that nobody reads except the other dramatic critics?" To remark that if
only the critics read criticisms the suppression of criticism obviously
would be needless was an easy triumph, so he continued in a grumbling
way,

"What I mean is--suppose that after a play you merely gave some sort of
account of the plot and did not say whether the piece was good or bad,
or proper or shocking, or how it was acted, and so on, would it make
any difference? I mean," he added, hastily anticipating a question,
"would people go more or less to the theatre, or would the kind of plays
and acting change? I suppose it would make a little difference; would
the difference be great?"

The answer was "Yes."

After all, the public may award the farthings, but the critics are of
weight upon the question of fame; the crowd to some extent acts as jury,
the critics are judges; and to pursue the figure, whilst the verdicts
are of immediate influence, the judgments remain on record. In the
future it will often be difficult to find out what were the verdicts;
but there will be no doubt about the judgments. Moreover, whilst, as in
the law courts, the verdicts are often due to prejudice and to mere
temporary causes, the reasoned judgments, when and so far as reasonable,
are based on a firmer foundation.

Probably the theatres would suffer, since there would be less talk about
them. For the average Englishman is timid in opinion, and, unless
fortified by ideas gleaned from the papers, scamps his conversation on
topics concerning which opinions may be expressed. When he has exhausted
such subjects as the weather, his health, his private affairs and those
of his neighbours, he is accustomed to bestow upon his listeners, in a
distorted form, the opinions concerning books, plays, pictures, etc.,
that he has read in the papers and understood imperfectly; and he
certainly would talk far less about plays if he had not the aid of the
critic's views.

Of course he would be able to call a piece "awfully good," "simply
ripping," "sweetly pretty," "beastly rot," "awfully dull," and to use
ill-assorted adjectives concerning the players; but beyond this he
would hardly venture for fear of uttering absurdities. A curious humour
is that people who have read the opinions which he is misrepresenting,
in the papers from which he got them, will listen without patent signs
of boredom, and in their turn utter second-hand opinions on similar
subjects.

Clearly, then, talk on the topic would languish but for our promptings;
and if the theatres were less talked of there would be fewer visitors to
them. Furthermore, if there were to be no newspaper criticisms of plays
or players, the gossip about them would be diminished even in the
papers, for the thrilling personal paragraphs would lose their point if
given without adjectives, and adjectives involve criticism of one kind
or another.

Would the pieces and performances be affected by the suppression of
criticism? Certainly, to some extent. For even if the professional
critics tell little more than the amateurs who offer friendly advice,
their remarks have a greater weight--partly, indeed, because in a sense
they are not gratuitous. All observers have noticed the fact that we
rarely act on the opinion of mere friends, however sound. Moreover, no
one can deny that when the critics, belonging as they do to many schools
of thought and thoughtlessness, agree, they are likely to be correct.

Even putting them on a humbler level, and assuming that some merely
express the views of the public, they are serviceable, since the
opinions of the world at large are almost wordless, and the author or
player unguided save by those immediately around him, and unable to
learn more of the public ideas concerning a play or performance than is
shown by inarticulate noises and by good or bad houses, would remain
curiously ignorant of errors against art and mistakes as to the desires
of playgoers.

No doubt, to voice the public's thoughts is not our loftiest task, but
it is useful to do so, and there can be no denial of the fact that we
know very well what the public likes. It has often been said that we
make remarkably bad prophecies as to the fate of plays, but some of the
instances quoted are not in point, since they concern works ultimately
licked into shape, which, but for the adverse notices, would have
remained unchanged till early death ended them.

Real mistakes are made by us in this respect, but generally the mistake
is in believing that a piece will be successful which, however, proves
to be a failure; we overrate the public taste, or fail to take into
account matters quite foreign to the qualities of an entertainment which
nevertheless determine its fate.

Of the more important aspect of the critic's mission, his duty in trying
to aid in the development of art, the luckless angler was not thinking.
Certainly, few, even of those who denounce the critics, will, if they
think the matter over, refuse to admit that to the public, the players,
and even authors, the humble craftsmen render useful services, quite
apart from the value of the work they do for art, by their power of
giving voice to the public, whom they study carefully and under
favourable circumstances, and by exercising to some extent the function
of censor in addition to those of beefeater and guide.


The Threatened Theatrical Trust

Somebody has forwarded from America a newspaper article called "The
Theatrical Syndicate's Reply to Its Critics," to which is given the
signature of Mr Marc Klaw, partner of Messrs Klaw & Erlanger,
well-known American managers. During the last few years _The Referee_
has been uttering a note of warning about the danger of the
establishment in London or England of a theatrical trust. Other papers
have handled the subject, and in particular an interview with Mr David
Belasco has appeared, in which he explained and vehemently defended his
attitude towards the theatrical trust in the United States.

Mr Klaw's article is amusing in its unconscious humour. In one part he
denies the existence of certain facts, whilst in another he attempts to
show that their existence is beneficial to everybody. The important
feature of it is a candid admission that the aims of the syndicate are
entirely commercial and that he, one of its principal members, looks
upon the theatre from no other point of view than that of business.

"The theatre," he says, "is governed by the rules and observances of all
other commercial enterprises. It is not out to dictate to public taste.
It is out to satisfy the public demand. While even such a purely
business undertaking must be hedged about with essential suggestions of
artistic refinement, I do not believe that the public demands of us that
we should give over our commercialism. Moreover, the public would have
no such right."

There is no need to criticise Mr Klaw's style: still it is rather
amusing to think that he sometimes discusses the literary quality of his
wares.

If there be any chance of our theatres becoming subject to a syndicate
which replies officially to its critics in such a fashion there is
serious danger to be considered. Now, according to certain statements by
Mr Belasco and by writers in and to _The Referee_, the Theatrical
Syndicate does, in fact, control to a very great extent the drama in
America, and there is no real doubt about the accuracy of the
proposition that the drama in the States is in a worse plight than the
drama in London. If, judging by the ordinary picked American productions
over here, the evidence were otherwise insufficient, the tone of Mr
Klaw's article would render it satisfying.

According to Mr Klaw, the Syndicate has conferred certain advantages
upon all persons connected with the theatre--except the critics and the
public. He does not venture to put his case any higher than that of a
trade combination, and it is clear that he at least does not consider
the theatre from the point of view of dramatic art. It is difficult to
accept this with equanimity. A phrase of his--"the theatre itself is a
business house, exhibiting the pictures of the dramatist and composer
under the proper light and most attractive auspices, just as the
picture-dealer has a picture-house in which he displays the best efforts
of the painters and illustrators"--is based on a curious fallacy.

The picture-dealer will not hurt his business if, in addition to
stocking the Royal Academy works, upon which he relies for his
bread-and-butter, in the front window, he devotes a little space at the
back to the unconventional efforts of the true artists. To do this costs
him nothing, and he may even make money by such a policy.

The manager of the strictly commercial theatre cannot follow the
picture-dealer's example; he must risk serious loss every time that he
produces a non-commercial piece. In one respect Mr Klaw is in agreement
with some of the English antagonists of the trust system; like them, he
is almost indignant at the idea that the theatre should attempt to
educate or dictate to the public. As a corollary, he and they must be
opposed to the idea that the dramatist or player should have an
educational value. Do they think that the public needs no education in
theatrical art? Are they content that the great half-washed should
remain in their present condition, which exhibits painfully a great lack
of education? Presumably.

Mr Klaw deals with the dramatic critic. Here, of course, our withers are
wrung and we write with a bias. He is indignant because the Syndicate is
accused of an attempt to "stifle and muzzle" dramatic criticism. He
thinks that it is "to his best interests to have it [dramatic criticism]
absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and always on the most dignified
plane." Then he explains that it is because certain American dramatic
critics have fallen from this high standard, or never reached it, that
they have been driven from the Syndicate's paradises. Who is to decide
whether the critic in a particular case is "absolutely impartial,
absolutely just, and on the most dignified plane"? Mr Klaw and his
colleagues, of course.

There is a certain fable in which a wolf set itself up to judge the
conduct of the relatives of an appetising lamb, and executed a vicarious
injustice. From time to time London dramatic critics of the highest
standard and most respected character have been excluded by particular
managers for a while from their houses, because the managers thought
they had not been "absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and on the
most dignified plane." Time and their friends have convinced the
managers that they had blundered, and peace was made.

Suppose, however, that those individual managers, who really are people
taking a far more dignified view of their calling than that of putting
it on the level of the dry-goods store, had been part of a syndicate of
Klaws, would those critics have been readmitted? Would the fact have
been recognized that the unfavourable notices were really honest
dignified criticisms, even if disputable upon the point of justice? Of
course not. If the newspapers had combined against the theatres, the
Syndicate managers would have climbed down. Would they have combined? I
think not. Here, indeed, is the peril.

It appears that the Syndicate has already laid its claws on some of the
London theatres. What combination is likely to be formed to fight it;
and if there be none, what is the inevitable result? In this land, many
centuries ago, even before the famous statute of James I. that regulates
our Patent Law, the British feeling has been hostile to monopolies.
Apparently this spirit was thrown overboard during the famous passage of
_The Mayflower_, or when Boston Bay was turned into a teapot, and
certainly the American takes everything on trust, except, indeed, the
honesty of his rulers and judges. Unfortunately one of the things we are
importing from America--would that there were a real prohibitive tariff
against it!--is the monopolistic spirit; and this being the case, it is
very rash to hope that we shall band ourselves adequately to resist the
attacks of the theatre syndicates.

It is easy to see how such a thing would be worked: at the beginning
quietly, pleasantly, until the hold became so strong that the gloves
could be taken off and players might be warned not to accept engagements
from outsiders on pain of getting none from the trust; and dramatists
informed that unless they kept all their wares for the Syndicate they
must look to the few outsiders for a living. The American managers, in
their big way, would buy up some of the irreconcilable newspapers, would
acquire a preponderating influence in the neutral, and discover that the
critics representing the independent journals were not "absolutely
impartial, absolutely just, and always on the most dignified plane."
Truly, if we are to be judged by such a method, few, if any, of us will
escape a whipping. Does the Syndicate regard any critic who expresses an
unfavourable opinion about its wares as "absolutely impartial," etc.?
Surely no one who is not "absolutely impartial," etc., is entitled to
apply such a standard to the critics: would this consideration prevent
Mr Klaw from judging them and carrying out his sentences? It is to be
feared that he would do Jedburgh justice on some of us, and the
out-of-work critics would join the crowd at Poverty Corner.




CHAPTER IV

PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES


The Pseudo-Historical

A play running at the Savoy in March 1905, concerning Madame du Barri,
called forth the usual complaints about inaccuracy in detail and
undesirability of subject. The latter point is not our theme, and may be
dismissed with the remark that there was nothing in the life of the
creature as presented upon the stage to serve as an excuse for requiring
us to spend an evening with such a worthless baggage.

At an early stage of his career the critic welcomes this class of
pseudo-historical drama--but his welcome takes an unamiable form. He
likes to have it produced on a Saturday evening, so that he may pass a
happy Sunday. The inaccuracies fascinate him. They offer such a splendid
chance of showing the knowledge possessed by him--and his library. When
very young he deals with the matter in a straightforward fashion, and
trounces the author for every unwitting solecism and willing
falsification that is discovered.

He writes a learned little disquisition headed by a remark, in the
Macaulay vein, as to matters of common knowledge, and shows from direct
authority that the dramatist is quite wrong in mixing up the Du Barri
who married the heroine with the Du Barri who took her away from the
milliner's shop, and gives a facetious touch of lightness to his
remarks by pointing out that neither of the scoundrels was connected
with a certain much-advertised proprietary food.

The more obscure the blunder the greater the writer's joy in it, for he
will be able to introduce observations beginning "That little known but
elegant author," etc., and if the subject is earlier than the Du Barri
period he will present some quotations in the uneconomically spelt old
French.

A little later in his career his method changes: he relies upon his
_batterie de cuisine_ as much as ever, but uses some art to conceal the
employment of his apparatus. There will be mere hints about the errors;
an adjective between two commas will sometimes represent a severe
correction. The books are not referred to, the corrections are made in a
fashion which suggests that no greater authority is needed than that of
the critic.

A time arrives when he comes to the conclusion that it is no part of his
duties to deal with the historical aspect of the matter; but, of course,
the habit is upon him, and he excuses himself by saying, after he has
pointed out all the errors which he has noticed, that they would not
matter in the least if the play were meritorious in other respects.

It is difficult to defend his attitude, which, however, is due to his
appreciation of the fact that nowadays a little knowledge is a well-paid
thing. Moreover, he does not wish it to be thought that his knowledge of
history--and books--is less than that of his rivals. Of course the
inaccuracies do not matter very much unless they are so gross as to
shock the great half-literate.

There is, however, a more valid objection to the historical play than
that it is certain to be inaccurate; the historical drama is rarely a
good drama.

The author is compelled by his matter to present it in a conventional
fashion, for to give a Du Barri or a Napoleon, a Nelson or a Wellington,
not in accordance with the popular concept of such personages would be
to seek failure. Moreover, the writer is necessarily forced to belittle
the subject if not bold enough to take a simple episode in the life of
his hero or heroine, and even then, unless the miracle-working power of
genius is employed, the great figure comes out as a small puppet.

The player may be made to look up like Napoleon, may follow traditions
as to his gestures and mode of speech, but in none of the vast number of
plays concerning the wonderful monster has he ever appeared to be a
person of genius: whether handled facetiously, as in Mr Shaw's ingenious
play _The Man of Destiny_, or _Madame Sans-Gene_, pathetically as in the
play presented by Mr Martin Harvey, or formidably as in most works, he
never seems at all different from any commonplace man put into the like
circumstances. Exactly that in which he differed from all others is
exactly what cannot be put upon the stage. We have had Nelson, and of
course it was quite impassible to get any suggestion of the qualities
that made him Nelson.

The modern tendency in the matter seems to be to choose the
reprehensible--such, for instance, as Mlle. Mars, Madame de Pompadour,
Madame du Barri, and La Montansier, women in the career of whom no doubt
there were many dramas, similar, however, to the dramas in the lives of
other women of their class less famous and infamous. When, however, they
are put upon the stage they cease to be remarkable, and the characters
introduced to support them have the same fate; for instance, the Louis
XV. at the Savoy does not give the faintest idea of the ineffably vile
monarch, whilst no glimpse is shown of the quality which enabled a Du
Barri to obtain her tremendous power.

It is always a case of mountain and mouse in these plays; take as an
example the Sardou _Dante_ play produced with prodigious drum-beating a
while ago at Drury Lane. Who, if names had been altered, would have
guessed that the hero of the piece was the author of the immortal poems?
There has been hardly a historical play in modern times in which the
identity of the famous personages could be guessed except from the
names, the make-up, the costumes, and the specific facts; at the best
the pieces are _tableaux vivants_.

Perhaps there is nothing illegitimate in the ambition of the player to
pose as one of the mighty dead, and it is rather humility in the author
which urges him to seek adventitious interest than vanity that causes
him to believe himself really able to give a true idea of a Napoleon.
Into such delicate questions it is needless to inquire. The point is
that the lives of the great are not more dramatic than the lives of the
small. Napoleon at St Helena was not more unhappy than were millions of
people of his day. There is a drama as poignant in the history of César
Birotteau as in that of Marie Antoinette, as big a tragedy in the career
of Whitaker Wright as in that of Napoleon III.

There was a reason, which exists no longer, why the authors of the
Middle Ages chose characters of great social status for their principal
parts, and even this reason was not altogether well founded. It would be
wrong to assert that historical plays ought not to be written, for,
whilst not recommending the use of the stage instead of history
classes, one can see that a historical play may illustrate ideas that
could hardly be presented otherwise.

There is a noteworthy instance in the work of the much-abused Ibsen.
_The Pretenders_ is a historical drama amazingly rich in idea; whether
the idea of kingship superbly handled in it is an anachronism it is hard
to say, or to tell whether the dramatist chose his subject to illustrate
his idea or the idea to embellish his subject; but in it, though
obviously there is scope for magnificent mounting and interesting
detail, one feels that the genius of the author has prevented him from
making any sacrifice of the dramatic aspect. He has not chosen a popular
historical personage and made him into the hero of the melodrama, as
happens in the case of nine out of ten of the so-called historical
plays, but has written a drama that demands a royal atmosphere, which he
handles admirably.

What a pity that the money lavished upon the Du Barri play--and lavished
very cleverly, it must be admitted, so far as the production of
beautiful stage-pictures is concerned--was not spent in the mounting of
a great drama like _The Pretenders_, rich in strong acting parts,
magnificent in presentation of character, and really illuminated by
ideas!


The Horrible in Drama

It has been alleged that _The Monkey's Paw_, a clever one-act play by
Messrs Jacobs and Barker, formerly presented at the Haymarket Theatre,
is too horrible for the stage. The part complained of is confined to the
last scene of three.

A young man has been killed in a factory, and his body was so mangled
by the fatal wheels that even his father was not allowed to see it. Late
at night the father, by means of a diabolical talisman--the Monkey's
Paw--succeeds in recalling his son to life, and the audience hears a
knocking at the door. What is knocking? The mother is making frantic
efforts to pull back the bolts. Her son is there, returned from the
grave. The father, aware that the talisman, which promised the
fulfilment of three wishes, is of a fiendish malignity, guesses that if
the door be opened his son will stand before them alive, but fearfully
mangled and mutilated, so he is groping upon the floor for the Monkey's
Paw, and the audience feels that on the other side of the door is an
obscene horror fresh from the grave. There was a sigh of relief in the
theatre when the father found the talisman, and, using the last wish,
prayed successfully that his son might be dead and at peace.

The knock, knock, was decidedly impressive, like the knocking at the
door in _Macbeth_, which greatly affected Charles Lamb. Is this matter
too horrible for the stage? One may compare it with another horror given
not long ago, _The Soothing System_, which Mr Bourchier adapted cleverly
from a story by Edgar Poe and produced at the Garrick, showing the
terrible adventures of two visitors to a lunatic asylum, the inmates of
which had overpowered their keepers. This was very powerful and
horrible, and perhaps would have given a shiver to the hero of a famous
tale in the collection of goblin stories by the Brothers Grimm.

Nevertheless it was not legitimate, partly because the circumstances are
rare when it is permissible to present madness on the stage, partly
because some of the mad people were repulsive to the eye, and partly
because horror was the sole means and end of the piece. Many condemned
_The Monkey's Paw_, yet a line can be drawn between it and _The Soothing
System_--not a nice sharp line, but one of those blurred lines so faint
and so uncertain, that even if their existence be admitted, there is
always room for a fight on the question whether a work lies on this or
that side of it.

Speaking roughly, one may say that _The Monkey's Paw_ is legitimate
because there is nothing in it repulsive to the eye, and for the reason
that horror is not the sole means and end of it: the story, like its
prototype folk-lore tale, "The Three Wishes," has an obvious moral. It
belongs to art because the emotion caused is due to a stimulus to our
imagination by the force of an idea and not of a thing exhibited. If an
effort were made to show us any ghastly creature knocking, the work
would be out of court.

To illustrate the line of definition already indicated, a few instances
of the horrible presented on the stage in our time may be given
usefully; it must be added that most appear to lie on the wrong side.

Shakespeare's adventures in the horrible are legitimate, with an
exception in the case of one play of doubtful authenticity, _Titus
Andronicus_. On the other hand, _Sweeney Todd; or, The Barber of Fleet
Street_, would probably find no defender; whilst a historical drama I
once saw in the South of France, where the hero was put upon the rack in
front of the footlights and squirmed and screamed, was quite
unendurable; and this is rather a pity, since there is a very powerful
dramatic scene in Balzac's _Notes sur Catherine de Medicis_, which in
consequence of this objection should not be used. There is a mitigated
form of the torture business in _La Tosca_ that caused great discussion.
Perhaps those who deem it illegitimate are somewhat supersensitive; it
would be more polite, and perhaps accurate, to call them hyper-modern.

_Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ presented a very difficult case. I can remember
nothing so "creepy" and "shuddery" as the first appearance of Mr
Mansfield at the Lyceum in the character of the evil doctor; the house
gasped at the half-seen image of a sort of obscene beast at the
conservatory window, and there was the silence of breathless horror when
it bounded into the room and seized its victim. Until the impression
wore off the Mansfield Hyde was almost as horrible as the fantastic
things born of the cruel imagination and brilliant pencil of Mr S.H.
Sime, whose work is sometimes so richly embellished by imagination as
well as by superb technique that one cannot deny its claim to be
regarded as art.

Something of the distinction here discussed can be seen by comparing Mr
Sime's drawings with the pictures of the mad painter Wirtz, whose
abominable gallery at Brussels is a chamber of unimaginative horrors. It
may be remembered that Mr Mansfield had a competitor in Mr Bandman
Palmer, who, however, missed horror by the simple vulgarity of his
horrors, and, though he may have impressed the simple-minded, was
ludicrous to the thoughtful.

Returning for a moment to the clearly unpermissible, one might take a
book like "Frankenstein." Certainly any presentation on the stage of the
man-monster as described by the talented authoress would fall under the
censure of being disgusting. This term may be used concerning several
needless exhibitions of blood on the stage, and of such a matter as
_Nana_, once presented in Paris. When the hapless heroine appeared in
the last act with wax spots to indicate the pustules of smallpox, she
very nearly "took a lot out of us," if one may borrow a phrase from "Mr
Hopkinson." Obviously anything that reminds one of the ghastly horrors
at the Royal College of Surgeons or the Polyclinic Institute is quite
unforgivable.

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

There was the famous Mlle. Croizette in _Le Sphinx_, by that detestable
dramatist Octave Feuillet; she squirmed horribly after taking poison
from a ring; and it was alleged that she had studied the death of
patients in hospitals--a brutal, horrible thing to do. There is a good
deal too much dying in _Frou-Frou_, _La Dame aux Camellias_ and
_Adrienne Lecouvrer_. Without going back to the traditions of the Greek
theatre, one may say confidently that, if death on the stage is
permissible, dying is almost illegitimate, and trick falls, exhibitions
of agony, and the like are mere pandering to a very vulgar taste.
Occasionally the dying is so handled that, though somewhat prolonged,
such a vigorous phrase ought not to be applied to it. For instance, one
may refer to _In the Hospital_, once presented at the Court, where Mr
Beveridge, in an admirable performance, gave a very tactful, restrained
exhibition of approaching death and actual decease. Another objection
exists to any exhibition upon the stage of dying as compared with
death. The symptoms often call up terrible memories to some members of
the audience which are not evoked by the simple fact of death itself. It
cannot be pretended that these references to instances of the horrible
and the trifling comments upon them establish the existence of the
distinction indicated, but they may be of some assistance to those who
endeavour to explore the matter. It is at least pleasant to note that
there is a modern tendency to obtain effects of the horrible by appeals
to the imagination rather than to the senses.

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


The Immorality Play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Scripture Plays

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

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

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

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

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

Most of our theatres are run as a mere commercial speculation by people
who care little enough about art, and probably nothing about religion.
We have had one instance of the sort of thing that might be expected,
_The Sign of the Cross_, in which a commonplace melodrama was mixed up
with hymns and pseudo-religious talk and miracles, and a ballet as
immodest, as pulse-disturbing, as any given in the theatres or the
halls. Many visited the play who had never been to a theatre before,
since they believed that it was really a religious drama outside their
ban. Some were horrified, and from being potential playgoers became
rapidly adverse to the stage and all its works; others were shocked and
disturbed and delighted by the exhibition of female flesh in the ballet,
with a result which can easily be guessed. No doubt a number of persons
believed that the piece did good to them and other folk--some people
will believe anything.

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

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

We could not expect all the actors chosen to represent Christ to be
gentlemen of fine sensibility, high character, and sincere feeling for
art, like Mr Forbes Robertson; it is hardly pleasant to think of the