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 DRAMATIC 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 BY P. P. HOWE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 
 M C M X 1 1 1
 
 A critic should be taught to 
 criticize a work of art with- 
 out making any reference to 
 the personality of the author. 
 This, in fact, is the beginning 
 of criticism. 
 
 Wilde : A Letter on " Dorian Gray 
 
 Every man's work, whether 
 it be literature or music or 
 pictures or architecture or 
 anything else, is always a 
 portrait of himself . 
 
 Butler : "The Way of All Flesh "
 
 PR. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Throughout this book a particular point of view has 
 been adhered to, a point of view from which the dramatic 
 art is looked upon as a separate art from the literary, 
 
 and from which especial attention is given to the 
 manner of its practice. Thus, the works of nearly 
 all the dramatists passed under review are to be read 
 — a complete list of the books will be found in the 
 Bibliography at the end — but I have spoken of them 5 
 as far as possible, in terms of their presentation in the 
 theatre. 
 
 Four of the chapters first appeared in the Fortnightly 
 Review, and I wish to make to the Editor of that 
 periodical full acknowledgment of his courtesy. 
 
 P. P. H. 
 
 vn 
 
 280549
 
 A cri'
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Arthur Pinero 11 
 
 II. Henry Arthur Jones 53 
 
 III. Oscar Wilde 83 
 
 IV. J. M. Barrie 115 
 
 V. Bernard Shaw 133 
 
 VI. St. John Hankin 163 
 
 VII. Granville Barker 185 
 
 VIII. Hubert Henry Davies 209 
 
 IX. John Galsworthy 231 
 
 Chronology of Plays 257 
 
 Bibliography 263 
 
 IX
 
 I 
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 N the third act of the thirty-third play of 
 Sir Arthur Pinero, we read : 
 
 Hilary. Come, Mrs. Filmer ! Let us believe, if we 
 can — if it makes us better, and gentler, and more merciful ! 
 — let us believe that in all this there was the hand of God ! 
 Nina [harshly]. Very well ; let us believe it. [Looking 
 him in the face defiantly and measuring her words.] Only we 
 must believe equally that it's the hand of God that has 
 brought these letters from their hiding-place and has 
 delivered them to me. 
 
 Since this is to be an inquiry into drama, and 
 not an inquiry into theology or philosophy, we must 
 assume at the outset that it was not the hand of 
 God that caused the first Mrs. Filmer Jesson and 
 her lover to write incriminating letters to one 
 another while they were in the same house, that 
 caused her to store them behind the loose boarding 
 in a cupboard in her boudoir, that killed her in a 
 carriage accident, and that delivered the letters 
 three years later into the possession of her suc- 
 cessor ; but the hand of Sir Arthur Pinero. The 
 
 11
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 drama must have reality, but the first essential to 
 our understanding of an art is that we should 
 not believe it to be actual life. The spectator 
 who shouts his warning and advice to the heroine 
 when the villain is approaching is, in the theatre, 
 the only true believer in the hand of God ; and he 
 is liable to find it in a drama lower than the best. 
 Let us believe that it is the hand of Sir Arthur 
 Pinero we are to talk about. And let us, for the 
 moment, place on one side the fourteen or fifteen 
 farces and comic plays, from The Schoolmistress 
 and The Magistrate to A Wife without a Smile and 
 Preserving Mr. Panmure. No one would think of 
 looking for the hand of God in these. 
 
 An inquiry into the serious art of this dramatist 
 is an inquiry into upwards of thirty years of the 
 English theatre. The work of Sir Arthur Pinero 's 
 prentice hand is shrouded in an obscurity which 
 one must believe to be deliberate. The present 
 generation may know only of Daisy's Escape and 
 Bygones as dwelling " as happy blendings of 
 humour and pathos " in the memory of Mr. 
 William Archer, a critic of the period. We must 
 rest content to call them bygones, these. 
 
 With a third play, Hester's Mystery, the hand of 
 Sir Arthur Pinero comes into the light. It is a 
 play in one act, with a " rural setting " and 
 "rustic dialogue," of the stage. There is a nice 
 young man causing great mystery at the farm of 
 Hester's mother, because he is so obviously 
 12
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 superior to the common labourers. Hester comes 
 home from school, very bright and cheerful. A 
 sinister schoolmaster comes after her, and threatens, 
 if she does not reward his base love, to tell her 
 mother that she has not been to school for seven 
 weeks. This is Hester's mystery. She defies the 
 base schoolmaster, takes the nice young man by 
 the hand, and a baby is produced from somewhere. 
 Hester and the nice young man were married a 
 year ago. Hester's mother cries into the cot, and 
 apologizes to the baby for the hard things she has 
 said. Mr. Archer thought the little play " dealt 
 with a rather dangerous theme, but dealt with it 
 cleverly." This was in the year when the European 
 theatre was giving its attention to the theme of 
 " Ghosts," and finding it enjoyable. 
 
 Sir Arthur Pinero's next rural drama was The 
 Squire, in which certain people thought they 
 detected an unacknowledged debt to the hand of 
 Mr. Thomas Hardy, probably on insufficient 
 evidence. 1 About this time Mr. Archer gave it 
 as his opinion that " a little study of French 
 methods, without diminishing Mr. Pinero's origi- 
 nality, would be almost certain to improve his 
 form." 
 
 Lords and Commons was a play about a young 
 
 1 Since this play is not included in Sir Arthur Pinero's 
 printed works, it is not possible to say whether it was better 
 than the play Mr. Hardy himself made from the novel 
 " Far from the Madding Crowd," or not so good. 
 
 13
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 gentleman who married a girl of lower degree, and 
 had to part from her on the wedding-day because 
 he discovered that her mother and father had 
 not been married. The hand of a Scandinavian 
 novelist assisted the dramatist to this play. Mr. 
 Archer confessed that he left the theatre on the 
 first night " with a feeling of pleasant exhilaration. 
 The play seemed to me healthy and earnest in 
 tone, entertaining in detail. The dialogue I 
 thought admirable." 
 
 The Hobby Horse was a play about a racing man 
 who left his wife a good deal alone, so that she 
 engaged in good works in the East End of London 
 under an assumed name, and allowed a curate to 
 fall in love with her. When the curate found out 
 the truth he was much shaken. " Perhaps the 
 Hobby Horse" wrote the critic who introduced 
 the play in its printed form, " in its defiance of the 
 conventional demand for wholesale conjugal happi- 
 ness in the last act, though an ample supply was 
 conceded, was a little before its time." 
 
 Sweet Lavender was a play about a young man 
 in chambers in the Temple who fell in love with his 
 landlady's daughter. A barrister friend, who was 
 unfortunate enough to be frequently drunk, 
 smoothed over every difficulty for them and 
 proved himself to be really a most charming 
 fellow. When it happens to come out that the 
 young man's guardian in his youth himself fell 
 in love with a landlady's daughter, and that she 
 14
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 is this very identical landlady, and that her 
 daughter is his daughter, he is very sorry for the 
 wrong he has done, and an ample supply of conjugal 
 happiness is conceded. The dramatist of Sweet 
 Lavender was, said Mr. William Archer, " the master 
 of our contemporary stage, the only writer (Mr. 
 Gilbert, perhaps, excepted) whose work showed 
 intellectual grip and originality, combined with 
 thorough literary craftsmanship." 
 
 The Weaker Sex was a play about an American 
 poet, who proves to be some one else, whom a 
 mother falls in love with — one thinks for the second 
 time — and her daughter too. In the end the poet 
 goes off very nobly and leaves mother and daughter 
 to console one another. 
 
 We have come to The Profligate. The Profligate 
 was a play about " the union of a delicate-minded 
 child with a coarse, gross-natured profligate.'* 
 The profligate, bearing " the signs of a dissolute 
 life in his face," marries the young girl. To the 
 office of the solicitor who is the young girl's guar- 
 dian happens to come another young girl seduced 
 by the profligate in the country, directed here by 
 the first young girl and her brother who happened 
 to meet her in the train. In the second act the 
 honeymoon of the first young girl and the profligate, 
 " who has lost his dissipated look," is interrupted 
 near Florence by the arrival of the seduced young 
 girl, who has happened to enter the service of people 
 who happen to be friends of the first young girl. 
 
 15
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 In the third act comes the scene of confrontation. 
 In the fourth act, a year later, the seduced young 
 girl looks at the face for the last time of the first 
 young girl's brother (who has come to love her) 
 and vanishes to Australia for ever, while the 
 profligate returns home to the first young girl and 
 (a) takes poison, (b) lives happily ever after. The 
 first ending was the one preferred by Sir Arthur 
 Pinero, but the second ending was given in the 
 theatre and approved by Mr. Clement Scott and 
 Mr. Archer as the " only logical conclusion." 
 The Profligate made a great sensation. 
 
 Lady Bountiful was a play about a young heiress 
 in the country who loved a young gentleman who 
 came to town and married the daughter of a riding- 
 master. When business became bad with the riding- 
 school he lived with his wife and her parents in the 
 basement of a tenement house. Shortly after the 
 young heiress has paid them a visit, the young 
 wife dies in her chair before our eyes while her 
 husband is talking to the baby in the cradle about 
 the future. In the fourth act the young heiress 
 is about to be married to an old gentleman, when 
 who should stroll into the church but the young 
 widower, in whose favour the old gentleman 
 magnanimously retires. 
 
 The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was a play about a 
 widower who knowingly marries a lady who has 
 been the property of several men before, and takes 
 her to live in the country. When his daughter 
 16
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 by his first marriage falls in love with a young man, 
 the young man proves to have been one of her 
 stepmother's protectors. The second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray remarks that the world is very small, and 
 goes upstairs and commits suicide. The suicide is 
 reported to us by the daughter. " The limitations 
 of Mrs. Tanqueray are really the limitations of the 
 dramatic form," wrote Mr. William Archer. 
 
 The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith was a play about a 
 lady who held " regrettable opinions " on some 
 points, and who, before she fell in with a rising 
 young politician, had gone so far in propagating 
 them as to become alternatively known as Mad 
 Agnes. Since she fears that she may find herself 
 loving the young politician in the " helpless, 
 common way of women," they live together without 
 the ceremony of marriage, until the young politi- 
 cian's uncle the Duke comes to Venice and brings 
 with him the young politician's wife. Mrs. Ebb- 
 smith, after putting a Bible into the fire to show 
 her contempt for conventional morality, burns her 
 hand in taking it out again, and retires from the 
 contest to learn to pray for the young politician 
 and for the young politician's legal wife whom she 
 has wronged. 
 
 The Benefit of the Doubt was a play about an 
 innocent young woman who, since the Divorce 
 Court has given her but the " benefit of the doubt," 
 must positively " sit tight " in town in order to 
 win back her good name ; but her husband 
 
 b 17
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 proposes to take her abroad. Whereupon she goes 
 straight off to the other man. His jealous wife, 
 whose petition it is that has been dismissed, is put 
 into the next room, while he goes through the 
 ordeal of receiving the innocent young woman in 
 such a manner as will establish their innocence 
 in his wife's hearing. They survive the ordeal ; 
 the innocent young woman's family turns up, 
 including a bishop ; and we are left happy in the 
 knowledge that now the innocent young woman's 
 good name will be all right. 
 
 The Princess and the Butterfly was a play about a 
 princess, no longer quite young, and her admirer 
 the butterfly, the man of forty ; and the play sets 
 out in five acts of London and Parisian drawing- 
 rooms how the Princess and the butterfly did 
 not marry one another, but each married with 
 youth. 
 
 The Gay Lord Quex was a play about another 
 profligate, who means, like the other one, to turn 
 over a new leaf ; but in the course of doing so, he 
 is unwise enough to pay a farewell visit to a 
 Duchess in her bedroom at midnight. This gives a 
 young woman who owns a manicure shop in Bond 
 Street, but who is spending the night in the same 
 house, the opportunity of doing a little detective 
 work in the interests of the young lady the gay 
 lord is to marry, who happens to be her foster- 
 sister. In the course of this detective work the 
 gay lord and the manicurist get shut up in the 
 18
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 bedroom together ; and our feelings are tremen- 
 dously worked upon by the duel which ensues. 
 Whose reputation is to go spotless out at that 
 door — the gay lord's or the manicurist's ? Honours 
 are easy : the gay lord is allowed to turn over his 
 new leaf, and the manicurist is suffered to make 
 happy her fiance the palmist (who also happens 
 to be sleeping in the same house). 
 
 Iris was a play about a young woman who has 
 neither the recklessness nor the power of self- 
 denial necessary to choose between the young lover 
 who is poor and the middle-aged Jewish lover who 
 is rich ; so she keeps them both on. She drifts, and 
 she deteriorates, until she loses both men. We 
 leave her Jewish lover smashing the furniture, as 
 her own life is smashed. 
 
 Letty was a play about a young woman of the 
 lower middle class who might have married her 
 employer or accepted the protection of a well- 
 disposed young man-about-town ; but in an epi- 
 logue we learn how much wiser she was to become 
 the wife of a photographer. 
 
 The Thunderbolt, the thirty-fourth play of Sir 
 Arthur Pinero, and successor to His House in Order, 
 was a play about a will. The absence of the will 
 makes the members of a provincial family wealthy ; 
 the sudden confession of one of their number that 
 she destroyed the will makes quite a different 
 person wealthy. The wife's guilt is taken on 
 himself by the husband, and a most charitable 
 
 19
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 part is played by the young person who is the 
 injured beneficiary. 
 
 Mid-Channel was a play about a woman of the 
 newly wealthy middle class who, because life is 
 allowed to contain no worthy purpose for her, is 
 driven out of life, while her husband is driven into 
 drink. The careless lover and the careless husband, 
 having finished their talk about her in the next 
 room, open the door and find she has thrown herself 
 over the balcony. 
 
 The " Mind the Paint " Girl was a play about a 
 young lady of the musical drama and her circle. 
 She was not only beautiful but good, and when she 
 felt badly about leaving her humbler admirer for 
 the son of an earl, she was exhorted to remember 
 ' wot a lot o' good ' she was doing to the aristocracy. 
 
 That is the serious drama of Sir Arthur Pinero. 
 Since it is what we have to talk about, and its 
 bulk is large, we shall be none the worse for having 
 it before us. Supposing it to have limitations, for 
 the moment, are the limitations of this drama 
 " the limitations of the dramatic form " ? If 
 the critic was right about The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray this book may end where it begins, with the 
 drama of Sir Arthur Pinero. 
 
 There is the drama which is an art, and there is 
 the drama also which is a trade. The distinction 
 is an important one, but not one that is always 
 clearly made ; that is the reason why we shall do 
 well to make it here, before we go further. If a 
 20
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 man is moved to put his vision of life, or of some- 
 thing in life, into a play, he will want a theatre for 
 it, because except in the theatre he cannot look 
 upon his play, and see whether it is good ; and 
 when a play, conceived after this fashion, comes to 
 the theatre, it is likely, given the necessary qualities 
 in the dramatist, to be art. But the theatre is 
 always with us ; in a city where a great many people 
 live, there are a great many theatres. These theatres 
 must be kept open. For economic reasons, which 
 need not be gone into here, they must be kept 
 open. For social reasons, too, they must be kept 
 open ; for a man must have somewhere to go when 
 he is tired with his day's work, and without the 
 theatres what would there be to do between dinner 
 and supper ? The social reason for the theatres is 
 that they pass the time ; and why should they not ? 
 It is an excellent function. But a minority of 
 people are not content to pass the time unless they 
 pass it in some highly approved fashion. Nothing 
 is more highly approved, as a pastime, than Art. 
 Now there is one art that is thoroughly efficient 
 as a pastime, and at the same time so amusing that 
 you would never know it was an art at all. This is 
 the theatre. And the theatre, if it is not content to 
 be frankly a place where time is passed, must have 
 a drama in order to keep open. 
 
 Besides, every really cultured country has a 
 Drama. What would there be for the critics to do 
 if they could not ask themselves from time to time, 
 
 21
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Is the Drama Advancing ? That is the reason why 
 the theatres of commerce are not all jolly places like 
 the Tivoli and the Gaiety. Art, where the people 
 have "got culture," is good business. So it 
 happens that every great country has a number of 
 theatres devoted to the Drama. The plays that 
 come to the theatre in order to keep it open may 
 perfectly well be art ; but it is more likely that they 
 will not be. It will now be clear that a " drama- 
 tist " is not so absolute a thing as we perhaps 
 thought him. People, between dinner and supper, 
 like to have a little acting. They like their pleasures 
 to take an approved form, and so a play is provided ; 
 this has the advantage also of giving them a story to 
 talk about afterwards, when they have done with the 
 merits and the demerits of the actors. The actors 
 like to have a play provided also, since they have 
 ceased to be vagabonds and have become aware 
 of the exceptional dignity of their profession. The 
 dramatist is merely the man with the trick of 
 providing these plays. It will be a mistake to 
 think of the dramatist as the artist whose vision 
 of life is so clear and compelling as to take inevit- 
 ably the form we characterize as dramatic. So long 
 as there are theatres there must be " dramatists," 
 vision or no vision. The men who prove their 
 ability in any generation to keep the theatres open 
 will be the great dramatists of that generation. 
 
 But when they have proved their ability to 
 weave a story round the favourite actors, they will, 
 22
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 artists or not artists, evolve a kind of pride. They 
 will like to do their work well ; they will evolve 
 the tradition of the " well-made " play. The well- 
 made play is orderly, efficient, and economical ; it 
 is thoroughly fitted to keep the theatres open. 
 The actors will be content with the well-made 
 play, because it will carry them along, and because 
 its " great scene " will invest them with greatness. 
 The public will be content, because they like to 
 see their favourite actors involved in important 
 situations. The critics will be content, because 
 they can compare one well-made play with another 
 play not so well made, one actor with another 
 actor ; and have they not always their " instinctive, 
 unreasoning, unreasonable love for the theatre, 
 simply as the theatre," to fall back upon ? It will 
 be a pleasure to the dramatist to go on conquering 
 unnecessary conventions, and so to give further 
 contentment to the critics by proof that the drama 
 is advancing. The theatre of commerce, happy in 
 the well-made play, appears such a contented 
 little institution that it is almost an inconsiderate 
 act for the artist to break into it. Without him 
 those concerned can so well keep their house in 
 order. 
 
 The artist, moreover, will not find it easy to 
 break in. The dramatists who have proved their 
 ability to keep the theatres open do not want him. 
 The managers do not want him so long as they are 
 able to keep their theatres open. So long as they 
 
 23
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 are willing to keep the managers' theatres open the 
 public give proof that they do not want him. An 
 official of the Royal Household, by whose per- 
 mission the theatres are opened at all in England, 
 most certainly does not want him. But of all 
 these, the most successful in keeping him out are 
 the practising dramatists. As we have seen, they 
 are very proud of their profession. Having proved 
 their own ability to keep the theatres open, they 
 take their stand upon the statement that it is very 
 difficult to be a dramatist. Drama, they say, is 
 not merely the greatest, it is the most difficult of 
 the arts. They point to the failure of the poet 
 or novelist when he comes to the theatre, and their 
 gesture implies that these lesser, or at least different, 
 artists are very well in their place. But they lack 
 the dramatic talent. " There is only one exception 
 to the rule," Sir Arthur Pinero has said, "that 
 during the nineteenth century no poet or novelist 
 of the slightest eminence made any success upon 
 the stage, and even that solitary exception is a 
 dubious one. I refer, as you may surmise, to 
 Bulwer Lytton. There is no doubt as to his 
 success ; but what does the twentieth century 
 think of his eminence ? " Let us see how Sir 
 Arthur Pinero goes on to define the dramatic 
 talent, by which alone the theatre of commerce may 
 be satisfactorily kept open. 
 
 " What is dramatic talent ? " he has asked. 1 " Is 
 
 1 Lecture on " R. L. Stevenson : the Dramatist." 
 24
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 it not the power to project characters, and to cause 
 them to tell an interesting story through the medium 
 of dialogue ? This is dramatic talent ; and 
 dramatic talent, if I may so express it, is the raw 
 material of theatrical talent. Dramatic, like poetic, 
 talent is born, not made ; if it is to achieve success 
 on the stage, it must be developed into theatrical 
 talent by hard study, and generally by long 
 practice. For theatrical talent consists in the power 
 of making your characters not only tell a story by 
 means of dialogue, but tell it in such skilfully 
 devised form and order as shall, within the limits of 
 an ordinary theatrical representation, give rise 
 to the greatest possible amount of that peculiar 
 kind of emotional effect the production of which 
 is the one great function of the theatre." 
 
 The production of this peculiar kind of emotional 
 effect is the business, then, of the well-made play. 
 It requires a great deal of theatrical talent, make 
 no mistake about that. The well-made play is 
 not merely some kind of a story woven about 
 favourite actors ; it is a story woven so skilfully that 
 it fits them as beautifully as do their own clothes. 
 It is a story carefully devised to contain every 
 situation which the public is known to love to see 
 its actors in, told, for preference, in the language 
 of the newspapers they have just been reading. 
 It is a kind of calculation of the chances of wringing 
 from the public theatrical emotion. Above all, for 
 the production of its peculiar kind of emotional 
 
 25
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 effect, it depends upon the " great scene," to which 
 all else in the play may be regarded as leading up. 
 
 It is to be observed that each of the serious 
 plays of Sir Arthur Pinero may be spoken of by 
 reference to a single scene, without risk of misunder- 
 standing. Thus we have the Bible-burning play, 
 the play with the listening scene, the furniture- 
 smashing play, the play about a bedroom, and so 
 on ; and when we name the plays by this method, 
 we are not conscious of having left the essential 
 thing out, as we should be, for example, if we spoke 
 of " Hamlet " as the play with the listening scene, 
 or of " Othello " as the play about a bedroom. The 
 Gay Lord Quex is, quite simply, a play about a bed- 
 room. It takes us two acts to get into the bedroom, 
 and it takes us another act to get out again ; but 
 what possible doubt is there that the bedroom, and 
 not the play, is the thing ? Let us suppose the play 
 to have been conceived somewhat after this fashion. 
 First, take a bedroom ; put into it a midnight 
 assignation ; throw in a third person ; and stir 
 thoroughly. Now it will not do to be misled 
 by the cookery-book manner into thinking that we 
 may take " any bedroom " : we are making a play, 
 and not a pudding, and theatrical talent is only 
 to be achieved by hard study, and generally by 
 long practice. This bedroom must have at least 
 two doors, and a boudoir will be desirable ; it is 
 by these things that we know the dramatic crafts- 
 man. Given the bedroom, whom are we to put into 
 26
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 it ? Obviously a profligate to whom detection 
 is dangerous, a guilty woman to whom detection is 
 dangerous, and an innocent woman to whom 
 detection is dangerous. Why should detection 
 be dangerous to a professional profligate ? Let us 
 make him an elderly profligate who is turning over 
 a new leaf, and, before becoming the husband of a 
 charming young girl, is saying good-bye to the 
 Duchess — yes, a Duchess, because obviously the 
 virtue of a Duchess is the highest possible in 
 the scale of importance. Since the third person is 
 to be guilty of spying, plainly she must be of the 
 lower order ; but if she is of the lower order, what 
 reason can there be for setting so much value 
 on her virtue ? She must be sympathetic ; she 
 must be taking this risk in order to shield some one 
 very dear to her from marriage with an elderly 
 profligate ; we will make her the young lady's 
 foster-sister, and we will add to the sense of the 
 risk she is taking by arranging that her own fiance 
 shall be sleeping in the same house. Now, at last, 
 the scene should be secure of its emotional effect. 
 Move one, discovery of the young person watching 
 at first door. Move two, exit of the Duchess by 
 second door, and summons for the young person. 
 Move three, the profligate, alone with the young 
 person in the bedroom, offers her two, four, five 
 thousand pounds as the price of her silence. Move 
 four, the profligate appeals to the young person's 
 pity. Move five, the profligate turns the tables 
 
 27
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 on the young person : he has the key, and if they 
 are found together, what is discovery for him, a 
 profligate, compared with discovery for her, an 
 innocent young person with a fiance at the other 
 end of the corridor ? Move six, desperation of the 
 young person, and imminent triumph of the pro- 
 fligate. Move seven, heroic resolve of the young 
 person to sacrifice her honour rather than the 
 happiness of her foster-sister ; she tugs at the 
 bell-rope. Move eight, gentlemanly resolve of 
 the profligate — who is really quite a good fellow at 
 heart — not to bring ruin upon the young person. 
 Move nine, the household knocking at the door — 
 shall she tell ? Move ten, let generosity meet 
 generosity ; the household be sent back to its bed ; 
 the young person, turning to the profligate, say, 
 " Oh, God bless you ! You — you — you're a gentle- 
 man ! I'll do what I can for you ! " and Curtain. 
 
 Now our business here may fairly be with the 
 hand of Sir Arthur Pinero, but it can hardly be 
 with the mind of Sir Arthur Pinero ; and we can 
 do no more than venture the suggestion that it 
 was somewhat after this fashion that The Gay 
 Lord Quex came into being. The Gay Lord Quex 
 was a play carefully planned by an expert crafts- 
 man in such a manner as, within the limits of an 
 ordinary theatrical representation, to give rise to the 
 greatest possible amount of that peculiar kind of 
 emotional effect, the production of which is, we 
 are told, the one great function of the theatre. The 
 28
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 scene in the bedroom went off successfully, and we 
 called it a good play. Now let us turn to another 
 play which was, in its own day, equally successful ; 
 the play which was laid out with earnestness, 
 and with the assistance of poetry upon the pro- 
 gramme, around the thesis that no profligate 
 can ever be reformed. I suppose the great scene 
 of The Profligate was the scene of confrontation 
 in the third act. By a device of the dramatist, 
 the young wife is made to believe that a profligate 
 peer, and not her husband, is The Profligate. " This 
 poor child is a living sacrifice to a man whose 
 history is a horrible chapter of dishonour," she 
 says, and the next moment, in her presence, the 
 living sacrifice is brought face to face with the man 
 whose history is a horrible chapter — her own 
 husband of a month ! " Girl, do you mean that 
 you know Mr. Renshaw ? " This is the scene for 
 which we have sat and waited ; now that it is 
 over, do we care very much whether the fourth 
 act shows us a profligate poisoned in his wife's 
 forgiving arms, or a profligate — despite the poetry 
 on the programme — happy for ever after ? It is 
 for the critics of the period to answer ; but one 
 fancies not. We shall have had our money's 
 worth in theatrical emotion whichever way the 
 story ends. 
 
 We should most of us say that The Gay Lord Quex 
 is a better play than The Profligate ; but it will 
 not do to say that, and have done. If the later 
 
 29
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 play about a profligate gives evidence of a more 
 highly developed theatrical talent than did the 
 earlier play about a profligate, the difference has 
 already led us into a discussion of technique. 
 There are, Sir Arthur Pinero has said, in speaking 
 of some of his predecessors in the theatre, 1 " two 
 parts of technique, which I may perhaps call its 
 strategy and its tactics. In strategy — in the 
 general laying out of a play, those transpontine 
 dramatists were often, as I have said, more than 
 tolerably skilful ; but in tactics, in the art of 
 getting their characters on and off the stage, of 
 conveying information to the audience, and so 
 forth, they were almost incredibly careless and 
 conventional." It has been the achievement, 
 then, of Sir Arthur Pinero to have improved the 
 strategy and tactics of English play-writing, and 
 especially the tactics. Upon the production of 
 " The Lights o' London " Mr. William Archer, " in 
 common with many other critics, conceived great 
 hopes of Mr. Sims." But it was not Mr. Sims's 
 destiny to carry on the strategy and the tactics 
 of the English well-made play to a still higher 
 point of development. It was Sir Arthur Pinero 's, 
 and not Mr. Sims's, to satisfy Mr. Archer's hopes 
 with a Mrs. Tanqueray, and, eventually, more than 
 to satisfy them with a His House in Order. 
 
 The dramatist of the well-made play starts, we 
 have seen, with a situation which will be " effective " 
 
 1 In " R. L. Stevenson : the Dramatist." 
 30
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 in the theatre — the bedroom, the Bible-burning, the 
 furniture- smashing. The ability to conceive these 
 ideas from which theatrical emotion may be wrung 
 is a definite indication of theatrical talent. Having 
 conceived one of these ideas, the dramatist proceeds 
 to " lay it out " — to tell an interesting story 
 through the medium of dialogue. Since Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's metaphor is military, we may say that 
 The Gay Lord Quex is an. interesting story laid out 
 like a train of gunpowder to explode in a bedroom. 
 Similarly The Benefit of the Doubt is a play written 
 because it makes possible the scene in the third 
 act, at which we may look on in an agony of 
 apprehension lest the innocent young woman 
 betray herself by a false step into the hands of the 
 listening wife — we should hardly suspect the play 
 of having been written for the sake of anything 
 else that is in it. There are earlier crises in Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith ; that one, for example, at the end of the 
 second act, when the lady, by entering handsomely 
 gowned and with the fashion of her hair altered, 
 makes it clear to the Duke and to us that she is 
 going to put up a fight ; but it is by the third act 
 and the Bible-burning that the play in the theatre 
 must stand or fall. Mrs. Tanqueray is deceptive ; 
 the play might so easily have been a tragedy of 
 incompatible characters. The mad marriage might 
 have been made to work its own ruin ; it is sufficient 
 to point out that it did not, but is dependent upon 
 the " great scene " of the wife confronted by her 
 
 31
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 earlier protector in the person of the suitor for her 
 stepdaughter's hand for its principal demand on 
 our emotions. His House in Order, in the manner 
 of its laying out, is a type perfect of the well-made 
 play. The letters are written, the letters are con- 
 cealed, their recipient is removed from this world ; 
 all this is cast back into the past. In the play, the 
 letters are brought from their hiding-place and are 
 delivered into the hands of the new wife under 
 circumstances which give rise to the greatest 
 possible amount of that peculiar kind of emotional 
 effect the production of which is the play's one great 
 function. Only we need no longer believe it was 
 the hand of God that delivered them, any more 
 than we really believe that the hand that sent Mrs. 
 Tanqueray upstairs to her room to destroy herself 
 was the hand that made the world so inconveniently 
 small. 
 
 The dramatist's " strategy " lays out a play so 
 effectively as sometimes to leave it quite dead, and 
 the dramatist's " tactics " are often such, it must 
 be admitted, as to do nothing to bring it to life 
 again. 
 
 Now tactics, we saw, had three main parts : 
 
 (a) the art of getting characters on to the stage, 
 
 (b) of conveying information when they are there, 
 and (c) of getting them off again. In The Profligate, 
 the first of Sir Arthur Pinero's plays to be regarded 
 as a masterpiece, it is desirable that the seduced 
 young person should be got on to the stage. She 
 32
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 is brought along, quite simply, by the young girl 
 who is about to be married to her seducer, they 
 having happened to become acquainted with one 
 another in the railway train. Once on the stage, 
 it is desirable that she should convey to the 
 audience the information that Mr. Dunstan Ren- 
 shaw is her seducer. A sympathetic young solicitor, 
 partner to the elderly solicitor who is giving his 
 ward to the profligate, and sympathetically in love 
 with her himself, will be useful. Then this is how 
 it is done : 
 
 Hugh Murray [to himself]. Great Heavens ! If by any 
 awful freak of fate this poor creature is a victim of Renshaw's 
 
 — and she at this moment standing beside him ! What 
 
 a fool I am to think of no man but Renshaw ! 
 
 Janet Preece. Don't ask me to describe him in words, 
 sir, — I can't, I can't. But I've taught myself to draw his 
 face faithfully. I'm not boasting — I can't draw anything 
 else because I see nothing else. Give me some paper I can 
 sketch upon, and a pencil. 
 
 [Hugh hands her paper and pencil, and watches 
 while she sketches.] 
 
 Hugh Murray [to himself]. If the face she sketches 
 should bear any resemblance to his, what could I do, what 
 could I do ? 
 
 Janet Preece [to herself]. That's with his mocking look 
 as I last saw him. He is always mocking me now. 
 
 Hugh Murray [to himself]. I could do nothing — it's too 
 late — nothing. Shall I look now ? No. What a coward 
 I am ! Yes. [He looks over Janet's shoulder.] Renshaw ! 
 [He struggles against his agitation.] The wife ! I must 
 think of the wife. . . . 
 
 Impossible to deny that this gives us the informa- 
 
 c 33
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 tion. We may have doubts about this seduced 
 young person who, unable to draw anything else, 
 can sit down and draw her seducer, " with his 
 mocking look," so well as to obtain instant recog- 
 nition. If we put ourselves into her place, and 
 into her period, we may think it more probable 
 that we should have produced something with 
 an equal likeness to Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. 
 Gladstone. But that we should put ourselves in 
 the place of people on the stage would not have 
 seemed a fair test to the English dramatists of 
 The Profligate's year ; and it was a test that did 
 not occur to the critics whose business it was to 
 conceive great hopes, and to answer, at all costs 
 in the affirmative, the solemn question, Is Our 
 Drama Advancing ? The scene in question gave 
 them the information ; and, when they had done 
 admiring the way in which the dramatist got his 
 seduced young person on to the stage, they could 
 go on to admire the way in which he got her off 
 again, by dismissing her sympathetically to 
 Australia. And this is the ending to the play 
 about the wife who dies in her chair, leaving her 
 husband free to go back to the woman who always 
 loved him. The latter is taking a look at the village 
 church, preparatory to wedding another (Richard) : 
 
 Camilla. How could I have forgotten it ? To have 
 hoarded it for five years and then, in one minute of forget- 
 fulness, to let it go from me ! [She sits by the font.] It was 
 a trust. " If he wanders back to England some day without 
 34
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 me," poor Margaret said, " give it to him, with your own 
 hands." And now, if ever he returns — if — ever — Oh, I 
 mustn't think about that ! No ! God bless me and 
 Richard ! God bless me and Richard 1 
 
 [Dennis ascends the steps. He passes Camilla, 
 not seeing her, and walks across towards the 
 porch. She rises with a faint cry of fright, at 
 which he turns sharply and faces her. They 
 stand staring at each other silently.] 
 Camilla [in a frightened whisper]. Dennis ! 
 Dennis. Ah! [Going to her with outstretched hands.] 
 Camilla ! 
 
 To end is a simple business, with Richard proving 
 suitably magnanimous. At times we are tempted 
 to forget what the dramatists of the well-made play 
 so persistently have told us, that theirs is the most 
 difficult of the arts. 
 
 And now it is time to state quite clearly a fact 
 which must have been sufficiently obvious already. 
 The hand of Sir Arthur Pinero has gone on gaining 
 in cunning. It is only because Sir Arthur Pinero 
 is a clever man who has advanced with his times 
 that we were able to say that the history of his 
 plays is the history of thirty years of the English 
 theatre. Considered both strategically and tacti- 
 cally, we have seen that The Gay Lord Quex is a 
 better made play than The Profligate — the ten 
 years that separated them were ten years well 
 spent. The Princess and the Butterfly does not 
 come so simply by its expected end as Lady Boun- 
 tiful did. While Mrs. Tanqueray and Iris and Mid- 
 Channel are all in theme not dissimilar, Iris is a 
 
 35
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 better made play than Mrs. Tanqueray and Mid- 
 Channel is a better made play than Iris. To the 
 last Sir Arthur Pinero is willing to learn, is ready to 
 conquer an unnecessary convention ; it is the most 
 sterling of his sterling qualities In Mrs. Tanqueray 
 the comic relief afforded by Sir George and Lady 
 Orreyd is an unnecessary convention, which is 
 conquered in Iris ; in Iris the lowering of the 
 curtain upon nine occasions is an interference with 
 the direct telling of an interesting story, which is 
 overcome in Mid-Channel. The " great scene " of 
 the discovery of the will in The Thunderbolt is an 
 even more skilful piece of work than the " great 
 scene " of the discovery of the letters in His House 
 in Order. And with certainty we may say that 
 in the first fifteen years of this dramatist's pro- 
 fessional practice there is nothing to foreshadow 
 the mastery of stage means that is shown in the 
 single incident of the latchkey of Maldonado. The 
 latchkey, symbol of Iris's freedom from molesta- 
 tion, is dropped into the vase on the mantelpiece 
 " with a sharp sound " ; the sound is the guarantee 
 that we shall remember it lying there ; when 
 Maldonado quietly withdraws it, the action speaks 
 to us of all that he knows, of the certainty that 
 Iris will later that evening meet with her fate. 
 This is the famous " sense of the theatre " ; it is 
 something that is altogether apart from the ability 
 to express oneself freely in the English language, 
 and it is something the possession of which is by 
 36
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 no means to be under- estimated. But just as it 
 has been possible to say something which has a 
 general truth about the strategy of the plays, so is 
 it possible to say something which has a general 
 truth about their tactics. It is possible to point, 
 for example, to the " soliloquy " and the " aside." 
 Essentially, in its use of such things, the technique 
 of Pinero is the technique of Robertson and the 
 technique of the Restoration ; and they are, it 
 may be noted, as integral a part of Letty or The 
 " Mind the Paint " Girl as they were of Dandy 
 Dick or Sweet Lavender. The people of Sir Arthur 
 Pinero have a little scale of factitious inaudibility 
 up and down which they run : Thinking, To him- 
 self, Half to himself, To herself in a whisper, To 
 herself in a low voice, In an undertone, Under her 
 breath as he passes her, In her ear, and so on. These 
 little licences are, as may be imagined, a great 
 convenience to the working dramatist. And need 
 it be said that when a person in a play by Sir Arthur 
 Pinero is in receipt of a letter, the spirit of humours 
 answers the prayer of Maria in the comedy and 
 intimates reading aloud to him ? 
 
 It is possible to say, for another example, and 
 I do not think that we shall be contradicted, 
 that there is sometimes a lack of intimacy between 
 the people " brought on " and " taken off " in 
 fulfilment of this dramatist's purposes, and in 
 the manner in which they " convey their informa- 
 tion." Sir Arthur Pinero's dramatic diction is 
 
 37 
 
 280549
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 something quite constant. We are surprised, in 
 view of the intimate relationship existing between 
 them and the fact that he arrives through the 
 window, that Sophy's fiance 1 should say, " I love 
 you ! Ever since I had the honour of being pre- 
 sented to you by Mr. Salmon, the picture- dealer 
 next door, I have thought of you, dreamt of you, 
 constantly." Since Mr. Salmon played so important 
 a part, it cannot be that Sophy should have for- 
 gotten that he is a picture- dealer and lives next 
 door ; is it possible that it is to us, and not to 
 Sophy, that the information is being conveyed ? 
 Is it possible, in the following, that Iris is telling 
 us and not her young lover that his uncle is an 
 Archdeacon named Standish ? 
 
 Laurence. You remember that when, six weeks ago, I 
 wrote to my uncle, telling him I was hanging up for a 
 while the idea of leaving England, he sent me, generously 
 enough, his good wishes and a cheque for five hundred 
 pounds ? 
 
 Iris. Yes. 
 
 Laurence. At the same time his letter conveyed a very 
 decided intimation that I was neither to see him nor hear 
 from him again. 
 
 Iris. I read Archdeacon Standish's note. 
 
 But it is not only when burdened by a consciousness 
 of the information they have to convey that this 
 dramatist's people find intimacy impossible. Two 
 girls of twenty are having a cosy chat together ; 
 says one of them : " Leslie, I perceive I have done 
 Mr. Renshaw an injustice. But surely you had some 
 38
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 further motive in sharing with me the privilege of 
 enjoying Mr. Renshaw's estimate of the gentleman 
 who is to be my husband ? " A young gentleman 
 excuses himself from a birthday party at which 
 some shop-girls are honouring him : "I am going 
 to behave very rudely, I fear. A rather pressing 
 matter has arisen which necessitates my leaving 
 you for a few minutes. I throw myself on your 
 mercy." And then we have this from the mature 
 Pinero of The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith : 
 
 Lucas [going up to her eagerly]. What do you think of 
 my essay ? 
 
 Agnes. It bristles with truth ; it i3 vital. 
 
 Lucas. My method of treating it ? 
 
 Agnes. Hardly a word out of place. 
 
 Lucas [chilled]. Hardly a word ? 
 
 Agnes. Not a word, in fact. 
 
 Lucas. No, dear, I dare say your " hardly " is nearer the 
 mark. 
 
 Agnes. I assure you it is brilliant, Lucas. 
 
 It must be understood that Mrs. Ebbsmith and 
 her young politician are living together on terms 
 of the greatest intimacy ; it must be understood, 
 I say, because the fact is hardly to be gathered 
 from the style of her literary criticism nor from 
 the manner in which he receives it. The notorious 
 lady who nearly burned the Bible at one moment 
 relapses into a speech in the Hyde Park manner 
 which earned for her her earlier notoriety ; con- 
 sidering that her audience is the cynical roue* the 
 Duke of St. Olpherts, who is trying to part her from 
 
 39
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 his nephew, the moment is not well chosen ; but 
 it is her incidental lapses into rhetoric that are far 
 more unfortunate, supposing it to be of any im- 
 portance that we regard her as a real person. 
 
 All Sir Arthur Pinero's persons are unfortunate 
 in this respect. If they like the view, they say, 
 " I could gaze at this prospect for ever." They 
 say,." Have done ! Have done ! " when they wish 
 to convey that that is enough, and " Pray complete 
 your sentence," when they mean "go on." If 
 they wish to say you are right, they say " It affords 
 me great pleasure to subscribe to that," and if 
 they wish to say you are wrong, they say, " You 
 are mistaken in the construction you put upon it." 
 "Be silent," they say, and "Please to ring the 
 bell," and, if they are very strongly moved, " Let 
 me be rid of you ! " This strange kind of speech 
 is held entirely in common. There is the pleasant 
 young girl in the early play (on no account to be 
 mistaken for a comic character) who announces 
 that " There are certain prescribed limits beyond 
 which it is not decorous for a young person to step 
 during the period of engagement. I feel you are 
 travelling beyond those limits." There is the 
 sympathetic curate in The Hobby Horse who 
 remarks, " Let me be rid of you ! Your money has 
 mildewed the bread with which I feed the dear 
 ones who are dependent upon me, long enough ! " 
 There is the pleasant young girl whom Quex is 
 to marry, whose opinion of the word " To-night ! " 
 40
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 which Sophy overheard in the garden takes the 
 form of " A hundred topics of conversation would 
 lead to such an expression. You are mistaken in 
 the construction you put upon it. The Duchess 
 of Strood is a most immaculate woman." This 
 disturbing peculiarity of Sir Arthur Pinero's 
 people becomes positively startling when they 
 speak in some such terms of themselves. The 
 brother to the young lady who marries the profligate 
 announces the intention of himself and his sister 
 to remain " simple, light-hearted boy and girl 
 for ever and ever." The young woman who is 
 given the benefit of the doubt is of the opinion 
 (with particular regard to herself) that " Ninety- 
 nine women out of a hundred are kept fresh and 
 sweet by nothing better than mere sentiment." 
 How poignant the cry of Paula Tanqueray is 
 intended to be, " I've always been a good woman ! " 
 " I, the virtuous, unsoiled woman ! " says the lady 
 who supplies the Bible to Mrs. Ebbsmith ; " Yes, 
 I am a virtuous woman. . . ." Even the young 
 lady who found fame by exhorting us to mind the 
 paint lives anxious days lest she should do anything 
 " actually not nice." " Nobody can breathe a 
 word against my respectability," is the proud 
 boast of Miss Sophy Fullgarny. There were 
 critics who held, when the straight young English 
 girl in Mid-Channel said, " Oh, I don't want to 
 
 boast, but I'm a straight, clean girl ," that the 
 
 remark was out of her character. It will be nearer 
 
 41
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the truth to say that this conscientious self- 
 revelation on the part of Sir Arthur Pinero's people 
 is the dramatist's way of making up for that 
 congenital absence of intimacy of which we have 
 spoken. 
 
 But it must not be supposed from the foregoing 
 that Sir Arthur Pinero's people, when they convey 
 information about themselves or about things in 
 general, are content, in an expressive Americanism, 
 to " deliver the goods." One of the ways we have 
 of recognizing Sir Arthur Pinero's people is by 
 their fondness for a kind of allegory. Says the 
 stockbroker-raisonneur of Mid- Channel, who has 
 himself devised the term for a phase in the 
 relations of married people which makes the 
 play's title, " You follow me ? You grasp the 
 poetic allegory ? " Sir Arthur Pinero's people put 
 a constant demand upon us to grasp the poetic 
 allegory. Hugh Murray, for example, the sympa- 
 thetic solicitor, strikes out on the subject of wild 
 oats, with the profligate for auditor : 
 
 To-morrow, next week, next month, you may be happy — 
 but what of the time when those wild oats thrust their ears 
 through the very seams of the floor trodden by the wife 
 whose respect you will have learned to covet I You may 
 drag her into the crowded streets — there is the same vile 
 growth springing up from the chinks of the pavement ! In 
 your house, or in the open, the scent of the mildewed grain 
 always in your nostrils, and in your ears no music but the 
 wind's rustle amongst the fat sheaves ! And, worst of all, 
 your wife's heart a granary bursting with the load of shame 
 your profligacy has stored there ! I warn you, etc. 
 42
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 Dick Phenyl, the sympathetic though drunken 
 barrister, makes great play with the story of 
 Cinderella at a crisis in the action, just as Hilary 
 Jesson, British Minister to the Republic of Santa 
 Guarda and raisonneur-in-ordinary to the house- 
 hold at Overbury Towers, makes great play with a 
 story about a chef. Marriage, to Mrs. Ebbsmith, 
 is " the choked-up, seething pit " ; loss of repu- 
 tation, to Cayley Drummle, " the social Dead Sea ' ' ; 
 herself, to Mrs. Tanqueray, " a candle that gutters." 
 Even Lord Quex, between his gallantries, has time 
 to embroider a little on the theme of turning over a 
 new leaf. Sir Arthur Pinero's use of poetic allegory 
 is so much his own, and the British theatre's, that 
 we need not look for influences. When Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith says of her Lucas, " He is my child, my 
 husband, my lover, my bread, my daylight — all — 
 everything. Mine ! Mine ! " and to the cynical 
 Duke of all people, well, we think of her unfor- 
 tunate training in Hyde Park ; but when we find 
 her talking of her Hour, her Hour, we may 
 remember that although her creator did not 
 approve of " the small despairing message from 
 the great voice of Henrik Ibsen," he would not be 
 Sir Arthur Pinero if he had not been willing to 
 catch some tones of the great voice. 
 
 In all Sir Arthur Pinero's people there is some- 
 thing we must call vulgarity for lack of a better 
 word. His young women are " just a leetle rapid." 
 Directly the news of poor pa's death came, " Ma 
 
 43
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 took off her corsets," in The Benefit of the Doubt; 
 and she repeats the process at crises in the play's 
 action. " Women — God bless 'em ! " says Sir 
 Arthur Pinero's ideal man, with a kind of imagi- 
 native slap on the back. " That nice gal," is the 
 word of Sir Chichester Frayne or Mr. Peter Mottram 
 for the creamy English girl, " beautiful pink and 
 white right through." Miriam, Marchioness of 
 Castle Jordan, would like to have been the mother 
 of a " complete boy " ; as it is, her daughter the 
 Amazon, carried upstairs by a young man, has to 
 answer the question, " Think he guessed you — 
 weren't the — usual sort of young man ? " When 
 the Duchess and Quex were together at Stockholm 
 it will be remembered she entered nothing indiscreet 
 in her diary — " only the words, ' warm evening.' " 
 But to point to this quality in Sir Arthur Pinero's 
 people is not for one moment to bring a charge 
 of indelicacy against his drama. When a Duchess 
 undresses, or a Princess gets out of bed of a morning, 
 or a lady of musical comedy puts on her stockings, 
 the dramatist always arranges that she shall be 
 concealed by a screen or a table ; while his people, 
 even when moved by the conviction of infidelity to 
 the point at which they break furniture, have no 
 plainer word than " trull " in their vocabulary. 
 When Mrs. Ebbsmith suggests to her lover that 
 their union should be " devoid of passion," she 
 averts her eyes. And is not the passage in The 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray quite perfectly delicate? 
 44
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 Drummle. In Heaven's name, tell me what's happened ? 
 Aubrey [gripping Drummle's arm]. Paula ! Paula ! 
 Drummle. What ? 
 
 Aubrey. They met to-night here. They — they — they're 
 not strangers to each other. 
 
 No, there is no possible case on which to sustain 
 a charge of verbal indelicacy. But all Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's people might live very happily in that 
 up-river villa where the doll is affixed by a cord 
 through the ceiling to the couch in the room 
 above, and make jokes about " Rippingill versus 
 Rippingill, Bowen, Fletcher, Hedderwick, and 
 Rideout — there were no more." At least they 
 would not find the atmosphere oppressive there. 
 
 Perhaps this is the place to record that it has 
 been pointed out on Sir Arthur Pinero's behalf 
 that the purpose of his comic drama is to satirize 
 vulgar people. "It is well known," says his 
 critic, 1 " that Mr. Pinero holds decided views of 
 his own as to the nature and function of farce ; 
 indeed he claims for it a wider scope and more 
 comprehensive purpose than have ever been 
 associated with farce of the old Adelphi type, or 
 the more modern genus of the Palais Royal. He 
 has openly expressed his opinion that farce must 
 gradually become the modern equivalent of comedy, 
 since the present being an age of sentiment rather 
 than of manners, the comic playwright must of 
 necessity seek his humour in the exaggeration of 
 
 1 Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman, introduction to The Times. 
 
 45
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 sentiment. Thus Mr. Pinero holds that farce 
 should treat of probable people placed in possible 
 circumstances, but regarded from a point of view 
 which exaggerates their sentiments and magnifies 
 their foibles. In this light it is permitted to this 
 class of play, not only to deal with ridiculous 
 incongruities of incident and character, but to 
 satirize society, and to wring laughter from those 
 possible distresses of life which might trace their 
 origin to fallacies of feeling and extravagancies of 
 motive." 
 
 Certainly Sir Arthur Pinero has achieved humour, 
 intentional or unintentional, in the exaggeration 
 of sentiment. Certainly he has used his theatrical 
 talent to wring laughter from vulgar people in 
 his comic drama, as he has used it to wring thea- 
 trical emotion from them in his serious. A gentle- 
 man who says, " Miaou ! miaou ! puss, puss, 
 puss ! " when he is offered a sausage-roll, is, it is 
 only kind to suppose, a vulgar person satirized. 
 But his best play does not satirize vulgar people ; 
 it tries to understand them. At this stage in our 
 proceedings, it will be almost necessary to provide a 
 separate category for Mid-Channel. The dramatist 
 knows the Blundells, and, as a consequence, we 
 feel we know them too. Zoe had a " hell of a row 
 last night " ; and she drifts from a hell of a row 
 to a hell of a mess. She takes us with her, as she 
 " goes her mucker." Admiration may be pointed 
 to the skill with which the true motivity to the 
 46
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 tragedy, childlessness, is deferred in its revelation 
 to nearly the end of the third act — " I want you 
 to remember that bargain, in judging me ; and I 
 want you to tell Peter Of it." It may be pointed 
 to the skill in dramatic preparation shown in the 
 masterly fourth act, " Mother, do come and look 
 at the tiny men and women " — from the balcony, 
 that is, from which Zoe is to throw herself down. 
 This is a fruit of that hard study and long practice 
 of which we found the dramatist speaking ; it 
 is a touch from the same hand that tinkled audibly 
 Maldonado's latchkey. In this act we may see 
 theatrical talent subserving dramatic imagina- 
 tion ; can it be that that is the truer relation 
 than the one we heard Sir Arthur Pinero enounce ? 
 Certain it is that Mid-Channel is the best of 
 Sir Arthur Pinero's plays. We may still have 
 doubts about the husband who goes straight off to 
 drink and an impossible woman the moment his 
 wife leaves him ; we may have doubts about 
 the straight, clean girl — aged twenty- six — who 
 " oughtn't to know about such things " ; but we 
 do not wish to doubt Zoe or the manner of her 
 " mucker." Mid-Channel, we would say, is the 
 play Sir Arthur Pinero wrote because he wanted 
 to write it, rather than because the theatre was 
 of opinion that a new play was due ; and when 
 he had written it, it failed, under an ironic fate, 
 to keep its theatre open. 
 
 Nor must this last of the major plays be left 
 
 47
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 until we have noted in it a kind of technical 
 self-consciousness which is important in illuminat- 
 ing much that has gone before. " Times have 
 changed, master," says Scaramel to Pierrot in 
 the third act of the fantasy. Through this play 
 also there runs a vein of knowledge that the times 
 have changed. " There's too much of this trying 
 to say something fresh on every subject," says 
 Peter Mottram ; it is — may we fancy ? — his 
 master's voice. When marriage is compared to a 
 pair of horses that stop prancing and settle down 
 to a trot — a piece of poetic allegory that would 
 have passed without apology in Mrs. Tanqueray — 
 here in Mid-Channel it must be taken care of as 
 " a worm-eaten illustration." Even the " tactics," 
 war-proven in how many campaigns, are not 
 immune from self-criticism. " You are full of 
 information, mother," is the protective reproof 
 incurred by Mrs. Pierpoint when, to give her justice, 
 she is doing no more in the matter of first-act 
 usefulness than had been done, far more flagrantly, 
 by her predecessors for a quarter of a century. 
 The consciousness that times change, and with them 
 things dramatic, is as much a part of Mid-Channel 
 as it is of Trelawney of the " Wells " ; whose Tom 
 Wrench, it will be remembered, was a loyal portrait 
 of Robertson the master. 
 
 In a drama which, in the main, by keeping 
 character subservient to action, has satisfied, at 
 least in the letter, the precept of Aristotle, the 
 48
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 true and pathetic figure of Zoe Blundell stands 
 rather alone. For the rest, the dramatis personae 
 drilled and marshalled beneath the hand of Sir 
 Arthur Pinero, whether for purposes of serious 
 or of comic demonstration, are amenable enough 
 types — " probable people placed in possible cir- 
 cumstances." We may, if we like, give it as our 
 opinion that the Mortimores are placed in more 
 probable circumstances than the Ridgeleys, that 
 the persons who revolve about Letty, or the girl 
 who sang about the paint, are either more or less 
 possible than the persons of Girls and Boys or The 
 Times ; but, Ridgeleys or Mortimores, photo- 
 graphers or palmists or dukes or dilettanti of the 
 musical " drama," Mrs. Tanqueray or Mrs. Ebb- 
 smith or Iris Bellamy or Sophy Fullgarney or 
 Renshaw or Maldonado or Quex, Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's people have not forgotten the days 
 through which they were obedient figures in a 
 practical dramatist's toy theatre for the invention 
 of well-made plays. Character, in the Pinero 
 theatre, being a matter that is remembered only 
 after strategy and tactics have had their due, 
 does but rarely surprise us ; be it a hairdresser, 
 his talk is of " the untidiest chin in the Inner 
 Temple " ; a Frenchman, " Necessity is the 
 mother of objecting to a smoking carriage " ; an 
 agricultural labourer, "I be a poor agricultural 
 labourer " ; a young wife, " I think, sir — whatever 
 Clement thinks, always " ; a straight clean young 
 
 d 49
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 English girl, let her say so, and have done. It may 
 be summarized as the organization of the expected. 
 Most useful of all in the familiar regiment of 
 persons is the raisonneur, the family's disinterested 
 visitor, the practical dramatist's friend ; the man 
 without whom no well-made play is complete, 
 for may not information at all hours of the day 
 and night be conveyed to him, and through him 
 to us ? His name is, in successive reincarnations, 
 Hugh Murray, Cayley Drummle, Croker Harrington, 
 Hilary Jesson, Peter Mottram ; but, whatever his 
 name, his character is not greatly different from 
 that given to Hilary, " a type of the genial, peren- 
 nially fresh cosmopolitan." He it is who, having ex- 
 pended himself in disinterested labours, murmurs, 
 " My dear old pals ! " and, before he withdraws, 
 stands for a moment looking lingeringly at those 
 he has happily reconciled. He it is — sitting, 
 perhaps, late at night over the fire with a woman, 
 between him and whom there is " never one single 
 thought of anything but friendship on either side " 
 — who voices the practical, comforting message from 
 one person of the world to another that is Sir 
 Arthur Pinero's : " Don't fret ; it'll be all the same 
 a hundred years hence," or something of that 
 kind. It is a little message in a great voice. Sir 
 Arthur Pinero set some words on the title-page of 
 an early play : "I don't aspire to great things, 
 but I wish to speak of great things with gratitude 
 and of mean things with indignation." His 
 50
 
 ARTHUR PINERO 
 
 people's world is St. James's, " our little parish 
 of St. James's," as the good Cayley has it ; their 
 concern is that by Goodwood week the reputation 
 of some one who has been foolish, perhaps, but 
 not guilty, shall be sound as any woman's in 
 England ; and their creator has little patience 
 with the " parochial pessimism " of the Ibsen 
 drama. "We poor modern playwrights," says 
 he, " will not be found wanting at least in the 
 endeavour to respond to lofty and heroic inspira- 
 tion." 
 
 And yet it is not so much for lofty and heroic 
 inspiration that the Pinero drama is notable, as 
 for the complete efficiency with which it has 
 discharged its various yet unvarying purpose. 
 We have seen this drama take its rise in the 
 drama with a rural setting, and in the drama 
 of "girls" and "boys." When the theatre 
 wanted sweet lavender, an ample supply was 
 conceded ; when " Ghosts " and " Hedda Gabler " 
 were heard of, it was Sir Arthur Pinero who gave 
 the theatre a profligate and a Paula Tanqueray ; 
 when England was in need of a Drama with which 
 to front Europe, it was Sir Arthur Pinero who 
 was found to have supplied it. This cumulative 
 ability to give of the best that he knew is the 
 essence of the achievement of Sir Arthur Pinero. 
 Even in the comic plays that small boy in the early 
 farce who set fire to the house with a firework only 
 reaches his true apotheosis in the third act of 
 
 51
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Mr. Panmure ; there is no scene in the Court 
 Theatre farces which goes off with this stately 
 precision of the set-piece. Perhaps it would not 
 have been possible for Sir Arthur Pinero to have 
 achieved the first act of The Thunderbolt if the 
 third act of " The Voysey Inheritance " had not 
 shown him the way. Certainly it would not have 
 been possible for Sir Arthur Pinero to make The 
 Profligate that determined essay in conjugal 
 unhappiness he himself achieved in Mid-Channel. 
 In the drama of Sir Arthur Pinero we may find 
 in actual epitome the answers to a generation of 
 anxious questionings, Is the Drama Advancing ? 
 No other hand could project characters so well 
 fitted to the favourite actors of his generation, 
 or cause them to tell so interesting a story through 
 the medium of dialogue. No other hand could 
 devise such skilful form and order as, within the 
 limits of an ordinary theatrical representation, to 
 give rise to so great an amount of that peculiar 
 kind of emotional effect, the production of which 
 was the one great function of his theatre. No 
 other hand, in fact, could supply so efficiently the 
 actual demand. When, in the fullness of time 
 and honours, Sir Arthur Pinero has need of an 
 epitaph, it may well be this : He kept the theatres 
 open. 
 
 52
 
 II 
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 THE English drama of his day, said Matthew 
 Arnold, lay between the heavens and the 
 earth ; it was neither realistic nor ideal- 
 istic, but just " fantastic." He could not have 
 put it more kindly. 
 
 Sir Arthur Pinero once disclaimed " any absolute 
 and inherent superiority for our modern realistic 
 technique " ; but in making this disclaimer on 
 behalf of his own plays he did not use terms in 
 the sense in which they will be used in this book. 
 Even so, he set up a banner under which Mr. 
 Henry Arthur Jones, for one, would not serve. A 
 French critic, M. Augustin Filon, writing of the 
 drama of the early nineties in England, has left 
 it on record that " Mr. Jones will not hear of the 
 ' well-made ' piece ; he seems to have recognized 
 that the architecture of a play does not count for 
 much, and that the science of Scribe and Sardou 
 is a snare. Nor will he hear of realism or of logic." 
 Mr. Jones, saysM. Filon, was for " Beauty, Mystery, 
 
 53
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Passion, and Imagination. The drama, he is con- 
 vinced, is returning to the mysterious and imagi- 
 native side of human life." But we may listen 
 to the dramatist himself. 
 
 For Mr. Henry Arthur Jones is one who, like 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw, has written a great deal about 
 his own art, and by no means left his plays, as Sir 
 Arthur Pinero for the most part has done, to the 
 exposition of the critics. The secret of Mr. Jones's 
 dissatisfaction with the teacup- and- saucer school 
 of Robertson, which Matthew Arnold objected to as 
 " fantastic," is rather that it " exactly copied and 
 reproduced the littlenesses of social life." He 
 concedes to Robertson that he gave to the theatre 
 " a greater air of vraisemblance " ; but his 
 summary is that Robertson " drew many pleasing 
 characters and scenes, most of them as essentially 
 false as the falsities and theatricalities he supposed 
 himself to be superseding." Now to the playgoer 
 of our day this summary may well stand as a 
 verdict ; but the playgoer of our day will be 
 pardoned, I think, if he confess his inability to 
 conceive of a drama with a smaller air of vraisem- 
 blance than Robertson's. Suppose, however, that 
 he concede the air of vraisemblance ; it was 
 nothing more than a device on the part of a 
 practising dramatist to keep the theatres open — 
 a new device, if you will, since vraisemblance, 
 from the era of " Black-Eyed Susan " to the era of 
 " Still Waters Run Deep," had been a great stranger 
 54
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 to the English drama. What exactly did Mr. Jones 
 mean by saying that " Caste " or " School " 
 " reproduced the littlenesses of social life " ? Do 
 they reproduce the littlenesses of social life in the 
 manner in which De Hooch's Court of a Dutch 
 House or Jan Steen's Music Master reproduces 
 them ? If the dramatist's purpose in drawing his 
 picture of the interior of the Eccles household was 
 to " copy " the life of a real household of that grade, 
 it can only be said that he did not succeed in 
 making a very good copy. If Mr. Jones meant 
 that by copying life, occurrence by occurrence, like 
 the photographer for a halfpenny newspaper, the 
 dramatist did not go the right way about to produce 
 a work of art, we could understand him. Then, 
 even supposing Robertson had the ability to 
 reproduce successfully the manner of human 
 speech or the nature of human character — which 
 he had not — we might agree with Mr. Jones that 
 the result was " essentially false." But it appears 
 that Mr. Jones meant something quite different. 
 He meant that the reproduction of the littlenesses 
 of social life is no work for the drama at all. He 
 meant to deny the desirability, or at least the 
 practicability, of reality in the theatre. "The 
 theatre is here," he said, in effect, "to be kept 
 open. I have kept it open with little pieces called 
 Harmony, A Clerical Error, Sweet Will, and so on, 
 of the same kind and quality as Mr. Pinero's little 
 story of mysterious Hester. I have kept it open 
 
 55
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 with melodramas, such as The Silver King, in 
 
 collaboration with a Mr. Herman, of which Mr. 
 
 Archer conceived great hopes. I have kept it 
 
 open with a realistic play called Saints and Sinners. 
 
 In collaboration with the same Mr. Herman, I have 
 
 even succeeded in keeping it open, for a short time, 
 
 with the ' Doll's House ' of Ibsen, a ' Doll's House,' 
 
 it is true, without a Dr. Rank, with an ending of 
 
 general reconciliation, and with the new name of 
 
 Breaking a Butterfly. I am above all a practical 
 
 dramatist. My plays will never be found to forget 
 
 the purposes of the theatre ; but I now propose to 
 
 keep it open by returning to the mysterious and 
 
 imaginative side of human life." 
 
 That is our own gloss upon the utterances of Mr. 
 Henry Arthur Jones. 
 
 But in the year of his own Judah the dramatist 
 himself put his views about Realism and Truth in 
 this way. "The most stupendous difficulty," he 
 wrote, " the most outrageous convention, meets 
 the realist on the very threshold of the theatre. 
 For the purposes of the stage, human lives have to 
 be woven into a consecutive story, and this story 
 has to be chopped into three or four acts of an 
 average three-quarters of an hour each. There 
 may be, indeed there are, dramatic moments in 
 the lives of all ; there may have been dramatic 
 scenes of two or three minutes in the connected lives 
 of two or three people ; but never in this world 
 was there anything approaching to a dramatic 
 56
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 three-quarters of an hour in the lives of half a dozen 
 or a dozen people, passing in such a way and with 
 such a volume and variety of incident and emotion 
 as to be satisfactory or even endurable in repre- 
 sentation to a modern audience." 1 So that, 
 since realism cannot be truth, we are to content 
 ourselves with Beauty, Mystery, Passion, and 
 Imagination, chopped into three or four acts of 
 an average three-quarters of an hour. The bargain 
 sounds not a bad one ; but before we leave it at 
 that, let us make sure that Mr. Jones fully under- 
 stood what Matthew Arnold meant when he denied 
 realism to the English drama of Robertson. It 
 happens that Mr. Jones, in the course of his 
 addresses upon the drama, has clenched the matter 
 for us in a paragraph. Let us give it prominence 
 here : 
 
 I lately saw a drawing of Turner's called " Llanthony 
 Abbey. "... It was one of the most beautiful tran- 
 scripts from Nature that I have ever looked upon. But 
 the whole picture was not two feet square. You could 
 never mistake it for a real Abbey and real hills. 
 
 Now that is clear. We understand at once what 
 Mr. Jones means by realism, and we understand 
 why, as a practical dramatist, he has had nothing 
 to do with it. 
 
 There are three kinds of " realism " — if we 
 omit the doctrine of the schools with which we here 
 have nothing to do. There is the lawyer's realism, 
 
 1 Letter to New York Dramatic Mirror, April 19, 1890. 
 
 57
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the actor-manager's realism, and the artist's 
 realism. A thing is real, to the lawyer, when, 
 like a house or a piece of land, it cannot be moved. 
 Llanthony Abbey and the surrounding country, 
 since they cannot be moved, are real property ; 
 Llanthony Abbey and its hills transferred to the 
 boards of a London theatre, are " properties," but 
 are no longer " real." When Mr. Jones pointed 
 to this fact, he spoke like a lawyer ; except that 
 no lawyer even would think of going over a drawing 
 by Turner with a foot-rule to convince himself that 
 it was not an abbey. But a real property to the 
 actor-manager is something different. Wolsey's 
 cloak is a real property, if he himself bought it 
 at an auction sale or borrowed it from some one 
 who can assure him that it once was actually worn 
 by Wolsey. But the actor-manager is not so 
 careful in his terms as he might be ; for he will 
 go on to congratulate himself on the " realism " 
 of his Llanthony Abbey and its hills if he do 
 but build them up in lath and painted canvas. A 
 property is real to the actor-manager if it cost 
 a great deal of money and is so solid that he 
 may lean against it ; the transference of Picca- 
 dilly Circus to his stage, landmark by landmark, 
 and taxicab by taxicab, is a triumph of " realism " 
 to the actor-manager, even if, when he has got 
 his lath and canvas there, it does not really 
 resemble Piccadilly Circus in the least. There 
 remains the artist's realism. It is because the 
 58
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 artist does not talk so much about his realism 
 that the lawyer's realism and the actor-manager's 
 realism hold the field. The actor-manager's under- 
 standing of realism, in its second sense, is parti- 
 cularly prevalent. The people whose business 
 it is to write little notes upon the new novels in 
 the papers, when they say that a work is " all duly 
 realistic and depressing," are saying two things : 
 they are saying that it has been the attempt of 
 the novelist to transfer the reality of life to the 
 printed page, and they are voicing a personal 
 opinion that they do not like their novels to do 
 that ; but the one thing they do not say is whether 
 the transference of life to the printed page is 
 well or ill done. Their understanding of realism 
 is the actor-manager's ; here is Piccadilly Circus at 
 midnight, they say, with the Criterion with white 
 lights duly facing the Monico with pink and several 
 taxicabs that are authentic. Because, in their 
 opinion, there have been too many novels about 
 Piccadilly Circus at midnight, they take the actor- 
 manager's term " realism," and give to it a special 
 connotation of reproach. This special connotation 
 of reproach entitles the term, I suppose, to a fourth 
 category of critic's realism. But there still remains 
 the artist's realism. The artist, consciously or 
 unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly, tells us 
 that it is a very difficult thing to see. He tells 
 us that it is a very difficult thing really to see and 
 really to hear. He makes us aware that most of 
 
 59
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the pictures are painted, and most of the plays and 
 novels written, by industrious people who can 
 neither see nor hear. It is possible that, if they 
 had tried, they might have learned to do these 
 difficult things ; but it is more likely that they 
 were born blind and deaf, although not, unfor- 
 tunately, dumb. Every artist is an artist by virtue 
 of his superior awareness of life. Art is the means 
 by which life is made clear to us ; the power of 
 the artist is the power by which its inner essences 
 are released, its escapable truths revealed, its 
 elusive values co-ordinated. The demand for art 
 is constant, and that is why, if artists are wanting, 
 its functions are performed by not-artists. These 
 are the blind who lead the blind, and, since all are 
 blind together, nothing is easier than to agree 
 upon a little code. You wish to be told about life ? 
 say the not-artists. We cannot clearly see its lines, 
 nor have we the power or patience to wait upon its 
 voice ; but let us agree that it looks after this 
 fashion, and speaks after that, and then, with you 
 the audience lending your agreement, our invention 
 will enable us to keep you famously supplied. 
 This Braille system is one with which the artist 
 who has a right pride in his faculties will have 
 nothing to do. When he looks at life he sees it, 
 according to his power ; and he sees it to be diffe- 
 rent from the pretty picture the not-artists have 
 agreed upon. Its voice he hears to be a different 
 voice, because his ear is tuned to its lower tones 
 60
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 that have quite escaped the others. When they 
 did not see, when they did not hear, they agreed 
 upon conventions. Not-art is always made up of 
 the expected ; art of the unexpected. In art we 
 may recognize the truth, and that is delightful ; 
 we may be surprised with the deeper truth, and 
 that is still more delightful ; but not-art gives us 
 neither the pleasures of recognition nor surprise, it 
 is the tedious repetition of the expected. 
 
 It is very difficult to look at life, then, and to see 
 it, not as you expected to see it, but as it is. Art 
 is not life ; it is the transference of an essence into 
 a vessel that is the artist's own — a vessel whose 
 form is determined by the conditions of that art's 
 acceptance. The drama, for example, can come 
 to its public only through the theatre, and the 
 dramatic artist shapes his vision of life for accept- 
 ance there. But this act of transference is difficult, 
 and the greatest artist is he who achieves it with 
 least spilled. The not- artist is he who says, 
 because this is difficult I will not make the attempt, 
 but will stay in my theatre and speak loudly of the 
 immutability of its conditions. Now this essence 
 of life may be well called its reality ; and the 
 method which secures its transference without 
 diminution, to the theatre or to the printed page, 
 may be called the method of realism, although 
 less well. Realism, to speak strictly, is not a 
 method or a theory, it is this care for undiminished 
 reality, that is all ; this care which is unconsciously 
 
 61
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 a part of all art that is romantic, and whose claims 
 need only to be made separately vocal when the 
 classic is running into the decadent. The theatre 
 of the mid- nineteenth century in Europe, in so far 
 as it was an art at all, was a decadent art ; and 
 that is the " real "-ists' and the " natural "-ists' 
 sufficient apology. Realism — which is a better 
 word than naturalism, because Nature has nothing 
 to do with art, while reality has a very great deal — 
 may be elevated into a theory or method, if we 
 choose to think of it not merely as the artist's 
 abiding care that reality shall suffer no diminution, 
 but as a positive process by which, after his subject- 
 matter has been re- created in his imagination, it 
 is dipped into actuality again, as though to make 
 fast its dyes. To Mr. Arthur Symons, the best 
 English critic since Arnold, " the theory of Realism 
 is that (a man's) emotions and ideas are to be given 
 only in so far as the words at his command can 
 give them," whereas the Idealist, " choosing to 
 concern himself only with exceptional characters, 
 and with them only in the absolute, invents for 
 them a more elaborate and a more magnificent 
 speech than they would naturally employ, the 
 speech of their thoughts, of their dreams." The 
 English drama of the time of Robertson was neither 
 given in the words that were at the command of 
 the people it pretended to portray, nor was its 
 speech magnificent ; it was " just fantastic." But 
 whatever we mean by realism, so long as we do not 
 62
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 mean what the lawyers mean nor what the actor- 
 managers fancy they mean, we shall be pointing to 
 that quality in a work of art by which the reality 
 of life is given, within the conventions that are 
 proper and necessary to the art, without diminution. 
 The term has, in its general applications, but a 
 negative usefulness. To say that a work which 
 purports to picture life is lacking in realism, is to 
 say that it is not a good picture. But to say that 
 it has realism is, or should be, a work of superero- 
 gation. 
 
 This digression will have been pardonable if it 
 has served to make impossible to our minds the 
 idea that to wear Wolsey's cloak is to give a true 
 performance of Wolsey, or even to assist in any 
 degree to that end ; or that to transfer Piccadilly 
 Circus bodily into the theatre, however remarkable 
 the endeavour, has anything whatever to do with 
 dramatic reality. In that drama whose end, as 
 Sir Arthur Pinero has affirmed once or twice and as 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has never tired of affirm- 
 ing, is to picture life, our only demand is that there 
 shall be no diminution in the sense of reality. That 
 we do demand this, those who have welcomed a 
 movement towards greater realism in the English 
 theatre not more than those who have fancied 
 idly that it has connoted something only " sordid 
 and depressing," is every day evident. Some well- 
 intentioned play, one of the queer fish cast up into 
 publicity out of the great ocean of the deservedly 
 
 63
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 unacted, will show us the boudoir of a Duchess, 
 with her dressing-table at one end, or perhaps her 
 bed, the safe in which she keeps her priceless 
 necklace of black pearls at the other, and at the 
 back a table at which her guests refresh themselves. 
 May not the dramatist point to the convenience of 
 his scheme, and remind us of the " most outrageous 
 convention " which meets the realist on the very 
 threshold of the theatre ? And yet, one and all of 
 us, we refuse his story our belief ; and why, unless 
 it is the diminution in reality that is the offence ? 
 When we look at Pieter Saenredam's picture of the 
 Church of St. Bavon as it hangs on the wall of the 
 gallery, we shall not mistake it for a real church 
 in Haarlem — it would be time for the curator to 
 take us in charge if we did. But we are delighted 
 because we are conscious that there has not been 
 any diminution in the sense of reality ; while the 
 artist has added, what Pater has said the best of 
 the Dutch genre painters always added, " a more 
 and more purged and perfected delightfulness of 
 interest." That we shall have Mr. Jones with us 
 when we say that this is a task of great difficulty, 
 we know ; because we have heard him say that 
 already. " For the purposes of the stage, human 
 lives have to be woven into a consecutive story, 
 and this story has to be chopped into three or 
 four acts of an average three-quarters of an hour 
 each." But art is difficult ; and why, alone of the 
 arts, should the drama refuse the difficult ? Cer- 
 64
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 tainly the drama, over and over again, has achieved 
 the difficult, from the " Antigone " to " Rosmers- 
 holm " ; why should Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who 
 saw that what was wrong with the English theatre 
 was its inability to remember the days when it was 
 an art, have stopped at the difficult and put us off 
 with big words ? It is true that the most stupen- 
 dous difficulty, the most outrageous convention 
 meet the artist on the very threshold of the theatre ; 
 but the difficulty and convention to be met on the 
 threshold of the theatre are no different in kind, 
 however they may differ in degree, from the 
 difficulty and the convention to be met on the 
 threshold of any other of the arts. We may know 
 the artist by his ability to overcome the difficulty 
 and to shape the convention to the service of his 
 vision of life. We may know him in no other way. 
 It is because the English theatre had not shown 
 itself able, or even anxious, to do this for a century 
 that we know there were no artists in it ; only 
 practical dramatists, crying out about the diffi- 
 culties of the theatre, and content to perform the 
 different function of keeping it open. 
 
 No, the mistake of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones was 
 that he thought it would be a very easy business 
 to invent character and dialogue that would be 
 " good enough " ; that would be sufficiently 
 lifelike, that is to say, to give us the pleasure that 
 might fairly be demanded from the theatre. Or 
 perhaps his mistake was in thinking that because 
 
 E 65
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 in his generation reality was not expected in the 
 theatre the last way to write plays that would be 
 successful was to bother about it. Or perhaps, 
 again, he never thought very clearly upon the 
 subject of dramatic reality at all. Mr. Jones's 
 first approach to the theatre was by means of the 
 little pieces that all the other clever fellows were 
 writing. One of the first of these was called 
 Harmony, and was about an old blind organist 
 who drank and a young organist who got his job 
 and fell in love with his daughter. The despair 
 of the old blind organist was only relieved by 
 the humours of a comic bailiff's man in possession. 
 Enter the young organist, who tells us in an aside 
 that the old blind organist is still to be organist, 
 with himself as assistant organist; whereupon the old 
 blind organist is so much moved by his daughter's 
 invoking her mother's memory that he dashes his 
 glass to the ground and gives up the drink for 
 ever. Let us complete the picture of life with a 
 fragment of speech from the bailiff's man : " It's 
 a very pretty instrument," he says, " a jews' 'arp 
 is ; the wolume of sound aint so overpowering as a 
 horgin." It is permissible to ask whether the 
 dramatist with his own ear had ever heard that 
 intrusive " w " since he laid down the works of 
 Dickens. If not, the young Mr. Jones was already 
 making too much of the inviolability of convention. 
 " After I had obtained a great financial success in 
 melodrama, and was temporarily in a position to 
 66
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 write a play to please myself rather than to suit 
 
 the exigencies of a theatrical manager " Ah, 
 
 what did Mr. Jones do then ? He wrote Saints and 
 Sinners. Saints and Sinners is the story of a 
 Nonconformist minister of religion whose daughter 
 is seduced by a wicked captain in the Army, who 
 takes her to his villa to live with him. To him she 
 says, " Eustace, Eustace, if you do not mean to 
 make me your wife, in mercy say so, and kill me ! " 
 To herself, in soliloquy, she says, " Oh, I have 
 passed the boundaries, stepped over the eternal 
 landmarks ! Yes, you are sure of me ! and I shall 
 grow to be as wicked as you are ! Yes, as wicked," 
 &c. To her father, who comes to the villa in search 
 of her, she says, " Oh, don't touch me ! Don't 
 speak to me ! Do you know what I am ? Leave 
 me ; I'm not fit you should touch me." Neverthe- 
 less she goes home with him, and is taken to church 
 by her father, but the tradesmen of his congregation, 
 or perhaps it is the tradesmen's wives, will have 
 nothing more to do with a minister whose daughter 
 has been disgraced ; and father and daughter 
 together pass into poverty and retirement. Here, 
 attended by her father and her faithful early lover 
 George, Letty nurses the sick and dies remarking, 
 " Oh, you Christians, will you never learn to 
 forgive ? " " But " — alas for Mr. Jones's new-found 
 determination to please himself ! — " the death- 
 scene proving too sad for the genial associations 
 of the theatre where it was to be performed, I 
 
 67
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 accepted a kind suggestion from a well-known 
 critic, and changed the last scene into a happy union 
 between Letty and George." 
 
 For the diminished reality of his story in the 
 theatre, which, even so, he claimed to be " a study 
 and representation of life," Mr. Jones had two 
 excuses to put forward when he came, seven years 
 later, when the passing of the Anglo-American 
 Copyright Act made publication a possible course 
 for practical dramatists, to write a preface to his 
 play. First, the faithfulness of his play as a 
 representation of life had, he pointed out, to be 
 made subject to a due regard for the requirements 
 of the modern stage ; second, such life is after all 
 rather commonplace and uninteresting. "I do 
 not claim any great merit for Saints and Sinners" 
 he wrote, " apart from that of representing with 
 some degree of faithfulness, and with due regard 
 to the requirements of the modern stage, some 
 very widely spread types of modern middle- class 
 Englishmen. If it be objected that they are 
 rather commonplace and uninteresting, I can only 
 urge in defence that it is impossible to suppose 
 that God Himself can have taken any great degree 
 of pride in creating four-fifths of the present 
 inhabitants of the British Islands, and can hardly 
 be imagined as contemplating His Image in the 
 person of the average British tradesman without a 
 suspicion that the mould is getting a little out of 
 shape." So Mr. Henry Arthur Jones determined 
 68
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 to strengthen the hand of God by smiting the 
 Philistines and going in for Beauty, Mystery, 
 Passion, and Imagination. 
 
 He gave us Judah. The Rev. Judah Llewellyn 
 was again a Nonconformist minister of religion, 
 but this time young, mysterious, and passionate, a 
 sort of revivalist, "part Jewish and part Celtic " — 
 as his name may serve to suggest. Equally young, 
 passionate, and mysterious is Vashti, the young 
 lady who goes about the country performing 
 miracles of faith- healing. Now these two meet 
 at the house of an Earl, who has an only daughter 
 who is dying : " Fifty thousand a year, and one 
 dying child ! " as he is neatly summed up for us 
 in an " aside." The young lady is to perform 
 a faith- cure, and when the Earl promises her, if 
 she is successful, anything she cares to ask for up 
 to half his fortune, the young lady brings the 
 Earl " down stage " and says she would like him 
 to build a church for Judah. Then the faith-cure 
 commences. Now you must know that Vashti's 
 father is nothing but a common fraud, who has his 
 daughter in his power. For the purposes of her 
 miracle-working, he gives out that Vashti is living 
 entirely without food ; but in reality he is con- 
 veying it to her secretly every night. A Pro- 
 fessor who is also staying with the Earl has his 
 suspicions, and he keeps so close a watch upon the 
 movements of the pair that Vashti really comes 
 very near starvation. All this time, you must 
 
 C9
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 understand, Judah believes in her implicitly and 
 loves her with pure passion. It is a terrible 
 moment for him, and the great scene of the play, 
 when he stays up one night, as well as all the other 
 persons, serious and comic, and learns beyond the 
 shadow of a doubt that his Vashti, like souls of 
 common clay, can be hungry. The revivalist has 
 a little soliloquy all to himself : 
 
 I cannot think. Good is evil, day is night. Are you 
 angel or devil — or both ? What are you ? The brightest 
 star of all hell, the blackest fiend of all heaven ? What 
 are you ? Oh, if I had died before I knew ! 
 
 But Vashti is an angel, despite the fact that she 
 lives by food ; it is her father who is a devil, and 
 he is properly discredited and sent packing. The 
 Earl's daughter gets better. Whereupon the Earl 
 awards Vashti the church for Judah. But Judah, 
 knowing what he knows, cannot accept the church. 
 " No, Lady Eve ; there was a mistake in the title- 
 deeds. The building stones were not sound. Yes, 
 we will build our new church with our lives, and its 
 foundation shall be the truth." Did not Ibsen 
 end a play in somewhat the same manner ? 
 
 But Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, notwithstanding 
 his adventure with "A Doll's House," did not like 
 Ibsen any more than did Sir Arthur Pinero. One 
 of his next plays was a play in verse about the 
 Devil, and its prologue contained these words : 
 
 Shun the crude present with vain problems rife, 
 Nor join the bleak Norwegian's barren quest 
 70
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 For deathless beauty's self and holy zest 
 Of rapturous martyrdom in some base strife 
 Of petty dullards, soused in native filth. . . . 
 
 " Petty dullards, soused in native filth " — that 
 is Mr. Jones's word for the realistic drama. The 
 Tempter, however, remains Mr. Jones's only play 
 in verse. He obtained a great financial success 
 with The Dancing Girl ; he smote the Philistines 
 in several plays ; and then he sought deathless 
 beauty's self with Michael and His Lost Angel. 
 
 Michael and His Lost Angel is the story of another 
 minister of religion (Mr. Jones's drama, like the 
 bleak Norwegian's, is rich in ministers of religion), 
 this time a clergyman of the Church of England. 
 The clergyman takes a serious view of sexual 
 sin, and in the first act returns from a ceremony 
 in which a young girl, who has been led astray, 
 has made full confession of her fault, on his 
 advice, in open congregation. Now the clergy- 
 man is in the habit of retiring during the week 
 to the seclusion of an island which lies a few 
 miles off the coast of his parish ; and in this parish 
 has come to live a beautiful lady. In the first 
 act it is evident that the beautiful lady already 
 has some influence over the clergyman, and he 
 blames himself for allowing her to kiss the portrait 
 of his mother, which is his good angel, and hangs 
 always on the wall above his head. He sets 
 out for his island. In the second act we see him 
 there, and to him comes the beautiful lady. He 
 
 71
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 reproaches her, the evening wears on, the arrange- 
 ments she has made for her return are found to be 
 defective. The curtain to this act falls on the 
 words, " No boat will come to-night ! No boat 
 will come to-night ! " In the third act he is back 
 on the mainland, rumour has been busy, and the 
 father of the seduced young girl is telling the 
 clergyman to mete out to himself the same measure 
 he meted out to others. In the church built for 
 him with the beautiful lady's money he comes 
 face to face with her again. " The image of my 
 sin is a reptile," he says, " a greyish green reptile, 
 with spikes, and cold eyes without lids." He 
 confesses his sin to his people in open congrega- 
 tion, and retires to a monastery in Italy. Thither 
 comes the beautiful lady, when some years have 
 elapsed, and dies in his arms. The clergyman, 
 beneath the portrait of his mother, the good angel 
 he has lost, goes on living to expiate his sin. 
 
 The play was, said Mr. Joseph Knight, " in the 
 full sense a masterpiece," and certainly it is diffi- 
 cult to see why it should have failed to succeed 
 in the theatre for which it was written. We are 
 told that the impression got abroad that there 
 was " something immoral in the part of Audrey 
 Lesden " ; but then, there was something immoral 
 in the part of Paula Tanqueray, and that did not 
 keep people away. It is possible to contemplate 
 Michael and His Lost Angel being given to the 
 world again, as it is hardly possible to contemplate 
 72
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 Judah. The parallel instances of the young girl's 
 sin and that of the clergyman point forward to 
 Mr. Galsworthy's drama. It may be remarked 
 that the degree of faithfulness Mr. Jones permitted 
 himself in his representation of life had still a 
 due regard for the requirements of the modern 
 stage. When it is necessary that we should learn 
 about his heroine, we do so in this way : " What do 
 you know of her ? — Merely what I wrote you in my 
 letter. That she was, etc. etc. etc. Her great- 
 grandfather, I believe, was " and so on. 
 
 W T hen the third act opens, and we do not know 
 what happened on the island, " Let us go carefully 
 through it all as it happened, to make sure," say 
 the guilty pair, and they do so, and greatly oblige us. 
 But if we wish to see the height of Mr. Henry 
 Arthur Jones's achievement in the kind of play 
 that is a study and representation of life, we pass 
 on to Mrs. Dane's Defence. Mrs. Dane's Defence 
 is the story of the struggle of a young woman, 
 who has been unfortunate, to keep her place in 
 suburban society. Having been mixed up in an 
 ugly Continental scandal, she comes back to 
 England and pretends to be some one else. In 
 her capacity as some one else, she becomes engaged 
 to marry the adopted son of a judge. But she has 
 to cope with the judge. In the great scene of the 
 play the judge cross-examines her in the privacy 
 of his suburban library upon the story of her life. 
 We watch him out-matching her — out-matching 
 
 73
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 her at every point. The question comes, " When 
 was the last time you saw your cousin Felicia 
 Hindemarsh ? " ; then, " Woman, you're lying ! 
 . . . You are Felicia Hindemarsh." Our sym- 
 pathy is carefully retained for Mrs. Dane ; she is 
 not a bad woman, nobody warned her, she never 
 had a chance. In the end, while she is not allowed 
 to marry the judge's son, she is allowed to keep her 
 place in suburban society ; the judge's son falls 
 back upon a young girl who has loved him all the 
 time, and her aunt makes every one happy by 
 consenting to marry the judge. The first thing 
 that strikes the contemporary playgoer when he 
 is faced with Mrs. Dane's Defence is that here is 
 a play which ought to exist for the sake of a woman 
 who lied because of her deep love, but which exists 
 in fact for the sake of a high-handed, if sympathetic 
 judge. 
 
 It is the Trail of the Actor-Manager that we have 
 come upon. The dramatist blazed this trail with 
 The Silver King, and he has never ceased to follow 
 it. We understand now what Mr. Jones meant 
 by a due regard for the requirements of the modern 
 stage. The " requirements of the modern stage " 
 are the Actor-Manager's requirements. The Actor- 
 Manager's requirements are, stated shortly, that 
 he shall be "a bright, shrewd man of the world, 
 about fifty " with a third act in which to decide 
 the destinies of several persons, a fourth act in 
 which to lay siege successfully to a younger heart 
 74
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 that has long held out against him — although 
 how it has succeeded so long in holding out against 
 his masterful charm remains a mystery — and a 
 free permission throughout all four acts to tell 
 the story of his life, whenever it may seem to him 
 to be apposite. It will be found that Mrs. Dane's 
 Defence fulfils all these requirements, just as 
 satisfactorily as do Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's 
 principal comedies, with which we shall have to 
 deal in a moment. The Actor-Manager, we are at 
 liberty to suppose, was that " most outrageous 
 convention," which, it will be remembered, met the 
 realist on the very threshold of the theatre. For 
 the purposes of the Actor-Manager human lives 
 have to be woven into a consecutive story, and this 
 story has to be chopped into three or four acts of 
 an average three-quarters of an hour each, because 
 that is the length the Actor-Manager likes best. 
 
 In the fact that Mr. Jones writes Speeches for 
 Actor-Managers we have the key to his dramatic 
 diction, whether comic or serious. This is from the 
 serious play we have just been regarding : 
 
 Sir Daniel. When I came up to London to read for 
 the Bar, I fell very desperately in love with my landlady's 
 sister, a lady some six years older and some two stone 
 heavier than myself. She was in the mantle business, and 
 wore a large crinoline. I used to call her my Bonnie Louisa. 
 My father got wind of it, came up to town and promptly 
 shattered our apple-cart ; sent Bonnie Louisa flying to 
 Paris, and packed me off on a judicial commission to 
 India. 
 
 75
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Lal. I don't see the point of the story, sir. 
 
 Sib Daniel. Twelve years after, I happened to be 
 coming down the Edgware Road on a Sunday morning, 
 and I met Bonnie Louisa with a husband and five children, 
 all in their Sunday best. 
 
 Lal. Still I don't see the point, sir. 
 
 Sir Daniel. I did ! I hurried to church and devoutly 
 thanked Heaven that my father had had the sense and the 
 courage to do for me what I'm trying to do for you to-night. 
 [Very firmly.] Now, my boy, you'll take this post under 
 Sir Robert Jennings. 
 
 That is the Actor-Manager in the act of managing. 
 It is true that the point of his story (which we 
 cannot blame Lionel for not seeing) in real life 
 would be grossly insulting to the lady his son is 
 in love with, but we need not mind about that — 
 it gets its effect in Mr. Jones's theatre, where no 
 one minds about real life, but only about Beauty, 
 Mystery, Passion, and Imagination. And now for 
 the Actor-Manager in comedy : 
 
 Elaine. There is an immense future for Woman 
 
 Sir Richard [interrupting]. At her own fireside. There 
 is an immense future for women as wives and mothers, and 
 a very limited future for them in any other capacity. 
 While you ladies without passions — or with distorted and 
 defeated passions — are raving and trumpeting all over 
 the country, that wise grim old grandmother of us all, 
 Dame Nature, is simply laughing up her sleeve and snapping 
 her fingers at you and your new epochs and your new 
 movements. Go home ! Be sure that old Dame Nature 
 will choose her own darlings to carry on her own schemes. 
 Go home ! Go home ! Nature's darling woman is a stay- 
 at-home woman, a woman who wants to be a good wife 
 and a good mother, and cares very little for anything else. 
 76
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 [Elaine is about to speak, Sir Richard silences her xcith a 
 gesture.] Go home ! Go home, and don't worry the world 
 any longer about this tiresome sexual business, for, take 
 my word, it was settled once for all in the Garden of Eden, 
 and there's no more to be said about it. Go home ! Go 
 home ! Go home ! 
 
 Elaine [furious]. Sir Richard, you are grossly indelicate ! 
 
 Sir Richard [blandly]. I am. So's Nature. [Cheer- 
 fully.] Now I must go and dress for dinner. 
 
 Cannot you hear the rising inflexions of the voice, 
 so familiar and so lovable ? What chance for 
 Susan to remain Rebellious, with such a manager 
 among uncles about the house ? It is a delightful 
 world, this in which the Actor-Manager lives. 
 There is provision for applause as he enters it : 
 " Oh, nonsense, Nepean ; you're mistaken " — (his 
 first sentence must be just long enough for him to 
 get it out before the applause breaks in.) Once 
 on the stage, he moves through this world, blandly 
 interrupting people with his wisdom of it, cheerfully 
 moving off to dress for dinner when they offer to 
 reply. The condition of their existence around 
 him is that they serve him with easy dialectic lobs 
 that he may smite to the boundary. " Ah, pardon 
 my inexperience," he says, and they feel properly 
 crushed. His habitual tone, whether he be the 
 distinguished Q.C., the well-known judge, or merely 
 the famous soldier, is " the tone of a skilful cross- 
 examiner who is leading his witness unsuspectingly 
 on. " He manages them not only by moral suasion, 
 but by physical force as well ; " driving them 
 
 77
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 nearer to each other," or heading off a recalcitrant 
 wife down stage. When the moment comes he 
 illustrates the action with a chapter from the story 
 of his life. " I've had one great love story in my 
 life," he says. " Shall I tell you about it ? " To 
 the foolish young, " I've been twenty-five " is his 
 all-sufficient answer. " I'm not a hero," he says ; 
 " I'm not on a pedestal, I never put on a moral 
 toga. But I owe no woman a sigh or a sixpence. 
 I've never wronged any man's sister, or daughter, or 
 wife." He has had, of course, his " little amours " ; 
 would he be the man he is, able to manage every- 
 body's business, if he had not ? "I became 
 successful, and met other women, had my affairs 
 with them — I won't call them love-affairs — some 
 of them graceful, some of them romantic, none of 
 them quite degrading ..." Even the Devil, in 
 Mr. Jones's poetical play, has the principles of 
 the Actor-Manager : 
 
 It isn't fair to tell against a woman. 
 
 You've had your frolic ; now be wise. Forget her. 
 
 Out of the Actor-Manager's youthful frolics has 
 come the wisdom he is able to impart to other 
 men : " That's all right. Love 'em, worship 'em, 
 make the most of 'em ! Go down on your knees 
 every day and thank God for having sent them into 
 this dreary world for our good and comfort. But, 
 don't break your heart over 'em ! Don't ruin your 
 career for 'em ! Don't lose a night's rest for 'em ! 
 78
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 They're not worth it [very softly] — except one ! " 
 It is a delightful world for Actor- Managers. " Go 
 home ! " he has but to say, for Lady Susan to go 
 back to her husband, for Lady Jessica to go back 
 to her husband, for Mrs. Dane to go out into the 
 night and to her child. And when lovers are 
 finished parting, because he tells them to, he turns 
 and secures his own loved One in the end. 
 
 This " outrageous convention " of the Actor- 
 Manager was good enough to produce Mrs. Dane's 
 Defence on the one hand ; it was good enough to 
 produce The Liars on the other. The Liars 
 remains the most representative artificial comedy 
 of its generation, and the masterpiece of Mr. 
 Henry Arthur Jones. It shows at their best its 
 author's powers of pleasant play construction, less 
 stiffly formal than Pinero's ; it exhibits some 
 understanding of comic diction as existing apart 
 from Oscar Wilde. We are bound to find Wilde's 
 influence on his elder contemporary in the theatre 
 marked very clearly, but Mrs. Dane's Defence owes 
 more to the author of " Lady Windermere's Fan " 
 than The Liars owes to the author of "The 
 Importance of Being Earnest." The Canon and 
 the Bulsom-Porters, as constituent figures in the 
 play about the woman who was not a bad woman, 
 have moments, even in their diction, which bring to 
 mind the dramatist who, for a little interlude in his 
 own work as artist, joined in the game of keeping 
 the theatres open. But The Liars is quite definitely 
 
 79
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's own. We may see its 
 author's powers of comic diction, more particularly 
 in an effective use of verbal repetition. " Give me 
 a woman that lets a man call his soul his own," 
 says Freddie Tatton. " That's all I want, Coke, to 
 call my soul my own." When Lady Jessica has run 
 her risk, the dreadful Risk of Becoming Declassee, 
 her reiterated story is quite funny, " I must have 
 taken the wrong turning, for instead of finding 
 myself at the station I found myself at the ' Star 
 and Garter.' " Dolly, who is to say that she too 
 dined there, is quite willing to stick to it, " Only 
 I should like to know where I dined. Where did 
 I dine ? " In other ways, too, Mr. Jones comes 
 near to wit. " I will be a cipher no longer," says 
 Freddie, to which his wife replies, " Run away to 
 your club, Freddie, and think over what figure you 
 would like to be. I dare say we can arrange it." 
 " Your Freddie is such a poor little pocket- 
 edition of a man," says Lady Jessica ; while 
 Sir Christopher's word for the amusing third-act 
 imbroglio is the right one, " We're taking too many 
 partners into this concern." For the rest, the play 
 is Sir Christopher's, in the manner we have seen ; 
 and as for the indiscretion of Lady Jessica, it is 
 no more than Lady Susan's, " There wasn't even 
 so much as an innocent flirtation ! There wasn't 
 indeed ! " This earlier comedy, The Case of 
 Rebellious Susan, foreshadowed The Liars in the 
 closest possible fashion, sharing its form without 
 80
 
 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 
 
 quite attaining to its distinctness of comic dialogue 
 or imbroglio. It is instructive to read of Sir 
 Richard, in his managing scene, that " whenever 
 the business of the stage allows it, he shows to the 
 audience that he is most keenly watching every 
 word, movement, and glance " ; for in the Play 
 for Actor- Managers, than Stage Business there was 
 no more important contributory part. 
 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has written other 
 plays, both comic and serious. In some, like 
 The Manoeuvres of Jane, the Actor- Manager was 
 provided with little else than Stage Business ; 
 he fell into the sea and got wet, being a comic 
 rather than a sympathetic Actor-Manager. In 
 other comedies, in the quarrelling scene of Dolly 
 Reforming Herself in particular, there was some of 
 the old adroitness of the lying scene in The Liars ; 
 in The Ogre, the Actor-Manager nailed up the 
 breeches over the fireplace, and the familiar 
 cadences about Woman had all the old ring ; but 
 in his more serious plays, it must be concluded, 
 Mr. Jones has ceased to attract. Since we failed 
 to recognize ourselves in The Hypocrites he has 
 taken to smiting the Philistines in studies and 
 representations of English life that are consumed 
 in America, where perhaps they find them quite 
 satisfying. Is it possible that the English theatre 
 has passed on to something with a greater air 
 of vraisemblance ? The dramatist of The Liars 
 knew the names of all the wines and sauces, 
 
 f 81
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 but very little about the heart of man. We 
 owe him many pleasing characters and scenes, 
 most of them as essentially false as the falsities 
 and theatricalities he supposed himself, like 
 Robertson, to be superseding. " Wonder at nothing 
 that you find in the heart of a woman, or the heart 
 of a man," we read at the end of Lady Susan's 
 comedy, " God has put everything there." No, 
 it was not the hand of God, but the hand of the 
 practical dramatist ; and that is why there is 
 nothing there to wonder at. 
 
 82
 
 Ill 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 MR. HENRY ARTHUR JONES once spoke 
 of his endeavour as " to bring some kind 
 of style and form into the art of play- 
 writing," but it was Oscar Wilde who really did 
 this. Wilde's importance to the English drama is 
 that, at whatever cost in other things, he made 
 clear the necessity of style. Characteristically, in 
 giving the English drama style again he took care 
 to rob it of sincerity. " In all the unimportant 
 matters sincerity, not style," he wrote as critic, " is 
 the essential. In all important matters, style, not 
 sincerity, is the essential." Pleased with this, as 
 artist he gave it to one of the best of the persons in 
 his trivial comedy to say again. Now the greatest 
 of Wilde's claims upon our gratitude is that to him 
 the drama was a matter of importance. It was a 
 matter of grave importance, not as it is to trades- 
 men, because it serves to keep the theatres open, 
 but as it is to the artist, because it is an opportunity 
 for the personal expression of something that has 
 
 83
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 beauty. " The artist is the creator of beautiful 
 things " were the first words of that credo which 
 Wilde set as a preface in the forefront of his Dorian 
 Gray. It is his greatest claim upon our gratitude 
 that when he came to the theatre he did not for- 
 get this. It will not do to be misled by the 
 fact that he wrote " trivially " for it into thinking 
 that the theatre was not, to Wilde, an important 
 matter. To write trivially was one of Wilde's 
 poses. Perhaps it was the favourite of his poses 
 to be trivial about those things which are far too 
 important, as he would say, ever to be serious 
 about. 
 
 We do well to start thus with an antithesis, even 
 if it be only the well-worn antithesis between style 
 and sincerity. Of course there is no true antithesis 
 between style and sincerity ; sincerity, on the 
 contrary, is the greatest possible producer of good 
 style ; but Wilde must have his antithesis. His 
 comedy is the comedy of antithesis. Verbally (and 
 in writing of the drama of W T ilde one naturally 
 writes of its verbal aspects first), verbally the joy in 
 a Wilde comedy is nearly always the sudden joy of 
 the antithesis. " I assure you that the amount 
 of things I and my poor dear sister were taught 
 not to understand was quite extraordinary. But 
 modern women understand everything, I am told." 
 This degenerates very simply into the trick anti- 
 thesis, with its lesser joy or no joy at all, of which 
 Wilde's worser comedies are full ; the mere putting 
 84
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 of the unlikely word against the likely — " I can't 
 understand this modern mania for curates ... I 
 think it most irreligious " ; " Don't be led astray 
 into the paths of virtue," and so on. But what is 
 easily called paradox, and dismissed, is often 
 something quite true, to the statement of which an 
 antithetical form has been, perhaps perversely, 
 imparted. For example, we have Cecily's diary, 
 which " is simply a very young girl's record of her 
 own thoughts and impressions, and consequently 
 meant for publication." Conventionally, we expect 
 the " not " ; but who would say, with memories 
 extending from Harriette Wilson to Marie Bash- 
 kirtseff, and later, that the unconventional here is 
 not the witty expression of the truth ? We shall 
 often find in Wilde's work, at its best, the truth 
 of the unconventional ; the truth, if you like, of 
 masks. We may note at once that his comic 
 method is frequently the Omission of the Expected. 
 W T ilde's characteristic use of the comic dramatist's 
 weapon of surprise is a kind of amalgam of surprise 
 plus recognition, as in the incident of Cecily's diary. 
 And this may fittingly bring us to character. By 
 Wilde's antithetical method, a delicate flavouring 
 of satire is imparted to dialogue that is yet not 
 falsified beyond recognition of its essential truth. 
 Wilde cared far more for speaking personally 
 through his people than for giving them that life 
 by which they might speak for themselves, 
 but their speech is often not untrue to character 
 
 85
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 because character has been so skilfully selected 
 and limited. 
 
 The characters of Wilde's comedies may be 
 divided into those that are plain and those that 
 are coloured by their author's more personal pre- 
 dilections. The coloured are more numerous than 
 the plain, and certainly more interesting. The 
 plain are the " good women " — Lady Windermere, 
 Lady Chiltern, Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Hester, the 
 American young woman ; these are sometimes 
 allowed a dash of verbal colour it takes all their 
 Puritanism or their interest in the Housing of the 
 Poor to resist, and Mrs. Erlynne, that good woman, 
 merges nearly into the coloured. There are the 
 good men, of which Lord Windermere and Sir 
 Robert Chiltern are one type, and Gerald Arbuth- 
 not, the " straight " boy, is another. John 
 Worthing has to be serious for the purposes of the 
 trivial comedy, and so, lest he, too, lapse into some- 
 thing of his author's incurable zest, he is made a 
 J. P. But the method of antithesis is clearly seen 
 to be still at work in the matter of character when 
 we compare Jack even for a moment with the 
 trivial Algernon who is set down beside him. 
 Algernon Moncrieff, the Bunburyist, is the type 
 of which Viscount Goring, Lord Darlington, Lord 
 Illingworth, younger or older, more amusing or 
 less amusing, are but variations. These are the 
 coloured persons, who shine with the reflected glow 
 of the gossamer good things it delighted Wilde to 
 86
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 let fly from their mouths — his own good things, 
 "ve are certain, more often than not. Other 
 persons, coloured still with his own idiosyncrasy, 
 hut adversely as it were, figures of satire, are 
 Tuppy, the most good-natured man in London ; 
 ths young fools — Cecil Graham, who likes people 
 to ask him how he is, and Dumby, who has been 
 wildly, madly adored ; the old fools — the Earl of 
 Caversham, Canon Chasuble, and the Archdeacon. 
 There are the discreetly uncommunicative men- 
 servants, one of whom surprises Goring and us by 
 his " clever talk " into a sudden memory of the 
 Duchess of Berwick's little chatterbox. This 
 brings us to the women, and we may well begin 
 with the young ones. 
 
 " The most wonderful thing in the world — 
 youth 1 There is nothing like youth," says 
 Lord Illingworth. It is impossible to deny to 
 Wilde's comedies a sincere zest in youth. His 
 triumphant young girls, talking glibly, are its 
 embodiment. " How a little love and good com- 
 pany improves a woman ! " says Mrs. Sullen in 
 the old comedy ; and we think of the words in 
 regard to Wilde's Cecily Cardew, for the first time 
 in the theatre since Lady Teazle. Over against 
 Cecily with her watering-can is set Gwendolen and 
 her lorgnette, with great art ; both are delightfully 
 youthful, although Gwendolen is as obviously 
 suited to the serious Jack as Cecily is to the trivial 
 Algernon, since it is likeness that satisfies, as 
 
 87
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill has informed us, however 
 unlikeness may attract. Wilde's zest in youth 
 overflows into his stage directions : " enter Mabel 
 Chiltern in the most ravishing frock." It is a 
 particularly jolly way he has of poking fun it 
 himself in his stage directions ; after Lady Basildon 
 has entered and reminded him of an idyll by 
 Watteau, after Lord Caversham has entered and 
 proved to be like a portrait by Lawrence, after 
 Mrs. Cheveley has entered looking rather like an 
 orchid, Mabel enters, and " to sane people," we 
 read, " she is not reminiscent of any work of art." 
 She and Goring " blow kisses," like Gwendolen and 
 Jack on another occasion. " Lady Bracknel looks 
 vaguely about as if she could not understand what 
 the noise was." Lady Bracknel is the type of the 
 first of Mrs. Allonby's categories for her elders, 
 " the dowagers," with the Duchess of Berwick, 
 Lady Hunstanton, and Lady Markby for paler 
 embodiments ; " the dowdies " are Lady Jed- 
 burgh, Lady Caroline Pontefract, and so on. The 
 contemporaries of Mrs. Allonby, " types of exquisite 
 fragility," women not quite young but certainly 
 not quite old, are Lady Plymdale and Lady Stut- 
 field, the latter of whom goes through two comedies, 
 one graceful kneel. " But do you really think a 
 man's chin can be too square ? I think a man 
 should look very, very strong, and that his chin 
 should be quite, quite square." Impossible to 
 deny to Lady Stutfield (though her too-too style 
 88
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 is the very most personal thing, reading rather like 
 a good-natured parody of Wilde's own) a general 
 truth to the little parcel of brilliantly observed 
 traits that make up her character. She is as true 
 to character, and as true to her creator, as Lady 
 Bracknel is when she speaks about Land. 
 
 In Wilde's comic dialogue, inconsequence plays 
 as large a part as the antithetical quality we have 
 noted. Indeed, the one comes in with the other ; the 
 inconsequence is a kind of antithesis so amusingly 
 strained as to give rise to the pleasure of surprise. 
 Antithesis serves its purpose to tell the plain truth ; 
 for example, " Only dull people are brilliant at 
 breakfast." But Wilde's comedies are filled with 
 persons who are amiably incompetent to speak 
 plainly the truth or anything else. They them- 
 selves are set over against the clever people, the 
 people who never mean a single word they say. 
 " My dear," the former remark, " how can you 
 say that ? There is no resemblance between the 
 two things at all." Their own way is to put two 
 and two together. They " run on." A country 
 some of whose States are as big as France and 
 England put together suggests to Lady Caroline 
 a country that is very draughty, and a draught 
 suggests mufflers, and mufflers her husband, who 
 won't wear his. A consequence so devastating in 
 its literalness we can only call inconsequence. 
 Wilde perfected this kind of comic inconsequence. 
 There is inconsequence for its own sake : 
 
 89
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Lady Bracknel. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I 
 think it is high time Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether 
 he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with 
 the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of 
 the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. 
 Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in 
 others. Health is the primary duty of life. I am always 
 telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take 
 much notice ... as far as any improvement in his ailments 
 goes. I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. 
 Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse 
 on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for 
 me. It is my last reception, and one wants something 
 that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end 
 of the season when every one has practically said whatever 
 they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not 
 much. 
 
 There is inconsequence elevated into a method : 
 
 Lord Goring. Well, the fact is, father, this is not my 
 day for talking seriously. I am very sorry, but it is not 
 my day. 
 
 Lord Caversham. What do you mean, sir ? 
 
 Lord Goring. During the Season, father, I only talk 
 seriously on the first Tuesday in every month, from four 
 to seven. 
 
 Lord Caversham. Well, make it Tuesday, sir, make it 
 Tuesday. 
 
 Lord Goring. But it is after seven, father, and my 
 doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after 
 seven. It makes me talk in my sleep. 
 
 Lord Caversham. Talk in your sleep, sir ? What does 
 that matter ? You are not married. 
 
 Lord Goring. No, father, I am not married. 
 
 Lord Caversham. Hum ! That is what I have come 
 to talk to you about, sir. . . . 
 90
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 The twists and turns of Lady Bracknel's diction — 
 one clause capping another only to be capped again, 
 the whole giving the impression that she speaks 
 whatever comes into her head without, however, 
 by some unlikely dispensation of Providence, ever 
 for a moment losing her author's fine sense of 
 phrase — are matched by the twists and turns of 
 Wilde's dramatic action. It is in this that the 
 trick of inconsequence serves him, as a deliberate 
 method by which to get back on to the right line 
 again. In a serious drama like Wilde's, which is 
 for the most part valuable for its comic interpola- 
 tions, some such method is essential. He called 
 his novel " an essay on decorative art," and that is 
 a name that might be given to each of the modern 
 plays in its turn. 
 
 For it is not the theme that we remember, it is the 
 comic passages with which the theme is decorated. 
 There is some effect of comic observation that he 
 wishes to make, and he makes it ; he does not 
 mind where. The reputation of a good woman, the 
 happiness of wife and husband, may hang in 
 the balance ; we are not to be denied our comic 
 interlude : 
 
 Dumby. Good evening, Lady Stutfield. I suppose this 
 will be the last ball of the season ? 
 
 Lady Stutfield. I suppose so, Mr. Dumby. It's been 
 a delightful season, hasn't it ? 
 
 Dumby. Quite delightful ! Good evening, Duchess. 
 I suppose this will be the last ball of the season ? 
 
 91
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Duchess of Berwick. I suppose so, Mr. Dumby. It 
 has been a very dull season, hasn't it ? 
 
 Dumby. Dreadfully dull ! Dreadfully dull ! 
 
 Mrs. Cowper-Cowper. Good evening, Mr. Dumby. 
 I suppose this will be the last ball of the season ? 
 
 Dumby. Oh, I think not. There'll probably be two 
 more. 
 
 A drama written for the sake of its interludes can 
 hardly be anything but inconsequent. That is why 
 The Importance of Being Earnest is immeasurably 
 the best of these plays, because it is all inconse- 
 quence. 1 Inconsequence for its own sake, incon- 
 sequence as a method of getting forward, what 
 does it matter, where everything in character and 
 dialogue has an equally delightful inconsequence ? 
 A play in which Algernon can eat all the cucumber 
 sandwiches prepared for his aunt, Lady Bracknel, 
 and quarrel with Jack because he takes one, and 
 silence his obvious retort with " That is quite a 
 different matter. She is my aunt," and leave us 
 feeling that he has spoken quite properly, is a play 
 that has evidently set up its own conventions, and 
 achieved a quite perfect success within them. The 
 inconsequence of The Importance of Being Earnest 
 is the gay inconsequence of youth, and its consis- 
 tency is wonderful. It is something a world apart 
 from the trick inconsequence by which the lady 
 
 1 " There is no use adding * place ' and ' time ' to the 
 scenario, as the unities are not in the scheme. In art I 
 am Platonic, not Aristotelian — tho' I wear my Plato 
 ' with a difference.' " — Wilde, Letter to a friend, December 18, 
 1898 (unpublished). 
 92
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 in the would-be serious play, when she is told that 
 there is an orchid in her greenhouse as beautiful 
 as the seven deadly sins, is made to say, " My dear, 
 I hope there is nothing of the kind. I will certainly 
 speak to the gardener." 
 
 The whole of Wilde's comic dialogue is notable 
 for its sense of phrase, its general high-pressure 
 excellence, and, in particular, its deft use of repe- 
 tition. When that admirable father of Lord 
 Goring's makes a habit of turning up at the wrong 
 moment, "It is very heartless of him, very heart- 
 less indeed," we are told, and the words are no 
 one's but Wilde's. Perfectly simply, they succeed 
 in being quite full of character. There is the 
 repetition of phrase and idea. Repetition in the 
 theatre has its own curious effectiveness, so much 
 greater than we should expect, or could give any 
 good reason for. The journeymen know this, and 
 make use of repetition for the enforcing of tension 
 or the imparting of some point of information we 
 must on no account miss — often so crudely as 
 to destroy the emotional effect they are trying 
 to build. Wilde took up all the instruments of 
 the theatrical journeymen, as we shall see more 
 fully in a moment, but he generally proved his 
 ability to use them more suitably. The repeated 
 word or phrase or idea is a case in point. It is an 
 instrument that Wilde is delighted to play upon. 
 Its simplest effect may be illustrated quite easily, 
 as when Lord Goring, having turned the tables 
 
 93
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 upon Mrs. Cheveley, returns to her the remark she 
 has addressed to him a few minutes before, " Oh ! 
 don't use big words. They mean so little " — with 
 an enormous accumulation in their effectiveness. 
 Wilde is for ever pulling off little effects of that 
 sort. But his use of dramatic repetition becomes 
 his own when he begins to play variations upon it. 
 Who but Wilde would have given to the Duchess 
 dear nieces, purely in order that she might tell us 
 again, at a much later stage, " It's those horrid 
 nieces of mine — the Saville girls — they're always 
 talking scandal " ? And what is The Importance of 
 Being Earnest but a^triumph of the deftly repeated 
 motive ? It is funny to hear in the first act from 
 Gwendolen's lips that there is something in that 
 name that inspires absolute confidence ; it is more 
 than twice as funny in the second act to hear from 
 Cecily's lips the same thing ; and further than that 
 Wilde does not go, for he understands, as the 
 common writer of farce does not, the precise point 
 at which repetition ceases to be serviceable. 1 He 
 never makes the mistake of thinking that because 
 
 1 His plays have the artist's fear of over-emphasis, in 
 a theatre where over- emphasis is the journeyman's substi- 
 tute for clearness of design and diction. " In printing the 
 new play, will you see that, instead of italics, the words 
 emphasized are spaced . . . ? It is, I believe, a Swedish 
 idea, but in spite of that I like it. Italics are to me over- 
 emphasis." — Wilde, Letter to a friend, March 20, 1899 
 (unpublished). 
 94
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 one baby or one pair of lovers is funny, and 
 because two babies or two pairs of lovers are twice 
 as funny, that six babies or six pairs of lovers are 
 of necessity six times as funny. Shakespeare 
 might have made the wood near Athens far more 
 populous with lovers, but he did not ; Wilde might 
 have gone on adding to the number of those inspired 
 by the name of Ernest, but he did not ; both were 
 masters of the art of dramatic repetition. But 
 perhaps Wilde's subtlest achievement in the art 
 is the Duchess of Berwick's little chatterbox, who 
 makes "Yes, mamma," serve all the purposes of 
 polite conversation, including engagement in 
 marriage. She may vary her intonation, she may 
 be permitted the luxury of an interrogation point 
 or even of a note of exclamation, but by the words 
 her author has given her she is bound ; and yet 
 it is impossible to say she is false to character. 
 This is her apotheosis : 
 
 Duchess of Berwick. Agatha, darling ! [Beckons her 
 over]. 
 
 Lady Agatha. Yes, mamma ! 
 
 Duchess of Berwick [aside]. Did Mr. Hopper defi- 
 nitely 
 
 Lady Agatha. Yes, mamma. 
 
 Duchess of Berwick. And what answer did you give 
 him, dear child ? 
 
 Lady Agatha. Yes, mamma. 
 
 Duchess of Berwick [affectionately]. My dear one ! 
 You always say the right thing. Mr. Hopper ! James ! 
 Agatha has told me everything. How cleverly you have 
 both kept your secret 
 
 95
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Hopper. You don't mind my taking Agatha off to 
 Australia, then, Duchess ? 
 
 Duchess of Berwick. To Australia ? Oh, don't 
 mention that dreadful vulgar place. 
 
 Hopper. But she said she'd like to come with me. 
 
 Duchess of Berwick [severely]. Did you say that, 
 Agatha ? 
 
 Lady Agatha. Yes, mamma. 
 
 Duchess of Berwick. Agatha, you say the most silly 
 things possible. . . . 
 
 " It is perfectly phrased " — as the clever people in 
 Wilde's comedies retort upon the plain people 
 when they ask what is meant. Before we leave, 
 for the moment, the verbal side of Wilde's art, we 
 shall do well to notice his mastery of the perfect 
 phrase. The Archdeacon, for example, whose 
 conversation for the drawing-room is limited to the 
 exceptional ailments of Mrs. Archdeacon : 
 
 The Archdeacon. Her deafness is a great privation 
 to her. She can't even hear my sermons now. She reads 
 them at home. But she has many resources in herself, 
 many resources. 
 
 Lady Hunstanton. She reads a good deal, I suppose ? 
 
 The Archdeacon. Just the very largest print. The 
 eyesight is rapidly going. But she's never morbid, never 
 morbid. 
 
 " The eyesight is rapidly going " — how perfect that 
 choice of the definite article, and how irresistible ! 
 It is for his mastery over these little matters of appeal 
 to the ear that Wilde the dramatist can hardly be 
 over- valued. His drama is " perfectly phrased." 
 96
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 But it would be a mistake to assume that 
 Wilde's complement as a dramatist stops short at 
 a hold over words. It is easy to see that a writer 
 whose diction was so self-consciously clear-cut, 
 the best of whose work had always the quality of 
 good conversation, would turn to the theatre to 
 hear, as it were, his own voice. The theatre was 
 to Wilde the mirror, into which only, according to 
 his Salome 1 , we should look. When he comes to 
 the theatre, however, we see, not by his sense of 
 speech alone, that for the theatre he is predestinate. 
 Another and infinitely more subtle mastery is 
 Wilde's. Its symbol is the famous entry of Jack, 
 " dressed in the deepest mourning," into the 
 second act of The Importance of Being Earnest. 
 Here is something, it cannot be too strongly 
 emphasized, that is altogether above speech. It 
 may stand for the elusive part of the dramatist's 
 art, by which, above all other gifts, if he have it, 
 we know him to be a dramatist. It is the ability 
 to use the theatre, none of its multiplex oppor- 
 tunities going unemployed. One would say that it 
 is the black standing figure, so solemnly intrusive, 
 that causes the laughter to go up, percussion upon 
 repercussion. But there is nothing irresistibly 
 hilarious in a figure dressed in deep mourning, evert 
 in sheer physical contrast with an English garden 
 on an afternoon in July. The preparation is every- 
 thing. It is the triumph of comic preparation of 
 which our laughter is the sign. Wilde's mastery 
 
 g 97
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 of dramatic preparation is something that so rarely 
 deserted him that we are bound to concede it to 
 him as one of the most native of his gifts. Look 
 only at the first act of this comedy, the sandwiches, 
 the mystery of Ernest, the intriguing mention of 
 Cecily, the Bunburying, the artfully nonchalant 
 curtain that leaves us so furiously wishing to go 
 on. This first act is the perfect preparation for 
 everything in the comedy that surprisingly follows ; 
 the sufficient preparation, the only just and most 
 beautifully sufficient preparation, for the entry of 
 Jack dressed in mourning for the non-existent 
 brother who is at present making love to Cecily 
 in the garden. There is not a word too little, there 
 is not a word too much ; un jeopardized, the effect 
 is an effect of comic preparation unequalled in the 
 English theatre in its delicate certainty since 
 Sheridan's screen fell down. Wilde never did 
 anything else quite so good, because he never wrote 
 any other comedy nearly so spontaneously perfect ; 
 but we may find in all his work the same ability. 
 The return of Lord Goring from the conservatory, 
 in the fourth act of An Ideal Husband, " with an 
 entirely new buttonhole," is, on a smaller scale 
 of preparation, just the same thing ; we know, 
 from talk of buttonholes, from talk of " the usual 
 palm-tree " in the conservatory, just who has made 
 the buttonhole for him ; the incident is only less 
 exciting in the theatre because its importance is | 
 subsidiary and not central. It is the achievement 
 98
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 of Jack's entry that every single thread of the 
 comedy is drawn up into this moment, a moment 
 whose appeal would seem to be visual merely. 
 It is the misfortune of the best things in the 
 other comedies of Wilde that they are but sub- 
 sidiary to a central theme that does not interest 
 us at all. This is the penalty of Wilde's clever- 
 ness, out of which he wrote his plays about good 
 women and long-suffering politicians, to please the 
 actor- managers, and to win for himself some kind 
 of a mirror into which he might look, albeit 
 flawed. 
 
 But if Wilde in these plays is clever, he is not 
 stupid- clever, in that useful distinction of Lord 
 Goring's. The third act of An Ideal Husband 
 really is the " greatest " of " great " scenes. We 
 may imagine its author, although not caring at 
 all for the reputation of his innocent woman nor 
 for the villainy of his villainess, yet taking pleasure 
 in the thought that he had beaten the journeymen 
 at their own game. It will be remembered that 
 we have Mrs. Cheveley hidden in the drawing- 
 room, and the efforts of Goring, believing it is 
 Lady Chiltern who is there, to keep Chiltern from 
 opening the door. We have the scene of the 
 bracelet between Goring and Mrs. Cheveley, in 
 which he turns the tables upon her. We have the 
 scene of the letter, with its ironic conclusion, 
 " Thanks. I am never going to try to harm 
 Robert Chiltern again " — " Fortunately you have 
 
 99
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 not the chance, Mrs. Cheveley," when she has 
 just stolen the letter before our eyes. There is the 
 brilliant invention of the end ; serving to carry us 
 over to the fourth act with its moment of surprising 
 dramatic irony again, " . . . at all costs it must 
 not reach him. [Goes to the door and opens it] Oh ! 
 Robert is coming upstairs with the letter in his 
 hand." When Sir Arthur Pinero sets a scheming 
 woman to listen in an antechamber, we are to 
 believe that the most terrible consequences for all 
 concerned hang in the balance. When Mrs. Cheveley 
 is discovered, and the question put to her whether 
 listening to wonderful things through keyholes 
 is not rather like tempting Providence, her reply 
 is, " Oh ! surely Providence can resist temptation 
 by this time," and the scene is less than the 
 epigram which is its conclusion and excuse. Just 
 the same careless brilliance marks Wilde's other 
 " great scenes " — the third act of Lady Winder- 
 mere, with its business of the burned letter, the 
 fan, and the unobserved exit ; the third act of 
 A Woman of No Importance, with the kissing of 
 Hester by Illingworth and the " Stop, Gerald, 
 stop ! He is your own father ! " — a culmination 
 for which we have been prepared as skilfully as 
 Lady Windermere's simple words to her servant, 
 " I am particularly anxious to hear the names quite 
 clearly," prepare us for what is to follow in that 
 play. Wilde's work for the managers, careless in 
 detail, insincere in essentials as it may be, yet 
 100
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 shows him always with but little to learn about the 
 mystery of the theatre. 
 
 The insincerity we need not labour. That the 
 so-called De Profundi? has sincerity is an arguable 
 proposition, although, since it is an " important 
 matter," those who make much of sincerity would 
 probably be better advised, on Wilde's own 
 showing, to let their admiration stop short at the 
 style. But the insincerity of the emotional crises 
 shared in by Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne, 
 by Illingworth and Gerald and Hester and Mrs. 
 Arbuthnot, by Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern, is 
 sufficiently established by the fact that they do 
 not interest us. Evidence, if external evidence be 
 wanted, is not lacking that they did not interest 
 Wilde. If Wilde's real interest in his first play for 
 the London theatre had been in the " good woman " 
 it was ostensibly about, he would not have allowed 
 the ending of its first act to be altered in represen- 
 tation. It will be remembered that the scene as 
 Wilde wrote it reads as follows : 
 
 Lord Windermere [calling after her]. Margaret ! 
 Margaret I [A pause.] My God ! What shall I do ? I 
 dare not tell her who this woman really is. The shame 
 would kill her. 
 
 [Sinks down into a chair and buries his face in his hands.] 
 
 But in the theatre these words were given, " My 
 God ! What shall I do ? I dare not tell her that 
 this woman is her mother ! " They were so 
 
 101
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 given with the approval of the author, although 
 continued interest in the central theme of the play 
 becomes quite impossible if we learn the truth any 
 earlier than the point near the end of the second 
 act at which the author had originally taken care 
 to impart it. But it did not matter. Neither he 
 nor we are under any delusion that it seriously 
 mattered. The only importance of this maladroit 
 piece of interference with the " sympathetic " story 
 of a woman more sinned against than sinning is 
 that it spoiled a pretty pattern. To write a play 
 whose first act ended " Oh ! no one. No one in 
 particular. A woman of no importance," and 
 whose last act ended " Oh ! no one. No one in 
 particular. A man of no importance," went for 
 far more with Wilde, it is likely, than the story 
 of a woman's wrongs triumphed over which came 
 in between. It must have been so, or it could not 
 have happened that the most interesting thing 
 about the completed story is its decoration. In 
 fact Wilde is at one with Mr. Bayes of "The 
 Rehearsal " in saying, " Why, what the devil is a 
 Plot good for, but to bring in fine things ? " 
 
 And now it is time to turn from the group of 
 plays which Wilde wrote out of his cleverness to 
 please the managers, to the group of plays which 
 he wrote to please himself. These are not absolute 
 groups : The Importance of Being Earnest, while 
 finding its genesis in the first, can have no possible 
 cause for separation from the second ; while Vera, 
 102
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 one may surmise, was written less to please him- 
 self than to please the United States of America. 
 Still, there is good reason for separating Vera, The 
 Duchess of Padua, SalomS, La Sainte Courtisane, 
 and A Florentine Tragedy from the body of the 
 modern or drawing-room plays, if it is only a 
 reason of convenience. That it is little more will 
 be plain when it is remembered that Vera and The 
 Duchess of Padua were very early plays, that 
 Salome' dates from the year of Wilde's first entry 
 into the commercial theatres, and that La Sainte 
 Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy, partly written 
 in the year of his exit from the theatres, were left 
 still uncompleted at his death. 
 
 The only possible importance of Vera is that it 
 shows Wilde to have been possessed quite early 
 of what is sometimes called an aptitude for the 
 theatre. The dramatist who put out the lights at 
 the end of the first act of An Ideal Husband — so 
 that the room became almost dark, the only light 
 there was coming from the great chandelier that 
 hung over the staircase and illumined the tapestry 
 of the Triumph of Love — differed only in length 
 of experience from the dramatist who gave to the 
 first act of his drama of Russian revolution, an 
 inn scene, a " large door opening on snowy land- 
 scape at back of stage." This play about a 
 Tsarevitch who turns to the cause of the people is 
 remarkable, otherwise, for nothing but aptitude 
 in its worser sense ; an aptitude to write like 
 
 103
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Shakespeare — " warmed by the same sun, nurtured 
 by the same air, fashioned of flesh and blood like 
 to our own, wherein are they different to us (sic), 
 save that they starve while we surfeit," etc. etc. ; 
 a young man's aptitude to work himself into great 
 excitement over a theme for which he does not 
 really care in the least. Much of Vera is written 
 in a prose which unfortunately proves to be verse : 
 " Our wedding night ! — And if Death came himself, 
 methinks that I could kiss his pallid mouth, and 
 suck sweet poison from it," and so on. The next 
 play is written in what may be called intentional 
 verse, and is certainly better in every way. It still 
 echoes Shakespeare ; we hear about " the dreadful 
 secret of a father's murder " ; the play's comic 
 relief is quite comically close to its excellent 
 original : 
 
 Moranzone. Who is accused of having killed him ? 
 
 Second Citizen. Why, the prisoner, sir. 
 
 Moranzone. But who is the prisoner ? 
 
 Second Citizen. Why, he that is accused of the Duke's 
 murder. 
 
 Moranzone. I mean, what is his name ? 
 
 Second Citizen. Faith, the same which his godfathers 
 gave him. . . . 
 
 and so on, eight years together, dinners and suppers 
 and sleeping hours excepted. Guido, when he 
 says to the Duchess — 
 
 Everything is dead — 
 Save one thing only, which shall die to-night, 
 104
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 shows a true appreciation of one of the most 
 admirable of dramatic utterances, " Those that 
 are married already, all but one, shall live." For 
 the rest, The Duchess of Padua is sufficiently 
 Wilde's. Its culminating scene is on the palace 
 stairway, up which young Guido creeps to 
 avenge his father's murder on the cruel Duke 
 who sleeps with Beatrice beyond the curtain at 
 the stairway's head. Before he reaches it, out 
 from the curtain slips the Duchess with a bloody 
 dagger in her hand ; for love of him, she herself 
 has done the deed. Seeing it done, he recoils 
 from her ; and seeing him recoil from her and her 
 deed of love, she recoils in her turn and denounces 
 her lover as the murderer to the palace guard. 
 That is the tableau on which the third act ends. 
 The final tableau is also typically Wilde's. Guido 
 is in prison, awaiting the hangman's coming. To 
 him comes Beatrice, and drinks the poison provided 
 for Guido by a kindly gaoler. They live in love 
 together for the few moments while the poison does 
 its work — a poignant situation that M. Loti has 
 made good use of in a later drama. She dies, and 
 Guido kills himself with her dagger. "As he 
 falls across her knees," we read, " he clutches 
 at the cloak which is on the back of the chair, and 
 throws it entirely over her. There is a little pause. 
 Then down the passage comes the tramp of sol- 
 diers. ..." Thus early, we see Wilde's visual 
 faculty at work. The very picture of the stage is 
 
 105
 
 DRAMATIQ PORTRAITS 
 
 a design. The play is nothing more, a beautiful 
 design ; when the Duchess says : 
 
 Sit down here, 
 A little lower than me ; yes, just so, sweet, 
 That I may run my fingers through your hair, 
 And see your face turn upwards like a flower 
 To meet my kiss ; 
 
 the same kind of pleasure is ours as when Cecily 
 puts her fingers through her dear boy's hair and 
 hopes that it curls naturally. The best of Wilde's 
 work is one in spirit ; and so it is on the whole 
 with reassurance that we find in Vera a Prince 
 Paul Maraloffski who is nothing but an early 
 Illingworth, and hear in this play of sixteenth- 
 century Padua, as we might hear in any one of 
 the comedies of the drawing-room, that it is only 
 very ugly or very beautiful women who ever hide 
 1 heir faces. 
 
 As for action, it is in Wilde's drama never other 
 f ,han a pattern. Each of the plays in this group 
 is, not less but rather more than each of the modern 
 plays, an " essay on decorative art." Salomi is a 
 recurring pattern. When ten years pass and we 
 come to this play, we find it to be a variation on 
 the same theme of double recoil as that on which 
 the loves of Guido and Beatrice were a decoration. 
 The daughter of Herodias is amorous of the body 
 of Iokanaan the prophet, and, when he scorns her, 
 her amorousness turns to a hatred that is only 
 medicable by the gift of the prophet's severed head. 
 106
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 The Tetrach is amorous of Salome, and when he 
 turns on the steps of the palace and sees Salome 
 illumined by the sudden moonlight he orders her 
 to be crushed beneath the shields of the captains. 
 But Salomi is master work, where the earlier plays 
 were the work of an apprentice. The earlier plays 
 were over- opulent ; Salomi is the triumph of 
 selection. Salomi is written in French that is not 
 idiomatic but is suitable ; it has been rendered 
 into Wilde's English excellently by another hand. 
 In Salomi all Wilde's characteristic abilities as a 
 dramatist find their most concentrated and effec- 
 tive expression. Here the art of preparation 
 issues in the creation of apprehensiveness — always 
 the largest part in the success of tragic drama, 
 viewed upon its technical side. Here verbal repe- 
 tition is used directly for the evocation of an atmo- 
 sphere of foreboding. The talk about the moon, 
 the talk about to-night's strange beauty of the 
 princess, achieve their effect absolutely. The 
 dialogue is full of an extraordinary insistence, beat 
 upon beat, the rhythmic blows of the worker in 
 some strange metal who is unerring in his art. 
 " Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan." The 
 body of the Young Syrian falls dead between them. 
 " Princesse, le jeune capitaine vient de se tuer. ..." 
 
 Salome. Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan. 
 
 Je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan, je baiserai 
 ta bouche. 
 
 107
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Unremittingly, the blows go on. The Pharisees 
 and the Sadducees dispute about angels ; Tigellinus 
 holds the Stoics who kill themselves to be ridiculous 
 people, he himself regards them as being perfectly 
 ridiculous ; Herodias thinks that her husband is 
 ridiculous with his talk of the moon, which is like 
 the moon, that is all ; the voice of the invisible 
 prophet comes again and again ; Herod looks all 
 the while at Salome with an extraordinary concen- 
 tration — until the spell, become almost more than 
 we can bear, is broken. " Je veux qu'on m'apporte 
 pr^sentement dans un bassin d'argent ... la tete 
 d'lokanaan." Surprise is used here not to comic 
 effect but for the heightening of this apprehen- 
 siveness ; the soldiers have no sooner said that the 
 Tetrach will not come to this place, for he never 
 comes on the terrace, than he comes. Salome may 
 not have been worth doing, but it is useless to 
 deny the astonishing mastery with which it is 
 done. To Maeterlinck Wilde may have owed the 
 instrument of verbal repetition, but not the fero- 
 cious effectiveness of its use ; and it was not until 
 many years later, and then to less effect, that 
 Maeterlinck threw across the pattern of a play 
 the voice of Him of whom the prophet Iokanaan 
 was the forerunner. Wilde is much more reminis- 
 cent of Maeterlinck when he is writing easily and 
 badly in the modern plays. " Love is easily 
 killed," says Lady Windermere. " Oh ! how 
 108
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 easily love is killed." Anyone could have written 
 that ; but no one but Wilde, not even Maeterlinck, 
 could have written Salomi, even if he had wished 
 to do so. 
 
 There remain the two fragments. The nearest 
 of these to Salome" is La Sainte Courtisane, or The 
 Woman Covered with Jewels, which is written in 
 English, so far as it is written at all. Charac- 
 teristically, the decoration is there before the 
 theme ; the woman is covered with jewels before 
 she is created woman. But it is easy to see that 
 Myrrhina the courtesan who comes to the desert, 
 hearing of the beautiful young hermit, him who 
 will not look on the face of woman, and coveting 
 his love, was destined in the completed play to 
 gain not love but Christianity, while Honorius the 
 hermit, losing what he gave, went back to Alexan- 
 dria to live the life of pleasure from which Myrrhina 
 had come. We have not all that ; but what we 
 have is the atmosphere of expectation created by 
 the talk of two desert- dwellers, and by the words 
 of the woman, calculated as surely as the words of 
 Salome, " How strangely he spake to me, and with 
 what scorn did he regard me. I wonder why he 
 spake to me so strangely." We have speeches 
 and portions of speeches, filled with the names of 
 jewels and the names of perfumes and the names 
 of fruits ; names which decorate over-heavily the 
 Poems in Prose, but are here decorations upon 
 
 109
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 speeches nerved undeniably with drama. And then 
 abruptly we have the fragment's end : 
 
 Come with me, Honorius, and I will clothe you in a tunic 
 of silk. I will smear your body with myrrh and put 
 spikenard on your hair. I will clothe you in hyacinth and 
 put honey in your mouth. Love 
 
 Honorius. There is no love but the love of God. 
 
 With the antithesis, sharp as strophe and anti- 
 strophe, in our ears, we may go back to the " How 
 hard good women are ! How weak bad women 
 are ! " of Lady Windermere's drawing-room. Or 
 forward to the end of A Florentine Tragedy : 
 
 Bianca. Why 
 
 Did you not tell me you were so strong ? 
 Simone. Why 
 
 Did you not tell me you were beautiful ? 
 
 These are husband and wife. It was like Wilde 
 to provide this fragment not with a beginning, 
 but with an end — the end in which he was 
 interested. Another hand has since provided very 
 cleverly the necessary beginning, between wife 
 and would-be lover, so that the play is a practicable 
 play for the stage. Wilde's interest is in the entry 
 of the husband, his slow crafty speeches about the 
 beautiful stuffs it is his trade to sell, the fight in 
 the half-darkness after Bianca has put out the 
 torch, her sharp whisper " Kill him ! Kill him ! " 
 to her lover ; followed ever so suddenly by the 
 double change when the young noble is dead, and 
 husband and wife raise their eyes to one another 
 110
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 with new wonder. It is, as Wilde left it, an 
 interesting fragment, not innocent of echoing now 
 the " Merchant of Venice " and now " Othello," but 
 in its sheer dramatic intensity far less near to his 
 earlier play in verse than to Salome 9 . Three other 
 similar plays he invented, Ahab and Isabel, Pharaoh 
 and The Cardinal of Arragon, but did not write 
 down. We learn of them from his literary executor, 
 who adds, " Pharaoh was intensely dramatic and 
 perhaps more original than any of the group." 
 With Salome and the two fragments of plays 
 before us, altogether apart from The Importance 
 of Being Earnest, it is impossible not to believe 
 that W T ilde would have gone on adding to his own 
 peculiar mastery in the theatre. 
 
 Somewhere in his Truth of Masks Wilde gives 
 some examples of the employment of costume " as 
 a mode of intensifying dramatic situation " — that 
 he should do so is evidence of what we have meant 
 by the single spirit informing his work. But the 
 principal concern of all his drama is the employ- 
 ment of words to the same purpose. Sometimes 
 they are the mere " tinsel phrases " which Bianca, 
 in Mr. Sturge Moore's clever prelude to the tragedy, 
 protests have no power to move her at all ; at 
 other times we may say of Wilde's diction for the 
 theatre, as Simone said of his Lucca damask, " Is 
 it not soft as water, strong as steel ? " His prose, 
 of course, is better than his verse. At all times 
 Wilde's insistence upon the supremacy of words 
 
 111
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 in a theatre which had forgotten how to use them 
 was of the highest possible importance to the 
 theatre. That his understanding of the needs of 
 the theatre did not stop short at giving it good 
 words we have seen ; that he saw the theatre as 
 a single art, in need above all of a unifying imagina- 
 tion, is clear from the following : 
 
 As a rule, the hero is smothered in bric-a-brac and palm- 
 trees, lost in the gilded abyss of Louis Quatorze furniture, 
 or reduced to a mere midge in the midst of marqueterie ; 
 whereas the background should always be kept as a back- 
 ground, and colour subordinated to effect. This, of course, 
 can only be done when there is one single mind directing 
 the whole production. . . . 
 
 Wilde was thus the first to foreshadow the func- 
 tion of our present-day Producer. He began " to 
 quarrel generally with most modern scene-paint- 
 ing." It is as an influence on the art of the 
 theatre, the influence of an artist respecting the 
 domain on which he entered, that he will find his 
 true importance. His own work for the theatre 
 has not always an equal value. He conceded 
 much ; when he conceded too much he lost interest, 
 as in his men and women of the drawing-room who 
 use the phrases of conventional theatrical emotion 
 and who bury their faces in their hands. So far 
 from omitting the Expected, he achieved it, at 
 these times, like a fatality. It must be noted that 
 the best of his plays, his comedy of youth on the 
 one hand and his tragedy of an antique corruption 
 112
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 on the other, set up their conventions, which are 
 quite perfect ; while the " great " scenes of his 
 emotional drama are conducted entirely by means 
 of the " soliloquy " and the " aside," in the 
 most disappointingly conventional manner. When 
 Wilde is not interested he is careless ; when he is 
 careless, he loses style. He is always least the 
 stylist when he is least sincere. 
 
 The nearest perhaps that we shall come to under- 
 standing Wilde's sincerity, the nearest certainly 
 that, for our present purposes, we need come, is to 
 point to that theme which we have seen to run 
 through several of his plays, as it runs through The 
 Portrait of Mr. W. H. also — the theme that when 
 you convert some one to an idea, you lose your 
 faith in it. And what is this but a pattern ? The 
 inevitability of Salome" is not the inevitability 
 which takes its rise in character. It may or may 
 not be a very dangerous thing to tell the name of 
 one's god. It might or might not happen that 
 strength would call up love, and love make beauty 
 visible. We do not know these things to be true 
 of the saint and the courtesan, the husband and 
 wife of Florence ; we accept them for what they 
 are, the rhythmic basis of a pattern. The drama 
 to Wilde, as the intellect to Lord Illingworth, is 
 an instrument on which one plays, that is all. If 
 one plays with genuine enjoyment, that, we may 
 say, is sincerity. Wilde came as near to the truth 
 about his own art as we are likely to come, in the 
 
 H 113
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 course of that little essay on London models for a 
 magazine, in which he spoke of the self-conscious 
 artist and his small corner of life ; " but this very- 
 isolation leads often," he said, " to mere mannerism 
 in the painter, and robs him of that broad accept- 
 ance of the general facts of life which is the very 
 essence of art." Wilde, in his own small corner, 
 did not fail to put into a comedy that is all his 
 own a ready responsiveness to the surface beauties 
 and absurdities of organized humanity, an innocent 
 responsiveness and irresponsibility that have some- 
 thing childlike and delightful. He achieved an 
 intensity of vision which, it is true, is of the essence 
 of the art of drama ; but in achieving it he spoiled 
 himself for that without which the greatest work 
 may not be done in the drama or any other art — a 
 broad acceptance of the general facts of life. 
 
 114
 
 IV 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 BETWEEN Wilde and Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 in the dramatic pantheon, between the 
 drama which is decoration and the 
 drama which is dialectics, is the place of J. M. 
 Barrie — Sir James Barrie, " for his services." 
 A reaction from the one as they have proved a 
 corrective to the other, his services in the English 
 theatre are yet most notable, as the services of 
 Wilde and Mr. Shaw are most notable, for the 
 fact that they have constituted a raid on the 
 stronghold of the theatre men. The remarkable 
 fact about Barrie is that he alone among English 
 men of letters in a century was able to enter the 
 English theatre, and to find an immediate and 
 lasting welcome there. To English men of letters 
 the theatre was, it began to appear, the Never, 
 Ne^cu Land ; and there is no one who does not 
 remember that the only people who went there 
 were the little boys who had fallen out of their 
 prams. When Shelley, Dickens, Browning, Tenny- 
 son, Meredith, Stevenson and Henley, and Mr. 
 
 115
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Henry James fell into the English theatre out of 
 what the English theatre felt to be their proper 
 perambulators, the English theatre hastened, like 
 a dutiful nurse, to put them back again. It is 
 probable that Wilde might have routed the kind 
 nurse ; but the fact remains that it was Barrie 
 who slipped past her with the certainty, when he 
 got into the theatre, of staying there. Our 
 dramatist was clever ; he did not announce, like 
 Mr. Shaw, who was out of the perambulator soon 
 after him, that he had come to sack the fortress. 
 No, he accepted the theatre just as he found it, 
 and sat down inside, and for ten years you would 
 hardly have known it was his deep design to join 
 in the game of keeping it open. And perhaps he 
 has never quite joined in, but just sat there, 
 securely inside, and happy in the knowledge 
 that when he chose to give the theatre just the 
 smallest excuse, however tiny, it would persist 
 delightedly in keeping open, to show that it was 
 glad of him. Happy, too, in this, that he was 
 not born inside, like the theatre men, but had 
 memories, glimpsed above the sides of his per- 
 ambulator, of the real and living world. J. M. 
 Barrie, man of the theatre, has not become merely 
 one of the theatre's men, because, as we shall see, 
 he has not lost his detachment. 
 
 But neither has he proved one of the lost boys 
 in the English theatre. The real lost boys in the 
 theatre are the men of letters who have made 
 116
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 entry there more for experiment than by vocation, 
 and we cannot do better at the outset than be 
 clear that J. M. Barrie is not one of these. When 
 the novelist comes to the theatre he comes, too 
 often, in the belief that here is a shorter but not 
 different task, a kind of subdivision of his accus- 
 tomed labour, a pleasing arrangement by which 
 he is to supply the story and dialogue, and the 
 actors and producers and others are to supply all 
 the rest. Seeing that he has not (unless he write 
 plays so near in form to the novel as those of Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw) to write down how or with what 
 accompaniments his people speak, but merely what 
 they speak, he is wont to make a novel audibly 
 vocal, as it were, and to ride off on the easiness 
 of the theatre. When he has ridden off, however, 
 we are left perfectly conscious that, sufficiently 
 entertaining or delightful as his story for the theatre 
 may have been, it has still been a story told not 
 so much by the theatre as in the theatre. It is 
 not the completely effective and characteristic 
 and satisfying deliverance, that is to say, of which 
 each of the arts is capable. To Browning, the 
 dramatic principle was in a work which consisted 
 of "so many utterances of so many imaginary 
 persons, not mine " ; but we may suppose that 
 if the English theatre of his day had not quite 
 disgusted that great dramatist, he would have gone 
 on to demonstrate beyond doubt that the dramatic 
 principle is something more than this. With 
 
 117
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Tennyson, who rode off on the apology superior — 
 " although not intended in its present form to 
 meet the exigencies of our modern theatre," etc. — 
 we need not linger : Tennyson, in the theatre, 
 was just the lost boy. We shall do well to come 
 at once to the case of Mr. Henry James. Mr. 
 Henry James, the novel's complete master, has 
 wooed the theatre for long, and has yet written 
 for it, to speak generally, dialogue that does not 
 bear its own burden. He has, in the theatre, been 
 unable to put everything necessary to complete 
 revelation into his people's mouths. The " aside," 
 perfectly good part as it is of the poetic convention, 
 is yet, if employed in modern drama, a confession 
 of failure from full mastery. To the curious in 
 these things it may be pointed out that the content 
 of the old " aside " has gone into the new directions 
 to the actor ; for example, " I am determined to 
 know what he thinks," spoken by a stage person 
 to the audience in the breath before he speaks to 
 his vis-a-vis, while rendering in one way an unvoiced 
 thought which it is the novelist's simple business to 
 take account of, would, in the hands of the modern 
 dramatist, take some such form as {with determina- 
 tion), preluding an added subtlety in the spoken 
 words. To take, if we may for a moment, a more com- 
 plete instance from the work of Mr. Henry James : 
 
 " {To herself) Why does she speak to me ? I don't 
 like her, nor want to know her. {Aloud) Thank you, 
 I'm better. I'm going out." 
 118
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 — that tells us, in a way, everything it is needful 
 we should know ; but it is a close approximation to 
 the novelist's way, it is not the dramatist's way. 
 The fact that the expression of character or 
 intended action might have been put into the 
 direct speech itself, or into a stroke of the stage 
 that is apart from speech, is but an indication 
 that everything, somehow or other, might have 
 gone into the scene's unity, instead of left half 
 hanging out like this. It is, of course, an objective 
 test of excellence. There are no conventions 
 which are good or bad, but only art which is good 
 or bad— good, and better, and best. The best art, 
 all other things being equal, is that which comes 
 to us with the minimum of interference. The 
 dramatist's way, in matters of this kind, is the 
 better way, not for any abstract reason, nor for 
 any empty technical satisfaction of those who 
 fancy that technique is itself an end, but merely 
 because the full content of the drama's moment 
 makes more ready entrance of our imagination 
 when shaped thus fitly in accordance with the 
 theatre's plan. It is by this ability instinctively, 
 as it were, to shape the scene's unity that one 
 would most willingly test the dramatist ; and it 
 is a test that the novelist in the theatre, however 
 easy or delightful his dialogue, however searching 
 his wit, however profound his criticism of life, 
 sometimes fails to go through. Mr. Arnold 
 Bennett, for a latter-day example, we have seen 
 
 119
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 compose for the theatre in novel time ; so that his 
 plays, we would say, because they are conceived 
 in terms of the novel, never gather the dramatic 
 momentum — no moment in them appears to be 
 the heir of all the others. But Barrie does not, 
 in either of these ways, fail from full mastery. 
 It would be impossible, if we wished, to regard 
 him as belonging to the genus novelist in the 
 theatre ; for, when he came to enter it, he found 
 himself to be perfectly at home. 
 
 There is no part of the theatre's art which is 
 more frequently forgone by the novelist in the 
 theatre than what we may speak of as its visual 
 possibilities — the things that are apart from 
 speech, either subserving its effectiveness or 
 possessing, entirely on their own account, an 
 effectiveness of mere physical disposition ; and 
 there is no part of the theatre's art which, by 
 Barrie, is more surely seized. The novelist in 
 the theatre will place the whole burden upon 
 dialogue, a burden that dialogue cannot bear ; the 
 dramatist is able so to dispose his materials that 
 a movement or circumstance may be more in- 
 forming, a silence more eloquent. Who else of the 
 theatre's workers has conceived a " silent part " 
 so intimately exciting as that of Miss Tinker Bell 
 in the Christmas play ? 
 
 Now there is a kind of wit of situation which 
 is not the verbal wit which arises out of events so 
 disposed, but is the actual joyful perfection of 
 120
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 the disposed spectacle — as in the appearance of 
 the mourning Ernest at the garden door in the 
 comedy of Wilde. There is not a great deal of 
 verbal wit in the comedies of J. M. Barrie, but 
 there is a very great deal of what we have called 
 the wit of situation. This dramatist, we feel, 
 finding himself at large among the theatre's 
 possibilities, made up his mind to have a very 
 good time with all of them ; but his love for them 
 is not the amateur's love, like Stevenson's, nor 
 the undiscriminating revelry of Mr. Bernard Shaw, 
 who, when he broke into the theatre, left his 
 faculty of detachment outside. Stevenson, fresh 
 from the nursery excitements of a theatre in plain 
 and coloured cardboard, never could conceal his 
 joy in a " practicable window," and all the ro- 
 mantic machinery of the stage ; but Stevenson 
 did once strike out a scene that is a perfect example 
 of the wit of situation. The scene is that in which 
 he made blind Pew face the sleep-walking Admiral 
 and take him for a seeing man in a dark room 
 until he himself, groping with his hand to find the 
 door, burned it in the flame of the candle. That 
 is a scene which was tremendously exciting without 
 a word spoken, and we may imagine that it is a 
 scene which Barrie would like very much to have 
 devised. But one such scene does not make a 
 play, and that is why Barrie is a dramatist while 
 Stevenson was, for the most part, a novelist en- 
 joying himself in the theatre. Barrie has done 
 
 121
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 scenes nearly as good as that — the creeping back 
 of all the persons to the smell of the butler's pot 
 at the end of the second act of The Admirable 
 Crichton, for example ; but they have been scenes 
 in comedies that from first to last have been neatly 
 and delightfully executed. The danger of a too 
 great reliance upon spectacular exhibition is best 
 illustrated to-day, perhaps, in the plays of Mr. 
 Charles McEvoy, who exhausts himself by throwing 
 something very remarkable upon the stage to 
 which the play that follows is but anticlimax, in 
 so far as it can be called a play at all. Spectacular 
 exhibition for its own sake is never wit of situation, 
 for this is achieved only when the most economical 
 and delightful means are hit upon for the play's 
 total illumination. 
 
 That Barrie is all awake to what we have termed 
 the theatre's visual possibilities we have only to 
 remember one of half a dozen traits to be confident ; 
 his love, for example, of differing levels is very 
 much his own. There are the cradles on the wall 
 in Little Mary, the spiral staircase in What Every 
 Women Knows, in Old Friends the stairs down 
 which the white figure of Carry creeps — things that 
 sometimes are nice on their own account, some- 
 times valuable to the dramatic purpose ; and then 
 in Peter Pan, where all these things that the dra- 
 matist thinks nice, and we think nice too, have their 
 apotheosis, there is the spectacle of the redskins 
 camped above, and below, the home under the ground. 
 122
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 In the first of the plays which call here for our 
 serious regard we shall not be surprised to find that 
 Barrie is telling over again the story of Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's " Profligate " ; but he tells it neither in 
 the manner of the novelist nor of the novelettist 
 in the theatre. There are many things in The 
 Wedding Guest that are quite truly Barrie's : the 
 rising of the curtain on the jolly little rehearsal 
 of how to be married, with the assistance of 
 Meikle the butler ; the game of draughts with the 
 minister, in the fourth act, in which again the 
 butler plays a part ; but while these are incidentals 
 of character, the principal point in the story's 
 telling is also Barrie's own. There is the bowl of 
 wedding rice, it will be remembered, that has been 
 left, quite unobtrusively and naturally, to stand 
 in the drawing-room. Margaret, when things 
 are bad, she having denounced her husband for a 
 profligate and returned to her father's home, 
 listlessly dips her hand into this and lets the rice 
 fall through her fingers. And later, at the very 
 end, when the last word is spoken, and still we do 
 not know just how the play is leaving us, the 
 second woman, half cynically yet with a generous 
 impulse, takes up two handfuls of the rice and 
 flings them after the reconciled pair through the 
 window, in token of their happiness, and hers. 
 That is enough, without any tedious speeches of 
 termination ; it is the way of the good dramatist. 
 And, for a slighter thing, there is the very good 
 
 123
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 moment in the comedy of equality, when the 
 returned voyagers are once more in the drawing- 
 room, and Ernest perpetrates his first epigram at 
 the instant that Crichton, a butler again, happens 
 to have his hand on the ship's bucket where it 
 stands for exhibition of the travellers' prowess. 
 Ernest's look of apprehension over his shoulder 
 is all that we need for our recollection to become 
 lively of what the penalty for epigrams was on the 
 island. Ernest's look is all that we are given, and 
 the moment is a delightful one, quite innocent of 
 the insistence with which a less good dramatist 
 would have spoiled it. Indeed, we may say at 
 once that Barrie's workmanship is never anything 
 else but neat and delightful. 
 
 The Hon. Ernest Woolley has this particular 
 importance in the comedy of J. M. Barrie, that he 
 is the symbol of its reaction from the drama of 
 verbal decoration which, in its superficial aspect, 
 was Wilde's. Wilde's drama was something more, 
 but it was sufficiently that to make discipleship 
 dangerous ; and from a long course of discipleship 
 to the drama of verbal decoration Barrie has saved 
 us more than any man. Thus, it is very good satire 
 that no one in the household should understand 
 Ernest's best paradox, and that at last the sugges- 
 tion should be forthcoming that, of course, what 
 he intended to say was the opposite. But if 
 Barrie has preserved the English theatre from one 
 kind of decadence, he has done his best also to 
 124
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 shake it out of the decadence in which he found it 
 so self-satisfied. When he has told the theatre's 
 stories, as in the play about a profligate, he has 
 told them better. Quality Street is a more self- 
 respecting supply to meet the dramatic demand 
 than " Sweet Lavender." And in place of the 
 little pieces about Hester's baby or an organist 
 who took the pledge that were held " good 
 enough " to raise a curtain, a quite definite drama 
 in the one- act form has come from J. M. Barrie. 
 
 But when he has told the theatre's stories with 
 a twist, he has, one feels, been the more Barrie. 
 Nothing could be better satire of the theatre which 
 is for ever given up to the pursuit of some matri- 
 monial intrigue than the play which, for two acts 
 itself a play of matrimonial intrigue, has for its 
 final curtain warning an " especially loud click." 
 How many constant playgoers, Amy Greys every 
 one of them, sat through Alice- Sit-by -the- Fire in 
 the belief that it was the real article, rather better 
 done ; until that final fall of the curtain shocked 
 them, perhaps, into a reconsideration of the 
 dramatic values on their way home ? The only 
 objection that could be brought against Alice- Sit- 
 by-the-Fire is that, for a play that ends in a joke, 
 it is beaten a little long and thin ; really, the only 
 terms upon which the second act is wholly enter- 
 taining would be that the play actually was the 
 play of matrimonial intrigue for which the Amy 
 Greys were taking it. For this reason we may 
 
 125
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 fancy the satire against the theatre of the theatre 
 men more directly acceptable in the little one-act 
 Slice of Life, in which the heroine, for lack of the 
 raisonneur that is denied to a drama become self- 
 consciously realistic, confides the facts of her birth 
 and parentage into the telephone, and, having 
 thrown away what Mr. Henry Arthur Jones once 
 termed "that piercing spyglass" the soliloquy, 
 has recourse to the sympathetic ear of a china dog 
 lifted down from the mantelpiece. 
 
 Barrie's theatre, then, is a place that is much 
 too good to be stupid in, and much too good to 
 be stupid-clever in— it is, like the House They 
 Built for Wendy, so good just to be in. In such 
 a jolly place, with so many jolly things to be done, 
 the last thing one would wish to indulge in is the 
 drama of dialectics— the rhetorical dialectics of the 
 Actor-Manager on the one hand, or the cut-and- 
 come-again dialectics of Mr. Bernard Shaw on the 
 other. As for fireworks, when one may have them 
 green and red and yellow and white, like the 
 fairies in the House in the Trees, who would have 
 them verbal ? 
 
 With the drama too, which has, we would say, 
 put the conviction of reality in the place of effective- 
 ness of construction and given the lie direct to the 
 strategy and tactics of the military men, the drama 
 of J. M. Barrie has nothing to do. The Twelve- 
 Pound Look would never have happened ; Kate 
 would have been put out of the house by the two 
 126 J
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 lackeys of the irate little Knight long before his 
 new wife had opportunity to find the look infectious. 
 But for the dramatist's wholly delightful purposes, 
 for Sir Harry Sims to echo Moliere's bourgeois 
 gentleman — " Ho, my two lackeys ! " — would not 
 do at all. A half- hour's traffic of the stage is the 
 end in view, and, granting this, we may be sure 
 that the sum of it will be neat and quick and beauti- 
 fully rounded. Above all, the theatre will be used 
 — we shall smile at the rehearsal of Sir Harry's 
 " very beautiful ceremony," we shall be left in 
 surprised admiration by the curtain's artfully con- 
 sidered fall. If the play is by Barrie, the theatre 
 will be used, and used well ; but we shall not 
 forget it is the theatre. His is not the art that 
 conceals art, and why should it ? — we have not 
 had so much art in the theatre for a century, that 
 we may grieve now that it is displayed with a 
 little delighted consciousness. Rosalind, the story 
 of an actress who was both herself and her mother, 
 the one in public life and the other in private, 
 might be a truer play if she were not both within 
 a stage ten minutes ; but who are we that we 
 should deny to ourselves, or to the author, the 
 wholesome pleasure in the tour de force ? The 
 comedy of J. M. Barrie is an artificial comedy that 
 is disarmingly natural, that is all. 
 
 Allied to this frank and engaging unreality of 
 time and place is a care for character that is always 
 the care of the proud parent for his children, rather 
 
 127
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 than the fine careless care (if one may say so) 
 that gives to each person his or her strong life, 
 and leaves them there to stand on their own feet. 
 They are true people, these figures of the Barrie 
 comedy, true because their author loves them ; 
 Mr. Crichton, Meikle, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, John 
 Napoleon and Michael and Cosmo and Amy, 
 Colonel and Mrs. Grey, Nurse and Nana, the 
 cricketing clergyman, the Wylies, the Hon. Ernest, 
 Mr. Fairbairn and the Earl of Loam, and all the 
 line of " little mothers " — Jenny Geddes and 
 Moira and Wendy and Richardson and Maggie 
 Shand ; but when their author does not love them, 
 rather a serious thing happens. It happens to 
 Lady Sybil Lazenby, who has the temerity in the 
 Parliamentary comedy to come between the little 
 mother and her child, John Shand. It is what 
 happens to Ricky Ticky Tavy in the play by Mr. 
 Shaw ; but there it shocks one less, because you 
 cannot play the game of ninepins without a ninepin 
 or two going down into the dirt. But Barrie's is not 
 the comedy of ninepins, and we are sorry for Lady 
 Sybil Lazenby. She is so heartlessly bowled over, 
 in order that the firm stand of Maggie may shine 
 more admirable. It is likely that you cannot be 
 quite completely fair to all your persons unless you 
 are at least as fair to them as Life is — that is to say, 
 unless you grant to them the right to stand on 
 their own feet ; and this the comedy of Barrie 
 scarcely does. The very neatness of design in 
 128
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 which this comedy never disappoints us is the 
 negation of its persons' right to step outside. But 
 from the really strongest comedy, which of the 
 persons may not surprisingly step out, and go 
 walking, it seems, his own road through the world ? 
 
 If the comedy of Barrie is not the really strongest 
 comedy, it is a comedy which is perfectly ex- 
 pressive and worthy of the contemporary theatre, 
 and a comedy of which one example at least — 
 The Admirable Crichton — is quite certain to be 
 keeping its theatre open in a hundred years. Of 
 how many plays of our generation are we able 
 with an equal confidence to say that ? In render- 
 ing our statement of account between J. M. Barrie 
 and the theatre of his day, we may find it to be 
 over-simplified, but we shall not find it to be false. 
 " No," wrote Stevenson, late in his life, " I will not 
 write a play for Irving, nor for the devil. Can you 
 not see that the work of falsification which a play 
 demands is of all tasks the most ungrateful ? " 
 That was the apology petulant, from the artist who 
 has failed of full success in a medium that was not 
 his own. The theatre did not demand falsification 
 from Stevenson : that was what he gave it. In 
 going in memory back over the theatre of Barrie, 
 there is much that is simplified, but nothing, one 
 thinks, that is false. 
 
 Not to count the things that took their true 
 origin in the printed page — Walker, London, and 
 The Little Minister — there was that earliest 
 
 I 129
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 comedy of which, one has to confess, one remem- 
 bers only a hayfield, a professor, a pretty secretary, 
 and the Scottish tongue. There was the story 
 of the wild oats the young man had sown, 
 to find them thrusting their ears through the 
 very seams of the floor — as Sir Arthur Pinero 
 would say ; but Sir Arthur Pinero, in writing this 
 play, had written it differently. There was the 
 "Uncomfortable Play," which, for all the humour 
 of its incidentals, proved, like the satirical 
 comedy we have glanced at, to be somewhat 
 too thin- spread for the magnitude of the little 
 joke when we came to it. And what of that 
 other little joke, of what really happened to Adam, 
 which constituted the sum of what is known to 
 every woman and to this dramatist, but not to any 
 other man at all ? Well, there is this to be said, 
 that when the little joke was retrenched in repre- 
 sentation, at a later appearance of the comedy, 
 the comedy was found to be a good and, in essen- 
 tials, a true comedy without it ; and that is more 
 than can be said of the kind of play which is less to 
 its author than the epigram which brings down its 
 curtain. There have been effects of dramatic 
 contrast (such as that between Maggie and Lady 
 Sybil) which have shared with effects of dramatic 
 irony (such as that a serene sky should shine down 
 upon the sad little daughter of the man who con- 
 quered his drunkenness too late) a simplification 
 resulting almost in naivete\ Together with the 
 130
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 things to which we have not quite given our 
 credence, but which have not mattered at all (such 
 as the time-plot of the one-act plays), there have 
 been things to which we have not quite given our 
 credence either, and which have mattered more 
 (such as the symptoms under catalepsy of the 
 wedding-guest). The Wedding Guest's solvent, too, 
 may seem to us in the circumstances to have been 
 over-simplified ; but since it is really the solvent 
 of all the plays — what the gentle pirate Smee 
 desiderated as a Mother's Love — it is nice to think 
 we need not name it false. 
 
 Simplification, one fancies, may be left to stand 
 on the one side of the account, as it must certainly 
 stand on the other. The success of J. M. Barrie 
 in the theatre is the success of simplification. 
 Says Jenny Geddes, aged eleven, of the baby that 
 was the profligate's, " Sometimes she sleeps and 
 sometimes she wakes up — I never see such a 
 baby ! " But we have, in the world outside, seen 
 just such a baby more than once, and our pleasure 
 is the pleasure of recognition. The theatre of 
 J. M. Barrie is full of such pleasure. In Peter Pan 
 we recognize our nursery ; children don't, they 
 would be bored if they did — that is the art of the 
 thing. In the " fantasy " about a desert island, 
 we recognize something that we know to be so 
 simply and profoundly true that from any other 
 than Barrie we should, as the children their 
 nursery, refuse to receive it. In Pantaloon we even 
 
 131
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 recognize the ancient family in mufti, and know 
 that in mufti they would be just like that, with 
 Harlequin and Columbine, of course, quite speech- 
 less, and a sausage- shop over the way. It is a 
 delightful power, this power to convince us that 
 our interests and observations are identical. Says 
 Jenny Geddes, aged eleven, to the baby that was 
 the profligate's, " This is a chair, and that there's 
 the window, and the thing outside the window 
 is the world." The thing outside the window, 
 in the theatre of Sir James Barrie, really is the 
 world, and that is a great deal to be thankful for. 
 The theatre of the theatre men had the world out- 
 side, no doubt, but its only window had the mis- 
 fortune to be merely a " practicable " window, which 
 is as much as to say it was quite windowless. 
 
 132
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 MR. BERNARD SHAW confronts his age 
 not so much a dramatist as a writer 
 possessed of a philosophy and of a 
 trick of the stage, who has employed the one to 
 expound the other. He has said so himself on 
 more than one occasion. At the outset of his 
 career as a dramatist he denned the impulse which 
 moved him as the " philosopher's impatience to 
 get to realities," and he went on to state, " I fight 
 the theatre, not with pamphlets and sermons and 
 treatises, but with plays." Now the dramatist by 
 vocation does not fight the theatre at all. It is 
 always a pity for the artist to quarrel with his 
 medium, for if the artist wins, he will despise the 
 medium, and if the medium wins, he will still 
 despise it. The most curious thing about Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw is that as long as he wrote about 
 the theatre he always called it a church, with 
 reverence, but the moment he began to practise 
 regularly in it he treated it as though it really 
 were a church — that is to say, without reverence. 
 
 133
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 In making the theatre the vehicle for a philosophy 
 of life, instead of for a load of banalities, it is true 
 that by implication he has dignified it ; but the 
 philosopher has put all his emphasis upon the 
 evolution of a better kind of life, and the play- 
 wright has done nothing in particular to assist in 
 the evolution of a better kind of theatre. " I tell 
 you," says Don Juan in Man and Superman, 
 " that as long as I can conceive something better 
 than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving 
 to^ bring it into existence or clearing the way for 
 it." But Mr. Bernard Shaw's attitude towards 
 the theatre has not so much been one of striving 
 and clarifying as of a rather scornful acceptance 
 of the " hackneyed stage framework " of the 
 theatre as he found it. "I have always cast my 
 plays," he has left it on record in one of his pre- 
 faces, " in the ordinary practical comedy form in 
 use at all theatres; and far from taking an 
 unsympathetic view of the popular preference for 
 fun, fashionable dresses, a little music, and even 
 an exhibition of eating and drinking by people 
 with an expensive air, attended by an if-possible- 
 comic waiter, I was more than willing to show 
 that the drama can humanize these things as 
 easily as they, in undramatic hands, can de- 
 humanize the drama. ' ' Mr. Shaw has gone further : 
 in another preface he has stated quite explicitly 
 his belief that " It is the philosophy, the outlook 
 on life, that changes, not the craft of the plav- 
 134 J
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 „i„ht» We may well make this antinomy 
 Sten the philosopher and the playwright the 
 starting-point of onr «— • Mr shaw > s 
 
 T« thp first place we shall rind tnat mi. &*■ 
 best plays are the plays that carry, not necessarily 
 th fletTof his phLophy, but that carry * most 
 successfully. What are Mr. Shaw s plays? WeU, 
 they are twenty-three in number, and tbejr com 
 nrise an "anti-romantic comedy, a topical 
 prise an » rome dv " " a comedy and a 
 
 comedy," a plamc T edy ^ „ ^ 
 
 philosophy a trifle a 7 ^ ^^ an 
 Suture," "fustory^ a " -gedy^a .£» 
 
 wTZce their resourceful author has not been 
 W ^' !1 them we must include in the category 
 ^oneTby S Ljames Barriers heroine as darling 
 UuHues Lt just don't know what Mg ar 
 Tn his twenty-three plays up to the present), mr. 
 Shaw has surveyed mankind from <%™»£* 
 H,p Far West, he has associated on familiar terms 
 with Napoleon after Lodi, with Burgoyne before 
 s£ttoga P tth Osar in Egypt, with Shakespeare 
 at Hampton Court, and he has personal y con- 
 ducted a party of tourists from Richmond to Hell 
 And yet Mr. Shaw has done nothing in particular 
 fo extend the confines of the English drama 
 Wherever he has been, he has not been unmindful 
 Z th " popular preference" for a word or two
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 about the English; so that Caesar has a British 
 Islander for a secretary, Napoleon explains the 
 English to us, General Burgoyne is satiric at the 
 expense of the War Office, Major Petkoff learns of 
 the new habit of washing from an Englishman at 
 Pnihppopohs, and England is publicly commended 
 by the Devil as the country in which he has the 
 largest following. At once a link with Shake- 
 speare who, in setting a tragedy in the island of 
 Cyprus, would not suffer the occasion to go by 
 without informing the English that they were 
 great drinkers. Nor is it the only link ; for Mr 
 Shaw, in taking over the ordinary stage frame- 
 work that was "practical," took over the form 
 that, poorly used as it was by some of his immediate 
 predecessors, had yet been good enough for the 
 best English dramatists from Shakespeare to Wilde 
 to put their plays in. Shakespeare, amongst his 
 lesser lapses, falls occasionally into a fault in comic 
 writing which we may call the verbal anticlimax 
 Here is an instance of it : 
 
 Maria. Many, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan 
 ^Sir Andrew. O ! if I thought that, I 'd beat him like a 
 
 Sir Toby. What, for being a Puritan ? 
 This is a fault in dramatic writing only because, 
 in the theatre, we laugh at the second line, and 
 have no need of the third ; indeed, we never hear 
 it because of the laughter. It is thus a fault in 
 dramatic economy ; and it is a fault also, of a 
 
 1 OO
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 graver kind, because it proceeds from an under- 
 estimation of the audience's intelligence. The best 
 comic writing is always keying our intelligence up ; 
 it gives us great credit ; poorer comic writing has 
 often this air of descending to our level, and making 
 everything even and acceptable for us. Now we 
 shall find that Mr. Shaw is often guilty of this 
 fault of under- estimating his audience. We may 
 take at random an instance from one of his best 
 plays ; the Swiss soldier of fortune is describing to 
 the romantic young lady a cavalry charge as it 
 really is : 
 
 Raina. Yes, first One ! — the bravest of the brave ! 
 
 Man. Hm ! You should see the poor devil pulling at 
 his horse. 
 
 Raina. Why should he pull at his horse ? 
 
 Man. IVs running away with him, of course : do you 
 suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be 
 killed ? 
 
 We have laughed at the second line, and we do 
 not laugh again at the fourth ; but that is not 
 merely the waste of two lines ; it is the achieve- 
 ment of verbal anticlimax, and it is in the nature 
 of anticlimax to be retrospective in its influence. 
 It will be enough to establish kinship, on this 
 lower plane, with both Shakespeare and Wilde, if 
 we note in passing Mr. Shaw's unfailing pleasure 
 in the confusion of a name ; it amuses him as 
 much that Mr. Redbrook should be addressed 
 as Mr. Kidbrook or Ftatateeta as Teetatota as it 
 
 137
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 amused Wilde to name a Member of Parliament 
 Kelvil in order to call him Kettle, or as it amused 
 Shakespeare to give a fellow the name of Elbow and 
 then to make puns upon it. If Mr. Shaw has a 
 person who is a professor of Greek, he cannot resist 
 the humour of addressing him as " Euripides " ; 
 but we shall have other occasions in the course of 
 this chapter to note the undergraduate quality that 
 is sometimes apparent in Mr. Shaw's humour. 
 
 The best plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw are Arms 
 and the Man, You Never Can Tell, Candida, The 
 DeviVs Disciple, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 
 and The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. 
 
 Arms and the Man is a quite perfect comedy. 
 How good a framework for comedy the " practical " 
 stage framework was for a writer who came to the 
 theatre with Mr. Shaw's intellectual vivacity may 
 be seen in this, one of the earliest of his plays. 
 Its opening is delightfully exciting; before the 
 curtain is up two minutes we get our first surprise ; 
 nobody but a dramatist of the very first quality 
 could have maintained so successfully the tension 
 of that admirable first act. The second act is 
 even better; there are moments in it that are 
 triumphs of comic preparation. Who is there that 
 does not cherish the recollection of the line, 
 " Captain Bluntschli : I am very glad to see you ; 
 but you must leave this house at once," and of 
 the subsequent dilemma of the Captain's carpet- 
 bag ? The third act is very nearly as good • 
 138
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 there is a very rich sort of drollery in the Captain's 
 four thousand table-cloths ; and it is beautiful to 
 see how, the moment the imbroglio is completely 
 untangled, the play is at an end. There is nothing 
 that the author of Arms and the Man might not 
 have done within the theatre's " ordinary frame- 
 work." He proceeded to do something more in 
 another almost perfect comedy, You Never Can 
 Tell. This is less a comedy of situation and more 
 a comedy of character : of the character of 
 William the waiter. William is more than the 
 if- possible- comic waiter : he is both comic and 
 possible — a creation. The twins, too, are comic 
 creations. Nor is the play without its very good 
 surprise : " No, sir : the other bar — your pro- 
 fession, sir " ; and its triumphs of comic prepara- 
 tion, as when Dolly echoes the K.C. and tells him 
 he may think he is not going to bully her but he 
 is, and when that unhappy phrase of Gloria's 
 about the grass growing and the water running is 
 brought home to the man in Madeira. Again, how 
 beautifully the play ends ! But now let us ask 
 ourselves two questions. When Arms and the Man 
 is played before us, are we conscious of anything 
 remarkable in the simplification by which people 
 of differing nationalities overcome the difficulty of 
 communication ? I do not think we are ; the 
 play carries us with it. When You Never Can Tell 
 is played, are we conscious of the surprising sim- 
 plification of circumstances by which the Clandon 
 
 139
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 family finds a father ? I think we are, just a 
 little ; but not enough in this particular comedy 
 to matter. Now let us turn to Candida. Candida 
 is not comic — except by excrescence. Candida is 
 a comedy of character. Candida herself is a 
 picture of Everywoman, a very interesting and 
 even beautiful picture ; the clergyman, her 
 husband, is a good, straight piece of characteriza- 
 tion ; the poet— well, he is Mr. Shaw's notion of 
 a poet, and we are interested. There is a discussion 
 in the last act which is a necessary discussion, and 
 when the appropriation of Candida is made clear, 
 the discussion is over and the play ends. It is a 
 " well-made play." But what is involved in its 
 conformity to type ? Burgess ; and all that stuff 
 about everybody in the house being mad ; and the 
 scene of Prossy and Lexy drunk ; and what are 
 all these things but the time-honoured comic relief 
 that we may find in a whole generation of Mr. 
 Shaw's predecessors ? 
 
 We have so far discovered nothing more for 
 ourselves than Mr. Shaw, always anxious to be 
 helpful, has himself discovered for us, although, 
 to be sure, I do not think Mr. Shaw ever did 
 himself the justice of admitting how good those 
 early comedies of his were. In a quite recent 
 preface, that to the latest edition of Man and 
 Superman, Mr. Shaw says : "I have not been 
 sparing of such lighter qualities as I could endow 
 the book with for the sake of those who ask nothing 
 140
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 from a play but an agreeable pastime." And now, 
 having secured that admission, and pausing only 
 to note that while in Man and Superman Mr. 
 Shaw's philosophy finds its fullest expression, the 
 stage framework of that comedy is of the poorest 
 (a contention we may proceed to illustrate in a 
 moment), let us go back to Candida. 
 
 If Burgess is of no particular value as a likely 
 father for Candida, there is one purpose at least 
 that he serves, and that is to make (in the remark- 
 able diction which he favours) the undoubtedly 
 true remark, "Hopinions become vurry serious 
 things when people takes to hactin' on 'em." It 
 mattered very little that Mr. Shaw should profess 
 a cynical carelessness with regard to stage forms 
 as long as he proceeded to write quite admirable 
 comedies within them ; but as soon as he began 
 to be careless in writing for the theatre, that was 
 a pity. It will be remembered that the Rev. 
 Mavor Morell's secretary, and all the Rev. Mavor 
 Morell's secretaries, suffered from what Candida 
 called Prossy's complaint. " She's in love with 
 you, James : that's the reason. They're all in 
 love with you. And you are in love with preaching 
 because you do it so beautifully." Now it was 
 just about the time Mr. Shaw wrote Candida that he 
 began to suffer from G.B.S.'s complaint. It was 
 not so much that he fell in love with preaching 
 because he did it so beautifully, or that he began 
 to " hact " on the " hopinion " he had held when 
 
 141
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 he was merely a harmless dramatic critic that the 
 theatre is a church. No, Mr. Shaw has always 
 been in love with preaching, and he had always 
 preached beautifully. The trouble set in when 
 Mr. Shaw no longer merely put up with the 
 " hackneyed stage framework," but fell positively 
 in love with it. The medium won. The artist 
 fell in love with all the stage tricks because he did 
 them so beautifully. For the line of least resist- 
 ance is G.B.S.'s complaint. It is a complaint that 
 has something in common with the desire of 
 schoolboys to " show off." Mr. Shaw was by this 
 time master of all the stage tricks, he was a better 
 hand at them than any other man of his genera- 
 tion, and he liked them so much that he allowed 
 them to master him. But before they mastered 
 him he wrote two more plays that are almost 
 completely free from G.B.S.'s complaint. The 
 Devil's Disciple has an opening inferior only to 
 that of Arms and the Man, the action is swift 
 and logical to the end, the diabolonian Dick and 
 the minister are consistently well-realized and 
 at the same time contain much of Mr. Shaw's 
 characteristic philosophy and foreshadow more. He 
 called it a " melodrama," and we must insist upon 
 regarding it with the most perfect seriousness as 
 one of the best of Mr. Shaw's plays. He called 
 Captain Brassbound's Conversion an " adventure," 
 but the adventurousness in it is not so remarkable 
 as the excellence of the characterization. Lady 
 142
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Cecily, who says " Howdyedo " to rascals the 
 world over and finds them quite nice, is the truest 
 and most engaging portrait of a woman in Mr. 
 Shaw's long gallery. His real hold on the theatre 
 has never been better exemplified than in the 
 little scene in which Lady Cecily outdoes Captain 
 Brassbound while helping on his coat, for " all 
 men look foolish when they are feeling for their 
 sleeves." Felix Drink water, the hooligan, must 
 for ever be memorable if only for his effort to lift 
 himself out of the " sawdid reeyellities of the 
 Worterleoo Rowd. " The play is again well-shaped, 
 although the circumstance by which, in the little 
 seaport of Mogador, the eminent judge finds at 
 once a nephew in Captain Brassbound, a former 
 acquaintance in the hooligan, and his brother's early 
 friend in the missionary, may be held to go as far 
 in the direction of conventional simplification as 
 even the " practical comedy form " does well to 
 go. Much more might be forgiven to the play for 
 its ending with Lady Cecily's words, " How 
 glorious ! how glorious ! And what an escape ! " 
 — one of the best of Mr. Shaw's endings in the 
 days before he allowed himself to " run on." 
 
 And now, if we wish to appreciate the ravages 
 worked by G.B.S.'s complaint, we have only to 
 turn from either of these plays to the play that 
 immediately followed them. Ccesar and Cleopatra 
 is very clever, very prolix, very " tricky," quite 
 unactable in its entirety and, a surprising thing, 
 
 143
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 far too tiresome to be read. Everywhere over it 
 is that destructive air of too great ease. A play 
 about Julius Caesar ? — Why, certainly, by this time 
 Mr. Shaw could write you a play about anything. 
 Custom had made it in him a property of easiness, 
 as in the gravedigger who tossed up skulls. Mr. 
 Shaw tossed up the skull of Caesar, and knocked it 
 gaily about the mazzard with his sexton's spade, 
 under cover of an ad hoc historical discovery that 
 Caesar was even such a man as himself ; very much 
 as, later on, he justified the clowning of the doctors 
 with the proposition that " life does not cease to 
 be funny when people die any more than it ceases 
 to be serious when people laugh." Ccesar and 
 Cleopatra, with its ill-considered rough-and-tumble 
 varied with a superficial air of profound study, is 
 easily the poorest of Mr. Shaw's plays. It was 
 born a victim to G.B.S.'s complaint : that com- 
 plaint which, when it is galloping, leaves us no 
 recourse but to the remark Mr. Shaw's unknown 
 Lady had to make to Napoleon, " W-w-w-w-wh ! 
 do stop a moment ! " Let us look a little deeper 
 into the symptoms. 
 
 The line of least resistance, in the theatre, leads 
 the artist first of all into falseness to character. 
 Perhaps, if the dramatic artist stood in any need 
 of a motto, we might give him the words of Sir 
 Thomas Browne : " Every man truly lives so long 
 as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the 
 faculties of himself " ; for every character in 
 144
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 drama truly lives on just the same terms. Since 
 drama is rooted in character, and finds in action 
 its expression and fulfilment, it is the business of 
 the dramatist first to create character, and then 
 to devise means by which it may act its nature. 
 It is not the highest business of the dramatist to 
 devise a situation, and then to invent such persons 
 as may be necessary for its exploitation : that way 
 lies our old friend the piece bien faite. Nor is it 
 the highest business of the dramatist to assemble 
 his people and to hand to each of them one from 
 a neat assortment of qualities that he may hang 
 it like a charm about his neck : the outcome of 
 that procedure is the play of " humours." Hazlitt 
 spoke the last word upon the play of humours 
 when he said of Ben Jonson that his plots were 
 " improbable by an excess of consistency " and 
 that his people were " extravagant tautologies of 
 themselves." Now we have seen how the plots 
 of even the best of Mr. Shaw's plays, plays like 
 You Never Can Tell and Captain Brassbound's 
 Conversion, are improbable by an excess of 
 consistency ; and are not his people too often 
 extravagant tautologies of themselves ? We may 
 see the genesis of the type in the earliest of all 
 the plays. Sartorius is an unprincipled money- 
 grubber. When Lickcheese, his cast-off hireling, 
 comes to him with a scheme that he says will put 
 money into his pocket, Sartorius asks, quite 
 against likelihood, " How much money," where- 
 
 K 145
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 upon Lickcheese remarks, " Ah ! there you speak 
 4ike yourself, Sartorius." Exactly : every man in 
 his humour. Now see how Mr. Shaw's persons, 
 as their author came to care less and less for 
 character and more and more for exposition, 
 degenerated steadily into types. Are not Cholly, 
 with his " certain amount of tosh," and B.B., with 
 his " stimulate the phagocytes," and Mr. Tarleton, 
 with his " read Whatshisname," and General 
 Mitchener, with his " shoot them down," in- 
 creasingly after the Ben Jonson manner ? The 
 professor of Greek who can never open his mouth 
 without quoting Euripides is in no way more 
 subtly characterized than was our old friend of 
 a hundred appearances who proved that he must 
 be a professor by his habit of correcting proofs in 
 the drawing-room. The line of least resistance has 
 led Mr. Shaw then, as to character, straight back 
 into the comedy of humours. It has led him, as 
 to composition, straight back into the piece Men 
 faite, with a difference ; that is to say, not into the 
 play of concentrated " situation," but into the 
 play whose situations, such as they are, are varied 
 with comic relief. Where may we find Mr. Shaw 
 at his most serious ? Well, he has named The 
 Doctor's Dilemma a tragedy : let us try there. 
 He has not been sparing of such tragic qualities 
 as he could endow Dubedat with : for " the most 
 tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is 
 not also a man of honour," and we are to believe 
 146
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 that the painter Dubedat is a man of genius. Mr. 
 Shaw told us early of his own determination to 
 accept " problem " as the only material of drama : 
 the problem in which he seeks to interest us here 
 is, supposing we had the choice between a good 
 man and good pictures, which should we choose ? 
 He proceeds to kill Dubedat slowly quite close 
 to the footlights with all the doctors clowning 
 about him. Can " problem " — far more, can 
 tragedy — live in such an atmosphere as that ? 
 Of course not, both are in a minute as dead as 
 Dubedat, and the play drags on to an ending that 
 we do not care about in the least. The easy way 
 to write a tragedy is to arrange for some one in the 
 course of an indiscriminate action to die. The 
 hard way is to cause a person of such character 
 to die, contending with a series of such circum- 
 stances, that the whole of life is somehow seen to 
 be there on the stage at issue. It is quite true 
 that life does not stop being funny (if that is the 
 word for it) when the fatal knock comes on 
 Macbeth's gate, or when Hamlet is in his agony, 
 or when Lear is driven forth in the infirmity of his 
 age : there are still porters and grave-diggers and 
 fools in the world. But the point is that, in the 
 hands of the dramatist, life does not have to stop 
 in order to be funny. Its march is even, and the 
 true dramatist's presentment of it carries with it 
 his own sense of the comedy of things. It is Mr. 
 Shaw's determination at all costs to stop and be 
 
 147
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 funny that has earned for him the name of farceur ; 
 but in this quality, if examined more closely, he 
 will be found to have much in common with the 
 most conventional of his predecessors who were by 
 predestination practitioners in comic relief. The 
 only difference is that while they practised it in the 
 mistaken belief that without its aid we could not 
 possibly bear up under the strain of their tragic 
 " situations," Mr. Shaw practises it merely because 
 he can do it so beautifully. 
 
 Akin to this question of the supremacy of 
 character in drama are all the other things in good 
 craftsmanship that make up a general impression 
 of reality. What do we mean, in this connexion, 
 by reality ? When Mr. Shaw was in the first 
 flush of his success as a dramatist who had waged 
 war on the ordinary theatre, and before he pro- 
 ceeded to avail himself of the privilege of the 
 conqueror by converting to his own use everything 
 he found within the walls, he trumpeted a declara- 
 tion entitled A Dramatic Realist to his Critics, 
 which celebrated the fact that the hero of his anti- 
 romantic comedy carried chocolate instead of 
 cartridges in his cartridge-box. Mr. Shaw was 
 possibly quite right in his fact ; but we mean an 
 adherence to something more than facts when 
 we speak of dramatic reality. Let us state again 
 the antinomy with which we started. We may 
 state it now in terms of the difference between 
 the " impatience for realities " Mr. Shaw the 
 148
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 philosopher exhibits, and the contentment with 
 unrealities he exhibits as a playwright. The 
 dramatic realist, while simplifying character of 
 necessity, would not carry simplification of cha- 
 racter to the point to which we have seen Mr. Shaw 
 carry it. This matter of simplification is important. 
 The secret of Mr. Shaw's dramatic criticism 
 was simplification — the public was always wrong. 
 When Mr. Shaw turned from writing about plays 
 to the vastly more difficult business of writing 
 them, he still proceeded by a method of simplifica- 
 tion. The best, as well as the worst, of Mr. Shaw's 
 characters are achieved by a process of simplifica- 
 tion — Lady Cecily and William the waiter, 
 Broadbent and Straker, Captain Kearney and the 
 Newspaper Man. The Shaw Girl, who might have 
 for her motto the line from The Admirable Bash- 
 ville : 
 
 Two things I hate, my duty and my mother ; 
 
 the Shaw Boy, whether as the poet in Candida or 
 in successive reincarnations ; the ruthless Man 
 of Action, the man or woman with the soul of a 
 servant, the youthful or elderly Aim or Butt, who 
 may be of either sex — we have seen how all of 
 these tend, when they fall below their best, to 
 achieve the ultimate simplification in the mere 
 " type." Allied to Mr. Shaw's simplification of 
 character, which results in the type, is his sim- 
 plification of humour, which results in mere 
 
 149
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 repetition. The Supposition Accurate, as when 
 Burgess sarcastically supposes Eugene to be an 
 earl and he proves to be the nephew of an earl, 
 is a good form of surprise ; but it is not so good 
 when we find Mr. Gilbey sarcastically supposing 
 Juggins to be the brother of a duke, and Juggins 
 proving to be the brother of a duke. " See then, ye 
 gods, the duke turn footman " is the Shavian comic 
 formula, as well as Cashel Byron's. The Supposi- 
 tion Inaccurate is a form of surprise that may 
 more safely stand the strain of Mr. Shaw's 
 characteristic repetition, and it leads repeatedly 
 to some of his happiest comic effects, as when the 
 rigid McComas supposes William's son to be a 
 potman when he is really a barrister, or when 
 Tanner, priding himself on being alone in his 
 congratulation of Violet upon her defiance of the 
 marriage law, finds that she has not defied the 
 marriage law, and on congratulating Hector Malone 
 upon the same independence of character, finds 
 that he has not defied the marriage law either. 
 But Mr. Shaw's simplification of character is as 
 nothing to his simplification of incident. 
 
 The modern theatre has no longer a belief in a 
 unity of time and a unity of place, but it has fixed 
 very clearly in their room what we may speak of 
 as a reality of time and a reality of place. Nothing 
 is of more usual occurrence in the " practical " 
 theatre than the meal which takes only a minute ; 
 not because it would in reality take only a minute, 
 150
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 but because the dramatist simply has no* taken 
 th! trouble to defer to reality. A ^aU toft* 
 mav be said, and so it is, but one of those small 
 togs that are not negligible; for who has not 
 found his pleasure in something very much larger 
 detected from by just sueh a small piece of 
 dramatic unreality ? Mr. Shaw, in taking over 
 "practical" theatre's exhibitions of eating 
 'and drinking, took over the "Practical" feat- 
 carelessness of the reality of time : th peop e 
 in his plays are sometimes allowed the most 
 absu dly short periods in which to take supper 
 „ to smoke a whole pipe. As for the realty of 
 nlace we have seen the obverse of that in the 
 way in which the people who are necessary 
 to the action of his plays most remarkably 
 find themselves gathered together. Really in 
 this matter Mr. Shaw is quite cynical It is 
 necessary, for example, to Mr. Shaw s tragedy 
 that all the doctors, picked men every one of them, 
 should attend upon the penniless artist ; and this 
 is how Mr. Shaw takes care of the circumstance : 
 Mas. Dobedat. There 1 be good now : ™~«£«^£ 
 
 of them, to consult about you ? 
 
 There is only one reply: It is, extraordinarily 
 kind Or Vis, to put it in the way Mr. Shaw 
 prefers to put it, "A dramatic coincidence! 
 Ind as for the reverse of the picture, we have that
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 whenever it is desirable that the people gathered 
 together should be in some other place, where- 
 upon, as in Man and Superman, they forthwith find 
 themselves gathered together there. If Mr. Shaw 
 were to write a play about Mahomet (as he probably 
 will), it would trouble him just as little to bring 
 the mountain to Mahomet as to bring Mahomet to 
 the mountain. 
 
 It has been claimed for Mr. Shaw, by himself, 
 that in two of his most recent plays " a return has 
 been made to unity of time and place as observed 
 in the ancient Greek drama." The claim does not 
 amount to very much, for if the dramatist is at 
 liberty to send all over the parish to fetch in the 
 Mayoress and the beadle, to put the Mayoress off 
 into a highly communicative trance, and to recruit 
 the number of his persons by aeroplane if the 
 conversation shows signs of flagging, it should not 
 be difficult for him to make the action of his play 
 continuous, particularly if his play has no action. 
 
 No, Mr. Shaw is not a dramatic realist. Reality 
 does not lie at the end of the line of least resist- 
 ance, as Mr. Shaw, in his capacity of philosopher, 
 has written twenty-three plays to establish. The 
 play which immediately followed Cozsar and 
 Cleopatra was Man and Superman. Quite the best 
 and most complete expression of Mr. Shaw's 
 " philosophy " is to be found in Man and Super- 
 man, the " comedy " of which is a very easygoing 
 affair. Its third act, in Hell, the " home of the 
 152
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 unreal," with Heaven, the " home of the masters 
 of reality," just round the corner, is the Quint- 
 essence of Shavianism ; but it has so little to do 
 with the theatre that when the play is given there 
 it is found necessary to omit it. Man and Super- 
 man, while the most characteristic product of Mr. 
 Shaw's genius, is thus not one of the best of his 
 plays, because it does not carry its burden. To 
 put the case another way, its comic vision and its 
 philosophic vision are not in alignment. The 
 struggle between the Philosopher and the Play- 
 wright has been fearful, but the playwright has 
 not won. It is perhaps their consciousness of this 
 inability finally to express all that their author 
 would have them express that drives Mr. Shaw's 
 persons into violence — a highly simplified form of 
 action. All the persons of Mr. Shaw's plays are 
 violent — from Blanche Sartorius, who takes up 
 the parlourmaid by the hair of her head, and from 
 Julia Craven, who shakes the Philanderer and 
 growls over him "like a tigress over her cub," 
 down to Margaret Knox, whose very similar 
 handling of her Bobby gives the Frenchman his 
 idea that these English domestic interiors are very 
 interesting. Mr. Shaw does not shrink from the 
 exhibition of physical violence — for tragic effect, 
 as when Bill bashes his fist into the face of the 
 Salvation lassie ; or for comic effect, as when we 
 are asked to laugh very heartily at the spectacle 
 of Felix Drink water carried out to be bathed. In 
 
 153
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Candida the collar of the poet suffers violence at 
 the hands of the clergyman, and in the little skit 
 upon Candida both He and Her Husband end up 
 on the floor. Even Mr. Shaw's use of stage- 
 properties tends to be violent — as witness the 
 book-cases at the Ibsen Club that are sent spinning 
 by the huntress in pursuit of her prey, the dentist's 
 chair that is let down with a bang in You Never 
 Can Telly or the aeroplane that falls with a smash 
 into Mr. Tarleton's glass-houses. Mr. Shaw is 
 fond of securing that crescendo of excitement 
 which is so valuable at the fall of an intermediate 
 curtain by starting the engine of a motor-car 
 behind the scenes. That he is not incapable of the 
 quietly effective opportunities the theatre offers 
 we may see when the maid who has been shaken 
 by Blanche is heard passing the library door of 
 the Sartorius household "with a tray jingling," or 
 when Her Husband announces his entry by tapping 
 the barometer in the hall downstairs. These quiet 
 things are good ; but Mr. Shaw, we feel, prefers the 
 noisier ones. Nor does Mr. Shaw's love of violence 
 stop short at the physical. Here is one fragment 
 of conversation between a lady and gentleman 
 about to be married : 
 
 Raina [sarcastically]. A shocking sacrifice, isn't it ? 
 Such beauty ! Such intellect I Such modesty I wasted on 
 a middle-aged servant man. Really, Sergius, you cannot 
 stand by and allow such a thing. It would be unworthy 
 of your chivalry. 
 154
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Sergius [losing all self-control]. Viper ! Viper ! [He 
 rushes to and fro, raging.] 
 
 Bluntschli. Look here, Saranoff : you're getting the 
 worst of this. 
 
 And here is another : 
 
 Tanner. You lie, you vampire : you lie. . . . Infamous, 
 abandoned woman ! Devil ! 
 
 Ann. Boa-constrictor ! Elephant ! 
 
 Tanner. Hypocrite ! 
 
 Ann. I must be, for my future husband's sake. 
 
 Tanner. For mine ! [correcting himself savagely] I mean 
 for his. 
 
 On this kind of evidence it has been claimed for 
 Mr. Shaw, this time not by himself, that indig- 
 nation is the passion that spins the Shavian plot. 
 It has been urged that all his principal persons are 
 gifted, like Mr. Cuthbertson in The Philanderer, 
 with " an habitually indignant manner." But to 
 say merely this is to miss a point of importance. 
 Indignation may be a quite vital emotion, but the 
 fact is that the persons of Mr. Shaw's drama are 
 galvanized rather than vitalized. His own impulse 
 to the drama may be indignation ; he has stated it 
 thus : " To me the tragedy and comedy of life lie 
 in the consequences, sometimes terrible, some- 
 times ludicrous, of our persistent attempts to 
 found our institutions on the ideals suggested 
 to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, 
 instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history ": 
 
 155
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 a strictly intellectual indignation. This intel- 
 lectual indignation finds its most highly simplified 
 utterance in the exclamation of Tanner : " What 
 a country ! What a world I " It is in essence an 
 indignation with men and women for their stupidity 
 in being, what another dramatist without indig- 
 nation said they were, merely players. The Devil 
 finds life to be an " infinite comedy of illusion," 
 and Mr. Shaw is intellectually indignant that his 
 contemporaries should continue to side with the 
 Devil. This intellectual indignation with make- 
 believe issues most happily in scenes of comedy, 
 such as the scene in the early play in which Raina, 
 herself very indignant at the accusation that she 
 has ever in her life told more than two lies, suddenly 
 throws up the sponge and sinks to the ottoman 
 with the surrendering sigh, " How did you find me 
 out ? " The most nearly tragically indignant of 
 the plays is Mrs. Warren's Profession, and Mrs. 
 Warren's Profession has so little genuine emotion 
 as to be nothing but an essay in galvanism. In 
 the second act Mrs. Warren is galvanized into 
 expression of her views ; and at the end of the 
 third act, when the play is obviously flagging, an 
 attempt is made to galvanize the whole thing into a 
 semblance of vigour by the exciting suggestion that 
 the love of Frank and Vivie is destined to tragedy 
 because they are children of the same father. But 
 the fourth act makes it clear that Frank and Vivie 
 are not in love, and the highly indignant preface 
 156
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 explicitly states their possible consanguinity to be 
 an " insoluble problem." The heroics with a gun 
 at the fall of the third curtain are thus a piece of 
 quite gratuitous violence. No one in this play is 
 really indignant ; they are puppets at the end of 
 wires, and the wires are attached to a battery, and 
 Mr. Shaw is in charge of the current. Nor are we 
 made indignant by this scientific demonstration ; 
 only Mr. Shaw is indignant, and he has to take 
 a preface for the purpose because his indignation 
 is intellectual indignation. The measure of Mr. 
 Shaw's inability as a writer of plays is to be found 
 in the measure of his ability as a writer of prefaces ; 
 just as the measure of his necessity for stage 
 directions is the measure of his failure in the 
 creation of character. 
 
 But the concentrated intellectual indignation of 
 which Tanner's remark was the expression would 
 be productive of a series of such remarks rather 
 than of plays as pleasant of those of Mr. Shaw, 
 plays which result for the most part in that 
 '* general laughter and good humour " which 
 characterized, we read, the indiscriminate gathering 
 on the Sierra Nevada. The truth is that Mr. 
 Shaw's philosophy issues cheerful as the religion 
 of Major Barbara — the religion which she aban- 
 doned for the religion of Mrs. George and of Mrs. 
 Knox when she came to find happiness " within 
 herself." Margaret Knox, with happiness within 
 herself, knocks two teeth out of a policeman ; and 
 
 157
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 all the best of Mr. Shaw's people have this rather 
 excessive happiness within them, although the 
 wires by which their author has communicated 
 it are not always hid. The theatre of Mr. Shaw 
 is a theatre out of which the devil of romance was 
 cast and into which the seven devils of romance 
 have entered. That is why it is such an amusing 
 theatre. " The artist's work is to show us our- 
 selves as we really are," says Tanner, but Mr. 
 Shaw's theatre does not show us ourselves as we 
 really are ; it is quite free from " sawdid reeyelli- 
 ties." It shows us a world of Mr. Shaw's own 
 witty invention, in which love and business and 
 religion and even politics are violently amusing. 
 Never was mortal lover stricken with such exciting 
 symptoms as Valentine at first sight of his Gloria. 
 Sex in the Shavian theatre becomes a duel, business 
 becomes a glorious power over reality, religion an 
 ecstasy, politics an arena in which Tom Broadbent 
 is baited. " There are larger loves and diviner 
 dreams than the fireside ones," says the ex-Major 
 Barbara, and this and no other is the Secret in the 
 Poet's Heart. What is Mr. Shaw's love of violence 
 but an outcome of the " incurably romantic dis- 
 position " he shares with the hero of the anti- 
 romantic comedy ? This love of violence is the 
 key to the best things in Mr. Shaw's art, as well 
 as to the poorest. It is the key, on the one hand, 
 to undergraduate pleasantries such as Tanner's 
 " No man is a match for a woman except with a 
 158
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 poker and a pair of hob-nailed boots," and to all 
 the things of excess and too great ease that we 
 have considered. It is the key, on the other hand, 
 to the quality of urgent and spirited speech which 
 Mr. Shaw at his best has in common with the 
 writers of the Restoration, and which it is his 
 greatest merit to have brought back into the 
 theatre. Unlike the verbal wit of Wilde, which is 
 leisured and dainty, all the best of the verbal wit 
 in Mr. Shaw's plays is sharp and explosive. " You 
 call yourself a gentleman, and you offer me half ! " 
 " I do not call myself a gentleman, but I offer you 
 half." It is not only the professional expert in 
 explosives who has powers of retort of this deadly 
 suddenness. " Respect ! Treat my own daughter 
 with respect ! " explodes Mrs. Warren. The 
 generally placid old lady who is mother to Ann 
 and prospective grandmother to the superman 
 goes off at her best moment with the ricochetting 
 decisiveness of the firework known to schoolboys 
 as the rip-rap : " Oh, she is a hypocrite. She is : 
 she is. Isn't she ? " Bohun is a big gun ; the 
 terrible Twins cultivate the frequency and deadli- 
 ness of the Maxim ; the typical Shaw raisonneur, 
 whether he be named Tanner or Charteris or 
 Richard Dudgeon or, more suitably, Hotchkiss, is 
 nothing but an irrepressible sharpshooter potting 
 at heads wherever he sees them ; the tempo for the 
 whole of the first and best of Mr. Shaw's comedies 
 is given by that startling fusillade of Bulgarian 
 
 159
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 rifles outside the window ; while, if we come back 
 to character, there is nothing more economical and 
 satisfying in the whole range of Mr. Shaw's persons 
 than the sole and tremendous outburst of the 
 Italian pirate Marzo : " Only dam thief. Dam 
 liar. Dam rascal. . . . She saint. She get me 
 to heaven — get us all to heaven. We do what we 
 like now." 
 
 We have come back to character, and we have 
 come to the last of Mr. Shaw's best plays, The 
 Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. Between the two 
 pieces written in emulation of the severe beauties 
 of ancient Greek drama, Mr. Shaw happened to 
 write a small masterpiece. Of all the plays with 
 which Mr. Shaw has filled in the " hackneyed 
 stage framework " which he set out to " humanize," 
 none has more completely avoided his charac- 
 teristic excesses nor come so near the human as 
 the short play of Blanco Posnet. The place is " a 
 territory of the United States of America," but it 
 does not matter ; its reality is established and 
 its reality is preserved. The duration is about 
 half an hour, and, while the reality of time is 
 preserved very skilfully, it is long enough to 
 contain both life and death. The people in it, a 
 dozen or more, truly live, because in the short 
 time they are before us each one of them is, by 
 the exercise of the dramatist's art, able to act his 
 or her nature, and to make good in some way the 
 faculties, not of Mr. Shaw, but of themselves. 
 160
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Because the play has its own comic vision, there 
 is no need of comic relief ; nor is there any tedious 
 overplus through lack of the play's ability to 
 prove a vehicle sufficient for its burden of philo- 
 sophy. There is even about this play a sort of 
 chastened beauty. It has not a symptom of 
 G.B.S.'s complaint. The story of how religion 
 found Blanco the horse-thief, or rather of how 
 Blanco the horse- thief found religion— " within 
 himself"— is an entertaining anecdote, but it is 
 more, it is the perfectly effective expression through 
 the theatre of what the author had it in him to 
 express. 
 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw, the philosopher turned play- 
 wright, early in life took the advice the Statue 
 gave to Don Juan: he "put his discoveries in 
 the form of entertaining anecdotes." In another 
 kind of examination, we might have looked into 
 the nature of these discoveries, and ended on a 
 note of thankfulness for the entertainment, not 
 always inseparable from a study of philosophy, 
 enjoyed by the way. This chapter has been con- 
 cerned not with the discoveries of the philosopher, 
 but with the precise form of the anecdotes devised 
 by the playwright for our entertainment, and to 
 contain the philosopher's view of life. It is not 
 possible to end without thankfulness for the in- 
 tellectual vivacity Mr. Shaw has brought to the 
 theatre; but it is possible to remain perfectly 
 conscious that he has not profoundly affected the 
 
 L 161
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 theatre beeause ^•Jffg'^JZ^ 
 
 among the minor Knglish dramatists. 
 
 162
 
 VI 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 THE English drama as Oscar Wilde left it 
 is the English drama that St. John 
 Hankin took up. "I took the drama," 
 wrote Wilde, at the end of his life, " I took the 
 drama, the most objective form known to art, 
 and made it as personal a mode of expression as 
 the lyric or sonnet ; at the same time I widened 
 its range and enriched its characterization." 
 That he did not do all these things it is needless 
 to say. Wilde made the theatre, or found the 
 theatre rather, a perfect vehicle for his own 
 personal wit ; in a sense, by producing " Salome " 
 with the one hand and " The Importance of Being 
 Earnest " with the other, he may be said to have 
 widened its range ; but certainly he did not 
 proceed, by elevating character into its rightful 
 importance above action, to open up a new path 
 for contemporary drama. This he left to be done 
 by his successors, and as much by St. John Hankin 
 as by any man. Wilde enriched the English 
 theatre with one perfectly delightful play, the 
 
 163
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Continental theatre with another play of pe*uliai 
 beauty, and the theatre everywhere with a tradition 
 ol wi/at any eost that has proved, in the hands of 
 lesser men, an embarrassing possess .on. He « 
 not enrich at all the theatre s charac elation 
 if by this we mean the creation of living and 
 recognizable persons, to know whom is to know 
 more of life, and to wonder at it more pleasurably. 
 H Wilde could surprise us, he was well enough 
 pleased ; and his way of surprising us was by 
 shining dialogue and by situations so artfully 
 contrived as often to be quite impossib e rafter 
 than by the greater artist's way, which is to show 
 us the wonders within the heart of man. At least 
 he does surprise us, by dialogue and situation 
 and to do that is out of reach of the journeymen. 
 But there is another way that the lesser and more 
 sincere artist than Wilde may take. He may 
 take the beaten path and, by keeping close to 
 character, although he may surprise us >veryW*£ 
 he may yet give us the real and constant pleasures 
 of "cognition. The advantage of keeping upon 
 this path is that it is the path the great dramatist 
 when he comes, will inevitably tread only he 
 will find great surprises in it at every turn, the 
 ptneer dramatist like Hankin-(and the beaten 
 path in the arts is always in great need of pioneers) 
 -it his bent be gently ironical, will write comedies 
 with an intention very like that of the Restoration 
 writers : 
 164
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 Follies to-night we show ne'er lashed before, 
 Yet such as nature shows you every hour ; 
 Nor can the pictures give a just offence, 
 For fools are made for jests to men of sense. 
 
 Hankin's people — one might almost write Hankin's 
 fools, but not quite — may not, as Mrs. Cheveley 
 in "An Ideal Husband" did, "make great 
 demands on one's curiosity." But then, in reality, 
 neither do Wilde's people, in the just sense that 
 Shakespeare's or Sheridan's people do. The com- 
 plete justification of Hankin's minor comedy of 
 recognition is that Nature shows us such people 
 every hour, and that the dramatist has rendered 
 them noteworthy by his own fine sense of dramatic 
 style. 
 
 Hankin's work for the theatre took the form of 
 five full-length comedies, two short plays, and 
 some clear-headed and witty criticism. If we 
 look at the plays, we shall soon see how close, in 
 1904, he was to the Wilde tradition: 
 
 Lady Faringford [to Mrs. Jackson]. You remember 
 her ? She was Stella's governess. Quite an intelligent, 
 good creature. But I dare say you never met her. She 
 never used to come down to dinner. I always think 
 German governesses so much more satisfactory than 
 English. You see, there's never any question about 
 having to treat them as ladies. And then they're always 
 so plain. That's a great advantage. And German is 
 such a useful language, far more useful for a young girl 
 than French. There are so many more books she can be 
 allowed to read in it. French can be learnt later — and 
 should be, in my opinion. 
 
 165
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Mrs. Pratt. I quite agree with you, Lady Faringford. 
 But the Rector is less strict in these matters. He allowed 
 my girls to begin French directly they went to school, at 
 Miss Thursby's. But I am bound to say they never seem 
 to have learnt any. So perhaps it did no harm. 
 
 Mas. Jackson. Yes, I have always heard Miss Thursby's 
 was an excellent school. 
 
 But Wilde would never have written The Return 
 of the Prodigal. He would never have studied 
 so patiently as Hankin did the lesser country 
 houses of Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, and 
 Dorsetshire. Hankin's first play is set in the 
 suburb of Norwood, and in the suburb of Norwood 
 Wilde could never have been prevailed upon to set 
 foot at all. Lady Stutfield and the Archdeacon, 
 Lady Bracknel and the Honourable Gwendolen, 
 the Duchess of Berwick and her little chatterbox, 
 were seen for a moment in galvanic action during 
 the London season ; their stage counterparts, 
 without the wit, were already types in the theatres 
 of Wilde's day. Hankin is at no pains to keep 
 his people from appearing types, the vaguely 
 fatuous old lady or the " very pretty girl of twenty- 
 two " is of frequent recurrence ; but Lady Faring- 
 ford and Stella, Lady Denison and Margery, Mrs. 
 Jackson or the Countess of Remenham, may at 
 any moment falsify their author's small hope of 
 them and develop a character. Hankin was happy 
 in this too, that no sudden success in the theatre 
 set him writing plays out of his mere cleverness 
 166
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 and facility. He waited, as the wise artist waits, 
 for an idea, and then he made a play of it. Five 
 plays, with Hankin, mean five genuine ideas, apt 
 for comedy. A bad Mr. Wetherby, living in a 
 bachelor flat, and a good Mr. Wetherby, living 
 en famille, may shake hands over the walnuts 
 and wine and congratulate one another, " My bad 
 reputation is as hollow as your good one. We're 
 both frauds together." A prodigal son so arranges 
 his return that he gets the whip- hand of his family 
 and is enabled to go out into the wilderness again 
 replenished in his resources. An excellent lady 
 and her pretty daughter arrive at an interesting 
 distinction between the false hospitality and 
 the true, in accordance with which they invite a 
 lot of people to their house, not because they like 
 them, but " out of kindness " — with results that 
 are both dreadful and amusing. A wise little 
 lady of family, whose son has engaged himself to 
 the usual musical comedy actress, puts into 
 practice, in the belief that " love thrives on 
 opposition," a plan of killing it by kindness — an 
 exercise, almost mathematical in its neatness, 
 in the process of exhaustion. A minor county 
 family, that has run all to tarnished family por- 
 traits and not at all to brains or character and now 
 not even to sons, turns out of doors the daughter 
 who has spirit enough to seek to live her life in 
 her own way ; and then, when she produces an 
 heir, would like to take her back again — but she 
 
 167
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 won't come. The " idea " of a Hankin play is 
 always concrete and well-imagined enough to be 
 readily statable in a few words ; and its progress 
 is never cluttered up with a lot of unnecessary 
 "ideas." Hankin is perfectly clear about the 
 essential thing. " It is the dramatist's business," 
 he says, in one of his essays on the plays of other 
 people, " to represent life, not to argue about it." 
 He is equally clear about the things that make 
 up good stage-craft, the audible and visible things 
 in the dramatist's art that subserve dramatic idea 
 in its illumination of character ; but these he did 
 not always achieve so clearly as he may have wished 
 to have done. The critic, who finds it compara- 
 tively easy to know what he thinks good, is liable 
 when he becomes author to find himself resting 
 contented with the less good. It is probable that 
 Hankin never wished very consciously for an art 
 of the stage that was much in advance of that 
 which he found around him — no more consciously 
 than Wilde did ; but in technical matters, in 
 matters of the general ordering of his stage, his 
 taste was for neatness and the elimination of 
 conventions that were accepted merely because 
 they were easy. His sense of the theatre, together 
 with its subtlety, we see very early, when at the 
 final curtain of his first play we have the bad Mr. 
 Wetherby, newly constrained to accept his wife's 
 dominion, and still very easy in his own mind 
 about it, going out carrying " BOTH the bags." 
 168
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 In a later play there is a true instance of the way 
 in which the authentic dramatist will secure effect 
 out of the interplay of dialogue with stage possi- 
 bilities. The Denison family, and guests, are at 
 dinner, and as the man who looks after the dynamo 
 has been accepted on the same principle as the 
 guests, that of true hospitality — he isn't really 
 an electrician — the lights suddenly go out. The 
 ordinarily placid Lady Denison is worried, and 
 hopes it isn't going to be one of his bad nights. 
 The lights come on again, and she has no sooner 
 said " That's better " than they go out afresh. 
 This depresses her, but a moment later the lights 
 recover, have a series of spasms, and finally 
 settle to work again. This is very good ; as good 
 as the moment in Wilde's play, when Jack, having 
 gone out of the room in great excitement to find 
 the natal hand-bag, a terrible noise is heard 
 overhead; "It is stopped now," remarks Lady 
 Bracknel, and immediately the noise is redoubled. 
 We all catch ourselves in these little acts of pre- 
 mature congratulation, and the recognition of 
 other people making themselves ridiculous is 
 always pleasant. In addition, Hankin's is a touch 
 of the truest comedy ; a great deal of dialogue 
 could not give us with such beautiful precision 
 the full amenity of life in this household where 
 charity begins at home. 
 
 But Hankin's plays are not especially notable 
 for their good ordering of the stage. He put up 
 
 169
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 with most of the conventions of the theatre as 
 he found them. He suffered his first play to be 
 printed with R.C. and L.C. and R.U.E., like a 
 proposition in Euclid ; because he was frankly con- 
 tented that his play should be acted by amateurs, 
 and amateurs have to be told when and where and 
 how to come on, to " move up " or to " cross " or 
 to " come down," otherwise they would not be 
 able to act a piece at all. (Happily, in the new 
 collected edition, the play may be read without 
 these things.) Later, of course, he evolved a form 
 of literary stage direction that is particularly his 
 own ; something more must be said of this in a 
 moment. In the meantime we may see, by a 
 glance at any one of the plays, that Hankin was 
 content, even at the height of his powers, to ask 
 actors and producers to do things that they should 
 not be asked to do by a dramatist who has full 
 mastery of his art. In The Return of the Prodigal 
 there is a love scene at one side of the stage while, we 
 are told, "everybody else is immersed in conversa- 
 tion " — conversation that goes nevertheless, by one 
 of the most popular and arbitrary conventions of 
 the stage, unreported. Shakespeare has no stage 
 directions that are of guidance on this point, but 
 he, of course, did not pretend to observe the new 
 unity of the stage that, with its retirement within 
 the picture-frame, has come by general consent 
 to be desirable. By the time of the Restoration, 
 however, we may read in several dramatists the 
 170
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 direction, "They talk in dumb show " — that is to 
 say, one pair of characters has been made to 
 relapse into a sudden silence, not because in reality 
 they would have done so, but factitiously, in order 
 that another pair may have the centre of the 
 stage. This expedient of convenience is a charac- 
 teristic part of the Pinero technique ; and in The 
 Cassilis Engagement we read, sure enough, " They 
 converse in dumb show " — while another couple 
 " come down stage " and engage our ear. There 
 is no question of right or wrong in this, merely 
 the confession that the dramatist has taken the 
 easiest way instead of conquering an unnecessary 
 convention ; for " to conquer an unnecessary 
 convention is one of the greatest delights of an 
 art : to loyally accept and work within a necessary 
 convention is no less a delight " — a remark that 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones made once, but did not 
 proceed conspicuously to exemplify. Much depends, 
 of course, upon what are the necessary conventions. 
 But here is Hankin, in illustration of the general 
 willingness we have found in him to be upon the 
 side of good sense and economy in technical 
 matters, doing very much better only a few 
 minutes earlier in the same play. Major War- 
 rington and Ethel, it will be remembered, have 
 just been having a rather intimate little talk 
 together. " Meantime " (we read) 
 
 Lady Remenham has been conversing in an undertone 
 xvith Mrs. Hermes, occasionally glancing over her shoulder 
 
 171
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 at the other two. In the sudden hush which follows Warring- 
 ton's movement towards the fireplace, her voice suddenly 
 becomes alarmingly audible. 
 
 Lady Remenham. Such a common little thing, too I 
 And J don't even call her pretty. 
 
 This is at least an admission of the claims of good 
 technique, and an honest attempt at their satis- 
 faction ; it is a scene that need not distress the 
 best of producers. In itself — and Hankin's work 
 is full of instances of such honest good workmanship 
 — it is an advance on anything Wilde saw to be 
 necessary, who would crowd his stage with con- 
 versational groups and bring out one after another 
 into audibility like couples circulating on a merry- 
 go-round ; while any necessary business that there 
 might be to be considered, he would generally 
 impart quite naively in a soliloquy. Hankin is 
 never guilty of soliloquy — or almost never : Janet 
 de Mullin remarks " under her breath," it is true, 
 " Monty Bulstead ! engaged ! " a lapse which gives 
 us a bad quarter of a minute in a play that is 
 otherwise well-written. But Hankin's returned 
 prodigal, having safely secured admission to the 
 family drawing-room, and everybody having run 
 in various directions in search of restoratives, does 
 not get up and tell us all about himself. Oh no. 
 He takes advantage of the moment to " raise 
 himself cautiously from his recumbent posture 
 and wring out the bandage on his forehead, which 
 he finds disagreeably wet." This done, he hears 
 172
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 the sound of returning footsteps and ""»»«" 
 his fainting condition." Everything about the 
 prodigal is revealed in due order and with a 
 proper piquancy ; this moment is used in masterly 
 Son and is a true instance of Hankm's faculty 
 of qTe'tly humorous surprise. It is a moment of 
 
 V ^eTanrrgo y firthcr d without considering the 
 general ^stion of stage directions. Every play 
 fhat eanle read-(and every good play can be read 
 make no mistake about that)-must make plain 
 to the reader by means of commentary upon the 
 words and actions of the persons all those things 
 which, in the theatre, would be made plain to the 
 rectator by the actor's art and by the constant 
 enperSing 7 service of the stage Drama is one- 
 half a matter of visual demonstration : a blind 
 man sitting in a theatre could take away only 
 onchalf of a true play's content ; and 1 to read 
 the bare printed words of a play is to be in the 
 position o P f the blind man. The fund .or .of the 
 printed stage directions is to supply all that 
 deference between what would be apprehended 
 bf he blind man and what would be apprehended 
 by the spectator with the whole quintette of his 
 senses about him. But their funet.on is not to 
 upply more. Mr. Shaw's stage directions do 
 supply more ; they will give us the appearance £ 
 the front steps, of the entrance-hall, and of the 
 staircase of ! house, of which in the theatre we
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 see only the interior of one room; and when we 
 get to this room the stage directions will describe 
 it, perhaps, from the point of view of a super- 
 naturally observant sparrow on the window-sill. 
 Mr. Shaw's stage directions do not stop short of 
 giving us the whole flora and fauna of the neigh- 
 bourhood, together with the prevailing political 
 opinion, and the amount of the water-rate. But 
 Mr. Shaw's narrative excursions are not in any 
 strict sense stage directions at all ; they are delight- 
 fully readable, and he could no more issue a play 
 without them than he could issue a play without 
 a preface. Hankin, who did issue a Play without a 
 Preface, hit upon a very happy mean between 
 Mr. Shaw s narrative excursions and the alpha- 
 betical efforts of the school whose plays look 
 like a handbook of instructions for one desirous 
 of becoming proficient in the Morse code His 
 stage directions, besides adding to our pleasure 
 by the neatly pointed wit of their expression, do 
 really achieve their true function, that of giving 
 us exactly, or almost exactly, what we miss 
 through not seeing the play in the theatre. The 
 best moment in the best of Hankin's comedies is 
 thus one in which dialogue plays a small part. 
 Ethel Borndge, bored stiff in the Cassilis drawing- 
 uTj ff d rendered q uite ^ckless by the German 
 ballad Mabel has just sung very prettily, determines 
 to show these people what she can do. She plunges 
 mto a " refined ditty," in which the Hankin who 
 174
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 wrote Lost Masterpieces has caught quite perfectly 
 the style of the less-than-first-rate music-hall 
 article. The effect is critical : 
 
 Majob Wabbington. Splendid, by Jove I Capital I 
 That, however, is clearly not the opinion of the rest of the 
 lisiZs, for the song has what is called a « mixed- reception. 
 ThT^eTfor theZost part, had originally settled themselves 
 iZ Zir places prepared to listen to anything which was 
 Tbefollthem wiUi polite indifference. *$*»* *««J 
 suffice to convince them of the impossibili ty of that attrtude. 
 Lady Remenham, who is sitting on the sofa by Lady Mabch- 
 il, exchanges a horrified glance with that lady, and with 
 Mbs. HBBBms on the other side of the room. Mabel foote 
 uncomfortable. The Rectob feigns abstraction. Mbs. 
 Cassilis remains calm and sweet, but avoids every ones eye, 
 and^re particularly Geoefbey's, who looks intensely 
 miserable. But Wabbington enjoys himself thoroughly 
 Id as for Mbs. Bobbidge, her satisfaction's ^measured. 
 She beats time to the final chorus, wagging her old head and 
 
 f££g in in stentoriL *^/^J72*?JSr£ 
 chair clapping her hands, and crying Thats right, Eth. 
 Give'>emaZher.» In fact, she feels that the song has been a 
 °Zp2 trTXh for J daughter, and a startUng vindi^on 
 of old Jenkins's good opinion of her powers Suddenly, 
 Liver, she becoJes conscious of the ^nfied^Unce which 
 surrounds her. The cheers die away on her lips. She looks 
 TounTZ room, dazed and almost f^Z^HsmZfer 
 reseats herself in her chair, from which ^hasnsen in her 
 excitement, straightens her wig, and-there is an awful 
 
 pause. 
 
 Here we are told-very well told-everything 
 we need to know, and nothing that we need not. 
 If we have an ounce of imagination we can see 
 
 175
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the whole scene for ourselves; but no foolish 
 attempt is made to leave nothing to the imagina- 
 tion. To understand how well and surely this 
 scene is done, we have to read, not only in the 
 stage directions of other dramatists, but in those 
 of Hankin himself. He is not always, as we have 
 seen, equally sure of himself : if he had been quite 
 as conscious as he might have been that the burden 
 of the dramatist's directions is merely What the 
 Actor Has to Show, and nothing else, he would 
 hardly have set Margery Denison the task of 
 showing that she was " quite unconscious of her 
 mother's agitation, as she sat too far from her at 
 luncheon to notice that she was not in her usual 
 spirits." Margery, by her demeanour in the draw- 
 ing-room, could hardly be expected to show all 
 that. No, Hankin is here frankly telling us some- 
 thing— as frankly in his own interpolated person 
 as when he tells us somewhere else in the same play 
 that Verreker does not like Hylton, " I'm afraid." 
 This is, however, the defect of a quality. Hankin 
 really did believe in the drama as "the most 
 objective form known to art." He is determined 
 that his people shall stand upon their own feet • 
 and, in the light of this admirable determination' 
 his affectation that he knows no more about them 
 than does the reader or spectator is seen to be an 
 amiable little pose. 
 
 Of course an absolute objectivity is as impossible 
 m drama as in any other of the arts. Hankin 
 176
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 himself is not for ever speaking through the mouths 
 of his people, as Mr. Shaw is, reducing them to 
 mere raisonneurs ; but in their every utterance 
 there is something of his own sense of style and 
 form — his people bear the impress of their author, 
 or they would not be his people at all. The most 
 realistic of artists has thus to put shape upon 
 events and speeches, or he is no artist. It is 
 probable that Hankin was not a very conscious 
 realist ; but because he kept character in the 
 forefront, and refused to give in to what was 
 sentimentally expected of him, he was able to make 
 that scene of Ethel shocking her fiance's drawing- 
 room as truthful a scene as any on the modern 
 stage. We see most clearly his views on objectivity 
 in drama in the essay, already quoted, On Happy 
 Endings. Being content to represent life, and 
 not wishing to argue about it, he need not " end," 
 as the writer with a thesis wishes to end. His 
 plays have each the neatness and inevitability of a 
 theorem or proposition, but at the end of them 
 there is no Q.E.F. or Q.E.D. This is what he set 
 out to do with his plays : "I select an episode in 
 the life of one of my characters or a group of 
 characters, when something of importance to their 
 future has to be decided, and I ring up my curtain. 
 Having shown how it was decided, and why it was 
 so decided, I ring it down again. The episode is 
 over, and with it the play. The end is ' incon- 
 clusive ' in the sense that it proves nothing. Why 
 
 m 177
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 should it ? " Why should it, indeed ? Does not 
 " Le Misanthrope " of Moliere end with the words, 
 " Come, Madam, let us leave no stone unturned 
 to hinder the plan he has in view " ? — inconclusive 
 words, and yet we are left in no discontent, because 
 the play is certainly over. It is quite a different 
 matter from the ending on a question mark (which 
 is thought to be so clever just now), for no other 
 reason than that the writer has not skill enough to 
 bring his play to a proper end. Hankin, who took 
 the liberty, before he wrote plays of his own, of 
 showing in his Dramatic Sequels that other people's 
 plays need not have ended so soon as they did, 
 showed, in his own turn, that plays need not go on 
 so long. They might stop short of wedding bells. 
 His own do, invariably ; partly because to end 
 thus pleased his amiable cynicism, partly because 
 to end thus was quite right. One play, his first, 
 he spoiled ; after first begging the question ("I 
 wonder how you two ever came to marry ") the 
 courage of his cynicism failed him, and he flattered 
 the amateurs by reuniting his Constantia and his 
 Dick. Afterwards the endings are uniformly 
 " inconclusive " and uniformly right ; the disturb- 
 ing person, having fluttered the dovecote — Eustace 
 or Verreker or Ethel Borridge or Janet de Mullin — 
 goes out, and the dovecote settles once more into 
 its lazy and unimaginative peace. The country 
 house is at rest again, free to take cold baths 
 and to shoot partridges, to crochet counterpanes 
 178
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 for the sick and to manipulate orphans into 
 asylums. That is the true ending for the people 
 Hankin chose to depict. The interesting, dis- 
 turbing people in such circles generally do dis- 
 appear. There is nothing more manifestly recog- 
 nizable in Hankin than the truthfulness of his 
 endings. 
 
 The chief defect in Hankin's plays is their lack 
 of emotional momentum. His comedy is as minor 
 as that of the Restoration writers, but what he 
 makes up in sincerity they made up in splendid, 
 spirited speech. " How pleasant is resenting an 
 injury without passion," says Sir Harry Wildair, a 
 damnable sentiment, stated quite beautifully ; and 
 Hankin's people always do everything " without 
 passion." Their author doubtless felt it was 
 pleasanter so. His inability, after he has given 
 his people life, to give them ardour, does not 
 matter much until we come to Janet de Mullin, 
 whose tirade against her family sounds a little 
 thin and tinny for lack of her eagerness in life 
 having been made real to us. Hankin's last play 
 is in many ways his ablest ; but on the title- 
 page of his first play he wrote a line from Horace 
 Walpole : " Life is a comedy to those who think, a 
 tragedy to those who feel," that retained its 
 application to his own work to the end. For 
 Hankin thought his way successfully through 
 most of his comedies. But the theme of The Last 
 of the De Mullins is one that demands more feeling 
 
 179
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 than he was able to give to it. " Then I met — never 
 mind. And I fell in love with him. Or perhaps 
 I only fell in love with love," says Janet. It is a 
 subject for feeling ; but we feel it no more than we 
 feel the " One may like the love and despise the 
 lover, I hope," of Farquhar's pert Melinda. It 
 would not be quite true to say that Hankin worked 
 with his brain alone ; numberless touches that we 
 recognize for their emotional truthfulness would 
 have been beyond him so ; there are passages 
 like the following, with sufficient feeling : 
 
 Geoffrey [picking rose and bringing it to Ethel] . A rose 
 for the prettiest girl in England. 
 
 Ethel. Oh, Geoff, do you think so ? 
 
 Geoffrey. Of course. The prettiest and the best. 
 [Takes her hand.] 
 
 Ethel. You do really love me, Geoff, don't you ? 
 
 Geoffrey. Do you doubt it ? [Kisses her.] 
 
 Ethel. No ; you're much too good to me, you know. 
 
 Geoffrey. Nonsense, darling. 
 
 Ethel. It's the truth. You're a gentleman and rich, 
 and have fine friends, while mother and I are common as 
 common. 
 
 Geoffrey [firmly]. You're not. 
 
 Ethel. Oh yes, we are. Of course I've been to school 
 and been taught things. But what's education ? It can't 
 alter how we're made, can it ? And she and I are the 
 same underneath. 
 
 Geoffrey. Ethel, you're not to say such things, or to 
 think them. 
 
 Ethel. But they're true, Geoff. 
 
 Geoffrey. They're not. [Kisses her.] Say they're 
 not. 
 180
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 Ethel [shakes her head]. No. 
 
 Geoffbey. Say they're not. [Kisses her.] Not! 
 
 Ethel. Very well. They're not. 
 
 Geoffrey. That's right. [Kiss.] There's a reward. 
 
 The last thing to leave Hankin's hand, The Constant 
 Lover > is all as good as that, a beautifully sustained 
 trifle, very amiable, rather cynical, and very 
 human. Fortunately, being in one act, it has only 
 one curtain. Hankin's final curtains are always 
 good, but he often fails at his intermediate curtains 
 — because of his lack of emotional momentum. 
 For it is the fact that criticism may test a dramatist 
 most surely at the moment when he is ringing 
 down his intermediate curtain : it has merely to 
 ask itself the question, Do I want this play to go 
 on ? Is the veil that is coming between me and 
 this uncompleted world almost intolerable ? It 
 should be (except at the last; when its very 
 inevitability should, of course, be satisfying). 
 By however little the dramatist may have left the 
 beaten path of everyday experience, here, never- 
 theless, is a moment that must have been so 
 contrived as to " make great demands on one's 
 curiosity." With Hankin, it must be said, one is 
 not so anxious as one should be for the play to 
 go on. Of course one wants his plays to go on — 
 they would be unreadable otherwise, or unable 
 to hold their place in their theatre ; which em- 
 phatically is not the case. But one is a little — 
 what shall we say ? — subdued in one's eagerness. 
 
 181
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Partly this is because the plays, by their nature, 
 hold no great surprise ; they will work out, we 
 know they will work out — we know the prodigal 
 will return to the wilderness, the Cassilis engage- 
 ment end only one way, and so on. Essentially 
 the pleasure of recognition we have in his work 
 is of two kinds — the pleasure of meeting people we 
 know, the pleasure of seeing the episode in which 
 Hankin has involved these people come to its 
 logical end. This end will not surprise us ; there 
 is no great crisis being, at each curtain, cleverly 
 deferred. It is a patient, amiable enjoyment 
 that a Hankin play offers. But it might well have 
 a greater, a more steadily growing, momentum ; 
 this comes in only with true feeling, and the measure 
 of its absence in Hankin is the measure of the 
 difference of his drama from the greatest. 
 
 There are, nevertheless, two acts quite perfectly 
 ended : the first act of the De Mullins, with its 
 skilfully contrived passage between the sisters ; 
 and the first act of The Cassilis Engagement — 
 " Marry her ! Nonsense, my dear Margaret." 
 These are evidence once more of the good things 
 Hankin could do, for which his work will always 
 be valued. He could be quite heartless, as when 
 he is emphasizing some one's " fatuity," or in 
 the uncharitable episode of the maid Anson, in the 
 charitable comedy ; and then again he could make 
 real a Mrs. Cassilis or an Ethel or a Mrs. Jackson, 
 which no merely clever man could do. At any 
 182
 
 ST. JOHN HANKIN 
 
 moment, too, he may demand our pleasure by the 
 gently reminiscent skill with which he reminds us 
 that if we breakfast in our room the crumbs 
 get into our bed, or that it is the custom after a 
 really terrible experience to thank our hostess for 
 such a pleasant evening. It is a quality that is 
 near, at least, to the humour that is universal. 
 By an accident of commercial organization Hankin's 
 work has been kept from the general theatre, but 
 it will find its place there, and it will keep its place, 
 because it will continue to give this pleasure. 
 
 183
 
 VII 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 INTO the English theatre there came with the 
 first of the plays of Mr. Granville Barker the 
 deliberate indication that here was a writer 
 whose delight it would be to attempt the difficult. 
 There is a popular delusion in the theatre that the 
 diction to which great pains have gone to make 
 perfect will impose great pains in its turn upon the 
 auditor ; which is absurd, because the only test 
 of dramatic diction is the degree in which it can 
 please us by going right in at our ear — the more 
 perfectly it is shaped, the more easy it will be of 
 apprehension. And this is true, not only of its 
 diction, but of the whole constitution of the drama. 
 A man may write in many ways and leave 
 us ultimately satisfied that we have taken all 
 his meaning in ; but when a man speaks his 
 speech must be such, if it is to satisfy us, that 
 our ear is served moment by moment with just 
 so much as the ear in a moment can take in. It 
 is a confused perception of this obvious distinc- 
 tion between the literary and dramatic arts that 
 
 185
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 kept Browning and Meredith out of the English 
 theatre while it filled it full of a kind of diction 
 that sacrificed everything to readiness of appre- 
 hension, and of a kind of character and event 
 that had become unmistakable through long 
 familiarity. Nothing could be more familiar, and 
 therefore more readily recognized, than the 
 language of the newspaper we had just thrown 
 aside ; and the English theatre was contented 
 to reproduce this. But while familiarity is one 
 thing, intimacy is quite another. We shall find 
 the art of Mr. Granville Barker to be an intimate 
 art. And we shall find that his drama takes its 
 rise not in a belief in an unnatural ease to be 
 attained by adherence to several factitious rules 
 and conventions, but in a desire to express through 
 the theatre as much of his own personal view of 
 things as can possibly be given that form and 
 shape which are necessary to effective expression 
 through the theatre. In its deliberate courting 
 of the difficult — it is no mere casual flirtation — 
 Mr. Barker's is a definitely experimental drama ; 
 we may say that he is the first definite experi- 
 mentalist in the modern English theatre. 
 
 Now a man whose apprenticeship to the theatre 
 consists in speaking other men's lines upon 
 its boards is not the man to shape his own work 
 without regard to the theatre's conditions. Mr. 
 Barker's plays, however diverse, have in common 
 the desire to do something at once larger and more 
 186
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 intimate than his contemporaries are doing, and 
 they have also the technical equipment by which 
 alone, in any art, this desire will be safe from 
 frustration. A play by Granville Barker is first 
 and foremost, whatever its unorthodoxy, a play 
 that works. The play about the young lady of 
 family who married with the gardener is the play 
 of a young man sometimes remembering Meredith ; 
 but it works in the theatre — it works better than 
 " The Sentimentalists " of his master. The play 
 about the defaulting solicitor who died in honour 
 and left to his son an inheritance of doubt and 
 difficulty is, with only so much stated, a good 
 play ; but in the hands of this dramatist it took 
 on cheerfully the proportions of an epic of middle- 
 class family life in the latter days of the nineteenth 
 century, and remained a good play. The play 
 about a man whose usefulness to the State was 
 sacrificed rather than that the State should appear 
 to condone the private fault which was irrelevant 
 to his public usefulness, became, since Mr. Barker 
 was the dramatist, not merely a picture of political 
 society in the Edwardian era, but a vehicle for the 
 expression of a whole carefully considered plan 
 for the endowment of education and the dis- 
 establishment of the Church. Still, it carried its 
 burden ; it was not by any inadaptability to the 
 theatre of its generously imagined materials that 
 the play fell something short of the most memor- 
 able tragedy. Mr. Barker next wrote a comedy 
 
 187
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 that had for its unity nothing less than the conduct 
 and whole implications of a trade, and that 
 managed somehow, between its first act and its 
 last, to look much of contemporary civilization 
 in the face ; and who will be found at this 
 time of day to deny that The Madras House, 
 for three-fourths of its length at least, gave rise 
 to the emotions proper to comedy ? From The 
 Marrying of Ann Leete to the end of Act Three of 
 The Madras House, Mr. Barker's plays work : that 
 is the first of their merits. If we are clear about 
 that, we may proceed to see how they work, to 
 what end in pleasure and profit, and with what 
 significance for the future of the English theatre. 
 
 When the curtain first rose on the earliest of the 
 plays, it will be remembered that Ann's scream 
 that came through the darkness of the garden was 
 prelude to the following conversation : 
 
 Lord John Carp. I apologize. 
 
 Ann. Why is it so dark ? 
 
 Lord John. Can you hear what I'm saying ? 
 
 Ann. Yes. 
 
 Lord John. I apologize for having kissed you . . . 
 almost unintentionally. 
 
 Ann. Thank you. Mind the steps down. 
 
 Lord John. I hope I'm sober, but the air . . . 
 
 Ann. Shall we sit for a minute ? There are several 
 seats to sit on somewhere. 
 
 Lord John. This is a very dark garden. 
 
 Now we have here a dialogue of a deliberate 
 nicety that is pleasing ; we have the true question 
 
 188
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 and answer, not always in the closest consequence, 
 and sentences that are sometimes left in the air, 
 as we sometimes leave them — things that are 
 engaging in themselves if we recognize them, and 
 that contribute to the general impression of 
 naturalness none the less if we don't. They are 
 qualities quite apart from the fact that Ann, 
 the young lady who married with the gardener, 
 was an eighteenth- century young lady who was 
 breathless from just having been kissed ; for we 
 have only to remember the rise of the curtain on 
 a later play to recall that the conversation of 
 present-day people in a country-house drawing- 
 room discovers just the same qualities. Similarly, 
 the true answer to Constantine's " You are a poet, 
 Mr. State," is Mr. State's answer, " I never wrote 
 one in my life, sir ; " but it is not the answer another 
 dramatist would have thought of. This, then, is the 
 first of this dramatist's discoveries, that we really 
 speak like that, rather than like a newspaper, as 
 Sir Arthur Pinero would have us think that we 
 speak. We may say of Mr. Barker, slightly 
 varying what was said of another, " He has an 
 ear." And now let us hasten, having used the 
 word " real," to repudiate the idea, inseparable 
 from the word in some minds, that Mr. Barker is 
 either a phonograph or a newspaper man with a 
 notebook. It is a curious omission of these 
 minds to fail to remember that it is the newspaper 
 man with his notebook who produces those inter- 
 
 189
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 views in the papers in which the originals cannot 
 hear themselves speak. In fact, the reporter is 
 not a dramatist, and the dramatic realist in his 
 dialogue, astonishingly as the news may come to 
 some, is not a reporter. He has not only an ear, 
 he has an imagination ; and what the ear hears 
 the imagination so shapes that we may hear it 
 also, as it occurred and as, in the theatre, we may 
 be caused to believe that it occurred. When Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith, who was very fond of Mr. Lucas Cleeve 
 and lived with him on terms of the closest intimacy, 
 said what she thought of his essay, we know that 
 if the expression of opinion ever occurred it did 
 not occur in the least in that manner, and so we 
 are forced to believe that the people never really 
 did occur either. So subtle is the interrelation 
 between truthfulness in small things, and truth- 
 fulness in great. It is this interrelation that the 
 realist understands. But just as events can never 
 be made to exist until they have been through his 
 imagination, so words can become real by no other 
 process ; until, that is, they issue with that 
 imagination's impress. We have noticed in the 
 first persons to leave Mr. Barker's hands a deliberate 
 nicety of speech, and this does not desert his 
 persons whether they move over the sward at 
 Marks way de with Mr. Carnaby Leete, late of Mr. 
 Pitt's Cabinet, or sit in a library in Queen Anne's 
 Gate as prospective members of Lord Horsham's ; 
 or merely rotate between business in Peckham and 
 190
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 a house at Denmark Hill in salubrious enjoyment 
 of a view of the Crystal Palace. It is the impress 
 by which they are Mr. Barker's, and not Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's or Mr. Bernard Shaw's. It is only a 
 step from Ann's " I had rather, my lord, that you 
 did not tell my brother why I screamed — I had 
 rather, Lord John, that you had not told my 
 brother why I screamed," to the phraseology of 
 the correct Mrs. Huxtable when she learned that 
 Woking was a cheerful place, " I had thought not 
 for some reason." The step is a hundred years or 
 so in real time, but only some ten in Mr. Barker's 
 mastery of comic diction. 
 
 The distinguishing characteristic of Mr. Barker's 
 comic diction, then, is its intimacy. He can give this 
 personal quality to the diction of another dramatist 
 when he "paraphrases" Schnitzler's "Anatol." 
 When they ask Ann in the dark garden whether 
 she is blushing after being kissed, she replies, " I 
 am by the feel of me " ; and we are often next the 
 skin, as it were, of Mr. Barker's people — sometimes 
 almost indecently. That engaging soul Mr. 
 Huxtable has acquired Macaulay, Erbert Spencer, 
 and Grote's Istory of Greece in the intervals of the 
 drapery business, and one can feel the physical 
 twinge of satisfied ownership in the words, " I've 
 got 'em all there." Extraordinary how near 
 we come to the little beating heart, like a rattled 
 pea, of dapper Mr. Booth when he says, " One 
 can't lose half of all one has and then be told of 
 
 191
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 it in two minutes . . . sitting at a table." The 
 dialogue is attended, ever so closely, by a small 
 circling humour. " Are you going to be married ? " 
 demands brother George of Abud the gardener, 
 whose reply is " Not especially, sir." " A boy or 
 a girl, Dimmuck ? " asks Ann of the butler when 
 Mrs. George is brought to bed, and the answer 
 comes, " Yes, miss." This humour, as the plays 
 go on, takes to throwing the most sudden of 
 little lights, sometimes deep into character. It is 
 illuminating to hear of brother George Leete that 
 he is "a cork, trying to sink socially " ; but it is 
 positively the completest possible revelation of 
 the whole heart and soul of Mrs. Voysey, to have 
 her begin to retire for the night and pause at the 
 door to say, " I'm not pleased with you, Beatrice." 
 The speech of Mr. Barker's persons, every moment 
 that they live, is for ever taking some such twist or 
 turn that shows us some new facet of the truth 
 about themselves, as when Mr. Huxtable begins 
 the speech to his errant brother-in-law which 
 he has been preparing for thirty years, " And 
 I come here to-day full of forgiveness "... and 
 completes it with " and curiosity. ..." The 
 lambent humour that is throwing lights on these 
 people, the hand that is causing them to turn about 
 and display themselves, is of course Mr. Barker's, 
 but their naturalness, we would say, is their own. 
 This most essential unity, the unity of character, 
 is preserved so perfectly that, if we are reading the 
 192
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 plays, the very stage directions seem, when they 
 refer to crumpled Mr. Booth as " the poor old thing " 
 or to Mr. Huxtable asa" buffer," merely to have 
 found the intimacy infectious, and not to suggest 
 the showman speaking in his own person at 
 all. For the most part, it is the perfect stage 
 direction that Mr. Barker gives us — all that we 
 ought to see, as Mr. Barker, skilled man of the 
 theatre, sees it. This matter of stage directions 
 is important. The intimacy of Mr. Barker's art 
 cannot be better established than by a reference 
 to the comfortable office of Voysey and Son at the 
 opening of the fourth act. " It has somehow lost 
 that brilliancy which the old man's occupation 
 seemed to give it." That is how we have got to 
 see the room ; the desire that we should see it 
 thus, and the fact that Mr. Barker has so seen it, is 
 an example, of the kind that one would emphasize, 
 of the subtlety of this dramatist's theatrical vision. 
 He has an eye. 
 
 The attempt to look all round, which we have 
 found in Mr. Barker's dialogue and character is 
 matched by an equal attempt to round all in, which 
 we may look for rather in incidental detail. The 
 Voysey Inheritance, Waste, and The Madras House, 
 in their different fields, are triumphs of Rounding 
 In. The marshalling of the circumstances by 
 which there came to be a Voysey inheritance for 
 Edward to shoulder could not be more thorough 
 if Mr. Barker had been briefed by the Crown. In 
 
 N 193
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the comedy of drapery, the dramatist's zest in 
 the facts that at a Peckham emporium the two 
 hundred and thirty-five gentlemen get thirty 
 pounds a year allowed them if they live " out " 
 and jam roly-poly if they live "in," is quite equal 
 to his zest in Mr. Windlesham's narration of the 
 exact manner of the genesis of a Parisian cocotte's 
 new hat. If the Conservative party could not 
 go to the country at the next election on the 
 proposals presented gratis with the play of 
 Waste, it is not for a layman to say why. And 
 this brings us to the second of Mr. Barker's dis- 
 coveries. 
 
 The plays of Mr. Granville Barker make it 
 clear that the creation of character, which is the 
 business of the dramatist, need not stop short 
 at the creation of individual character only, 
 but may go on to the creation of what one 
 may call the corporate character of a group. 
 A play by this author is in fact a series of dramatiza- 
 tions of these group emotions, each proper to the 
 play's progressing effect. Thus the true business 
 of the dramatist, under this technique, is seen to 
 be the realization of the moment's mood. In 
 the plays of the dramatist Tchekoff, in " Uncle 
 Vanya " and " The Cherry Orchard " in particular, 
 this technique is carried to a further point of 
 conscious achievement than Mr. Barker has yet 
 carried it ; but really the unity of The Madras 
 House is just as much a matter of an impalpable 
 194
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 presiding influence, independent, one would almost 
 say, of individual character or incident, as is the 
 unity of "The Cherry Orchard." There is every 
 reason to believe that Mr. Barker has arrived at 
 this subtle dramatic technique entirely for himself. 1 
 Evidence of what is meant is to be found in any 
 piece of dialogue that we may take at random. 
 This, from Waste : 
 
 Frances Trebell. I think it's a mistake to stand 
 outside a system. There's an inhumanity in that amount 
 of detachment. . . . 
 
 Mbs. Farrant [brilliantly]. I think a statesman may be 
 a little inhuman. 
 
 Lady Davenport [with keenness]. Do you mean super- 
 human ? It's not the same thing, you know. 
 
 Mrs. Farrant. I know. 
 
 Lady Davenport. Most people don't know. 
 
 Mrs. Farrant [proceeding with her cynicism]. Humanity 
 achieves . . . what ? Housekeeping and children. 
 
 Frances Trebell. As far as a woman's concerned. 
 
 Mrs. Farrant [a little mockingly]. Now, Mamma, say 
 that is as far as a woman's concerned. 
 
 1 The deliberate nature of this dramatist's adherence 
 to the moment's reality is evinced when Edward — in 
 reply to Mr. Booth's question whether he was present 
 at the evening at Chislehurst — is made to answer, " I dare 
 say." Another dramatist would have taken it for granted 
 that they both remembered quite perfectly every incident 
 of that evening two years ago, for no better reason than 
 that in the theatre only an hour has elapsed. But then, 
 another dramatist would have made old Mr. Voysey die 
 of the chill he took before our eyes in the second act, instead 
 of from some merely unspecified chill taken nine months 
 later 
 
 195
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 Lady Davenport. My dear, you know I don't think so. 
 
 Mrs. Farrant. We may none of us think so. But 
 there's our position . . . bread and butter and a certain 
 satisfaction until . . . Oh, Mamma, I wish I were like 
 you . . . beyond all the passions of life. 
 
 Lady Davenport \with great vitality]. I'm nothing of 
 the sort. It's my egoism's dead . . . that's an intimation 
 of mortality. 
 
 Mrs. Farrant. I accept the snub. But I wonder 
 what I'm to do with myself for the next thirty years. 
 
 It matters positively nothing to us what Mrs. 
 Farrant, wife of a minor Cabinet minister, will do 
 with herself for the next thirty years ; no more 
 than whether the egoism of Lady Davenport, 
 whom we never meet again, is dead. But this 
 is not to say that any touch in this dialogue 
 is without its value, for these remarks that lead 
 apparently out of the play's unity instead of into 
 it, have their definite purpose in the creation 
 of mood. 1 When one says that this recognition of 
 the needs of the play's momentary mood as the 
 primary arbiter in a play's construction is the 
 discovery of Tchekoff and of Mr. Granville Barker, 
 one does not mean that the recognition is not 
 implied in the work of much earlier dramatists, 
 but only that it is in their plays for the first time 
 
 1 Mr. George Calderon, in writing of the drama of 
 Tchekoff, has made use of the terms " centrifugal " and 
 " centripetal" for the dialogue which tends away from and 
 the dialogue which tends towards the play's apparent 
 centre. 
 196
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 quite conscious and deliberate. The Voysey In- 
 heritance, The Madras House, and Waste proceed 
 in the knowledge that no audience can gather up 
 and carry forward every detail of their transactions 
 legal, political, or commercial-philosophic, but 
 that every such detail, whether of character or 
 incident, is justified in so far as it is making 
 smooth and inevitable the progress of the audience 
 from mood to mood. The knowledge that this 
 emotional apprehension is all that is really neces- 
 sary to a play's full appreciation is the true 
 solvent of the delusion regarding dramatic dialogue 
 which was touched on at the beginning of this 
 chapter. In a play by Mr. Granville Barker the 
 things that emerge serve to suggest much more 
 beneath, and in this much more, apprehended but 
 perhaps not fully comprehended, the play's real 
 unity lies. 
 
 This building of a play cell by living cell, as it 
 were, goes a good way to achieve a living organism. 
 And it is the fact that Mr. Barker's plays have 
 extraordinary life. What are the scenes in them 
 which remain most clearly in the memory ? 
 Certainly those of the Voysey family summoned 
 to the dining-room to hear the truth about an old 
 man they have just put, with every circumstance 
 of honour, into the grave ; of the meeting of pro- 
 spective ministers to decide what is to be done 
 about Trebell ; of the third-act gathering beneath 
 the rotunda of the Madras House whither the 
 
 197
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 American financier has come to negotiate a 
 purchase and whence he does not depart until he 
 has enjoyed as stimulating a conversation as he 
 can remember. Each of these scenes shows clearly 
 what one means by the achievement of group- 
 emotion. They show the art of Mr. Barker at its 
 best. Each person in them, while a true person 
 studied with the intimate humorous care we have 
 noted, lives, not for his own sake, but for the sake 
 of the scene. This is the triumph of dramatic 
 characterization. The dining-room at Chislehurst 
 pleases as a number by M. Fokine's Ballet pleases ; 
 it is the perfection of individual freedom within the 
 perfection of unifying control. 
 
 And we may go on to say that Mr. Barker's 
 drama ceases fully to please when a remark or a 
 person ceases to have definite value in the creation 
 of mood. Then we have the Loose End. There 
 were no loose ends in the passage quoted from 
 Waste, because that women's talk all made, every 
 word of it, for the moment's particular reality. 
 In The Voysey Inheritance, Major Booth's con- 
 versational opening, " I'm not a conceited 
 
 man ," does not exist for its own sake and 
 
 degrade him to the ranks of the " silly soldier 
 men." Major Booth Voysey, the soldier son, 
 exists for the play's sake, and never becomes 
 a loose end, in the manner in which Hugh 
 Voysey, the artist son, becomes a loose end. 
 With Hugh Voysey's conversational fireworks 
 198
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 in the fourth act, and with Hugh Voysey's 
 divorce in the fifth, the play of idea takes two 
 steps into the play of ideas. The dreadful danger 
 of the play of ideas is that the ideas may exist 
 for their own sake instead of for the play's sake, 
 and thus become nothing but loose ends. Now 
 here we have to tread cautiously, lest we do Mr. 
 Barker an injustice. It is necessary to distin- 
 guish very clearly between Mr. Barker's drama and 
 the drama of certain active young writers who, 
 while they may have a superficial appearance of 
 being followers of Mr. Barker, are in fact followers, 
 at a considerable distance doubtless, of Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw. For example, Mr. Shaw with " Man and 
 Superman " rendered quite popular the theatrical 
 amusement of guying one's mother, and to-day 
 a whole school of young dramatists is busy Guying 
 its Mother, with a view to showing how very 
 " advanced " are its ideas. But Mr. Barker does 
 not guy his mother. Mrs. Huxtable remains 
 happy in the possession of her own dignity, while 
 between Mrs. Voysey and her reprehensible old 
 pirate there is a passage at the end of the second 
 act that is quite beautiful in its sympathy and 
 truth. Nowhere in his plays is this dramatist 
 betrayed into that contempt for his own persons 
 which cannot be indulged without a loss in sym- 
 pathy, which is as much as to say a loss in art. 
 Mr. Huxtable is, quite certainly, a " lovable old 
 buffer " ; a dramatist filled with the " idea " 
 
 199
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 that the coarseness of suburban shopkeepers is 
 deplorable, could never have created him. But 
 perhaps the completest example of the dramatist's 
 sympathy is to be found in the pathetic little 
 wrangle m the waiting-room of Mr. Huxtable's 
 emporium, where there is the most exemplary 
 dispensation of even-handed justice. Nor is Mr 
 Barker either master or pupil in the school which 
 seeks to show its superiority to the common 
 theatre s sentimental handling of death by being 
 funny about death. -Life does not cease to be 
 funny » because the Voyseys are come fresh from 
 a funeral ; but Mr. Barker's people are capable of 
 speaking, as Mr. Shaw's are not, "as one speaks 
 of the dead." 
 
 Mr. Barker, with the realist's perception of the 
 ludicrous ever waiting close upon the dignified, 
 the worthy twisting suddenly to show the un- 
 worthy, the little thing ready to trip up the great, 
 is, however, the comic ironist always. His comedy 
 is the comedy of contrast. Verbally, what is it 
 that makes irresistible in its context such a simple 
 thing as "That's Ruskin's house, is it? Yes 
 I see the chimney-pots ? "—we may leave it to 
 M. Bergson to analyse the precise nature of the 
 effect of Denmark Hill chimney-pots upon a 
 physical system braced up to Ruskin, and rest 
 content with the fact that we laugh. Visually 
 how comic it is that while Miss Yates, with her 
 tragic little history, should be going out, and
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 while Jessica, with her proposals for luncheon, 
 should be coming in, poor Major Tommy should 
 struggle impotently with the telephone in the 
 foreground. This is the comedy of cross-currents 
 — not for a moment to be confused with that 
 horrible breaking up of the unity of impression 
 into little bits which some dramatists mistake for 
 contrast, or perhaps for Futurism. To come to 
 bigger things, the plays themselves are built on 
 contrast. If we were to analyse the quality of 
 our pleasure in the first act of The Madras House, 
 it would be accurate to say that it gave us the 
 pleasure of recognition, with the pleasure of 
 surprise, in a lesser degree, secured verbally. 
 Similarly with our pleasure in the third act of 
 The Voysey Inheritance — only here, when Mrs. 
 Voysey says, " I have known of this for a long 
 time," we have one of the few instances of Mr. 
 Barker's use of a surprise that is deeper than 
 verbal. For the characteristic of Mr. Barker's plays 
 is a humorous irony which flickers perpetually but 
 rarely flames into surprise. When the table goes 
 up at the end of the one- act Rococo and the vase 
 is smashed as a result of the eagerness of the 
 parties to possess it, we are not surprised ; but 
 we have been continually delighted by the contrast 
 between this spirited contentiousness and the 
 hideous uselessness of its subject. In Waste, it is 
 the bungling new man at Lord Horsham's who 
 contributes most powerfully to the emotional 
 
 201
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 intensity of the scene that is to decide upon life 
 and death for Trebell ; and it is the grave interest 
 of the two statesmen and cousins in the fate of 
 their Aunt Mary's Holbein which assures us at 
 the end of the scene that, whatever it may hold 
 for Trebell, life will still go on. The whole vision 
 of the Voysey splendour at Chislehurst, based as 
 we know it to be upon the Voysey depredations 
 at Lincoln's Inn, is comically ironic, even in such 
 little things as the discovery of Mrs. Voysey that 
 the Chinese Empire must be in a shocking state, 
 and the episode of Mr. Booth's Christmas presents ; 
 until, in the play's last fifteen minutes, the author 
 becomes a little earnest about the future of his two 
 young people, and the play's unity is spoiled. It 
 is almost as though, the play's idea being over, he 
 thought he were at liberty now for a little indul- 
 gence in ideas. Two plays (not to mention 
 Prunella, that perfect trifle) come to their end 
 without any such evil indulgence. The play about 
 the young lady who married with the gardener 
 rather than with any of her father's fine friends, 
 because, said she, " we've all been in too great a 
 hurry getting civilized," is a genuine play of idea, 
 though it may not fully persuade us ; when the idea 
 is exemplified, the play ends with its final exempli- 
 fication, the gardener lighting the young lady up 
 the cottage stairs to bed. Waste is a play of 
 idea, in which we have seen that the ideas, admir- 
 able as they may be, are never suffered to become 
 202
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 loose ends ; the play's end is the idea's final 
 utterance, one and inseparable, " Oh . . . the 
 waste ..." But with what degree of truth may 
 we say that the ending of The Madras House is 
 the final and inevitable exemplification of that 
 play's idea ? Here again, we must go cautiously. 
 If we have been accurate in our analysis of the 
 way in which Mr. Barker builds his plays, it must 
 be plain that it is his wish to leave us at the end 
 not with the memory of an incident, not with the 
 memory of an apophthegm that has a false air of 
 being inclusive, but with the memory of a mood. 
 A mood is a thing that may take a little building, 
 and Philip and Jessica, even more than Edward 
 and Alice, have an air of being conscious of their 
 responsibility. The trouble with The Madras 
 House is that the mood is such a difficult one to 
 create; "for really," says the dramatist, "there 
 is no end to the subject." The end to The Madras 
 House is not the sale of the Madras House, as the 
 end to Tchekoff's " Cherry Orchard " is the sale 
 of the cherry orchard. If the mood we are to 
 remember as the curtain falls is the mood of Philip 
 and Jessica " happy together," then this mood 
 might have been achieved more economically 
 than by the presentation of a typical twenty 
 minutes in the lives of this nice couple who are 
 the most confirmed of chatters about the health 
 of the world. A dramatist who is out to do some- 
 thing difficult has a perfect right to choose some- 
 
 203
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 thing which, like most true ideas, has " really no 
 end." But he has no right whatever to make us 
 tired with its interminability before he lets us go. 
 We are not made tired with the interminability of 
 life as it stretches before Uncle Vanya and Marina 
 at the fall of the curtain — only infinitely sym- 
 pathetic and happy. But that is because the 
 dramatist has succeeded in creating a definite 
 idea of life with which to leave us, as Hauptmann 
 has succeeded in " The Weavers." Perhaps in The 
 Madras House Mr. Barker has not succeeded in 
 creating a definite idea of life, but has succeeded 
 only in its episodic illumination. The play, although 
 full of an extraordinary mastery, is not the most 
 completely successful of Mr. Barker's plays. 
 
 All the work of the dramatist, viewed in its 
 practical aspect, consists in the skilled deferring 
 of crisis, but there is such a thing as the deferring of 
 crisis too long. It is, one fancies, the particular 
 danger of Mr. Barker's dramatic method. In each 
 of his major plays there is a man who (in Alice's 
 phrase of her Edward) " loves to think idly." 
 These men who spend their time " thinking idly " 
 have none left for anything more than a 
 " momentary little burst of passion " — and when 
 it comes it is unexciting to us as Trebell's. Mr. 
 Barker's failure in Waste is not that he has failed 
 to show us a man sharpened as a weapon to his 
 purpose and wasted because of a flaw, but that, 
 weapon and flaw together, Trebell leaves us as cold 
 204
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 as though he were really of steel. Now we have 
 seen that the apparently idle talking of Mr. Barker's 
 people is not in reality idle, but is contributing to 
 the moment's necessary mood, in addition to being, 
 incidentally, often quite delightful. But Edward- 
 Trebell-Philip is in some danger of becoming 
 merely a new form of raisonneur, whose function 
 it is to defer the crisis by " shaking his fist at the 
 world in general " — (the phrase is Jessica's for her 
 Philip). Mr. Barker's people are very much inter- 
 ested in the world ; they love to ask questions of it. 
 This is the ground for the charge of self-conscious- 
 ness against them. But they are not so much 
 over-conscious of themselves, which is a horrid fault, 
 as over- conscious of their world. The world is an 
 abiding presence to them, not as it is to simple 
 people, such as Synge's people, by contrast with 
 their own small piece of it ; not as it is to Pinero's 
 people, who are eternally concerned about how 
 their reputations will look in the eyes of their 
 " little parish of St. James's " ; but as it is to 
 sophisticated and sententious people who join 
 societies for the purpose of taking the world under 
 their wing and keeping its feathers tidy. Does 
 not Philip find it a farmyard world ? Even Major 
 Hippisley Thomas, that plain man, goes through 
 life conscious that this is a damned subtle world. 
 Jessica, that nice woman, finds it "a terrible 
 world — an ugly, stupid, wasteful world ; a hateful 
 world." Edward-Trebell-Philip comes near at 
 
 205
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 times to uttering the national question, What 
 Are You Going To Do About It ? of the great people 
 Mr. Barker himself has satirized deliciously in 
 Mr. Eustace Perrin State. But for the most 
 part, we may conclude, Mr. Barker is on the 
 side of the world, and makes clear very humor- 
 ously his belief that it knows its own business 
 best. 
 
 We shall not fully understand the mastery this 
 dramatist has over the technique of his art until 
 we have compared him with others. Ibsen him- 
 self may be caught hammer in hand in the act of 
 driving home a point ; telling us something we 
 must not miss, that is to say, with an emphasis 
 that does his belief in us, and in the art of the 
 theatre, no service. Over and over again in 
 Waste there are things to be told just as essential 
 to the play's understanding, and the dramatist 
 is so secure of our attention in the theatre that he 
 has to give it no more than the delicatest flick. 
 There comes, " But since Mrs. O'Connell is dead 
 what is the excuse for a scandal ? " and that is all 
 we know and all we need to know. There was a 
 time in the English theatre, not so long before, 
 when the information, lest we overlooked it, would 
 have been given to us in this fashion : 
 
 Lord Cantelupe. But since Mrs. O'Connell— 
 Farrant. Mrs. O'Connell ? 
 Cantelupe. — is dead — 
 Farrant. Dead ! 
 206
 
 GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 Lord Horsham "| 
 
 Blackborough > [together]. Dead ! 
 
 Wedgecroft 
 
 Farrant. Mrs. O'Connell dead ! 
 
 Cantelupe. — What is the excuse for a scandal ? 
 
 For the technical improvement, at least, in the 
 contemporary English drama, the credit is more 
 Mr. Granville Barker's than any other man's. 
 
 207
 
 VIII 
 HUBERT HENRY DA VIES 
 
 MR. HUBERT HENRY DAVIES is the 
 genre-painter in the English theatre. 
 He entered it in the same year as 
 Hankin did, but, since his own work is happily 
 far from done, his place is perhaps not so clearly 
 recognized, and certainly is not to be so con- 
 clusively appraised. And yet it is quite perfectly 
 his own ; for no other dramatist could have 
 written The Mollusc. Hankin might have written 
 it, in the sense that its idea is one that might have 
 come to him, but he would not have written the 
 same play. While he wrote it more wittily, perhaps, 
 he would not have achieved quite the same perfect 
 form ; and this dramatist's peculiar tenderness, 
 even in mockery, is not like Hankin at all. Nor 
 has Barrie written an artificial comedy that is at 
 the same time so completely a comedy of character. 
 When we have said that it is not like any one of 
 his more immediate competitors, we have but said 
 that Mr. Hubert Henry Davies is an artist, whose 
 plays are the dramatic expression of a personality 
 
 o 209
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 that is his own. In a theatre where successes are 
 made by pooling one's abilities and dipping 
 generously from the common stock, this dramatist 
 has preferred to be himself and to be different ; 
 and his happiness is the happiness of Sir James 
 Barrie, that, doing the work he has wished to do, 
 he has yet found it to be fitted to the theatre's 
 most immediate needs. 
 
 For the characteristic of the drama of Mr. 
 Hubert Henry Davies is that it accepted the 
 theatre as it found it. In his first play, Mr. Davies 
 accepted too much ; but even Mrs. Gorringe's Neck- 
 lace, while it speaks to us of little save of its author's 
 general aptitude for comedy, speaks in the tones 
 that are his own. The play's framework, that is 
 anybody's ; Mrs. Gorringe's necklace may well have 
 been hired out over the same counter as Lady 
 Windermere's fan. But what could be clearer 
 than that it is not Mrs. Gorringe's necklace that 
 has caught the fancy of the dramatist, but Mrs. 
 Gorringe ? Who stole the necklace, we do not 
 care at all ; but we care very much for Mrs. 
 Gorringe's reconstruction of the scene of the 
 theft, with the assistance of the furniture in the 
 drawing-room : 
 
 Mrs. Gorringe [rises], I don't know. I can't think. 
 [Speaks volubly as she moves about describing the scene.] I went 
 to my room when I came in. You know how the dressing- 
 table stands — as if it were there [points to a table] and the 
 door, of course, is like this. [Indicates the door, goes towards 
 210
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 it, opens it, goes just outside, and tlien comes in again.] Well, 
 I came in at the door just as I am coming in now. Of 
 course I had my hat on. I closed the door [closes the door 
 and walks towards the imaginary dressing-table, talking all 
 the time.] Then I crossed over to the dressing-table in 
 quite an ordinary manner. Just as I'm doing now. [Stands 
 before the imaginary dressing-table.] Well, I looked into my 
 jewel-case. I wanted to get some rings. These rings, in 
 fact. [Bends her hand to show her rings.] I thought it 
 looked different from usual. I couldn't think what it was 
 at first, but I remember saying to myself, " Well, that's 
 funny ! " Then all at once it flashed across me, and I 
 clasped my hands and exclaimed [clasps her hands 
 dramatically] : " Great heavens, my diamond necklace 
 has gone ! " [Drops the dramatic pose and tone.] Just 
 like that. 
 
 We like this circumstantial, feather-headed lady, 
 and when, in the second act, we begin to be con- 
 scious that she is making preparation to enact her 
 scene of reconstruction all over again, we like her 
 still more ; and not only like her still more, but 
 begin to see that we have here a dramatist with 
 a quite exceptional sense of form. Nor is Mrs. 
 Gorringe a mere shaving from the floor of Wilde's 
 workshop, any more than her hostess Mrs. Jardine, 
 who, when the theft is announced, jumps from the 
 postulate that it must be one of the servants to 
 the hypothesis that it is Pipkin — "We haven't had 
 Pipkin long, and she's always looking out of the 
 window. I shouldn't wonder if she stole it " — 
 an hypothesis which in her next utterance has 
 astonishingly come to be invested with the sanctity 
 
 211
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 proper to fact. Wilde had a nice sense of the 
 comedy value of the little things of every day ; 
 but he left this dramatist to have fun with a 
 telegram, and to write this passage, so intimately 
 laughable, about its mysterious dispatch : 
 
 Mrs. Jardine [to Mrs. Gorringe, as she goes towards the 
 door]. Are you going to send the h'm h'm about the 
 h'm h'm ? 
 
 Mrs. Gorringe. H'm h'm. 
 
 Colonel Jardine. What's h'm h'm and h'm h'm ? 
 
 In his next play Mr. Davies has fun with a 
 lunch-basket, fun with an unoccupied house, fun 
 with another little old lady who has, God bless 
 her, very poor and unhappy brains ; and the form 
 is now the form proper to comedy — no more stolen 
 necklaces, no more dropped handkerchiefs, no more 
 suicides to make way for sudden happiness at the 
 curtain's fall. Cousin Kate is still artificial comedy, 
 but artificial comedy of a most curious and dis- 
 arming intimacy. What could be better than the 
 play's beginning ? — we are genuinely interested in 
 this " rather helpless little family," and prepared 
 to be interested in the visiting Kate. And what 
 could we hear about Heath Desmond that would, 
 in spite of his apparent infidelity, dispose us 
 towards him better than, from Mrs. Spencer, that 
 " he used to get me quite hysterical every Sunday 
 night at supper " (those Sundays that were in 
 theory observed so solemnly) ? That Cousin Kate 
 212
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 is artificial comedy, in spite of its atmosphere of 
 pleasant truthfulness, is evident of course at the 
 end, when, in order to leave the way clear for Kate 
 and Desmond, Amy is handed over to " that 
 locum tenens " — a conclusion emotionally un- 
 justifiable as the conclusion to the comedy which 
 went before. 
 
 Nor was there anything between Cousin Kate and 
 The Mollusc to prepare one for a comedy that was 
 quite perfect ; but that is what The Mollusc, in 
 its own genre, is. That Mr. Davies added to an 
 eye for the little things of character an ear for the 
 little things of speech, one knew ; that he was 
 essentially a man of the theatre one had only to 
 remember the scene of Mrs. Gorringe's exits and 
 entrances, or the opening moments of Cousin Kate 
 before a word was spoken, to be certain. Clearest, 
 perhaps of his qualities, was a feeling for form ; 
 a feeling that the theatre, just as it was, was good 
 enough to do neater and more economical work in 
 than the theatre men were doing. Well, The 
 Mollusc is the perfectly effective and delightful 
 expression of all these qualities. It is an artificial 
 comedy of the most engaging naturalness ; it is 
 an entertainment of the theatre that is made up 
 most economically out of the contributions of only 
 four persons ; it is a beautifully sustained trifle 
 that is not too brilliant to be intimate, and not 
 too superficial to be searching. How certainly is 
 its genesis in character ! There is imbroglio, there 
 
 218
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 is even intrigue ; but these things, we are sure, 
 are the inevitable outcome of the little lady who 
 is the comedy's centre. This comedy is not 
 " invented," not " built up," it is hardly even, like 
 Hankin's, a comedy of idea ; it is a kind of sudden 
 sublimation of all that is most amusing in the 
 vague, delightful women the dramatist had been 
 drawing. Given the thought of a " mollusc," 
 the dramatist's task was, as though she were a 
 butterfly and not a bivalve, to pin her down. And 
 this dramatist pins her down with a touch that is 
 at once firm and gentle, a kind of affectionate 
 relentlessness — the best of all touches for comedy. 
 There is subtlety in his comic conception : 
 
 Baxter . Is molluscry the same as laziness ? 
 
 Tom. No, not altogether. The lazy flow with the tide. 
 The mollusc uses force to resist pressure. It's amazing 
 the amount of force a mollusc will use, to do nothing, 
 when it would be so much easier to do something. . . . 
 
 And so we have the comedy, the taking in hand 
 of a mollusc, and the force she uses to resist being 
 taken in hand. It is the comedy of inertia. 
 Throughout the first act, inertia is seen winning 
 all along the line. In the second act, inertia wins 
 again, in a pitched battle. In the third act, 
 inertia is shaken ; a miracle ! the mollusc takes 
 up her bed and walks. But do these miracles 
 last ? — that is the amused doubt we are left with 
 as the curtain falls. The mollusc will be a mollusc 
 still the moment this rude invading force has with- 
 214
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 drawn, taking the pretty governess with him; 
 and her husband will be quite happy in her 
 
 molluscry. 
 
 Now nothing could be more obvious than that 
 this is a " conventional " comedy ; the status quo 
 disturbed by a breeze from the Colonies, the 
 pretty governess, the parts " written for actors " 
 (oh, yes, certainly Mrs. Baxter was written for 
 an actress). But not written to order. One does 
 not conceive the comedy of inertia to order. One 
 waits and, God willing, it comes. Mr. Hubert 
 Henry Davies waits, and these ideas do come to 
 him. When he has not waited, they have not come, 
 and all his care and humorous sympathy have not 
 made these plays into Molluscs. He waited for 
 Doormats, however, and Doormats came. There 
 is a kind of play than which nothing is more 
 stupid, and that is the kind of play that calls 
 itself a fire-screen or a pen- wiper in the expectation 
 that we shall pay our money to find out what is 
 meant. We are allowed with ostentation to find 
 out what is meant generally just before the fall of 
 the first curtain, and for all else that the play 
 holds we might as well leave at that point. This 
 kind of play is a fraud and, one regrets to say, a 
 common fraud; or, if you like, a trick; a trick 
 to give freshness and " originality " to a piece that 
 has been written to order. The plays of Mr. 
 Hubert Henry Davies are not of this number. 
 Nothing could be more delicate than the art with 
 
 215
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 which we are told about molluscs ; and to leave 
 the theatre when we have been told would be 
 quite impossible, because that is not the play's 
 secret— the play's secret is the wonders in the 
 heart of Mrs. Baxter. There is no trick about 
 1 he Mollusc, it is a comedy of character. And 
 Doormats would be a comedy of character of 
 equal mterest and charm even supposing there 
 were no third-act revelation of what the title 
 means. This is not to say that the play's title is 
 an adventitious label, carelessly or calculatingly 
 tacked on. The dramatist has chosen to give 
 unity to his comedy in his own way, that is 
 all. It is the comedy of "dominants" and 
 recessives," and if Professor Bateson of Cam- 
 bridge University had written it, no doubt he 
 would have given it a more scientific name. But 
 Mr. Davies' art prefers the more homely analogy 
 of the doormat and the boot. Could anything be 
 more delicate than the manner of its announce- 
 ment ? 
 
 Josephine It's not that. It has nothing to do 
 with strength or weakness. Some people have a genius 
 for giving. Others a talent for taking. You can't not be 
 whichever kind you are, any more than you can change 
 your sex. You and I are amongst those who must give. 
 [Quaintly, as she resumes her serving.] Doormats I always 
 call them to myself. 
 
 Noel. I'm not a doormat— not usually— not in my 
 wkh n her~ n0t ln ^ deaHngS With mo " People-only 
 216
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 Josephine. Every doormat is not everybody's doormat. 
 But everybody is either a doormat — or else — the thing 
 that tramples on the doormat. 
 
 Noel [suggests vaguely]. A boot ! 
 
 Josephine. Yes. I always wanted a name for them. 
 Leila is a boot. So is your Uncle Rufus. They can't 
 help it. Just as every one is either a man or a woman — 
 not in the same degree, of course — but there are men and 
 women . . . [illustrating xvith her hands] ... at either 
 end, as it were, of a long piece of string ; very mannish 
 men at one end and very womanish women at the other. 
 Then — as you go along — men with gentler, what we call 
 feminine qualities — and women with masculine qualities 
 — some with more and some with less — right along — till 
 you come to a lot of funny little people in the middle 
 that it's hard to tell what they are. Just so, it seems to 
 me, is every one a more or less pronounced doormat or 
 boot. 
 
 Could anything be nicer or more free from 
 self-consciousness after the charming last-act 
 development of this philosophic distinction, than 
 the humour of its ready adoption into the con- 
 versation, just once or twice before the play ends ? 
 It is such a serious little conversation — serious to 
 Aunt Josephine as well as to Noel that Leila 
 should tread upon him and upon their marriage ; 
 and it is so seriously that Noel says, with half his 
 mind engaged with Leila in the next room, " She 
 wasn't always a boot," and so seriously that 
 Josephine replies, " Oh, my dear ! that's where 
 they are so clever. Leila wanted your love, so 
 she set to work the surest way to gain it. She 
 pretended to be a doormat." . . . And again, just 
 
 217
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 the flash of higher spirits from Noel at the end, 
 of Captain Maurice Harding, when Leila has 
 found that if she is to go off with him and leave 
 her husband she is not to go on her own terms — 
 " He's a boot." To which Leila's reply is, " Oh, 
 don't talk nonsense " — she isn't in the little 
 secret, she doesn't know what a boot has to do 
 with it, she can't share the flash of memory that 
 is ours as well as Noel's ; for it is no more than 
 that, by Mr. Davies' delicate art, no more than a 
 shared recollection whose perfect naturalness has 
 nothing of the didactic, nothing of the curtain- 
 warning epigrammatic, nothing for a moment that 
 has to be " rubbed in." 
 
 And now to substantiate our statement that, 
 doormats or no doormats, boots or no boots, the 
 comedy of dominancy is a good one. Again it is, 
 if you will, a " conventional " comedy — the 
 husband, the wife, the second man, the pair of 
 old people, the marriage that is threatened, the 
 marriage that is saved just in time ; an end that 
 is a little arranged perhaps, but fundamentally 
 truthful. But how perfect the unity that is 
 secured by the old people being just such a pair, 
 dominant and recessive, as the young people, 
 only the other way round ; how inevitable our 
 quiet pleasure in waiting for the recessives, in the 
 third act, to put their heads together ; how good 
 the surprise by which, when wife and willing-to-be 
 lover come to the husband to put before him their 
 218
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 scheme for going of! together so nicely cut and 
 dried, the wife finds her new partner to be a 
 dominant also, and that she doesn't like at all! 
 How natural, too, all through, the humour which 
 reveals Uncle Rufus in all his stubborn old 
 dominancy, very much in the background although 
 he takes such repeated care to put himself in the 
 front. The comedy has just these five people, 
 and, if we except Captain Harding, who has not 
 much to do except look like a captain and come 
 out as a dominant at the right time, each one of 
 them is as firmly and simply and yet subtly drawn 
 as The Mollusc's four. Everything is done with 
 intimacy ; what could be better done than this ? 
 
 Leila. Noel ! Don't get up, Aunt Josephine ! [Coming 
 down to Noel with the card.] Noel, dear, this man has called 
 to see you. [She offers him the card with her right hand.} 
 
 Noel [instead of at once looking at the card takes her 
 left hand and kisses it]. Dear Leila ! 
 
 Leila [smiling]. That is my hand. This is the card. 
 
 Noel [smiling at her]. Let's see who he is. [Before he 
 looks at the card he says] You've got your hair done in 
 a new way. 
 
 Leila. D'you like it ? 
 
 Noel. Yes. I like that saucy little twist just there. 
 
 Leila [laughs and thrusts the card at him]. There ! 
 
 Noel [taking the card from her]. What's his name ? 
 
 Leila. Mr. Welkin. I think he's an American by his 
 3 c cent 
 
 Noel [reading the card]. Elisha P. Welkin. Yes, he 
 must be. 
 
 This is the first-act atmosphere, made by the 
 
 219
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 delightful young married woman who is willing, 
 a little imperiously, to be gay and charming, by 
 the husband who cares a great deal, and, because 
 of their presence, by the pair of old people for 
 whom the young married woman is a little more 
 willing to be her gay and charming self than she 
 is for the husband to whom she has grown used. 
 The words of these people, and just the plain 
 directions of the dramatist as to how they are 
 spoken, contribute quite unerringly to the im- 
 pression we are to receive from this scene. And 
 then in the second act, when Noel returns from 
 America unexpectedly, and finds Captain Harding 
 in the house, the scene of tension is admirably 
 done. " The situation is too much for Josephine. 
 Finding everybody's attention upon her she is 
 overcome with confusion and emotion and hurries 
 out. They all see this. Every one is a little 
 more embarrassed." How theatrical this might 
 be ; do we not know to tedium these scenes of 
 collective embarrassment — until the Actor- 
 Manager came to the rescue, with his masterly 
 charm? How quite untheatrical it is; how 
 simply effective, how moving even— because it is 
 so truthfully imagined. 
 
 This distrust of the theatrical— of that which, 
 hallowed by usage in the theatre, is employed 
 by practising dramatists without imaginative con- 
 sideration of its suitability or truth— is implicit 
 in the best work of this dramatist. Because this 
 220
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 distrust is so little vocal, it must not on that 
 account be missed. Because Mr. Davies' work is, 
 in the best sense, " conventional," it will not do 
 to fail to distinguish him from the crowd. This 
 story of the affectionate husband who finds his 
 wife growing careless, it is not a " new " story ; 
 and what is the theatre's advice to him ? — why, 
 that he should pretend to be careless too. Is that 
 not the immemorial way, of proven efficacy — in 
 the theatre ? We may find a comedy of Mr. 
 Somerset Maugham going exactly upon the lines 
 laid down in a comedy of Sir John Vanbrugh. 
 We have found Sir James Barrie re-proving the 
 efficacy of the theatre's time-worn advice that if 
 your husband thinks he is in love you cannot do 
 better than give him a good stiff dose of his 
 beloved. We may turn back from "The Ogre " of 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones to read in " The Beaux' 
 Stratagem " of Farquhar, " No, no, child, 'tis a 
 standing maxim in conjugal discipline, that when 
 a man would enslave his wife, he hurries her into 
 the country." The theatre is full of these standing 
 maxims in conjugal discipline and conjugal 
 strategy, and the theatre-men take them up as 
 they find them. How many comedies since the 
 Restoration have not come to the same end as 
 that to which Sir Harry Wildair brings his 
 own, 
 
 So spite of satire gainst a married life 
 A man is truly blessed with such a wife ? 
 
 221
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 But Mr. Davies, while still in their territory, does 
 not take them up as he finds them, because he 
 has something he prefers of his own. There is 
 some one, sure enough, to give the theatre's 
 advice to Noel in his predicament, but it is not 
 the Actor-Manager, all- wise and all-managing, it is 
 the thick-headed old gentleman who thinks him- 
 self such a fine man of the world. And what is 
 Noel's reply to the theatre's advice : " Yes," he 
 says, " but deliberately to set to work to make 
 her jealous, it may be the clever thing to do — 
 but it isn't sincere — it's not real — I don't like it." 
 That is the dramatist's reply to the standing 
 maxims of the theatre : they're not sincere, 
 they're not real, he doesn't like them. We may 
 find this distrust of the unreal in each of the 
 best comedies of Mr. Davies : it is the secret of 
 their freshness. Says Noel, " You can't turn 
 round suddenly after breakfast one morning and 
 become a new man — a propos of nothing at all " ; 
 but that is what the people of the theatre find no 
 difficulty in doing. Says Leila, " He hasn't said 
 one word of anything real since the day he came 
 home. It's simply awful — the constraint between 
 us." The constraint that we saw to exist between 
 Mrs. Ebbsmith and Lucas would be something 
 to this dramatist quite intolerable. And how is 
 this passage, for its negation to half a hundred 
 of the most cherished of the theatre's standing 
 maxims ? 
 222
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 Maurice. Shall you tell him ? 
 
 Leila. I shouldn't mind. I'd rather — in a way. It's 
 more honest. But, of course, one can't. Apart from 
 everything else it would hurt him so. That's really what 
 I couldn't bear ! He has always been so good to me, and 
 I'm so fond of him. [Half smiles as she adds] He's a 
 very great friend of mine. 
 
 Maubice. It's extraordinary how I don't hate him ! 
 
 Leila. Why should you hate him ? I don't see how 
 anybody could hate Noel ! You'd love him if you knew 
 him well. He's got so much character and he's such good 
 company. I'm devoted to Noel — devoted ! It's so silly 
 of people to suppose that a woman only falls in love with 
 another man because her husband is either a brute or a 
 fool! 
 
 " It's extraordinary how I don't hate him " — 
 that is the theatre's voice, and quite properly ; 
 Maurice has the theatre's obtuseness. " I hate 
 him ! I hate him ! I hate him ! " like that, 
 three times, is what he feels is expected of him to 
 say ; but in the hands of this dramatist he cannot. 
 In the hands of this dramatist the people we know 
 well in the theatre, not greatly different to look 
 upon, find themselves unaccountably speaking and 
 acting the truth. When Captain Harding is asked 
 by Leila's husband for an assurance as to his 
 income, he says he will get his lawyers to draw 
 up a " thing " in the morning — how unerringly 
 would Sir Arthur Pinero have given us the right 
 word ! — the word that would be proportionately 
 wrong. Nor are they afraid to speak out their 
 intimacy, as the people of Mr. Galsworthy are. 
 
 223
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 This is the passage immediately following the 
 husband's pathetically comical attempt to follow 
 for a little minute the advice of the theatre : 
 
 Noel [he cannot resist her — he goes towards her, pauses, 
 and looks down at her]. It's been my fault too — mine more 
 than yours. [Drops on one knee beside her and says im~ 
 ploringly] But oh, Leila — tell me — let me think ! let me 
 feel — let me know — that it's all right. 
 
 Leila [drying her eyes as she looks at him and says]. Yes, 
 Noel — of course — of course it's all right ! 
 
 Noel. D'you swear it ? — that there's been nothing 
 
 Leila [becoming restive and offended]. I've told you. 
 
 If you're not going to take my word [Makes a movement 
 
 away from him.] 
 
 Noel [taking her hand and drawing her round to face him 
 again]. No, Leila — Leila ! Don't run away. I take 
 your word. You say it's all right. I believe you. But 
 I love you so desperately. I'm so jealous. If I thought 
 that any one was pushing me out and taking my place — 
 I'd . . . I'd . . . [Dropping his voice almost to a whisper.] 
 No, no ! Listen to me. I shouldn't be afraid — only — 
 lately — I've seen — for some time past I've noticed — it's 
 not the same — not quite the same. There are little signs — 
 little things that make me think — and then — you say 
 something or you do something — something so sweet and 
 tender — and then I think you are the same — and that it's 
 only my fears and my jealousy and my love for you. You 
 say it's all right. You say so ; I hope it's all right. 
 
 Leila. Poor old Noel. Dear old boy, I wish I was 
 more what you want. 
 
 [He is kneeling on the ground beside her. 
 
 Noel. I wouldn't have you any different — but I wish 
 we were back at St. Ives. Have you forgotten how it 
 was then ? You are everything in the world to me still — 
 just as you were then — just as I was to you then. Your 
 224
 
 HUBERT HENRY DA VIES 
 
 mind was given up to me — your hands were always finding my 
 hands. When we looked into each other's eyes and kissed 
 each other — I was enough — I was everything. What a 
 long time ago that seems. Nothing can hurt me now, 
 you said, neither poverty, nor age, nor pain — so long as I 
 have you. 
 
 [She dries her eyes. 
 I have never forgotten that. 
 Leila. I'm fond of you still, Noel. 
 
 There is nothing sentimental in that, because it is 
 impassioned ; because it is the intimate speech of 
 sincere feeling, it has the rhythm which all good 
 speech in the theatre may have ; it is delightful to 
 listen to, and, within and beyond the words we 
 hear, is there not an emotion of aching pain that 
 sets the scene, in its own small way, within 
 measurable distance of Othello's cry, " That we 
 
 can call these delicate creatures ours " ? 
 
 It is, then, this adherence to a basis in genuine 
 feeling, together with their humour and excellent 
 neatness of form, that gives to the comedies of 
 Mr. Davies their distinct place in the theatre. 
 Kate and Desmond, taking tea together in the un- 
 tenanted house, came to the agreement that a love 
 for little things was estimable, and that those are 
 happy who retain it. " That's what gives dis- 
 tinction to their humour and imagination ; a 
 charm to the point of view." Since Cousin Kate 
 the work of Mr. Davies has gained immensely in 
 distinction, but throughout his work, even in the 
 one or two plays that are frankly poorer, one does 
 
 p 225
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 not lose the charm of the point of view. " I never 
 think what I think of people I like," says the 
 young girl in the earliest play, and again, " What's 
 evidence when you know a man ? " This decision 
 to know is quite Mr. Davies'. And then again, 
 from Josephine, " It's no use knowing — with one's 
 brain. ..." Mr. Davies' comedy is not the comedy 
 of brains ; it is the comedy of exquisite sym- 
 pathies. " If she feels your heart is towards her," 
 says Captain Drew, " I don't think the words and 
 the ways will matter much." Somehow we know 
 that the heart of this dramatist is towards his 
 people, and that is why he is successful in making 
 us understand that the heart of Noel is towards 
 Leila — it is not the words and ways that matter ; 
 it is the intimate sympathy of imagination. In 
 Mr. Davies' comedy there is no contempt. Con- 
 tempt cannot be indulged in without a certain 
 lack of sympathy ; and it is difficult to think that 
 a lack of sympathy is anything but a lack of patient 
 understanding. 
 
 Mr. Davies' comedy does not fail in patient 
 understanding. " I don't pretend to be a critic," 
 says Mrs. Spencer, confronted by the phenomenon 
 of Kate's novels, and we like her all the more that 
 she does not. The spectacle of this little old lady 
 effecting an introduction, and after apologizing that 
 she couldn't remember the one name, having to 
 confess that now she has forgotten the other, is 
 funny, but our laughter is with her, not at her. 
 226
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 And so with Mrs. Baxter's knowledge of the Latin 
 language : 
 
 Mrs. Baxter [complacently]. I learnt Latin. I re- 
 member so well standing up in class and reciting " Hie — 
 haec — hoc " — accusative " nine — hone — hue." 
 
 Baxter [correcting her]. Hoc. 
 
 Mrs. Baxter. Hue, my dear, in my book. And the 
 ablative was hibus. 
 
 Baxter. Hibus ! 
 
 [Mr. Baxter and Miss Roberts both laugh. 
 
 Mrs. Baxter [making wild serious guesses]. Hobibus — 
 no, wait a minute — that's wrong — don't tell me. [Closes 
 her eyes and murmurs] Ablative — ho — hi — hu — no ; it's 
 gone. [Opens her eyes and says cheerfully] Never mind. 
 What were we talking about ? 
 
 Hankin's scene of Lady Denison at her German 
 lesson is not funnier, but is not this quite free from 
 the Hankin " fatuity " ? The mollusc fatuous ! 
 — she is a quite gloriously, almost uproariously, 
 successful little lady, whom we cannot hold 
 contempt for if we would. Wilde might have 
 drawn Mrs. Gorringe, with her '* Now you're 
 making fun again," or Mrs. Jardine, who was never 
 mistaken in eyes ; Hankin would have liked the 
 humour of Mrs. Moxon and the reading circle 
 " taking " King Lear ; but Mrs. Spencer, who 
 preserved the sanctities of the Sabbath with 
 great care until she had her family about her at 
 the supper-table, is a more kindly portrait of a 
 lady than Wilde or Hankin was ever guilty of ; 
 and Aunt Josephine neither Wilde nor Hankin 
 
 227
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 could have drawn at all. Nobody but Mr. Davies, 
 perhaps, would have made so memorable Uncle 
 Rufus at the breakfast-table, petulantly pushing 
 a sausage or saying " I detest haddocks. That's 
 well known." Nor are Mr. Davies' young women 
 the mere " very pretty girls " that serve Hankin's 
 comic purposes for the most part ; Miss Roberts, 
 the pretty governess, is near to the Hankin 
 convention, it is true ; but Leila Gale, the " delight- 
 ful young married woman," is something very 
 much more than this. Vicky Jardine, who leads 
 to an amusing scene of suspended animation in 
 Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace, is a very good portrait 
 of the " flapper," with more of her own eager life 
 than was allowed by Wilde to the young lady who 
 had the pure taste for the photographs of Switzer- 
 land ; while the young people in A Single Man are 
 similarly studied for their own sakes. Mr. Davies 
 is good at young people — one does not remember 
 a better English schoolboy than Bobby Spencer, 
 not even in Barrie. But Mr. Davies knows quite 
 clearly where to draw the line — there is no child- 
 exploitation in his drama. In regarding the 
 exceptional symmetry of The Mollusc one cannot 
 sufficiently admire the art with which the two 
 little Misses Baxter are confined to their proper 
 quarters, the schoolroom. 
 
 This dramatist has run with no " movements," 
 and if he belongs to a school it is the teacup- and- 
 saucer school and he is a master in it without, it 
 228
 
 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 
 
 seems, any pupils. There is a beauty in the 
 quality of quietly humorous acceptance, a quality 
 we think of as feminine, and perhaps rightly, since 
 in the novels of Jane Austen it finds its most full 
 expression. If Jane Austen had been a dramatist, 
 her comedies, one may fancy, would have been very 
 like the best comedies of Mr. Hubert Henry Davies. 
 
 229
 
 IX 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 AN observer from the continent of Europe, 1 
 bringing to an end his survey of the 
 English theatre in the year 1896, wrote 
 that he would " have wished to determine the 
 influence exerted by the contemporary German 
 drama upon the dramatic movement in England, 
 but I can find no trace of any such influence at 
 all." Ten years later he could not have said so, 
 for this was the year of The Silver Box. If The 
 Silver Box showed the influence of Hauptmann's 
 " Der Biberpelz," Strife, three years later, showed 
 even more plainly the influence of Hauptmann's 
 "Die Weber " ; and this we might say, even if we 
 did not remember that Hauptmann's play about 
 the weavers was one of the earliest productions 
 of the Court Theatre in the days when the dramatic 
 art of both Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. John 
 Galsworthy was in the making. 
 
 That Mr. Granville Barker learned something 
 of the possibilities of the theatre from the " social 
 
 1 Augustln Filon, The English Stage. 
 
 281
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 drama " of Hauptmann, and that Mr. Galsworthy, 
 when he brought his faculties of carefully skilled 
 observation to the service of the stage, learned 
 both from Hauptmann and from Mr. Barker, are 
 contentions that need only be proved in so far as 
 their proof will help us to a more exact under- 
 standing of Mr. Galsworthy's own art. And even 
 so the question of influences must not be made 
 too much of. The transition from Ibsen to 
 Hauptmann was an inevitable transition in the 
 theatre. It may be quite broadly defined as the 
 growing consciousness that there are more ways 
 than one of giving to the drama that clear unity 
 without which it cannot be good. Ibsen threw 
 over the drama of Sardou and Dumas, but he did 
 not throw over the central principle upon which 
 they built their plays. Implicit in " Rosmersholm " 
 as in " La Dame aux Camelias " or in " Diplomacy " 
 is the belief that the only unity which can hold a 
 play together is the unity of plot. Strindberg did 
 not achieve another unity ; he worked unconven- 
 tionally within Ibsen's, proving his ability, as in 
 "Froken Julie, " to cut a plot in two and join it again 
 without the usual interval. But in Hauptmann's 
 first play we are conscious of a unity which is 
 independent of plot ; a farm-house interior, with 
 the living souls it holds, is the play's sufficient 
 unity, altogether apart from any single action 
 there, or the inheritance, as in " Rosmersholm," of 
 any single action in the past. We might call its 
 232
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 unity a unity of being as distinguished from a 
 unity of doing. The " naturalistic " school of 
 dramatists, of whom Hauptmann is merely the 
 most consistently distinguished, put the creation 
 of atmosphere in the place of the complication and 
 unravelling of plot. It is not a different or an 
 exclusive definition of the dramatic, it is merely 
 a wider definition. It may include " Othello " and 
 "Mrs. Tanqueray," in which the personal drama 
 gives the plays their form ; but it may include also 
 a play of group emotions like " The Weavers," in 
 which there is no consistent drama of single 
 persons. That the transition from the tyranny of 
 plot was a natural and inevitable transition would 
 be clear if the German Freie Buhne had never 
 come into being, for as long ago as Ostrovsky, the 
 theatre in Russia had proved itself to be as good 
 a vessel as the Russian novel to hold the spirit of 
 sentient passivity, a state certainly of being rather 
 than of doing ; and with Tchekoff the drama whose 
 apparently simple but really very complex purpose 
 is the creation of atmosphere came to its highest 
 and most natural development. 
 
 The drama of Mr. Galsworthy is a drama which 
 finds its sufficient motive in the fact that things 
 are. That is both its strength and its weakness. 
 The " social drama," one supposes, is written when 
 the dramatist is less interested in persons than 
 in groups, each of which may of course be, and 
 in Hauptmann's play about the weavers is, in- 
 
 233
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 dividualized as clearly as any personal protagonists 
 could be. But the protagonists are not persons— 
 that must be the distinction. The protagonists 
 of "The Weavers," for example, are small 
 capitalism on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 labour that is helpless to live its own life 
 because it has not the means; its tragic 
 pity is that life should get itself into these 
 difficulties. The play is truly tragedy because, 
 while life suffers like an animal caught in the toils, 
 our sense of the beauty of life is made more clear. 
 The social drama may find its complication in 
 collective life rather than in the life of the 
 individual; it may do altogether without un- 
 ravelling ; but it may not abdicate the function of 
 the drama— which is to add to the wonder or 
 beauty of human life an intensity of clearness— or 
 it fails to be truly tragic, as the plays of M. Brieux 
 fail. Its danger is that it may content itself with 
 the exhibition of institutions or sink into the 
 promulgation of theses. The drama of Mr. 
 Galsworthy is rather studiously free from this 
 second reproach, but it is not always free from the 
 first. 
 
 For it finds the theatre in existence, and in the 
 theatre— which for generations no man had thought 
 he might enter without a clever plot invented or 
 adopted— it proceeds to show us the peculiar 
 interest of the things which exist outside. To a 
 public of playgoers familiarized to tedium with 
 234
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 the exhibition of their own drawing-rooms — (or 
 drawing-rooms just a little more splendid than 
 they could ever hope to enjoy)— Mr. Galsworthy 
 communicated his discoveries as to " how the 
 poor live " ; and with this difference, that whereas 
 the drawing-rooms of the rich had not in them- 
 selves been held to be sufficient warrant to set the 
 machinery of the theatre in motion, Mr. Gals- 
 worthy's drama needed no other motive to come 
 into being than its skilful and sympathetic 
 observation of the houses of the poor. These 
 things are so, it said ; you cannot therefore but 
 be the better for knowing about them. There was 
 thus in it from the first a something irrelevant to 
 art, a something oi self-sufficient didacticism that 
 is not in the plays of Mr. Barker, and that is not 
 in the social drama of Hauptmann. In " The 
 Voysey Inheritance " the plot is certainly of less 
 importance than the creation of a particular 
 atmosphere, the atmosphere of a stable domes- 
 ticity built upon commercial instability ; but we 
 are perfectly clear that Chislehurst is not brought 
 into the play merely because Chislehurst exists 
 as a phenomenon of some social importance. To 
 Hauptmann a thieves' comedy is a study, of 
 perfect sympathy and truth, we feel, in how the 
 poor live ; but they are thieves, and it is, quite 
 undoubtably, a comedy. To Mr. Galsworthy a 
 thieves' comedy is the contrast between a rich 
 thief and a poor thief in the eyes of the law, with 
 
 235
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 extenuating circumstances in both cases, duly 
 reported. y 
 
 It is Mr. Galsworthy's purpose to go behind 
 the morning papers, and to show us the rich store 
 of human interest" there. His claim upon us 
 is that if we follow him, we shall "understand." 
 We follow him accordingly, into the police court, 
 into a mass meeting of labourers, into His Majesty's 
 prison cells. And the plays of Mr. Galsworthy are 
 these things. The art of Mr. Galsworthy, we may 
 say, is the art of skilful exhibition. It is when he 
 comes to put form upon these various exhibitions 
 that his difference from the dramatists we have 
 mentioned is apparent. The Silver Box would 
 have been far less good a play if there had been no 
 silver box m it, just as the thieves' comedy of 
 Hauptmann is inseparable from the beaver coat 
 But a kind of imaginative timidity made it impos- 
 sible for Mr. Galsworthy to put the silver box to any 
 use so strikingly integral as that to which Haupt- 
 mann put the beaver coat, when, for example, we 
 hear of its being worn by the bargeman far out in 
 the centre of the river. The silver box might 
 equally well have been a gold tooth-pick, or a gold 
 watch, or even, since the disproportionate severity 
 of the punishment visited upon the poor is Mr 
 Galsworthy's theme, a watch of oxidized iron. Mr' 
 Galsworthy's finished mastery of stage revelation 
 in his first play-(the excellently apprehensive 
 opening of his first scene will serve for an example)
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 — must not blind us to the fact that it is not really 
 a play about a silver box. The silver box remains, 
 after the play is done, a convenient pretext for 
 having shown us some things which Mr. Galsworthy 
 wished to show us, and it has not, even so, been 
 made into a kind of inevitable symbol of these 
 things as it would have been by a dramatist of 
 stronger imagination. Now what Mr. Galsworthy 
 wished to show us we know — a Liberal member of 
 Parliament, a room in a tenement house, a London 
 police court, a ne'er-do-well of the upper and a 
 ne'er-do-well of the lower classes — accurately 
 observed every one of them ; but why did he 
 wish to show us these things ? The Silver Box 
 is a good play, and not merely a series of accurate 
 observations, because Mr. Galsworthy did very 
 strongly wish to show us a social contrast. I 
 suppose it may be said that whatever else the 
 drama may exist without it cannot exist without 
 contrast ; nor any other of the arts, for that 
 matter, since the very excitement of Whistler's 
 Symphony in White is to observe the narrow 
 limitations within which contrast has been success- 
 fully achieved. Mr. Galsworthy found the motivity 
 to his first play in his pleased surprise — (an artistic 
 pleasure mingled with a little humane pain) — at 
 the different fates attending the ne'er-do-well of the 
 upper and the ne'er-do-well of the lower classes, 
 who are guilty of what is, in kind, exactly the 
 same series of social offences. But this surprise 
 
 237
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 at the existence of social distinctions is not a very 
 strong or lasting motivity to drama ; it is a 
 species of contrast definitely less stimulating than 
 the eternal wonder at human differences. 
 
 Accordingly, contrast, which to Mr. Galsworthy's 
 first play had been the motive, became in his later 
 plays the method. Mr. Galsworthy's drama is 
 the drama of social contrasts for their own sakes. 
 Thus his strike drama is not about one Anthony 
 and one Roberts ; it is about the differing 
 lives and fates of Anthony and his kind and of 
 Roberts and his kind in a capitalist civilization 
 when brought to the touchstone of industrial 
 deadlock. The tragedy of Falder is not about 
 Falder, but about the way in which we firmly 
 entrenched ones put away the weak in the name 
 of the Law, and forget that they are men. The 
 play of country-house life is not a play about the 
 love of the eldest son for the daughter of his 
 father's gamekeeper ; it is a play about the 
 varying deference given to morality according to 
 the degree in which two specifically contrasted 
 cases involve the house's honour. Mr. Galsworthy 
 has ranged far, but he remains the Mr. Galsworthy 
 who wrote The Silver Box. That, as we have seen, 
 was a comedy of discriminating treatment, and 
 the personal colour by which it was his own was 
 his feeling that the law's discrimination in favour 
 of the rich thief was somehow rather wrong. By 
 that, and by a not-very-far-to-be-sought didac- 
 238
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 ticism ; so that in the table of the play which 
 set out the household of John Barthwick, " a 
 wealthy Liberal," we read of Jones, " the stranger 
 within their gates," and were made to share Mr. 
 Galsworthy's feeling that it was somehow rather 
 wrong that the Joneses of this world should remain 
 strangers within the gates of the Barthwicks. The 
 Barthwicks were just a little culpable in that they 
 did not even try to understand. 
 
 But at this point we have to balance Mr. 
 Galsworthy's feeling that the social contrast is 
 somehow rather wrong with Mr. Galsworthy's 
 careful impartiality. First of all, he is an accurate 
 observer ; but next he is an observer who would 
 like us to understand quite clearly that the 
 accuracy of his observations has not been affected 
 by any conclusions to which they may have led 
 him, howsoever regrettable. Mr. Galsworthy is 
 a dramatist who is anxious about many matters, 
 but chiefly he is anxious to be fair. In his first 
 play, lest we should too hastily assume that the 
 right was all on the side of the Joneses, he made 
 Jones beat his wife ; and then, lest we should run 
 away with the idea that, among the poor, a sex- 
 contrast was being drawn all in favour of the 
 women, he balanced a wife-beating Jones with a 
 wife-beaten Livens. The young solicitor who 
 makes out the cheque in a hurry and leaves a 
 space after the nine is not angry or vindictive 
 with the clerk who takes a pen and ticks in " ty " ; 
 
 239
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 he does his best to save him from prosecution. 
 All the persons of Mr. Galsworthy's drama have a 
 share in this extreme anxiety of their author to 
 be fair. It is as though, having found the field 
 of his drama in social distinctions, he had said 
 to his people : " Now the dramatic contrast 
 between you is in a sense ready-made. I should 
 like you to be careful not to presume upon it." 
 His judge, in summing up, is, within the limita- 
 tions of his position, a model of fairness ; the 
 prison-governor who administers in a similar 
 spirit the system as he finds it " can't help liking " 
 the poor fellows in his care ; even the constable 
 who has to hale off to the police-court the pathetic 
 little suicide, 1 ecause it is the system, is a " good 
 sort." It is part of Mr. Galsworthy's careful plan 
 as a dramatist to personalize his institutions at 
 their best. In the difficulty in which the eldest 
 son of the Cheshires finds himself entangled, Lady 
 Cheshire is far from seeing one side only ; while 
 Sir William, if he depart at all from strict fairness, 
 is careful to explain : "I am speaking under the 
 stress of very great pain — some consideration is 
 due to me," and we give it. We always give to 
 Mr. Galsworthy's people, administering a little 
 apologetically the social system they find them- 
 selves involved in, the consideration that is due 
 to them. That is a tribute to their successful- 
 ness. But as we give it we begin to understand 
 what is meant by being " studiously fair." There 
 240
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 is nothing in Mr. Galsworthy's carefully preserved 
 impartiality capable of adding to his drama so poig- 
 nant a truthfulness as that of Hauptmann's old 
 Hilse the weaver, who has good words for the manu- 
 facturers upon his lips until he is shot dead in his 
 chair by a stray bullet that comes in at the window. 
 We almost find ourselves guilty of wishing that 
 Mr. Galsworthy would permit his people to be 
 unfair for a change. The defect of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 virtue of impartiality is that it has become self- 
 conscious. 
 
 And now let us see how this drama of social 
 distinctions works out in tragedy and in comedy. 
 Both alike are marked by a kind of yearning 
 intimacy. The sincere desire at *the heart of 
 Mr. Galsworthy's drama we are acquainted with : 
 it is that we should understand. It does not 
 much matter whom or what we understand, 
 and so we are given William Falder, very 
 small, in contrast with the majesty of the Law, 
 very large. The tragedy is dependent upon the 
 fact that things are so. It therefore works out 
 rather easily. The dramatist's task is to show 
 us Falder in a solicitor's office, Falder in the dock 
 at the Central Criminal Court, Falder in the cells 
 of His Majesty's prison, and the dramatist is 
 perfectly capable of these scenes. Our tragic 
 emotion in face of Mr. Galsworthy's drama would 
 be expressed in some such words as : " Yes, I 
 suppose that's quite true. What are they going 
 
 Q 241
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 to do about it ? " We may go so far as to wonder 
 quite actively what ought to be done. It is just 
 the same with Mr. Galsworthy's comedy. Mr. 
 Galsworthy has written a comedy of self-criticism, 
 as Ibsen did in "The Wild Duck," and, perhaps 
 with a memory of Ibsen, conscious or unconscious, 
 he has called it The Pigeon. This is particularly 
 revealing. People had been saying, perhaps, that 
 Mr. Galsworthy's drama always asked them the 
 question what they were going to do about it ; 
 so he wrote a play, much lighter in texture, to 
 make it plain that it was not what they did that 
 mattered, but how much they understood. The 
 people who are most ready with an answer, indeed, 
 to what is to be done about the problem of poverty 
 — the Canon, the Professor, the Justice of the 
 Peace — are ridiculed, just as Halmar Ekdal was 
 figured by Ibsen to indicate what he did not mean. 
 What Mr. Galsworthy means is Understanding — 
 " without that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched 
 skin of orange." His French ne'er-do-well figures 
 the hopelessness of mere doing, and the little 
 flower-seller, and Timson, once a cabman, figure 
 it again. Wellwyn, the artist, is what, we fancy, 
 Mr. Galsworthy wishes us to be : " It isn't senti- 
 ment. It's simply that they seem to me so — so — 
 jolly. If I'm to give up feeling sort of — nice in 
 here (he touches his chest) about people — it doesn't 
 matter who they are — then I don't know what I'm 
 to do." It isn't sentiment, and, in case we should 
 242
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 think so, the yearning intimacy is relieved 
 deliberately with humours. The method is still 
 the method of contrast, carefully pointed. The 
 professor and the J. P. accuse each other of losing 
 sight of the individual, and together they step 
 out arguing into the night and fall over the sleep- 
 ing figure of the drunken cabman. "Monsieur, 
 it was true, it seems," we are prompted. " They 
 had lost sight of the individual." If we think 
 the dramatist to have travelled rather far from 
 the less unsubtle refrain of the play about the 
 silver box, " a poor man who behaved as you've 
 done . . ." we soon find that Mr. Galsworthy 
 on his defence is not really a different Mr. Gals- 
 worthy : 
 
 Ferrand. Ah ! Monsieur, I am loafer, waster — what 
 you like — for all that [bitterly] poverty is my only crime. 
 If I were rich, should I not be simply veree original, 'ighly 
 respected, with soul above commerce, travelling to see the 
 world ? And that young girl, would she not be " that 
 charming ladee," " veree chic, you know I " And the old 
 Tims — good old-fashioned gentleman — drinking his liquor 
 well. Eh ! bien — what are we now ? Dark beasts, 
 despised by all. That is life, Monsieur. 
 
 That is, at any rate, the motive to the drama of 
 Mr. Galsworthy — the drama of social distinctions. 
 And this, when the flower-girl has tried to drown 
 herself, is that drama's comedic complication, so 
 far as it can be said to have one : 
 
 Wellwyn. Well ! God in Heaven ! Of all the d d 
 
 topsy-turvy ! Not a soul in the world wants her 
 
 243
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 alive — and now she's to be prosecuted for trying to be 
 where every one wishes her. 
 
 It is a damned topsy-turvy world, not merely a 
 damned subtle world, as Mr. Barker's Major 
 Thomas would have it ; and to place topsy against 
 turvy is Mr. Galsworthy's way to make a social 
 drama. 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy placed topsy against turvy to 
 best effect when he wrote a play of social distinc- 
 tions in excitement. Strife, by its subject-matter, 
 is given the dramatic value of crisis in greater 
 degree than any other of his plays. It was like 
 Mr. Galsworthy to choose a case in which the 
 men's trade union stood aside, so that he might 
 have an impartial arbiter ready-made ; and it is in 
 Harness's concluding words, " That's where the 
 fun comes in," that we find the dramatist's 
 characteristic pitying aloofness rather than in 
 anything so simple as old man Thomas's " Shame 
 on your strife ! " There is the same careful 
 pointing of contrasts : the Directors' fire (Act I) 
 against the men's fire (Act II), the Directors' 
 meals against the men's meals, the Director's 
 wife, who may miss her train to Spain, against 
 the man's wife, who is dead. We " hear both 
 sides " ; sometimes the play takes on almost 
 the symmetry of an argument : it still remains 
 commendably unheated. Strife is a better play 
 than Justice. The victim there Mr. Galsworthy 
 did his best to personalize by showing him 
 244
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 to us through the eyes of his lover, in her 
 words over his dead body at the end ; but he 
 remained essentially an impersonal victim of a 
 system. The system in that case it was not 
 possible to personalize at all. Here the struggle 
 is personalized very cleverly by making each of 
 its protagonists something more than a " party " 
 man. Anthony is an extremist, as Roberts is an 
 extremist ; both draw something out of the 
 common stock of life, and are the more men for 
 that reason. It pleased Mr. Galsworthy to make 
 them, rich man and poor man, draw the same 
 thing ; and life treats them alike. The scene in 
 which they face one another, both thrown over 
 by their kind, is the most strongly imagined in 
 Mr. Galsworthy's drama ; and at the same time, 
 in its reliance for its full effect upon our know- 
 ledge of the differing defeat attending the poor 
 man and the rich, typically Mr. Galsworthy's : 
 
 Harness. For shame, Roberts ! Go home quietly, man ; 
 go home. 
 
 Roberts [tearing his arm away]. Home ? [Shrinking 
 together in a whisper.] Home ! 
 
 Perhaps it is not difficult to see how Mr. Gals- 
 worthy incurred the charge of sentimentality which 
 his nice little artist-man is at pains to rebut. 
 " Monsieur," says the picturesque Frenchman who 
 does his part in the rebuttal, " if HE himself 
 were on earth now, there would be a little heap 
 of gentlemen writing to the journals every day 
 
 245
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 to call Him sloppee sentimentalist ! " It may 
 be so ; but still there must be something which 
 dictates, for example, this dramatist's choice of 
 Christmas Eve as the background for both 
 comedy and tragedy, to show us Falder beating 
 the door of his prison-cell and these birds of 
 the Embankment despoiling their pigeon, when 
 on any other night in the year the same things 
 are. It is the choice of the ready-made occasion. 
 Christmas ! " says the governor, and we are to 
 contrast this greenish-distempered prison interior 
 with the domestic fireside of our imagination's 
 choice. We will not call this sentimental, we will 
 call it the employment of ready-made emotion in 
 the service of dramatic contrast. If we have 
 suffered ourselves to be moved by it in Mr. Gals- 
 worthy's theatre, do we not remember that after- 
 wards we have been just a little bit ashamed ? 
 
 In the same way, much of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 dramatic effect is aimed, if one is permitted to say 
 so, just a little below the belt. It was to be 
 expected that Mr. Galsworthy would choose to 
 re-write « Caste, " in illustration of the progress made 
 by the English drama. But another dramatist 
 would not have used the old play as he uses it, 
 for purposes of quite so immediate a contrast : 
 
 Sttodenham. Wonderful faithful creatures; follow 
 you hke a woman. You can't shake 'em off anyhow 
 [He protrudes the right-hand pocket.] My girl, she'd set 
 her heart on him, but she'll just have to do without 
 246
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 Dot [as though galvanized]. Oh 1 no, I can't take it 
 awav from her. , _, , 
 
 Studdenham. Bless you, she won't mind I That a 
 settled, then. [He turns to the door.} [To the PufttJ 
 Ah I Would you ! Tryin' to wriggle out of it 1 Regular 
 young limb ! ^ ^ ^ followed by Jackson. 
 
 Christine. How ghastly ! 
 
 Dot [suddenty catching sight of the book xn her hand]. 
 
 '* Caste 1 " tt 
 
 [She gives vent to a short sharp laugh. 
 
 THE CURTAIN FALLS 
 
 Freda is to have a baby by the eldest son, and of 
 course there was a baby in the false old play ; so 
 Freda is brought in to assist at the young ladies 
 rehearsal, and when they appeal to her for help 
 in the matter of the baby : " Borrow a real one. 
 Miss Joan," she says. "There are some that 
 don't count much." The conjuncture of the real 
 and the unreal is there ; but its intention is too 
 apparent to be very poignant. We are not 
 allowed, in any event, to feel with Freda very 
 much. We are willing to; all Mr. Galsworthy s 
 sympathetic understanding of the powers of 
 truthful speech, all his excellent mistrust of the 
 rhetorical, are in the scene of her avowal. Mr. 
 Galsworthy's timidity, too, in the face of emotion, 
 is there ; but he has given us enough in the little 
 scene, we need not quarrel about the fall of a 
 curtain. Our quarrel is, if we wish to feel with 
 Freda that she is allowed to be no more than a line
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 in a diagram, a parallel line. Freda is a «■>,*.«. 
 object to be got "into trouble" that Ts a n 
 became an under-keeper has got a village i\ 
 nto he same trouble. Now that the offender* 
 
 auL t fi SOn ' W ^ the head of the household be 
 quite so firm in his adherence to the dictate of 
 
 ™r al r raUty ? - that is the drama tat T h i 
 upper class has one law for itself, it appear 
 
 S;'r depende f • Again > * ™ " 
 
 that it is so may even be right and necessarv 
 the dramatist himself is perfectly willing to £7r 
 
 partirLdT^' t EVerytWng * e ™> and im- 
 
 difflcu't b,,,°r k * q T rel ° Ut of St "ould be 
 difficult, but it u not likely that we shall do 
 that, because we do not very much mind. 
 
 tw n Galsworth y' s P'ays it is not character 
 that really matters. The contrast he needs for 
 
 type n s a ; u , so re r dy - to - hand and s ° *»£?& 
 
 types will really serve its purpose quite well 
 Character is added, it is true ; butcher on 
 Mr Cokeson's principle, of making it all nice and 
 jol y for us. Mr. Galsworthy's precision that" s 
 not quite portraiture amounts to little more than 
 we may read in his stage directions : "Enid is 
 tall ; she has a small, decided face, and is twentv 
 eight years ol d." Thus Mrs. Jones is a charwoman 
 who takes life as it comes, " of course " „n7 t 
 speaks of her own work/when °h an'g^lt a ° 
 her "profession." Wellwvn is »n « 3 <■ f 
 always smokes , ^ desp T ofsoSl ££*
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 who gives his visiting cards, his charity, and even 
 his trousers to poor people because it makes him 
 feel " nice in here." Miss Beech, the family 
 dependent, is a dear old lady to whom men and 
 women and worms are alike " poor creatures," 
 each one thinking himself a " special case." 
 Cokeson is a nice old man, who keeps dogs and goes 
 to chapel out of office hours, and likes his dinner 
 hot. This dramatist is always curious, always 
 observant. And because Mrs. Jones's lot in life 
 is a sad one, we are given, among the little accurate 
 things she says, some at which we may smile ; 
 " almost quite drunk," she describes her husband 
 to the magistrate. The husband of Mrs. Megan 
 is not a bad one, but when he gets playing cards 
 " then 'e'll fly the kite." " I see," says Wellwyn, 
 " and when he's not flying it, what does he do ? " 
 All Mr. Galsworthy's characterization is curious 
 and sympathetic and indulgent, like that. People 
 are "so awfully human," in Wellwyn's phrase; 
 especially poor people. 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy's stage directions seem to go upon 
 the same principle of making things nice for us, 
 rather than suggesting the spontaneous overflow of 
 character eager to make itself explicit, as Mr. Gran- 
 ville Barker's do. But when we have disregarded 
 what is added to make them nice for us, Mr. Gals- 
 worthy's people are, perhaps, over-simplified. We 
 do not, for example, even the poor among us, move 
 in quite so regular an orbit around the " personal " 
 
 249
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 afMr 6 rl? PerS .T alj " thdr tW ° fixed P^ts, 
 as Mr. Galsworthy would have us believe 
 
 don To " , 1S f Mr «, Worthy's determina 
 
 hem t a k, U 7 and ^ P6 ° pIe that mak * s 
 them take refuge m impersonality so often. 
 
 Or more hkely, lt is because they are eonseious 
 
 that they are speaking for their class, and that 
 
 But Mr r° r ! !?T ed im P artial % »Pon them. 
 But Mr. Galsworthy's people always come back 
 to an insistence upon the personal, as though to 
 assure us by word of mouth that their identity 
 has not been merged in the type; even the 
 
 r/rT 1 rw who is a fav ° urite ™*a 
 
 for Mr. Galsworthy's well-known virtue of im- 
 partiality Each one would have us know, with 
 the hero of Browning's "Pauline," that he or she 
 nas a most clear idea of consciousness of self " 
 Mr. Galsworthy gets some of his fun, his rather 
 deliberate fun out of this, as when the curtain 
 
 ll « n ™ \ hree reformers ^ The Pigeon, with 
 their My theory » « M y theory—" « M y 
 
 nf^T"*' / nd thC CUri0US m *y see how Part 
 of the effect of personal interest in Strife is gained 
 
 by making one and then another-the secretary of 
 the company, Mr. Scantlebury, the women, Frost, 
 the valet, John Anthony himself-narrow down 
 the social conflict until only his own little part in 
 it is apparent. F 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy, with an air of discovery, once 
 wrote a "Play on the Letter '1.'" 4' °Z
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 exception to much that we have said, in that it 
 does not rest upon a contrast that is ready-made ; 
 unless we hold the differing search for joy of 
 mother and of daughter to be so. But that is a 
 contrast, if of circumstance, of circumstance that 
 is not merely social ; and that is the reason why 
 Joy, though a pale little play, is in some respects 
 the most interesting Mr. Galsworthy has yet 
 written. Every one, we learn in it, thinks them- 
 selves a " special case," with this conclusion : 
 
 Colonel. I say, Peachey — Life's very funny. 
 Miss Beech. Men and women are ! 
 
 That, we feel, is Mr. Galsworthy's discovery, and 
 the motive to his plays : life, with its contrasts, 
 is very funny ; men and women are " so awfully 
 human " that he just had to show them to us. 
 
 But the art of dramatic exhibition is a minor art. 
 It is the skilful employment of the ready-made. 
 Just as Falder's prison-cell, we feel, and the 
 procedure of the Central Criminal Court have their 
 existence independent of any creative act of the 
 dramatist, so it is with Mrs. Megan, the flower- 
 seller, and Timson, the superseded cabman. " I 
 don't want the old fellow to feel he's being made 
 a show of," says Mr. Galsworthy's artist man ; 
 we note the kindness of his heart, but we do feel 
 that, just a little. We do feel that for Mr. 
 Galsworthy's people to be " made a show of " is 
 a consequence of his method. It is the rebellious- 
 
 251
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 ness of the material. The raw material of the 
 plays is the mass meeting of the strikers, the 
 procedure of a court of law ; and, after the 
 dramatist has put it to his purposes, it remains 
 raw. The West London police court is not a 
 difficult thing to " put on the stage," but it is 
 a very difficult thing to put through the dramatist's 
 imagination. That is why, in spite of all Mr. 
 Galsworthy's earnest artistry, his plays in general 
 have not set up their own quite satisfying con- 
 vention in the theatre, as those, for example, of 
 Mr. Barker and of Hauptmann have. A mass 
 meeting of strikers is an awkward thing in exhibi- 
 tion ; " the men form little groups," we read, 
 and their conversation comes to us with the 
 arbitrary selectiveness of Wilde's conversations in 
 a drawing-room, as with the turning on and off 
 of little taps. Similarly with the police court : 
 the people speak " behind their hands " to one 
 another, and their voices come to us quite plainly, 
 while the usher calls for silence in ineffective 
 effort to save the dramatist's face. Mr. Gals- 
 worthy has gone to reality for his drama, but he 
 has served the new wine in the old bottles. Drury 
 Lane has shown us many a police court thus. Mr. 
 Galsworthy's sense of the stage is shown more 
 surely in the little things : the ill-timed piping of 
 the boy Jan in Strife ; the moments when intimacy 
 of emotion and intimacy of effect are happily at 
 one, as when Bill " touches Freda's arms " as he 
 252
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 goes from the room to leave her with his mother, 
 or when Sir William, facing the thing in all his life 
 he has never been asked to face, grips the mantel- 
 piece so hard " that his hands and arms are seen 
 shaking." These things are good; singularly at 
 variance with the things which seem to us merely 
 fastidious, such as Lady Cheshire's distaste for the 
 gamekeeper's hands in his moment of emotion 
 — things which, at any rate, fail in the theatre 
 of their intended effect. There are the things 
 again that people do in unlikely places, such 
 as the scene between Bill and Freda in the 
 populous hall, and then, because they are people 
 in a drama conscious of its reality, apologize for 
 the unlikelihood. Some dramas are born formal, 
 some achieve form, some have form thrust upon 
 them. Speaking generally, the form of Mr. 
 Galsworthy's drama is less the spontaneous ex- 
 pression of the drama's needs than a form self- 
 consciously imposed. The tragedy of law is 
 formless, so, two years after the conviction, form 
 is imposed upon it, against all likelihood : 
 
 Walter. " The rolling of the chariot- wheels of Justice ! " 
 I've never got that out of my head. 
 
 No, it is the dramatist who has not got it out 
 of his head ; Walter forgot it long ago. It is 
 the same with the visiting cards in The Pigeon ; 
 we feel at the end that they are overstressed, 
 lest we lose sight of the art by which their 
 employment has given form to the whole. The 
 
 258
 
 DRAMATIC PORTRAITS 
 
 use of the old play to give form to the new 
 play of social distinctions we have already seen ; and 
 the rather teasing cleverness of the end of Strife 
 is another example of just the same thing. 
 
 The art which tries too consciously to conceal art 
 is the art that does not succeed in its aim ; and 
 this, we feel, is Mr. Galsworthy's. His famous 
 impartiality defeats itself when it becomes self- 
 conscious ; so far from the concept of an author 
 being remote from our thoughts as the force which 
 throws up and draws back the tides, it becomes 
 very definitely present to us, and on its face we 
 seem to see the " quaint little pitying smile " 
 with which the twentieth-century young lady 
 from Cambridge saw down the curtain on the 
 comedy of her brother and the gamekeeper's 
 daughter. These no less famous " curtains," which 
 seem to hesitate to come down on anything that 
 could possibly be mistaken for a climax, similarly 
 overshoot the mark, for theirs is the art which, 
 starting away from the theatre's unreality, has 
 ended in unreality again. In the English theatre 
 of the present day Mr. Galsworthy is undeniably 
 among the pioneers ; we cannot but be indebted 
 to him for the work he has done : but in it there 
 is something of the pioneer who, in his anxiety to 
 be a pioneer, has gone so determinedly ahead of 
 the main army that he has caught up again with 
 its rear. 
 
 254
 
 CHRONOLOGY AND 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF PLAYS 
 
 The dates are those of production rather than of 
 composition, except in the case of plays which have 
 not been seen on the public stage in England. The 
 titles of these are in italics. 
 
 1880 Hester's Mystery. 
 
 1881. The Squire. 
 Vera. 
 
 1882. Girls and Bovs. 
 The Silver King. 
 
 1883. The Duchess of Padua. 
 
 1884. Saints and Sinners. 
 Breaking a Butterfly. 
 Deacon Brodie. 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 1886. The Schoolmistress. 
 The Hobby Horse. 
 
 1887. Dandy Dick. 
 
 1888. Sweet Lavender. 
 The Weaker Sex. 
 
 1889. The Profligate. 
 
 R 257
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF PLAYS 
 
 1891. The Times. 
 Lady Bountiful. 
 The Dancing Girl. 
 The American. 
 
 1892. Lady Windermere's Fan. 
 Salome. 
 
 Widower's Houses. 
 
 Walker, London. 
 
 Judah. 
 
 The Magistrate. 
 
 1893. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. 
 A Woman of No Importance. 
 
 1894. Arms and the Man. 
 Mrs. Warren's Profession. 
 The Professor's Love Story. 
 The Case of Rebellious Susan. 
 
 1895. Guy Domville. 
 
 An Ideal Husband. 
 
 The Importance of Being Earnest. 
 
 A Florentine Tragedy. 
 
 Candida. 
 
 The Benefit of the Doubt. 
 
 The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. 
 
 The Triumph of the Philistines. 
 
 1896. Michael and his Lost Angel. 
 
 1897. The Devil's Disciple. 
 The Man of Destiny. 
 The Little Minister. 
 
 The Princess and the Butterfly. 
 The Liars. 
 258
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF PLAYS 
 
 1898. Trelawney of the " Wells." 
 The Manoeuvres of Jane. 
 
 1899. Caesar and Cleopatra. 
 The Gay Lord Quex. 
 
 1900. You Never Can Tell. 
 The Wedding Guest. 
 Mrs. Dane's Defence. 
 
 1901. Iris. 
 
 1902. The Marrying of Ann Leete. 
 Captain Brassbound's Conversion. 
 Quality Street. 
 
 The Admirable Crichton. 
 
 1903. The Two Mr. Wetherbys. 
 The Admirable Bashville. 
 Little Mary. 
 
 Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace. 
 
 Cousin Kate. 
 
 Letty. 
 
 1901. John Bull's Other Island. 
 A Wife without a Smile. 
 Peter Pan. 
 
 1905. The Voysey Inheritance. 
 
 The Return of the Prodigal. 
 
 Major Barbara. 
 
 The Philanderer. 
 
 Man and Superman. 
 
 Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire. 
 
 Pantaloon. 
 
 Captain Drew on Leave. 
 
 259
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF PLAYS 
 
 1906. The Silver Box. 
 
 The Charity that Began at Home. 
 
 The Doctor's Dilemma. 
 
 Josephine. 
 
 Punch. 
 
 His House in Order. 
 
 The Hypocrites. 
 
 1907. Waste. 
 
 The Cassilis Engagement. 
 
 Joy. 
 
 The Mollusc. 
 
 1908. Getting Married. 
 
 The Last of the De Mullins. 
 What Every Woman Knows. 
 The Thunderbolt. 
 Dolly Reforming Herself. 
 
 1909. Penelope. 
 Strife. 
 
 The Shewing-JJp of Blanco Posnet. 
 Mid-Channel. 
 
 1910. The Madras House. 
 Misalliance. 
 Justice. 
 
 The Twelve-Pound Look. 
 Old Friends. 
 A Slice of Life. 
 A Single Man. 
 
 1911. Fanny's First Play. 
 
 The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. 
 Rococo. 
 
 Preserving Mr. Panmure. 
 The Ogre. 
 260
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF PLAYS 
 
 1912. Milestones. 
 The Pigeon. 
 The Eldest Son. 
 Overruled. 
 Rosalind. 
 Doormats. 
 The " Mind the Paint " Girl. 
 
 261
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Plays of Arthur Pinero. 
 
 London : 1891, etc. William Heinemann. 
 
 The Plays of Henry Arthur Jones. 
 
 London : 1894, etc. Macmillan and Co. Also 
 Samuel French and Co., and Lacy's Acting 
 Edition of Plays. 
 
 The Works of Oscar Wilde. 
 
 Edited by Robert Ross. London : 1908, etc. 
 Methuen and Co. 
 
 The Dramatic Works of Bernard Shaw. 
 
 London : 1909, etc. Archibald Constable and 
 Co. 
 
 The Dramatic Works of St. John Hankin. 
 London : 1912. Martin Seeker. 
 
 Granville Barker. 
 
 Three Plays. London : 1909. Sidgwick and 
 
 Jackson. 
 
 Anatol : a sequence of dialogues by Arthur 
 
 Schnitzler, paraphrased for the English stage by 
 
 Granville Barker. London: 1911. Sidgwick and 
 
 Jackson. 
 
 With Laurence Ilousman : Prunella ; or, Love in 
 a Dutch Garden. London : 1906. Sidgwick and 
 Jackson. 
 
 263
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Plays of Hubert Henry Davies. 
 
 London : 1910, etc. William Heinemann. 
 
 The Plays of John Galsworthy. 
 
 London : 1909, etc. Duckworth and Co. 
 
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