a French statement, and even a French solution, of a dramatic problem ; it will take interest in a German play without forcing it into Anglo- Saxon dress. It frequently happens that a French play is acted in two forms — in an American translation and an English adapta- tion — and the former is often the more success- ful of the two. The dramatic fare presented to and relished by the American playgoer is far more varied than the English public de- mands or would accept. " Our public," says Mr. Brander Matthews, **is less prudish and less prurient than yours.'* He might have added that its tastes are more catholic, its distastes less irrational. It does not leave its brains with its umbrella in the cloak-room ; its lorgnettes are not always coloured with pro- vincial prejudice. It is ready enough to flock after sensation and frivolity, but it is also capable of giving patient attention to serious dramatic work. In short, it is more open- minded and less self-centred than ours, more tolerant and less captious. 268 ABOUT THE THEATRE. infiuenceof The example of America will probably tend, America on , , England, as dramatic mtercourse becomes closer, to widen our receptivity and increase our in- telligent interest in the drama of foreign nations. We may one day learn to value a French or German play in proportion to its inherent vigour and truth, not in proportion to the greater or less facility with which it can be tortured into an English form, and made to rhyme with English social prejudices and moral common- places. Already we are beginning to accept pictures of American life and character for their own sake and on their own merits. In time, America, which is becoming, as it were, a telephone-exchange for the spiritual influences of Europe, may interpret to us France and Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. And further, as the English dramatist learns to reckon upon the immense extension of his public involved in the throwing open of the American market, he will set about his work with greater freedom. He will no longer depend entirely on the prejudice or whim of one city. He will be able to appeal from narrow and exclusive England to wide and receptive America, where the Censor ceases from troubling, and the cockney reigns no more. As yet, he is scarcely aware of the and on the English wright, THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN, 269 loosening of his bonds, and that for two only beginning _ , _ , . . - , . . to make reasons. In the first place, it is only within itsei/feit. the last few years that judicial decisions and ingenious devices of theatrical agents and middlemen, aided, no doubt, by a more en- lightened public opinion, have combined to secure the rights of English dramatists in America almost as completely as if the coming international copyright were already in exis- tence. The full import of such a change does not make itself felt at once. In the second place, the verdict of London has still undue weight in America. A piece which has not been tried, or which has failed, here, as yet finds the American market practically closed against it. A success of esteem on this side has frequently become a money success beyond the Atlantic ; but to secure a fair chance in America, a play must have met with a certain amount of acceptance here. I could immense pecuniary name at least one English playwright whose profits of income for some years past has been about wnghtsin equal to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the greater part of it being drawn from America ; but all his pieces have been first tested in London. This state of things, however, must soon pass away. The English dramatist will enter into more direct relations with the 270 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Pecuniary profits will diminish^ intellectual advantages increase. American public, the American dramatist with the English public. Intercourse will no longer be carried on solely through speculators who, often without reading or seeing a play, take its reception in England as a sufficient omen of its American fortunes. To the English dramatist America is, as yet, a mere Tom Tiddler's ground, a " big bonanza " upon which he has chanced to stumble. As time goes on, and as the Americans develop their own resources, his disproportionate profits may decline, and he may feel the effect of American competition in the home market. But by that time he will also feel the solid and abiding gain which lies in the extension and differentiation of the audience to which he can address himself. He will go to America not merely to pick up gold and silver, but to seek his elective affinities, to find an outlet for his ideas and aspirations. In the American public he will see no mere dollar- minting machine, but a vast and varied as- semblage of thinking men and women, among whom he can scarcely fail to find appreciation for his technical skill, sympathy with his literary or social convictions. Am I rashly anticipating in this forecast ot the day when the English, or the Greater- British, dramatist shall combine technical skill May not the theatrical expansion of Jingland THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN. 271 with a serious " criticism of life " ? That time is certainly not yet come ; but the main purpose of this essay is to inquire whether there be not a reasonable hope that the theatrical expansion of England may hasten its coming. It is to the natural growth of things that justify a I mainly trust — to the inevitable and gradually dep!!rt"ref widening action of tendencies already traceable. But it seems to me that the altered and altering conditions of the stage may also give room for a definite new departure in theatrical enterprise — a departure for Utopia, some may be inclined to call it, when I explain my meaning. Perhaps they are right. America has furnished sites for more air-castles than were ever built in Spain, and my plan may be of the number. But voyagers to Utopia have sometimes found greater things than they sought, and a chart of the route to El Dorado may indicate a fruitful direction, even if it proposes an impossible goal. - Theorists on the drama have long told us Art and mammon that no great art is to be expected while incompaiibu management is a trade, and the theatre is together. expected not only to pay its way but to )deld a handsome interest on capital. A theatre which must make money from day to day and from week to week can do so, they say, only by pandering to "the giddy Phrygian crowd 272 ABOUT THE THEATRE. that hastes not to be wise." They point to the great subventioned theatres of the Con- tinent, and ask why, if the land of Moliere has ' a Theatre- Fran9ais, the land of Shakespeare should not have an English Theatre. Others! dream of an Endowed Theatre, drawing from a fund supplied by private munificence the yearly income which, like a steady-beating pro- peller, shall enable it to hold its ideal course, careless of the alternate storm and calm of popular favour. There is undoubted truth in this diagnosis of the disease ; the question is whether either of the remedies proposed is the right one. How to divorce A State Theatre, may be put out of the them : State . --,- . , Theatre? qucstion at oncc. Whatever its advantages or its disadvantages in France, in England it is an impossibility, unless, indeed, we are content Endowed ^° await the socialistic millennium. An En- Theatre f dowcd Theatre is not theoretically impossible, but it is practicably improbable. Its constitu- tion and government would offer immense difficulties ; and, as a matter of fact, the millionaires who turn their attention to the stage are generally more inclined to endow an actress temporarily than a theatre in perpetuity. But, short of absolute endowment, can we not conceive a theatre, or rather a wide-spreading THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN, 273 theatrical enterprise, founded in the interests of serious art by a body of art-lovers, who should be content with a moderate interest on their investment, and should resolve to apply any surplus of profit to the extension, solidifica- tion, and perfection of their undertaking? Can we not, in short, conceive a self-supporting National Theatre ? I think we can, if only our Self-supporting ^ . , . , , 1^ T J -r^ International nation be wide enough — not London or Eng- Theatre i land, but Greater Britain ; that is to say, if we make our National Theatre truly International, not English but Anglo-Saxon. The gambler who has unlimited capital and who plays on a system must, if he play long enough, at least recoup himself. The betting- man whose operations are wide enough, and who hedges skilfully, "stands to lose" but little. So an organization of sufficient resources, ap- pealing to a sufficiently diversified public, might keep steadily in view a certain artistic ideal and yet in the long run make both ends meet, if not considerably overlap. It is th^ desire to make large profits while catering for a narrow demand which cramps, if it does not degrade, private theatrical management. Let us inquire for a moment what should b^ rtsidmiznotto be found ready the ideal of an Anglo-American Theatre. We made in any cannot go for our model to the Th^atre-Fran9ais, 19 foreign modeU 274 ABOUT THE THEATRE. with its august traditions, and its rich, but exclusively French, repertory. Some German theatres might teach us apter lessons, for we are a Teutonic race, and should aim at some- thing of a Teutonic catholicity of culture. But the conditions of our international life, literary, social, and political, are so thoroughly peculiar T to ourselves, that the servile imitation of any foreign model could only lead to failure. In the first place, our store of dramatic literature is richer than that of any other people, and we, more than any other people, have allowed it to moulder in neglect. Shakespeare we have always with us, galvanized into factitious vitality by lavish decorations and the popularity of individual artists. But even of Shakespeare's works only some half-dozen can really be said to hold the stage. The rest have no over- whelmingly important star-parts, or do not First vein to adapt themsclvcs to such decorative displays SMkespeare, as will attract the town for months on end. It should be the first duty of a National Theatre to place the great majority of Shakespeare*s plays effectively on its repertory, that is, to represent them from time to time with an efficient cast, careful stage-management, and solid, soberly-appropriate decoration. ** Corio- lanus," "Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN, 275 '* Richard II.," '* Henry IV./' " Henry V.," ** Measure for Measure," ** Cymbeline " — all these, and others of less importance, are practically dead to us so far as stage repre- sentation is concerned. The Germans know them better than we. An Anglo-Saxon Theatre should literally ** revive " them — not mount them gaudily to produce a temporar}' sensation, but place itself in a position to represent them adequately at certain intervals, so that no period of, say, four or five years, should ever pass without each having had its turn. Several leading German theatres have given cyclic re- presentations of our great Anglo-Saxon epos from **King John" to "Henry VIII."— why is such a national solemnity impossible in England and America? Nor should Shake- and the speare alone be unshelved. Many plays of his contemporaries would amply repay occa- sional presentation on the stage, and that not merely as curiosities. To do them justice, and bring into relief their elements of abiding vitality, would demand in the artistic directors of the theatre great literary taste, as well as technical skill ; but there seems to be no good reason why such qualifications should not be . forthcoming. Pausing here in our sketch of the ideal policy ElisaMhans. 276 ABOUT THE THEATRE, A Shake- spearean theatre in London alone •would not pay. hut might Greater Britain. of our International Theatre, let us inquire into the means of carrying out this portion of it, of doing for our national drama from Shake- speare to Sheridan what the Theatre-Frangais and the Odeon do for the French drama from Corneille to Beaumarchais. The difficulty in our case is clearly much greater, for we have to deal, not with the classic, but with the romantic drama — a drama which calls for larger com^ panics, more original histrionic talent, and more varied and expensive decorations. A large sub- vention would evidently be needed by any London theatre which should attempt adequately to carry out such a programme. It would demand a numerous company of competent actors, with two or three of the first order, a huge wardrobe, and a vast store of scenery. But suppose the field of operations widened; suppose the same expenditure of thought,, labour, and material enabled to seek its return,, not in London alone, but in one or two great, provincial centres, not in England alone, but in New York, Boston, and Chicago in due suc^ cession; is it not conceivable that the interest of the Anglo-Saxon race in the treasures of its literature might in the long run yield effectual support to such an enterprise ? This, however, is only half, or more properly THE STAGE OF GREATER BRITAIN, 277 one-third, of the functions to be fulfilled by such Tiu second » _ . X 1 t , 1 1 ^" " •* The a theatre as I conceive. It should draw the foreign drama, greater part of its nourishment from two other tap-roots — the drama of Germany and France, both classical and contemporary, and the actual contemporary drama of England and America. There is no possible reason why " Faust " ^ and ** Tasso," " Fiesco " and " Wallenstein," should be banished from our stage. The versification of the French classic drama would render it difficult to deal with, even if its spirit were not unsympathetic ; yet it is hard to see why Moliere should be possible in Germany and impossible in England. Several of Calderon*s masterpieces, again, have been made genuinely attractive on the German stage — are we too hopelessly insular even to try such an experi- ment? But it is in the contemporary drama and con- of France, Germany, and, I may add, of Scan- ^^" '^^^' dinavia, that our theatre would find most material. There are hundreds of modem plays, both poetic and realistic, ill-suited to the Angli- cizing now considered necessary, yet full of human interest, dramatic vigour, and valuable illustrations of the manners and modes of thought of contemporary Europe. Such plays are not so absorbingly attractive as to secure * The " Faust" of Goethe, not of Mr. Wills. 278 ABOUT THE THEATRE. The third vein: The contemporary English and American drama . the requisite two hundred nights' run in London alone, but should find an adequate public in Greater Britain. In its relation to the contemporary drania of England and America should lie the highest utility of our International Theatre — the highest Utility, and perhaps the greatest difficulty, for there would be two opposite tendencies to be guarded against in the selection of new plays. On the one hand there would be the temptation to make money at the expense of art, to swerve from the ideal course at every momentary gust of popular favour. On the other hand — and this would perhaps be the greatest difficulty of all — undue influence would always be attempting to procure a useless hearing for the feeble amateur dramas which now litter the manager's room in every popular theatre. It might be found necessary to establish a fundamental rule that no play by a shareholder in the undertaking, or by any one who could claim even a Scotch- cousinship to a shareholder, should on any account be accepted for representation. In the absence of some such proviso the enterprise would oply too probably degenerate into a short-lived series of Gaiety matinees. This danger fairly averted, it would be the duty of the committee or committees of management to treat the plays Dangers to be avoided. All worthy forms of drama to be welcomed. THE STAGE OF GREA TER BRITAIN. 279 submitted to them in a catholic spirit. Prefer- ence should, of course, be given to serious dramatic studies of modern life, but healthy farce', graceful light-comedy, powerful melo- drama, should by no means be excluded from consideration. Nothing human should be held alien. Among the above-mentioned stacks of still-born plays many excellent works are probably hidden, which some fortuitous cir- cumstance alone deprives of a hearing — an ** unhappy ending," perhaps, or weakness of "female interest,'* or absence of ** comic relief," or some other peculiarity which con- flicts with popular prejudice or managerial superstition. It is this class of play which our piaysn. nations, at first produced a contrary effect in France itself. Between 1789 and 1815 France had no time for thought, much less for the artistic utterance of thought. Her literary development was arrested. At enmity with her neighbours beyond the Rhine and beyond the Channel, she was in no receptive mood for the new ideas and new forms which had revo- lutionized the Teutonic world of imagination. Anachronism apart, she may be said to have reversed the millennial process and beaten her pens into bayonets. From Beaumarchais to Victor Hugo — to put it with something of Hugonian exaggeration — French literature con- sisted of the " Marseillaise." The Restoration threw France open to Europe The Romantic and Europe to France. The invasion of Wel- lington and Blucher was the precursor of another invasion, gradual and insidious, but of infinitely wider issues. France now felt in the spiritual sphere the rebound of the very impetus she herself had given. Teutonism rushed in upon her on every hand, slowly at first, then with overpowering rapidity. The movement had already grown to vast propor- tions when Victor Hugo placed himself at its 292 ABOUT THE THEATRE. 1827 — War declared in *' CromwelL" head, and the Teutonic invasion became the Romantic revolt. It v^as in 1827 that the young author of " Odes et Ballades," " Bug Jargal," and ** Han d'Islande," published his manifesto of protest against the cold conventions in which the drama was enchained, with a specimen play of the new fashion tagged to it. ** Cromwell,** conceived with the idea of providing Talma with a part, had grown, after the actor's death, to quite untheatrical proportions, but it served all the better to emphasize the new departure. A gauntlet, to be thrown with effect, should be heavy enough to fall with something of a clang. Of the play and the preface more here- after ; for the present it is enough to note that Shakespeare, the " sauvage ivre " of Voltaire, has become in the eyes of Victor Hugo "ce dieu du theatre." Two years and a-half later (25th February, 1830) the battle-ground was transferred to the stage with the production of ** Hernani " at the Theatre-Fran^ais. There had been a preliminary skirmish in the previous year over Dumas' ** Henri III.," which had resulted in a success for the Romanticists ; but Dumas had merely insinuated interest of plot (hitherto confined to the theatres of melodrama and vaudeville) into the stronghold of convenr The battle of ** Hernani." THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO. 293 tional and foreknown intrigue. He had not attempted to disturb the decorous swing of the sacred Alexandrine pendulum ; he had not called a spade a spade in verse just as though it were the merest prose ; above all, he had not written the preface to *' Cromwell." The author of " Hernani " had committed all these enormities, and long before the curtain rose on the fateful 25th of February, it was known that worse remained behind. Victor Hugo Tkepoefs refused the services of the professional claque, ""* but a body of wildly-attired student-enthusiasts encamped themselves in the parterre from an early hour in the afternoon, committing in- describable breaches of decorum and filling the Classicist with disgust, the bourgeois with terror. At their head was Theophile Gautier, resplendent ** in a red waistcoat and trousers of pearly grey with a stripe of black velvet " ; and he was only one of many who aftenvards made themselves famous. Victor Hugo has from first to last been fortunate in his claque. What need to tell of the exploits of this long- haired phalanx — how, line by line and night after night, they fought the battle of " Hernani," until they had gained for the romantic drama vutwryt a firm foothold upon the classic stage ? The preposterous theories of ** Cromwell " seemed 294 ABOUT THE THEATRE, to the demoralized Classicists to have become accomplished and deplorable facts ; though in reality, perhaps, they were neither so deplorable nor so accomplished as they seemed. " Manon de Lorme," written before "Hernani," but stopped by the Bourbon censorship, was produced at the Porte Saint -Martin on the nth August, 1831, a year after the Revolution of July had removed the prohibition. It, too, attained a stormy success. "Le Roi ,s'amuse," A success and a failure. Prose plays. played at the Theatre-Fran9ais on the 22nd November, 1832, was, on the other hand, a stormy failure on its first night, and being interdicted on the morrow by the censorships did not reach a second representation until its solemn revival fifty years later. The next three plays, despite the vindication of verse as a dramatic medium in the preface to "Cromwell," were written in prose. Two were produced at the Porte Saint-Martin, ** Lucrece Borgia,'* on the 2nd February, 1833, and ** Marie Tudor," on the 6th November in the same year. The third, "Angelo," was played at the Theatre Fran9ais on the 28th April, 1835. All these were in their way successful, in spite of deter- mined opposition. The poet had even to resort to legal measures in order to prevent the Comedie Fran9aise from quietly shelving " Herx THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO. ro; nani *' and ** Angelo," in spite of the fact that they drew large houses whenever they were played. An interval of three and a half years t/u return ensued, and then, at the new Theatre de la ^*'^''* Renaissance, founded specially as a home for the romantic drama, Victor Hugo produced ** Riiy_Elas," not without opposition, yet with unquestionable success. In it, and in his last play, "^LesTBurgraves," he returns to verse, even more flexible and sonorous than that of his earlier works. *' Les Burgraves,*' produced at the Theatre Fran9ais, on the 7th March, 1843, was distinctly unsuccessful, and from that time forward the poet, like Daudet's Delobelle, " renounced the theatre." He was barely forty when his career as a playwright militant came to a close, f These, then, are the works we have to con- sider — five five-act plays and one ** trilogy " in verse, three three-act plays in prose. Nine dramas in all ; or eleven if we include " Inez de Castro," the firstfruits, and " Torquemada," the aftermath of the poet's dramatic labours. It is perhaps fortunate (to vary an old TheportUo and tkepalact, metaphor) that few people enter the theatre of Victor Hugo by way of its portico proper, the preface to "Cromwell," for whatever its intrinsic magnificence, it does not fulfil the 296 ABOUT THE THEATRE. promise of that imposing structure. The poet, it is clear, believed himself to be raising the forefront of an illimitable palace of art which other men and other generations would con- tinue to infinity. He did his own part man- fully towards carrying out the design, but no one followed him, and the palace of art consists at the present moment of one vast hall and no more. This is a primary fact to be noted ; Hugo not an .<^ictor Hugo foundcd no school of dramatic / epoch-maker in\/^ ^ the drama, writing. His plays stand isolated. They are not a link in the chain of theatrical history, French or European. They are an end rather than a beginning, the consummation and re- duction to absurdity of the drama of the past, rather than the starting-point of the drama of the future. Shakespeare's influence, for good or evil, is at work to this day in the literary drama and on the stage of the whole Teutonic world. Corneille, Moliere, and Schiller have stamped their impress upon the drama of generations in their own and other countries. Not so Hugo. Even Mr. Swinburne, who has paid him every other conceivable honour, has omitted in his plays the ultimate homage of His influence imitation. Hus:o's general influence as a poet on dramatic . history very upon French literature has been enormous, his trifling. .^ . ^ , . , ^ specific mfluence as a playwright upon the THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO, 397 French drama has been infinitesimal. If he had never written plays, French poetry would be greatly the poorer, and the history of Italian opera would be different ; but the modern\ drama of Europe would, in all probability, be ] much as it is. Whoever uses the Frencl|^y language as a medium of literary expression, whether in prose or verse, owes a deep debt of gratitude to Hugo's work, and to his plays among the rest ; but what modern dramatist of note, in France or elsewhere, traces his theatrical ancestry to Hugo? Neither Augier nor Sardou, neither Dumas nor Zola, neither Laube nor Freytag, neither Ibsen nor Bjornson; not even Cossa, though he works a somewhat similar vein. While Hugo went about like a roaring lion seeking what he might destroy in the way of prejudice or convention, dogma or formula, a patient little insect (in point of genius and intellectual calibre the proportion holds to a nicety) was quietly building up th« foundations of the new drama. Had Eugene Hugo and Scribe never lived, the whole theatrical history of the past fifty years would have been different. From him, by way of imitation, development, and reaction, the modern drama, springs. Had Hugo, on the other hand, held aloof from the theatre, we should simply have been the poorer 298 ABOUT THE THEATRE, The preface to *• Cromwell." by nine interesting plays, and several popular operas. Hugo invented a dialect, Scribe elabo- rated a technique. The dialect was not fitted for the needs of the modern theatre, the tech- nique was.^ That is why Hugo's magnificently planned avenue has proved a mere no-thorough- fare, while Scribe's modest little alley has widened into the great highway of the modern drama. Events, then, have shown that the men who refused to see a new isvangel in the preface to "Cromwell" were not altogether of the stupid party. The wonder rather is that an argument based on such questionable history and fantastic criticism should ever have passed for sound theory. Poetry, we are told, has three ages, each of which corresponds to an epoch of society. Primitive times are lyric, ancient times epic, modern times dramatic. The ode sings eternity, the epic solemnizes history, the drama paints life. The characteristic of the first is naivete, of the second sirriplicity, of the third truth. The persons of the ode are colossi. The ode, the eprc, and (he drama. ^ Even the advanced school, which rejects his technique, is nevertheless vastly indebted to the despised Eugene, just as Tennyson is indebted to Pope, though he works in metres at once simpler and subtler than the heroic couplet. THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO, 299 Adam, Cain, Noah ; those of the epic are giants, Achilles, Atreus, Orestes ; those of the drama are men, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello. The ode lives on the ideal, the epic on the grandiose, the drama on the real. These three streams of poetry flow from three great sources, the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare. The poetry born of Christianity, the poetry of our times, is the drama ; the characteristic of the drama is the ckaracuHstUs real ; the real results from the natural combina- tion of two types, the sublime and the grotesque, Svhich entwine with each other in the drama, as in life and creation. Fpr true poetr}', complete poetry, lies in the harmony of con- traries. What the poet must choose is not the beatitiftd but the characteristic. He must steep his work in local and historical colour. At the same time he must avoid the common, against which verse is a powerful preservative. The idea, plunged in verse, at once becomes more incisive and more brilliant. It is iron turned into steel. These, in the poet's own words, are the Prtpcitenui dogmas of his dramatic creed — and what ^^"' dogmas! The whole literary history of the world arranged in an arbitrary pattern, so that *' Cromwell " may fit into and complete it ! With his national love of order and symmetry, with 300 ABOUT THE THEATRE, his individual carefulness of epigram and care- lessness of fact, he systematizes all poetical effort in one preposterous scheme, and then jumps to conclusions quite independent of his premises, though in most cases equally prepos- terous. The real results from the combination of the sublime and the grotesque ! As well say that the diamond results from the combination of any two of its facets. The characteristic of the drama is truth ! Such a sentence, in the preface to such a play as " Cromwell," must be What is read in the lie^ht of this other sentence : " The truth f ° Greek Eumenides are much less horrible, and consequently much less tnte, than the witches in * Macbeth.' " The man who can draw such an inference clearly attaches some private interpre- tation to the term ** true." Truth, in the ordinary sense of the word, is not predicable of gorgons and chimaeras. If he had said "much less horrible and consequently much less equi- lateral," the remark would have been just as instructive. It is scarcely surprising to find the " truth " of this dramatist a myth, and his ** reality " a chimaera. ^As we review the pre- face in the light of the play and its successors, we are inclined to cry, with Ibsen's Julian the Apostate, " The old beauty is no longer beauti* ful, and the new truth is no longer true." THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO. 30, M. Zola has admirably stated the upshot of y-oUonHugo. this historic preface. ** Victor Hugo," he says, Dramatiques^" ** had an intuition of the vast naturalist move- ment. He felt perfectly that the classical school had had its day, with its abstract man studied outside of nature and treated as a philosophical puppet and as a subject for rhetoric. He was conscious of the necessity of replacing man in nature, and painting him as he is, by observation and analysis. . . . But Victor Hugo brought to the task the tempera- ment of a lyric poet, not that of an observer, a man of science. From the very outset, ac- cordingly, he narrowed his field. Instead of emphasizing the difference between two methods, the dogmatic and the scientific, he merely marked the divergence of two literary forms, drama and tragedy." He fought the battle, not of observation against fantasy, but of unbridled against bridled imagination. He sought for effect, and called it truth. Let us now look at the play which is intro- "CromwiL'* duced, as in the Elizabethan theatre, with such a fanfaronade. " Cromwell," at a rough calcu- lation, is about the same length as the three parts of " Wallenstein." On such a canvas it should have been possible for Victor Hugo, as it was for Schiller, to paint a living picture of 302 ABOUT THE THEATRE. even the most complex historical period; and this, indeed, is what he set himself to do, parading in his notes the authorities he had consulted, among them rare pamphlets and un- published documents. What is the result ? lis plot. In the first act we find two choruses of Cava- liers and of Roundheads plotting the destruction of the Lord Protector. The latter intend simply to assassinate him ; the plot of the former is more complicated and of a rare ineptitude. Lord Rochester (the author has rolled two Rochesters into one), having proved himself a fop and featherbrain almost to the point of insanity, is chosen as a fit and proper person to disguise himself as an Independent preacher, to approach Cromwell with an introduction from Milton, obtain the post of chaplain, and then drug his evening posset, so that the other con- A hopeful spirators may kidnap him at their ease. All this is to be effected in less than twenty-four hours ; and in his intervals of leisure Rochester proposes to seduce the Lady Francis {sic), Cromwell's youngest daughter. The second and third acts are mainly occupied with a series of scenes, now farcical, now melodramatic, growing out of this hopeful intrigue. Here is a passage in which Cromwell soliloquizes unconscious of the presence of Rochester, whoj on the other intrigue. THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO. 303 hand, does not recognize the Protector, and mistakes him for a Royalist : — ^''Cromwell — . . . Ouvrons cette fenStre. Actii. tc.x^ {II s'approcJie de la crois^e de Charles ler.) L'air libre, le soleil chasseront mon ennui. Rochester— \\ ne se gene pas ! on le dirait chez lui. {Cromwell cherche cl ouvrir la crotstfej elle r^siste.) Cromwell — On I'ouvre rarement, — La serrure est rouillde. {Reculant tout ci coup d'un air d'horreur.) C'est du sang de Stuart la fenetre souillde ! Oui, c'est de Ih. qu'il prit son essor vers les cieux ! — (// revient penst/sur le devant du thMtre.) Si j'etais roi, peut-^tre elle s'ouvrirait mieux ! Rochester— Fa-s ddgoCltd ! Cromwell— S'il faut que tout crime s'expie,. Tremble, Cromwell !— Ce fut un attentat impie. Jamais plus noble front n'orna le dais royal ; Charles Premier fut juste en bon. Rochester— Sujet loyal ! " This, as Mr. Swinburne says, is certainly not ** the faultless monster of Carlyle's creation/' but it is simply the Cromwell of pre-Carlylean Tk characur popular imagination, and a very little study even of the authorities available in 1827 should have shown Victor Hugo its ridiculous falsity. Rochester, it is needless to say, is discovered by Cromwell on his knees before Lady Francis, Avho has the presence of mind to pretend that 0/ CromvoclL 304 ABOUT THE THEATRE. ** Messire Obededom," as he calls himself, is begging her to plead his cause with her duenna. Dame Guggligoy (!). Act Hi. sc. 9. " CroviiueU [au chef des viousquetaires) — Dis k Cham Biblechan, I'un des voyants d'Ecosse, Qu'il marie k I'instant, sur le livre de foi, Messire Obededom et dame Guggligoy ! " So said so done, in spite of Rochester's protes- tatipns ; and it is in this interlude of outrageous and vulgar farce that Mr. Swinburne finds " Moliere already equalled ... by the young conqueror whose rule was equal and imperial over every realm of song " ! The fourth act is a passage of strong melo- drama, in which Cromwell, disguised as a sentinel, foils and entraps the Cavalier conspira- tors who have come to carry him off; as in the fifth act, the coronation scene, he turns the tables upon the Puritan assassins. Both these passages, but especially the act at the Whitehall postern, with its ambuscades within ambus- cades and its final transformation-scene, seem to cry aloud for operatic treatment. In point of local colour and historical truth they are Thefourfoois. about on the level of Italian opera. A few examples will suffice. Throughout the fourth act Cromwell's four fools (and such fools !) are concealed spectators of all that passes. Their THE PLAYS OF VICTOR HUGO, 305 names are Trick, Giraff, Gramadoch, and Elespuru; and that they may seem the more unmistakably English, we are directed to pro- nounce the name of the last " Elespourou." This is local colour laid on with a trowel. In the fifth act we have the following perversion of the legendary " bauble " incident. The scene is Westminster Hall, which has been arranged for Cromwell's coronation. At the last moment, however, he changes his mind, and seeing on the steps of the throne the sceptre provided for the occasion, he cries " d'une voix eclatante " : " Quoi done ? un sceptre ! — Otez de Ih. cette marotte. Act v. sc. la. {Se tournant vers Trick), Pour toi, mon fou ! " Here is the last speech of Carr, the irrecon- cilable Fifth-Monarchy Man, who, finding Cromwell triumphant, insists on returning to the Tower : — " En mon cachot, peut-etre, Act v. sc. 14, Je suis le seul Anglais dont tu ne sois pas maitre, Oui, le seul libre ! Lh, je te maudis, Cromwell ; Lii, tous deux je nous offre en holocauste au Ciel. Ma prison ! ^ I'enfreindre enfin tu me condamnes ; Ma prison ! Et s'il faut citer des lois profanes Et des textes mondains h. vos coeurs corrompus, J'y retoume, en vertu de V habeas corpui?^ 21 3o6 ABOUT THE THEATRE. This is delicious enough; but the reply of Cromwell is more exquisite still : — "A votre aise ! — II invoque un bill que rien n'abroge." Truly it is but a step from the England of ** Cromwell" to the England of "L'Homme qui rit," the fatherland of Lord Linnaeus \^ Clancharlie, of Gumdraith and Hell-kerters. A mixture of What has become of the great and faithful melodrama and comic opera, historical picture to which so huge a canvas was so solemnly devoted? We have an in- trigue of melodrama entwined with an intrigue of opera bouffe — by combining the sublime and the grotesque do we not produce the real? — and we have a motley crew of Roundheads and Cavaliers, gallicized from the models provided by Scott. Certainly there is a movement, a vigour, a variety, a sonorousness, an incisive- ness, a " facile force of dialogue and splendid eloquence of style " hitherto unknown in the French drama. One does not wonder that the Young France of 1827 should have gone into a passion of delight and hailed the master of this " mighty line " as the Messiah of French poetry, and even of the French drama. But when we read in the preface, " Le drame peint true neither io la vic," and again, "Le caractere du drame est history nor /<>... human nat-ure. la verite '* (historical as well as typical), we THE FLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO, y>7 cannot but ask ourselves what truth, whether of history or of human nature, is to be learned in these four hundred and fifty pages of rhetoric ? "Any dullard," says Mr. Swinburne, "can point the finger at a slip here and there in the history ; '* true, for a sors Hugoniana, a random opening of the book, could scarcely fail to show some absurdity. It would be a much more difficult task to point the finger at a single ^ touch of luminous characterization or histo- rical truth. It is a relief to pass from imaginary history '*^ernani\" to romantic imagination, pure and simple. To my mind " Hernani " stands easily first among Victor Hugo's dramas. It is his typical play, the most imposingly grandiose melodrama ever written. Mr. Swinburne places " Marion de compiredwUh ot/ur plays. Lorme," *' Le Roi s'amuse," and '* Ruy Bias," in "triune supremacy at the head of Victor Hugo's plays," and many critics, I know, agree with him in giving " Hernani " an in- ferior place. Each of its rivals has certainly some advantage of detail. " Marion de Lorme " is perhaps the most human and rational of Hugo's plays ; but a sublime unreason is what we seek as the characteristic note of his manner. The undeniable power of ** Le Roi s'amuse" merges into sheer repulsiveness. 3o8 ABOUT THE THEATRE. which is absent from *' Hernani." As for '* Ruy Bias," though Don Cesar imports into it. a grateful strain of fantastic comedy, the cha- racter of its hero seems to me a radical weak- ness. If not in reality a more impossible personage than Hernani, he is at least more currish and contemptible. In which of these plays, again, are there any scenes of magnilo- quence and magnificence comparable with the third and fourth acts of " Hernani" ? In which is the action so crisp, so rapid, so irresistible ? It passes from suspense to surprise, from surprise Theineiodrama to suspcnse, without an instant's pause. The of melodramas. . tables are always bemg turned upon some one ; and is not that the central secret of melo- drama ? Its action. The scene is Spain, the hot-bed of romance ; the characters, a king in disguise, a Castilian hidalgo, an Arragonese bandit. The king, -,. phldden in a cupboard, overhears and then inter- I rupts a love-scene between the bandit and the betrothed wife of the hidalgo : situation First. \ Just as the rivals are crossing swords, the hidalgo thunders at the locked doors and enters : situation Second. He makes a noble speech, concluding thus : — Act i. sc. 3. " Don Riiy Gomez (i ses valets) — Ecuyers ! ^cuyefs ! k mon aide ! THE PLAYS OF VICTOR HUGO. 309 Ma hache, mon poignard, ma dague dc Tol6de ! {Aux deux jcunes f^ens.) • Et suivez moi, tous deux ! Don Carlos {faisant U7i pas) — Due ce n'est pas d'abord De cela qu'il s'agit. II s'agit de la mort De Maximilien, empereur d'Allemagne. {11 jcttc son 7nanteau, et d^couvre son visage cach^ par son chapeau.) Don Riiy Gomez — Raillez-vous? . . . Dieu ! le Roi ! Doiia Sol — Le Roi ! Hernani{dont les yeux s'allument) — Le Roi d'Espagne I " Situation Third — and what a situation ! What j^ attitudes for all concerned ! The king, draw- ing himself up with a superb gesture; Ruy Four attitudes. Gomez passing from rage to astonishment, and then bending before his liege lord ; Doila Sol shrinking back in surprise and dread ; and Hernani couched, as it were, for a spring, his eyes blazing forth in sudden hate from the gloomy background of the Gothic chamber ! The whole theatrical art of Victor Hugo is summed up in these four attitudes. In the second act we have Hernani's sudden apparition as Don Carlos is on the point of carrying off Dofia Sol, and the magnificent pose of Don Carlos, when, in opposition to Hernani's drawn sword, he simply folds his arms with the words — " Je suis votre seigneur le Roi. ^^t U. sc. 3. Frappez, mais pas de duel. . . . Assassinez-moi ! Faites!" 310 ABOUT THE THEATRE, The tomb of Charlemagne. The picture- Xhc third act brings with it the famous picture- scene. ° _ ^ ^ ^ scene, a passage which stirs the blood like a trumpet - blast. In semi - barbarous manners there is nothing so sympathetic and touching to the modern mind as the fanaticism of hos- pitality ; and the action of old Ruy Gomez in calling up the great spirits of his ancestors to defend the guest who is his mortal foe, rises, surely, to the very summit of that sublime unreason in which lies Victor Hugo's force. As for the fourth act, was ever action more grandiose, speech more grandiloquent ? It is the work of a melodramatic Michael Angelo. One ceases to wonder that the puissant imagi- nation which conceived the monologue of Charles V. should be careless of fact, or should take its own inspirations for the highest order of fact. What, again, can be more impressive than the appearance of Charles V. to the awe- struck conspirators, issuing from the tomb of Charlemagne just as the three cannons are heard which announce his election to the Empire ? And for sheer bravura, for splendour of sound and magnificence of pose, what can equal Hernani's revelation of his name and dignities? Act iv. sc. 4. « Do7i Carlos {au due cTAlcald)— Ne prenez que ce qui peut etre due ou comte i THE PLAYS OF VICTOR HUGO, 311 Lc reste ! . . . Dona Sol. II est sauv^ ! Herftajii {sort ant du groupe des conjurh) — Je prdtend qu'on me compte ! {A Don Carlos) — Puisqu'il s'agit de hache ici, que Hernani, Pdtre obscure, sous tes pieds passerait impuni, Puisque son front n'est plus au niveau de ton glaive, Puisqu'il faut etre grand pour mourir, je me 16ve. Dieu qui donne le sceptre et qui te le donna M'a fait due de Segorbe, et due de Cardona, Marquis de Monroy, comte Albatera, vicomte De Gor, seigneur de lieux dont j'ignore le compte. Je suis Jean d'Aragon, grand maitre d'Avis, nd Dans I'exil, fils proscrit d'un p6re assassin^ Par sentence du tien, roi Carlos de Castille ! Le meurtre est entre nous affaire de famille ... (// 7net son chapeau — Aux autres conjiirh) — Couvrons-nous, grands d'Espagne ! {Tons les Espagnols se couvrent — cl Don Carlos) — Oui, nos tetes, 6 roi ! Ont le droit de tomber couvertes devant toi ! {Anx prisonmers) — Silva ! Haro ! Lara ! gens de titre et de race, Place k Jean d'Aragon ! dues et comtes ! ma place ! {Aux court isans et aux gardes) Je suis Jean d'Aragon, roi, bourreaux et valets I Et si vos echafauds sont petits, changez-les I " What sound ! What fury ! What an ineffable strut and pose ! Until the last remnant of transpontinism is purged from human nature, there will always be a fibre to thrill at such rollins: rodomontade as this ! 312 ABOUT THE THEATRE. T/ie last act, Qf the lyric intensity, the subtle sensuous- ness, the sombre horror of the last act, it is impossible to say too much. Only when the curtain falls have we time to remember that the plot is a tissue of absurdities, that our moral sense has been entirely in abeyance, that Hernani, Doiia Sol, and Ruy Gomez are not characters, but masks, who " traversent la piece dans la meme attitude farouche et tendre," and, in short, that we have been assisting at a puppet-show of heroic gesticulation and high- flown sentimentality, set off by incomparably gorgeous declamatory verse. '^ Marion de Many pcoplc placc "Marion de Lorme " at Lorme, j s: i: ir the head of Hugo's plays, and I can under- stand, though I cannot share, the preference. It is the most possible, the least extravagant, and contains touches of genuine humanity ; but without arriving at anything like truth of obser- vation or profundity of analysis it misses the fine theatrical effectiveness of *^ Hernani*' and " Ruy Bias." Saverny is one of the first instances of a type which has since become common in melodrama, opera, and fiction of the school of Ouida — the insouciant aristocrat, half Sybarite, half Spartan, who gains indul- gence for his vices by his gaiety and courage. Didier is a foundling Hernani, sombre, lugu- THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HUGO, 3»3 brious, intensely self-conscious, and inclined to be tedious. The treatment of Marlon's own Marions character is an excellent example of the way '^ '^'''^^''' in which Victor Hugo moulds everything into melodrama. Dumas fils would have made of the whole theme a realistic social study tinged with his peculiar ethics ; Shakespeare would have found in the central incident of the last act a problem for analysis, a variation of the motive of ** Measure for Measure." Hugo finds in Marion a mere vehicle for pathetic speeches. He leaves her character vague, indeterminate. We feel neither sympathy nor antipathy in regard to her, we do not know her. We are not even asked to take up any attitude towards her, whether of praise or blame. As a woman who suffers, she cannot but command a certain measure of pity. That is all the poet requires, for it is precisely in these simple emotions, not irrational but unreasoned, that the melodram- atist finds his account. ** Le Roi s'amuse " is a nightmare of a play *;^^oi in which the changes are rung upon cynicism, lust, and cruelty, until exhausted nature cries "Hold ! too much!" In Triboulet we have an instance of that ** system of predetermined paradox, of embodied antithesis " (to use Mr. Myers* phrase) which has vitiated so much of i amust. 314 ABOUT THE THEATRE. Victor Hugo's work. He has told us how he determined to take the vilest of beings, a phy- sical monstrosity placed in the most despicable of situations, and then to give him a soul, and place in that soul "the purest sentiment known to man, the paternal sentiment." " What will happen ?" he continues. *' This sublime senti- ment . . . will transform before our eyes this degraded creature ; the small will become great, the deformed will become beautiful.'* It is not thus that living character is created ; it is not even thus that great effects are produced. Amid the deformities and enormities of **Le A moral chaos. Roi s'amusc " a moral chaos seems to have come again. Our sympathies have no point of rest, and on the other hand we do not feel that this panorama of horrors is giving us a true insight into the dark places of the human soul. As a satire upon royalty it is scathing ; as a play it is simply painful without being luminous. The prose The three prose plays which follow in order plays. IT J of time bring us face to face with the melo- dramatist minus the poet, and allow us to estimate with less likelihood of error his merd theatrical technique. It is certainly not small. Both in the invention and in the conduct of his plots — but especially in the latter — he deserves THE PLAYS Oh VICTOR HUGO. 31 S to rank as a master. As regards invention he has the facihty and fertility which belong to the Latin races. With his machinery, indeed, of dagger, poison, and sleeping-draught, masks, secret doors, mysterious keys, scaffolds, vaults, dungeons, and, in short, the whole apparatus of mediaeval melodrama, it is not difficult to invent more or less startling combinations. The diffi- Exampuxef Hull's culty is to tell the story clearly, interestingly, theatrical skiU. theatrically, making the improbable seem for the moment probable, the impossible possible. In this art Hugo, when at his best, is a master. His expositions are often admirable. He does not bring on "two gentlemen" to confide to each other the events of the past ten years, the state of parties, and the position of home and foreign politics. Three minutes after the rise of the curtain we are in the thick of the action, or if not of the action at least of the interest. In " Hernani " there is no exposition at all, in " Ruy Bias '* very little. ** Lucrece Borgia " and " Angelo " open with mere conversations, but in each we see the drama germinating, as it were, shooting, flourishing, spreading abroad its fatal fronds and feelers, before our very eyes. Inspired by the name of Lucrezia Borgia, the ^"^ legendary muse of melodrama, Victor Hugo has 3i6 ABOUT THE THEATRE. *' Angela." " Marie Tudor.''' "RiiyBlas.'^ connected with it his masterpiece of melodrama pure, simple, and undisguised. Not far behind it comes " Angelo," in which the end of the first act is unsurpassed as an example of the art of exciting curiosity. " Marie Tudor," on the other hand, is quite the weakest of Hugo's dramas. Its opening is slow, and its intrigue impossibly involved, though a few scenes, and particularly that between Fabiani and the mysterious Jew in the first act, are of the best melodramatic quality. "Ruy Bias" and "Hernani," alone of Hugo's plays, can be said really to hold the stage, and one cannot wonder that it should be so. Don Cesar and Don Salluste, " comedy and drama," as the poet calls them, are figures of rich fan- tastic humour, and terrible, blood-curdling imagination. It is not so easy to recognize ■' tragedy " in Ruy Bias himself. He is full of the sublime unreason which we have recognized as the poet's most telling quality, but in his case the sublime sometimes trenches upon the ridiculous. He is a lackey not only in station but in soul ; indeed, a lackey in soul more than in station, for he has only once worn the livery, whereas he habitually grovels before rank, wealth, and arrogance. Hear his confession to Don Cesar : — The flunkey rampant. THE PLA YS OF VICTOR HI/GO, 317 " Ruy B/as.—t.tre esclave, 6tre vil, qu'importc P—^coute Act i. u, 3. bien, Frere, je ne sens pas cette livr^e infdme, Car j'ai dans ma poitrine une hydre aux dents de flamme, Qui me serre le cceiir dans ses replis ardents. Le dehors te fait peur ? si tu voyais dedans ! Don C/sar.—Q\ie veux-tu dire? Ruy Bias. Invente, imagine, suppose, Fouille dans ton esprit ; cherches-y quelque chose D'dtrange, d'insensd, d'horrible et d'inoui, Une fatality dont on soit ebloui ! Oui, compose un poison affreux, creuse un abime Plus sourd que la folie et plus noir que le crime, Tu n'approcheras pas encor de mon secret. — Tu ne devines pas ?— Hd ! qui devinerait ? Zafari ! dans le goufTfre ou mon destin m'entraine Plonge les yeux ! — ^je suis amoureux de la reine ! " One cannot but think of Mr. John Smawker and the " young missuses,** with the wish that Don Cesar had shown some of the common sense of Mr. Samuel Weller, and instead of replying **Ciel!" had said " Blagueur ! va!" It is needless to point out the strange contradiction \Vtakneu j r moreinminons unfair Statement of Wagner's position. I cannot pretend to compress into one paragraph a body of beliefs set forth in several volumes and illustrated in half a score of titanic art^ works. Wagner bases his prophecy of the future upon an analysis of the political and aesthetic history of the past which cannot be fairly studied except in his own writings* Nevertheless, enough has been said to show that his view of the problem and its issues was far profounder than Hugo's. He was misled by a priori conceptions of *' art," ** beauty," "ugliness," and so forth, but he was far above the radical error of Hugo's system — that of being content with an a priori conception of truth. The difference between the two men is curiously typical of the difference of their nationalities. Hugo, as Lord Tennyson has aptly, if not very profoundly, remarked, was HUGO AND WAGNER. 327 " French of the French," Wagner was German of the Germans. Who knows but that it may be the first task of the true creator of a living modern drama to eliminate from his methods, not the personal equation, but the ** race equation " ? Both Hugo and Wagner, it is important to The great remember, thought and wrote before the great reiathnof problem of modern aesthetics — the relation of Science to Art — had fairly formulated itself. They were insensible to the electric current which is thrilling the world of thought, polar- izing all its particles and arranging them in novel curves and new relations. Wagner, towards the close of his career, tried to bring his theories into harmony with a metaphysic Sckofenhauer^ which, of all similar systems, has the best claim to a scientific sanction ; but whether his attempt was successful or not, the system remains a metaphysic, and the harmonization remains an afterthought. It is possible that if these two great men had lived a generation later, Hugo would have attached a different meaning to the word " truth," and Wagner would have recog- nized in the realistic drama a means, and a more essential means than that in which he trusted, towards the great end he had in view. There was a third great man of their contem- '328 ABOUT THE THEATRE, poraries whose name both must have heard, but whose thought it did not occur to either of them to bring into relation with his own. That man was Darwin. THE REALIST'S DILEMMA, The word ** Realism *' has occurred more than Realism and once in the foregoing studies, and has some- true ant ujusist times been opposed to " Idealism." A friend who has been good enough to go over the proofs with me, rejects the antithesis, and ridicules the words, asking me to define what I mean by them. This I studiously abstain from doing, for the very good reason that I do not use them in any definite, but in a perfectly general, sense. Were I constructing an aesthetic system, I should try to formulate the concepts designated, in that system, by these, and many similar, terms. As it is, I believe that the words, taken in their context, sufficiently suggest to Tkeurmjustd the impartial reader those general notions which I design to convey. One may surely speak of Defoe as a realist and of Spenser as an idealist without being called upon to set forth in detail the connotation of the two terms. The remark would be neither luminous nor novel, 330 ABOUT THE THEATRE. but it would convey a certain meaning to the reader^s mind. Similarly one may oppose the realism of the third act of *' Othello " to the idealism of "As You Like It," the realism of Augier to the idealism of Hugo, without per- petrating an altogether false antithesis. There may be refinements of aesthetic theory whereby the classification is overset, and even reversed;, but one is surely justified in using common words without ceremony in their popular accep- tation. A formidable The scomcrs of realism — for it is always the dilemma ••-,..,,,,. , , apriorists who object to the term as to the thing — are in a stronger position when they give up verbal cavillings and ask : What is your criterion of reality? Supposing realism possible in art, how are you to recognize it ? Like Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, they arm themselves with iron horns (of a dilemma) and say, " With these shall I push the Realists until they be consumed." The dilemma may be formulated somewhat after this fashion: WJty represent Either you are familiar with the thing repre- How recognize scutcd, or you are not ; in the former case you the unfami- liar? learn nothmg, and have merely the childish pleasure of admiring on the stage the real pump which you see every day in your own back yard ; in the latter case you have no means of THE REALIST'S DILEMMA, 331 testing the truth of what you see, and must simply take the word of the author or actor, who, for aught you know, may be as ignorant as yourself. Some may answer (I have done so myself in my time), " We know this or that to be true, because it is vivid, irresistible, in short convincing ; '* but this is a woman's reason, a mere restatement of the difficulty. " Why is it convincing ? " the adversary may demand to know. ** Because it seems probable ? Do you not know that the improbable always happens, and that truth is stranger than fiction ? Or do you maintain that you have an intuitive per- ception of truth in questions of character and manners, as some thinkers hold that we have an intuitive perception of geometrical relations? If so, I part company with you finally, for you claim a faculty which I regard as supernatural. Your test of truth must rest on a basis of Experience must betktttst experience, or I will have none of it." Quite so o/reaii/y— — nothing more reasonable ; yet I propose to take this dilemma by the horns, hoping to show that it is not so formidable as it seems. In the first place, realism is a relative, not Preliminary * exflanaiton : an absolute, term. It indicates a tendency R