jrnia 
 
 a 
 
 mm$)m 
 
 Wi 
 
 y 

 
 9 zs". 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 ENGLISH WRITERS OF TO-DAY 
 
 A Series of Monographs on living Authors 
 The following are the first volumes in the Series : — 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING 
 
 The Man and His Work. Being an attempt at an "Appreciation." 
 By G. F. Monkshood, Author of "Woman and The Wits," "My 
 Lady Ruby," etc. Containing a portrait of Mr Kipling and an auto- 
 graph letter to the author in facsimile. A new and cheaper edition. 
 Containing a new chapter. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. — "He writes fluently, and he has genuine enthusiasm for 
 his subject, and an intimate acquaintance with his work. Moreover, the book has 
 been submitted to Mr Kipling, whose characteristic letter to the author is set forth 
 on the preface. ... Of Kipling's heroes Mr Monkshood has a thorough under- 
 standing, and his remarks on them are worth quoting " (extract follows). 
 
 Globe. — " It has at the basis of it both knowledge and enthusiasm — knowledge of 
 the works esteemed and enthusiasm for them. This book may be accepted as a 
 generous exposition of Mr Kipling's merits as a writer. We can well believe that 
 It will have many interested and approving readers," 
 
 Scotsman. — "This well-informed volume is plainly sincere. It is thoroughly 
 well studied, and takes pains to answer all the questions that are usually put about 
 Mr Kipling. The writer's enthusiasm carries both himself and his reader along in 
 the most agreeable style. One way and another his book is full of interest, and 
 those who wish to talk about Kipling will find it invaluable, while the thousands of 
 his admirers will read it through with delighted enthusiasm." 
 
 BRET HARTE 
 
 A Treatise and a Tribute. By T. Edgar Pemberton, Author of 
 "The Kendals," "Life of Sothern," etc., with anew portrait of Mr 
 Bret Harte and a Bibliography. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Spectator.— "A highly-interesting book." 
 
 Daily Mail — "An interesting biography full of good things." 
 
 Sunday Sun. — "A pleasant and interesting memoir.'' 
 
 Whitehall Review.— "A truly delightful book. . . . Written in no mean 
 spirit of adulation, it is a well-balanced, characteristic, and fair estimate of a 
 personality and a mind far above the average." 
 
 Sunday Special. — "It is an intensely interesting life story Mr Pemberton has 
 •to tell. . . . This little volume is eminently readable, full of excellent stories and 
 anecdotes, and is, in short, a very admirable commentary upon the work of one of 
 the brightest masters of the pen that the great continent over sea has produced." 
 
 Dally Express.—" Every true lover of Bret Harte ought to get Mr T. Edgar 
 Pemberton's book. There are not many authors, alas ! that would bear study at 
 close range, but here certainly is one where knowledge of his early struggles and 
 trials will only increase our affection and interest in the man himself and his stories. 
 Mr Pemberton has shown in this book the qualities of an ideal biographer. His 
 touch is light, his figure stands clear, and we find in his work a strong human note 
 we learned long years ago to associate with the creator of M'Liss." 
 
 London : 
 GREENING & CO., LTD., 20 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road 
 
 a
 
 English Writers of To-Day Series 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 A Study. By Theodore Wratislaw (Dedicated to Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton), with a new portrait of Mr Swinburne and a Biblio- 
 graphy. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Daily News.— " Mr Wratislaw's work is always dignified and eloquent, and not 
 without critical acuteness." 
 
 Court Circular.—" This little volume forms an excellent handbook to his (Swin- 
 burne's) writing. It is not simply an eulogy, but rather a discriminate appreciation 
 and a loving analysis of the poet's works which are dealt with chronologically as they 
 were published. The exposition helps greatly to elucidate many of the poems, and 
 the criticisms are fair and unbiassed. Those who know their Swinburne well will 
 find a new pleasure in the poems after reading this book, and those who have hitherto 
 been deterred from studying him are put in possession of a golden key to unlock the 
 gateway of an enchanted garden. Mr Wratislaw has fulfilled his task ably and well, 
 and has earned the gratitude of all lovers of English poetry." 
 
 HALL CAINE. By C. Fred Kenyon 
 
 Outlook. — " This book is well worth reading." 
 
 Evening Times (Glasgow).— "Decidedly interesting." 
 
 Publisher's Circular.— " A bright, readable volume." 
 
 Liverpool Mercury.— "Mr Kenyon writes fluently and well. His style is 
 
 interesting and his book eminently readable." 
 
 George Meredith. By Walter Jerrold. 
 Arthur Wing Pinero. By Hamilton Fyfe. 
 
 VOLUMES OF E. W. O. T. (in active preparation.) 
 
 W. E. Henley, and the " National Observer" 
 Group. By George Gamble. 
 
 Geo. Moore and Bernard Shaw. By C. 
 
 Fred Kenyon. 
 
 Mrs Humphrey Ward ) in one volume. 
 Mrs Craigie I B Y W. L. Courtney. 
 
 Thomas Hardy. By a well-known Critic. 
 
 The Parnassian School in English Poetry. 
 
 (Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse and Robert Bridges.) 
 By Sir George Douglas. 
 
 London : 
 GREENING & CO., LTD., 20 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO
 
 Photo by Ellis & // 'alery. 
 
 ^^i^*, s&xtZs-^ ^rr~d >*■
 
 Arthur Wing Pinero 
 
 PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 H 5tufc£ 
 
 BY 
 
 H. HAMILTON FYFE 
 
 • 
 
 Xonfcon 
 
 GREENING & CO., \fTD. 
 
 It, 
 
 20 CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 
 1902 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright 
 
 in 
 
 Great Britain 
 
 in THE 
 
 Dominion of Canada 
 
 and in the 
 
 United States of America 
 
 October 1902
 
 V 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 rA 
 
 I. 
 
 Introductory .... 
 
 I 
 
 
 II. 
 
 Biographical .... 
 
 II 
 
 
 III. 
 
 Early Efforts 
 
 17 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 Farce 
 
 26 
 
 
 V. 
 
 Sentiment .... 
 
 54 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 Satire 
 
 74 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 Nationality in Drama . 
 
 104 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Serious Intent 
 
 124 
 
 \ 
 
 IX. 
 
 Manners and Morals 
 
 184 
 
 rf) 
 
 X. 
 
 Mr f inero's Actors 
 
 214 
 
 XI. 
 
 Bibliography of Mr Pinero's P 
 
 LAYS . 231 
 
 VI 1 
 

 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 If any apology is required in behalf of this 
 little book, it must be an apology not so 
 much to its readers as to him who is the 
 subject of it. Criticism is seldom apologetic, 
 and yet, as it seems to me, it always ought 
 to include at least a veiled petition that the 
 critic may be absolved from the faults of 
 hasty judgment and distorted vision. To 
 make anything is hard, and, in proportion, 
 meritorious. To rail at that which has 
 been made, to note with lofty scorn its 
 imperfections, to lose sight of its finer 
 qualities, is lamentably easy, and, in pro-
 
 2 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 portion, contemptible. If, therefore, in 
 these pages I should seem here and there 
 to insist, with emphasis, upon a personal 
 view, to lay bare a cavilling disposition, or 
 to discourse with overmuch assurance, I 
 beg pardon in advance. The opinions 
 expressed, the impressions recorded, are 
 but the fruitage of a single mind. They 
 have one desert which I may claim 
 for them without loss of modesty — they 
 are genuine and frank and honest. Assail 
 my judgment if you will. But so you 
 admit that it is an honest judgment, I shall 
 be content. 
 
 If appreciations are permitted of the work 
 of living writers of books, much more 
 should room be found for a study of a 
 playwright's labours. For in the present 
 state of our theatre in England it is 
 exceedingly difficult to form any judgment 
 of a dramatist's work at all. A book you 
 may read at any time, but you can only 
 see a play acted when it pleases a theatrical
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 manager to stage it. It is true that Mr 
 Pinero has printed and published the dramas 
 on which he desires his reputation to stand 
 or fall, but the reading of plays is a habit 
 which the public has not yet formed. I 
 am not without hope, therefore, that this 
 book may be found useful by many who 
 value highly what they have seen of 
 Mr Pinero's dramaturgy, but who have 
 lacked opportunity to gain a full acquaint- 
 ance with the whole body of it. It may 
 stimulate their interest, it may perchance 
 create a fresh interest. If it turns attention 
 to the published plays (which are issued 
 in a handy and attractive shape by Mr 
 Heinemann) and persuades people to read 
 and form their own judgment upon them, 
 it will have served its purpose. There is 
 no doubt that, granted a taste for the 
 dramatic form of story-telling, their judg- 
 ment will be warmly favourable. The 
 talents which equip Mr Pinero for the task 
 of writing plays would set up at least half
 
 4 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 a dozen average novelists, and had he 
 chosen to throw his work into the form 
 of novels instead of plays, he would cer- 
 tainly have won an undisputed reputation 
 as a man of letters. That this title is not 
 universally conceded to him, as things are, 
 is a result of the muddle-headed view 
 which is generally accepted in respect of 
 plays claiming to rank as literature. Un- 
 critical critics are too ready to declare 
 any play "literary" if its author has intro- 
 duced into his dialogue such scraps of 
 "fine" and "flowery" writing as any tyro, 
 if he followed a sound and well-known 
 maxim, would at once cut out. This, of 
 course, is merely the point of view of 
 persons ignorant both of what is implied 
 when proper use is made of the word 
 "literary" and of the elements of dramatic 
 composition. But there are many people 
 of wider intelligence who are in doubt as 
 to the essentials of a play that may justly 
 be lifted out of the ruck of pieces endur-
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 able only as acting dramas and granted 
 the rieht to this much-coveted and much- 
 talked-about term. 
 
 The essential distinction, to my mind, 
 can be stated in some such way as this. 
 A skilfully - contrived play may appeal 
 strongly to the emotions and enforce 
 interest in its developments in spite of 
 weaknesses and even absurdities that be- 
 come apparent as soon as the curtain has 
 fallen — as soon as it is considered in any 
 other light than that of an entertainment 
 calculated solely to keep an audience 
 amused and interested for the brief space 
 of two or three hours. Judged from this 
 standpoint, by the verdict of the majority, 
 a Drury Lane melodrama or a play like 
 The Bells may equal in merit the most 
 brilliant efforts of Congreve and Sheridan, 
 the wittiest comedy of Moliere or Dumas 
 fils, the most poetical or the most pregnant 
 even of the plays of Shakespeare himself. 
 But the reason why the works of these
 
 6 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 writers have come to be regarded as great 
 achievements in literature as well as excel- 
 lent stage plays lies in the fact that they 
 will bear the closest scrutiny, the most 
 severely critical consideration in the study ; 
 that their pages glow with poetry, with 
 imagination, with wit and fancy, with a 
 wide knowledge of human character and 
 human life ; that they are founded upon 
 observation at first hand and written with 
 the pen that only genius knows how to 
 wield. 
 
 A play possessing none of these qualities, 
 a play built up carefully upon a basis of a 
 little humanity imperfectly understood and 
 an intolerable deal of stage trickery only too 
 well remembered — a play in which the 
 characters are puppets, the situations strained 
 and unreal, the plot mechanical, the senti- 
 ment false, may yet succeed in creating 
 illusions when it is cleverly represented by 
 capable actors and actresses. A play, on 
 the other hand, that can lay any claim to
 
 INTROD UCTOR Y 7 
 
 the title of literature must create its illusions 
 by natural means, by means that are not 
 seen to be inartistic and crude as soon as 
 we have escaped from the glamour of the 
 playhouse. The characters must be real 
 people, not stage people : the developments 
 such as would occur in the greater world 
 that lies beyond the small world of the hack 
 dramatist. Blemishes that are, perhaps, 
 unnoticed in an acted play, or that may be 
 condoned in view of the limitations imposed 
 by the conditions of the stage, are unfor- 
 givable in a book printed to be read and 
 not merely to serve the purposes of a prompt 
 copy. 
 
 It does not follow that a play written 
 by a man of undoubted literary talent will 
 be a literary play. Indeed, the contrary 
 has so often been proved that it were a 
 work of supererogation to adduce instances. 
 A good novelist will, if he tries his hand 
 at a play, probably write good dialogue. 
 But very often the persons who seem to
 
 8 ARTHUR WING FINER 
 
 live in the pages of his novels are stilted 
 and artificial on the stage. Very often his 
 situations are either bald and undramatic, 
 or else, from a desire to make them broad 
 and forcible enough to stand the test of the 
 theatre, they are over-coloured and sensa- 
 tional. Very often his power of writing 
 brilliant dialogue is used without a due 
 sense of character. In such cases the 
 literary man's dramas read no better nor 
 have any better claim to the title of literature 
 than the efforts of playwrights who have 
 gone through no literary training and find 
 it difficult even to write correct English. 
 It is not merely good writing that makes 
 a play literary in the real meaning of the 
 term. It is such writing as knows how 
 to fit every speech to the character of the 
 person who utters it. If the people are 
 illiterate, they must talk in an illiterate 
 manner. Fine writing is the dramatist's 
 worst enemy. To sum up then, a play 
 that is to rank as literature must convince
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 the reader in as great measure as it con- , 
 vinces the spectators who see it acted, 
 must so influence his imagination that its 
 characters and scenes are as clear to his 
 mind's eye as if it were being interpreted 
 to him in the playhouse by actors capable 
 of appreciating and carrying out the author's 
 wishes and design. 
 
 Tried by this touchstone the plays of Mr 
 Pinero may not be great works, but they 
 are, most of them, undoubtedly good pieces 
 of literature — quite as good as the novels 
 and romances of the period. Indeed, con- 
 sidering the difficulties against which Mr 
 Pinero has had to contend, their literary 
 excellence, according to the canons laid 
 down, is distinctly high. Mr Pinero's dia- 
 logue alone gives him an indisputable claim 
 to be treated as a man of letters. " It is 
 true," said Fox, on one occasion, "that I 
 am never in want of a word, but Pitt 
 always has the word." Mr Pinero has, to 
 compare small things with great, the happy
 
 io ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 knack of finding the word. Add to this 
 the humanity of the plays, the observation 
 that shines through them, the striving after 
 something better than the poor conventions 
 and artificialities of the stage as he found 
 it, and you have the secret of Mr Pinero's 
 position and influence as the leading dra- 
 matist of to-day.
 
 1 1 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Mr Pinero's name is Portuguese. The 
 correct method of opening this sketch of his 
 career would be to trace back the history of 
 his family into the storied past. But I will 
 leave that to some more industrious bio- 
 grapher, merely mentioning that the play- 
 wright's grandfather was an English subject 
 — one of the last " tellers " of the Exchequer, 
 a post long since extinct, and that his father 
 followed the law, practising as a solicitor in 
 London. This father regarded with no 
 favourable eye his son's first efforts in 
 dramatic craftsmanship. He looked to him 
 to carry on the legal traditions of the family, 
 and put him into his office, where the young 
 
 1 1
 
 12 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Pinero struggled with the intricacies of the 
 law much against his taste. By the time he 
 was nineteen, however, he had made up his 
 mind that he had a vocation for the stage, 
 and he accordingly took an engagement in 
 1874 with Mr and Mrs Wyndham, the well- 
 known theatrical managers in Edinburgh. A 
 pound a week was his salary, and he had to 
 work hard for it. After about a year's play- 
 ing of all kinds of parts at short notice, the 
 Edinburgh Theatre Royal was burnt down, 
 and the actor lost even his poor pound a 
 week. However, he soon found employment 
 again, this time in Liverpool, and in 1876 he 
 came to London to play at the Globe 
 Theatre. He had made, at Liverpool, the 
 acquaintance of Wilkie Collins, who was then 
 about to produce Miss Gwilt, and who 
 offered him a part in that play. Later in the 
 same year he had the good fortune to be 
 engaged by Mr Irving, and he remained 
 a member of the Lyceum Theatre company 
 for five years. He still played small parts,
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 13 
 
 and sometimes played them very badly. In 
 Birmingham he was once told by a frank 
 critic that his King in Hamlet was the very 
 worst King the town had ever seen ! But 
 this was early in his five years' experience 
 with Mr Irving. It is generally agreed that 
 Mr Pinero developed into a sound "utility" 
 actor, with ideas of his own and a fair 
 command of the means to express them. He 
 considers that he established a theatrical 
 record by playing two of the worst parts 
 in Shakespeare — Guildenstern in Hamlet, 
 and Salarino in The Merchant of Venice — 
 for the longest consecutive runs ever known. 
 In particular Mr Pinero complained of the 
 agony of standing still for thirty-five minutes 
 during the trial scene without speaking a 
 word ! Sothern had much the same kind of 
 experience, and attributed to it his talent for 
 reposeful acting. "In America I played 
 second ' heavies,' and if you had stood and 
 listened to the first 'heavy' man ladling out 
 long speeches for five years you would
 
 14 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 get as much repose as I have got." But of 
 course Pinero was thinking all this time 
 more about play-writing than play-acting. 
 He wrote steadily, trying his hand at all 
 kinds of pieces. In 1877 his first chance 
 came of seeing his work upon the London 
 stage. A little play called ^200 a Year was 
 performed at the Globe Theatre on the 
 occasion of the benefit of "a rising young 
 actor," Mr F. H. Macklin. Miss Comp- 
 ton, who is now well-known as a clever 
 comedy actress, and as the wife of Mr R. C. 
 Carton, also appeared in the piece. After 
 this came Daisy s Escape and Bygones, both 
 produced by Mr Irving at the Lyceum. For 
 the first Mr Pinero received from his 
 generous manager the sum of ^50. He 
 had written to Mr Irving offering to supply 
 a curtain-raiser, whenever one should be 
 wanted, for nothing. For some time no 
 notice was taken of the offer, but one day 
 Mr Irving said, " Pinero, if you like to write 
 me a little piece for next season, I will give
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 15 
 
 you ^50." After the first performance of 
 Daisy s Escape, Mr Irving, perhaps without 
 thinking very much of what he said, pro- 
 phesied that, if the young author went on as 
 he had begun, he would be sure to take a 
 good position as a dramatic author. Daisy s 
 Escape, which was revived not very long- 
 ago with Mr Lawrence Irving in the prin- 
 cipal part, not only won for Mr Pinero the 
 good opinion of his manager but also intro- 
 duced him to his future wife, Miss Myra 
 Holme, an actress of ability and charm. It 
 was not long before Mr Irving's prophecy 
 began to be justified. After his first decided 
 success as a playwright Mr Pinero gave up 
 acting, and wisely devoted himself entirely 
 to authorship. His experience as an actor 
 helped him, ofcourse, immensely in the writing 
 of plays, and it made him a capital speaker, 
 as he has often shown at public dinners and 
 meetings. But he would never have been a 
 great, or even a very good, actor. Therefore 
 no one can pretend to regret that his
 
 1 6 ARTHUR WING FINER 
 
 connection with the stage was in this respect 
 severed. The other connection which binds 
 up his name with the history of the English 
 Theatre during the last quarter of a century 
 has been productive of far happier results.
 
 1 1 1 
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 
 
 Upon Mr Pinero's early work — the plays 
 which came before The Squire — there is 
 little that can usefully be said. Nor, indeed, 
 is it necessary to discuss in detail any but 
 the pieces which Mr Pinero has printed in the 
 admirable collected edition of his work pub- 
 lished by Mr William Heinemann. These 
 are the plays by which he asks to be judged. 
 To rummage amongst the immature produc- 
 tions of the days when he was feeling his way 
 to a method — that may be interesting to a 
 bibliographer ; it has no attraction for the 
 critic. Nothing would, in truth, be gained 
 by a lengthy consideration of Mr Pinero's 
 
 early experiments. His success has been 
 b 17
 
 1 8 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 so much a matter of will-power that the 
 study of his beginnings yields little save 
 admiration for the strenuous effort which out 
 of so little has created so much. There was, 
 in Mr Pinero's first attempts, scarcely any- 
 thing that marked him out as a playwright 
 of particular promise — no evidence of a 
 superior talent — not even exceptional dex- 
 terity. He was not one of Nature's favoured 
 children ; he was not born with a silver 
 tongue in his mouth ; he did not lisp in 
 well-turned phrases or delight his schoolboy 
 hours by searching for le mot juste. His 
 writing never seems to have been done 
 easily. You can always find in it evidence 
 of effort, of patient labour, of determination 
 to secure the effect aimed at. As he gradu- 
 ally acquired the mastery over his material, 
 he learnt the art of concealing endeavour. 
 When you read or listen to the dialogue which 
 comes so pat and seems so inevitable in 
 Dandy Dick or The Gay Lord Quex, you 
 lose for the moment the sense of effort.
 
 EA RL Y EFFOR TS 1 9 
 
 But, when you look into it closely, you 
 can see how laboriously it has been put 
 together and shaped into the most effective 
 mould. 
 
 It was in The Money-Spinner that Mr 
 Pinero first showed a trace of his power. 
 The characters are commonplace types, and 
 they constantly talk to the audience in soli- 
 loquy and monologue. But the piece is 
 undeniably good stage-craft. It tells how 
 a young wife cheated at cards in order to 
 win money to pay off a certain sum which 
 her husband has misappropriated from his 
 employers — not a very sympathetic motive, 
 perhaps, but one that compels a certain 
 measure of sympathy as Mr Pinero handled 
 it. The wife is known as " The Money- 
 Spinner" for her dexterity at cards, so it 
 is not an isolated slip on her part. Her 
 father is a gambling-hell proprietor, and she 
 and her sister help the old scoundrel to 
 manage it. The only character in the piece 
 who is not more or less of a knave is more
 
 20 ARTHUR WING FINER O 
 
 or less of a fool, and that is the young 
 Englishman who is cheated, and who for- 
 gives the fraud practised upon him as soon as 
 he knows its circumstances. Mr Pinero has 
 avowed lately his belief that the materials 
 for drama can only be looked for to-day in 
 the upper ranks of Society. He evidently 
 thought so as far back as the date of The 
 Money -Spinner, for by making this young 
 Englishman a peer he gave the piece that 
 aristocratic flavour which he declares to be 
 essential to the plays of this age. The 
 Money -Spinner, despite its faults, is interest- 
 ing, effective, quick-witted. The Squire is 
 more than this, and yet in a sense less than 
 this. It is a play which begins so well that 
 its tame and hackneyed ending is an irritating 
 disappointment. This was the author's rough 
 note of the idea on which the drama is 
 based : — 
 
 "The notion of a young couple secretly married — the 
 girl about to become a mother — finding that a former 
 wife is still in existence. The heroine amongst those
 
 EA RL V EFFOR TS 2 1 
 
 who respect and love her. The fury of a rejected lover 
 who believes her to be a guilty woman. Two men face 
 to face at night-time. Query — Kill the first wife ? " 
 
 Here is an idea certainly — an idea which, 
 treated in a serious and original manner, 
 would no doubt make an interesting play. 
 It is true that men are not, as a rule, in 
 doubt whether their wives are alive or not. 
 The device is of the stage, stagey. How- 
 ever, something must be granted to the 
 dramatist. No one need grudge Mr Pinero 
 his postulate. The grudge which we do 
 bear against him is not for starting with an 
 improbable situation, but for handling that 
 situation in an insincere, nerveless fashion. 
 The first act is wonderfully good. The ex- 
 position of the theme is masterly. We are 
 interested in the characters. We feel that 
 the situation is big with all kinds of pos- 
 sibilities. Then comes the scene in which 
 the young husband and wife learn that they 
 are not legally married, that between them 
 stands the previous wife, supposed honestly
 
 22 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 by both of them to be dead. In this scene, 
 you will remember, the husband is concealed 
 behind a curtain. He has come in by the 
 window while his rival is telling the story. 
 
 This is the moment that brings us to the 
 parting of the ways. Up to now the play 
 has been full of interest, original, sincere. 
 This is the crux upon which all the rest 
 turns. When the teller of the sad story 
 has gone, will the husband come out at 
 once from behind the curtain and act as a 
 man would in such circumstances, or will 
 he remain hidden while his wife has a 
 scene all to herself, and then appear and 
 behave like a stage puppet ? It is a 
 moment of breathless excitement. Un- 
 fortunately, the playwright was not strong 
 enough to follow the bolder course. The 
 solution took the wrong turn, insincerity 
 laid hold upon the play, and the rest of it 
 is mere artifice — conventional drama of the 
 depressing period of the early eighties. 
 The difference between the first act, so
 
 EARLY EFFORTS 23 
 
 full of power and dexterity, and the last, 
 with its comic-opera peasants and lingering 
 denoueinent ', is truly pathetic. The final 
 scenes are really no more than tedious 
 devices to keep the story afloat until, upon 
 the stroke of eleven, the death of the in- 
 convenient first wife can be whispered and 
 the curtain fall upon a fresh prospect of 
 wedding bells. " Query — Kill the first 
 wife ? " Alas, the same malady which 
 carried off the first wife proved fatal to 
 the last act. What was the reason ? Did 
 Mr Pinero say to himself, " Video meliora pro- 
 boque ; deteriora sequor " ? or was it simply 
 that he had not yet the force of mind to 
 break with the commonplace ? The latter, I 
 fancy. He arrived slowly at his full mental 
 stature. In 1881 he was only in his in- 
 tellectual teens. Besides, there was no 
 one in 1881 to show the way to better 
 things, and, in serious matters, Mr Pinero's 
 habit of mind has ever been to follow rather 
 than to lead.
 
 24 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 The piece is said to have owed much of 
 its success to Mrs Kendal. Of this I must 
 leave my elders to speak. I have no doubt 
 her beautiful art filled the piece with the 
 fragrance of womanhood, and gave poig- 
 nancy to the passion and tenderness which 
 Chance had so sorely betrayed. I have only 
 seen Miss Kate Rorke in the part of Kate 
 Verity. She made a charming " squire," 
 certainly, but she was gracefully pathetic 
 rather than powerful in the emotional 
 scenes. It is difficult, by the way, to 
 believe that the people who made a fuss 
 about the points of resemblance between 
 The Squire and Mr Hardy's great novel, 
 Far from the Madding Crowd, can have 
 either read the book or seen the play. The 
 superficial likeness between Kate and Bath- 
 sheba is their only point of contact. The 
 rural setting, which was to waft " the scent 
 of the hay across the footlights," was surely 
 common property among novelists and play- 
 wrights.
 
 EA RL Y EFFOR TS 2 5 
 
 It was after The Squire that Mr William 
 Archer described Mr Pinero {English 
 Dramatists of To-day, Sampson Low, 1882) 
 as "a thoughtful and conscientious writer 
 with artistic aims, if not yet with full com- 
 mand of his artistic means." Mr Archer 
 found in Mr Pinero's work " sufficient 
 promise to warrant a hope that we have 
 in this author a playwright of genuine 
 talent, whose more mature work will take 
 a prominent and honourable place upon the 
 stage in coming years." A forecast of which 
 Mr Archer may very justly be proud.
 
 IV 
 
 FARCE 
 
 The Squire, like The Money -Spinner, sug- 
 gested that Mr Pinero's talent would 
 develop upon the lines of the serious 
 drama. But for this development we had 
 to wait a good many years — until the pro- 
 duction of The Profligate, in fact, in 1889. 
 The interval, however, was thoroughly well 
 occupied ; it brought forth what many good 
 judges still hold to be the most characteristic 
 fruit of the author's pen. Between 1885 
 and 1887 were produced, at the Court 
 Theatre, the three farces — The Magistrate, 
 The Schoolmistress and Dandy Dick — that 
 gave Mr Pinero at once a leading place 
 
 amonsfst the dramatic writers of the time. 
 
 26
 
 FARCE 27 
 
 In 1889 followed The Cabinet Minister, 
 and 1893, The Amazons, constructed on 
 much the same lines. In this delightful 
 series of farces, and in the Savoy operettas, 
 we have the only two original dramatic art 
 forms which England can claim to have 
 evolved during the nineteenth century. As 
 regards all other forms, we have followed ; 
 here, we lead. 
 
 When he wrote this series of what we 
 may call the Court farces, Mr Pinero re- 
 created the farce of character. The farce 
 of intrigue had, in 1885, long held the stage 
 unchallenged. Mr Pinero had tried his own 
 hand at it before he hit upon his later vein 
 of pure ore. In this kind the author's 
 figures are but puppets who move according 
 as he pulls their strings. The plot has them 
 in an iron grip. They do not build up the 
 story on natural lines as they go along. 
 They are merely dolls used for the con- 
 venient presentment of some one comic 
 idea. There are no surprises, no sudden
 
 28 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 turns of merriment in the farce of intrigue. 
 You see exactly how it will reach its ap- 
 pointed end, just as you watch a train 
 coming smoothly along upon its appointed 
 set of rails, switching off correctly at the 
 points, and turning awkward corners with 
 easy assurance. In The Rocket and In 
 Chancery Mr Pinero's puppets were more 
 lifelike than most, but they were really no 
 more than lay figures cleverly constructed 
 for the purposes of a ramified plot. His 
 later work was very different. In the 
 Court series the characters are astonishingly 
 actual. They live and move and have their 
 being quite apart from the demands of the 
 plot. Indeed, they themselves and their 
 idiosyncrasies are the plot. 
 
 It was a bold experiment to set about 
 amusing audiences which included so many 
 admirers of magistrates and deans and 
 cabinet ministers and schoolmistresses by 
 showing them these high and mighty per- 
 sonages in absurd and undignified situations,
 
 FARCE 29 
 
 and by turning upon them the high-lights 
 of satire and ridicule. Yet this was the 
 leading motive of each play — to make fun 
 of various types of modern character by 
 creating real people, exhibiting them in 
 their actual surroundings and making them 
 act in a highly improbable and yet just 
 possible way. It required a great deal of 
 wit and a great deal of tact to do this 
 without arousing annoyance and resentment. 
 Both ingredients were supplied by Mr 
 Pinero in just proportion. His wit made 
 everyone laugh, and when you can make 
 people laugh they cannot, even if they 
 would, continue to be angry with you. 
 When you hear complaint that a playwright 
 has made fun of this or that institution — 
 the Church, or the Law, or the Army, or 
 Marriage, or Divorce — it simply means that 
 he has not been funny enough, or that he 
 has been funny on wrong lines. Mr Pinero 
 had both wit enough to be genuinely funny 
 and tact enough to keep him upon the
 
 30 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 right lines. The Dean in Dandy Dick, for 
 instance, is so real in essence and so unreal 
 in action that no one could be offended. 
 He is a real person, but he is doing for 
 the moment what a real person would never 
 do. 
 
 This is one of the conventions between 
 the writer of farce and the spectator. The 
 characters of farce should be as real as their 
 creator can make them, but they must not 
 act as real people would act. If we could 
 imagine an impecunious dean suddenly 
 discovering that money could be made by 
 betting upon horses, commissioning his 
 butler to back a horse for him, making a 
 bran mash for the animal in his anxiety 
 that it shall run well, administering it himself 
 and then being arrested on suspicion of 
 trying to poison a starter on the eve of a 
 race — if this were really the playwright's 
 suggestion, the only play to be made on 
 such a theme would have to be a very 
 serious play — almost a tragedy, in fact. But,
 
 FARCE 31 
 
 in this case, it is the very incongruity of 
 the idea that sets our minds at rest, and 
 upon this basis of incongruity Mr Pinero 
 built up each of his famous farces. No 
 magistrate we know would allow his larky 
 stepson to take him to a fast supper and 
 gambling establishment just about to be 
 raided by the police ; no schoolmistress we 
 know would spend her Christmas holidays 
 figuring as a queen of comic opera ; no 
 Cabinet Minister and his wife would be 
 likely to act as Sir Julian and Lady 
 Twombley act ; it is highly improbable 
 that any dean would behave like the Dean 
 of St Marvell's, however much he wanted 
 money for his cathedral spire. Yet, of 
 course, it is just possible that any of these 
 things might happen ; we can just imagine 
 it ; and that is where the fun comes in. 
 When people behave on the stage as, con- 
 sidering their characters, they could never 
 by any possibility behave in real life, they 
 fail to awaken our interest. This is what
 
 
 32 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 weakens melodrama and all plays based 
 on a purposeless sacrifice or an idiotic 
 refusal to take a natural straightforward 
 course. But we can all be interested in 
 improbable incongruous actions so long as 
 they are logically led up and so long as 
 we know that the playwright is enjoying the 
 joke too. The persons in farce then should 
 act always in character. They may do 
 improbable things, but they must not do 
 altogether impossible things. The immense 
 superiority of Mr Pinero's farces to others 
 even of their kind lies in his observance 
 of these rules and in the solidity of his 
 central characters. He has drawn them 
 with so sure a hand that they remain real 
 people in spite of the unreality of their 
 actions. They would never behave as they 
 do, but they do it so naturally that we are 
 almost convinced in spite of ourselves. 
 
 M. Brunetiere, I know, has defined farce 
 as the spectacle of a human will striving 
 towards some end and meeting with some
 
 FARCE 33 
 
 obstacle such as the irony of chance, or 
 ridiculous prejudice, or a want of proportion 
 between means and end. But then M. 
 Brunetiere bases his whole theory of drama 
 upon what Stevenson called the struggle 
 between adverse wills "coming nobly to the 
 grapple." 
 
 " Ce que nous demandons au theatre, c'est le spectacle 
 d'une volonte qui se deploie en tendant vers un but et 
 qui a conscience de la nature des moyens qu'elle y 
 fait servir." 
 
 Thus, when the obstacles to a human 
 will are insurmountable, as Destiny, Pro- 
 vidence, a law of nature or a grand passion, 
 we have Tragedy. 
 
 When there is a chance of overcoming the 
 obstacles, as in the case of a strong social 
 convention or prejudice, or a passion not 
 quite of the grand order, we have Drama 
 or Romantic Drama. 
 
 When two adverse wills conflict one with 
 the other we have Comedy. 
 
 And when, as I have already said, the
 
 34 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 obstacle to will is found in the irony of 
 chance, or ridiculous prejudice, or a want of 
 proportion between means and end, then, 
 according to M. Brunetiere's classification, 
 we have Farce. 
 
 It seems impertinent to offer to disagree 
 with so eminent a man of letters, but I can- 
 not help thinking that, so far at any rate as 
 Comedy and Farce are concerned, M. Bru- 
 netiere's definition scarcely covers the whole 
 ground. "Comedy," according to Mr George 
 Meredith, " is a game played to throw reflec- 
 tions upon social life." Now there are ways 
 of throwing reflections upon social life which 
 are not based altogether upon a conflict of 
 wills ; and there is also a certain farcical 
 incongruity of which M. Brunetiere takes no 
 account. Apply his test to the Pinero farces. 
 It does not comprehend them at all. They 
 are a form of drama quite outside its scope. 
 May we not say that there is a distinct form 
 of farce which is based entirely upon incon- 
 gruity, and arouses merriment by appealing
 
 FARCE 35 
 
 to that sense of the unfitness of things which 
 lies so near the root of Humour ? 
 
 The difference between Comedy and Farce, 
 then, is, I would submit, this. Comedy 
 shows us possible people doing probable 
 things. Farce shows us possible people 
 doing improbable things. Thus The School 
 for Scandal is comedy ; She Stoops to Con- 
 quer is farce, The Relapse trenches upon 
 farce, The Comedy of Errors is farce, The 
 Country Wife is farce, while Love for Love, 
 and indeed all Congreve's plays, may justly 
 be called comedy. Put it another way and 
 we get almost the same result. Comedy 
 depends more upon wit, farce more upon 
 humour. Comedy keeps us smiling. Farce 
 sets us on to laugh, and this is done with the 
 greatest success when it is founded upon 
 some incongruity which is seen at once by 
 all the world to be an incongruity. Of 
 course there are farces which depend upon 
 wit rather than humour ; such are the plays 
 of Mr Bernard Shaw and the earlier plays
 
 36 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 of Captain Marshall. These would be 
 comedies if the characters were possible 
 people. Mr Shaw's wit is so spontaneous 
 that he almost persuades us his characters 
 are real. But really they are only so many 
 Mr Bernard Shaws in disguise. Captain 
 Marshall's creations are a little more lifelike, 
 but his wit, on the other hand, is more 
 mechanical. He brings forth things new 
 and old out of a well-stored note-book. Too 
 often his fireworks seem to have been left 
 out in the rain. Then, again, there is the 
 farce of intrigue, and lately to that has 
 succeeded the farce of misunderstanding. 
 These, as a rule, depend neither upon wit 
 nor upon humour, but upon a large number 
 of doors and upon the rapidity with which 
 the actors are able to get through their lines. 
 In neither kind is any attempt made to draw 
 character or to display the fruits of observa- 
 tion, or even to make fun of the passing 
 follies of the hour. They are born old- 
 fashioned ; they leap from their authors'
 
 FARCE 37 
 
 brains fully armed with japes which have done 
 service so long that the mind of man runneth 
 not back to the contrary. Thespis must 
 have joked so in his cart, and the clowns of 
 an earlier age have clowned it not otherwise. 
 Of the two orders I think the farce of in- 
 trigue is preferable. Here there is really 
 something to be concealed. The husband 
 really has deceived his wife, the young man 
 has actually married the cook or the artist's 
 model. In the other there is no reality at 
 all. The whole thing is a mistake. No one 
 has done anything wrong at all, and you 
 wish all the time that someone would be 
 sane enough to say so and end the play. 
 But they do not even pretend to be sane. 
 They are merely impossible people doing 
 impossible things. 
 
 Mr Pinero, then, brought back to life the 
 farce of character, the farce based upon in- 
 congruity, the farce which shows us in the 
 most light-hearted and entertaining fashion 
 possible people doing improbable things. 

 
 38 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 To understand how witty and observant 
 these pieces are, how genuine the humour 
 which inspired them, they need to be read 
 as well as seen on the stage. Anyone who 
 can read them without being amused must 
 be like Mr Fraser of Locheen, who had 
 never learnt to laugh. And then consider 
 what unspeakable torture it would be to be 
 obliged to read the ordinary farce or light 
 comedy which passes muster with the aver- 
 age audience. 
 
 Of the first three farces Dandy Dick is, I 
 should say, the best, considered all round. 
 The character is more developed and riper, 
 and the situations grow naturally out of the 
 idiosyncrasies of the dramatis personce. The 
 Magistrate is perhaps more mirth-provoking, 
 but the fun is more forced than in Dandy 
 Dick. There are signs here and there of a 
 determination to get a laugh at any cost, 
 and, when you come to think it over, the 
 idea of the young man nearly twenty passing 
 as a schoolboy of fourteen is not very
 
 FARCE 39 
 
 delicately worked out. There is no need to 
 dwell upon this, but I cannot help feeling 
 that Cis Farringdon's relations with his 
 mother's friends and maid-servants might 
 have been touched upon, if it was necessary 
 to touch upon them at all, with a lighter 
 hand. However, this affects very little of 
 the play, which is full of uproarious humour 
 from beginning to end. It is interesting to 
 observe that Charlotte. Verrinder is, as it 
 were, a first sketch of the inimitable " George 
 Tid " in Dandy Dick. You see it in this very 
 funny conversation between Charlotte and 
 her sister, Mrs Posket, in the first act. 
 
 Agatha. Now, we can tell each other our miseries 
 undisturbed. Will you begin ? 
 
 Charlotte. Well, at last I am engaged to Captain 
 Horace Vale. 
 
 Agatha. Oh, Charley ! I'm so glad. 
 
 Charlotte. Yes, so is he, he says. He proposed to 
 me at the Hunt Ball — in the passage — Tuesday week. 
 
 Agatha. What did he say ? 
 
 Charlotte. He said, " By Jove, I love you awfully." 
 
 Agatha. Well, and what did you say? 
 
 Charlotte. Oh, I said, " Well, if you're going to be 
 as eloquent as all that, by Jove, I can't stand out." So
 
 40 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 we settled it in the passage. He bars flirting till after 
 we're married. That's my misery. What's yours, Aggy ? 
 
 Agatha. Something awful. 
 
 Charlotte. Cheer up, Aggy ! What is it ? 
 
 Agatha. Well, Charley, you know, I lost my poor 
 dear first husband at a very delicate age. 
 
 Charlotte. Well, you were five-and-thirty, dear. 
 
 Agatha. Yes, that's what I mean. Five-and-thirty is 
 a very delicate age to find yourself single. You're 
 neither one thing nor the other. You're not exactly a 
 two-year-old, and you don't care to pull a hansom. 
 However, I soon met Mr Posket at Spa — bless him ! 
 
 Charlotte. And you nominated yourself for the 
 Matrimonial Stakes. Mr Farringdon's The Widow, by 
 Bereavement, out of Mourning, ten pounds extra. 
 
 Agatha. Yes, Charley, and in less than a month I 
 went triumphantly over the course. But, Charley dear., 
 I didn't carry the fair weight for age — and that's my 
 trouble. 
 
 Charlotte. Oh, dear ! 
 
 Agatha. Undervaluing yEneas's love, in a moment 
 of, I hope, not unjustifiable vanity, I took five years 
 from my total, which made me thirty-one on my wedding 
 morning. 
 
 Charlotte. Well, my dear, many a misguided woman 
 has done that before you. 
 
 Agatha. Yes, Charley, but don't you see the con- 
 sequences ? It has thrown everything out. As I am 
 now thirty-one instead of thirty-six, as I ought to be, it 
 stands to reason that I couldn't have been married 
 twenty years ago, which I was. So I have had to fib 
 in proportion. 
 
 Charlotte. I see — making your first marriage occur 
 only fifteen years ago.
 
 FARCE 41 
 
 Agatha. Exactly. 
 
 Charlotte. Well, then, dear, why worry yourself 
 further ? 
 
 Agatha. Why, dear, don't you see ? If I am only 
 thirty-one now, my boy couldn't have been born nineteen 
 years ago, and, if he could, he oughtn't to have been, 
 because, on my own showing, I wasn't married till four 
 years later. Now you see the result ! 
 
 Charlotte. Which is that that fine strapping young 
 gentleman over there is only fourteen. 
 
 Agatha. Precisely. Isn't it awkward ? And his 
 moustache is becoming more and more obvious every 
 day. 
 
 Charlotte. What does the boy himself believe ? 
 
 Agatha. He believes his mother, of course, as a boy 
 should. As a prudent woman I always kept him in 
 ignorance of his age in case of necessity. But it is 
 terribly hard on the poor child, because his aims, in- 
 stincts and ambitions are all so horribly in advance of 
 his condition. His food, his books, his amusements are 
 out of keeping with his palate, his brain and his dis- 
 position ; and with all this suffering, his wretched 
 mother has the remorseful consciousness of having 
 shortened her offspring's life. 
 
 Charlotte. Oh, come, you haven't quite done that. 
 
 Agatha. Yes, I have, because, if he lives to be a 
 hundred, he must be buried at ninety-five. 
 
 The Schoolmistress is wilder farce than 
 either The Magistrate or Dandy Dick, but 
 the wit of the dialogue and the neatness of 
 the characterisation remove it far away from
 
 42 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 anything like the rough-and-tumble variety 
 of comic drama. Vere Oueckett is a 
 genuine creation. There is much more of 
 him in the piece than of the School- 
 mistress herself, who, unless Mrs John 
 Wood had played the part, would have been 
 almost a secondary character. But Vere 
 would make up for any number of short- 
 comings. The contrast between the 
 immense pomposity of his "sesquipedalian 
 verbiage " and the utter insignificance of 
 his person and character is delicious. His 
 description of the small lark-pie which was 
 ordered for eight persons is irresistible. 
 The pie is "architecturally dispropor- 
 tionate." His excuse for fibbing could not 
 be improved upon : "A habit of preparing 
 election manifestoes for various members of 
 my family may have impaired a fervent 
 admiration for truth, in which I yield to 
 no man." As a foil to Vere we have 
 Admiral Rankling, the man of action, the 
 Admiral who is distinguished in the Service
 
 FARCE 43 
 
 "because his ship has never run into any- 
 thing," the man of few words, who, in reply 
 to the letter which tells him of his daughter's 
 engagement, telegraphs from Walton the 
 single word "Bosh!' : Peggy Hesslerigge, 
 the articled pupil, is a delightful little crea- 
 ture. Every line of the part recalls with 
 pathetic force the personality of Miss Rose 
 Norreys. 
 
 Sheba in Dandy Dick was another char- 
 acter which this young actress played with 
 delicious humour. The scenes between the 
 Dean's daughters and the eccentric officers 
 who make love to them are a long way 
 below the rest of the play both in veri- 
 similitude and in humour, but Miss Norreys 
 carried them off triumphantly by the dainty 
 charm of her art. The Dean himself, his 
 sporting sister, " George Tidd," Sir Tristram 
 Mardon and the butler Blore are each 
 perfect ; the constable and his wife are 
 scarcely less. When you think of The 
 Magistrate, your memory goes back to
 
 44 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 situations — to the raid on the gambling 
 establishment or the confronting of the 
 unlucky Mr Posket on the bench with his 
 wife and his sister-in-law in the dock. When 
 you recall The Schoolmistress, it is the 
 laughable ingenuity of the imbroglio that 
 chiefly occurs to you, the piling-up of 
 misadventures and misunderstandings, and 
 the gradual closing of the net around poor 
 Queckett. But in Dandy Dick it is the 
 people themselves whom we remember and 
 over whose peculiarities we smile. The 
 plot we almost forget, but the characters 
 stand out clear and distinct in recollection. 
 They are like people we have known 
 rather better than we know the most of 
 our acquaintances in real life. The whole 
 play coheres so admirably, is all so much 
 of a piece, that one can single out no 
 particular scenes for special commendation. 
 It is the general effect that leaves its 
 impression upon the spectator's mind. Yet 
 I should like to quote one scene, both for
 
 FARCE 45 
 
 its own sake and also to establish the 
 relationship between Charley Verrinder 
 and Georgiana Tidman. Sir Tristram 
 Mardon and "George Tid" have just 
 succeeded in rescuing the Dean from the 
 ferocious village constable, Noah Topping. 
 
 Georgiana. But, oh ! Tris Mardon, what can I ever 
 say to you ? 
 
 Sir Tristram. Anything you like, except " Thank 
 you." 
 
 Georgiana. Don't stop me ! Why, you were the 
 man who hauled Augustin out of the cart by his 
 legs ! 
 
 Sir Tristram. Oh, but why mention such trifles ? 
 
 Georgiana. They're not trifles. And when his cap 
 fell off, it was you, brave fellow that you are, who pulled 
 the horse's nose-bag over my brother's head so that he 
 shouldn't be recognised. 
 
 Sir Tristram. My dear Georgiana, these are the 
 common courtesies of everyday life. 
 
 Georgiana. They are acts which any true woman 
 would esteem. Gus won't readily forget the critical 
 moment when all the chaff ran down the back of his 
 neck — nor shall I. 
 
 Sir Tristram. Nor shall I forget the way in which 
 you gave Dandy his whisky out of a soda-water bottle 
 just before the race. 
 
 Georgiana. That's nothing — any lady would do the 
 same. 
 
 Sir Tristram. Nothing ! You looked like the
 
 46 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Florence Nightingale of the paddock. Oh, Georgiana, 
 why, why, why won't you marry me ? 
 
 Georgiana. Why ! 
 
 Sir Tristram. Why ? 
 
 Georgiana. Why ! Because you've only just asked 
 me, Tris ! 
 
 Sir Tristram. But when I touched your hand last 
 night you reared ! 
 
 Georgiana. Yes, Tris, old man, but love is founded 
 on mutual esteem. Last night you hadn't put my 
 brother's head in that nose-bag. 
 
 Mrs John Wood was, of course, thoroughly 
 at home as Georgiana. But the part is not 
 one that plays itself, as so many of Mr 
 Pinero's women's parts do. Miss Ada 
 Rehan was not a success in it in America, 
 and when Dandy Dick was revived in 
 1900 at Wyndham's Theatre Miss Violet 
 Vanbrugh failed to get into the character 
 the right touch of good-hearted loudness 
 which is Mrs Wood's particular gift. 
 
 Three years after Dandy Dick came The 
 Cabinet Minister, another triumph for Mrs 
 John Wood, another popular success, but 
 not another comic masterpiece like its pre- 
 decessor. It is scarcely in accordance with
 
 FARCE 47 
 
 the formula of "possible people doing- im- 
 probable things." We might accept as 
 possible the Secretary of State who plays 
 the flute and allows his wife to do the most 
 desperate things in her efforts to escape 
 from money entanglements. We might 
 accept Lady Twombley with an effort, but 
 Joseph Lebanon one cannot regard as any- 
 thing but a stock figure of low comedy. 
 He is extremely funny, but he is never for 
 a moment convincing. His sister, Mrs 
 Gaylustre, the pushing, fashionable dress- 
 maker, is much more real. A low-class 
 moneylender with social ambitions would 
 not behave as Joseph behaves. Accom- 
 panying social ambition is always some 
 faint idea of social conventions. The 
 vulgarian who likes to tell long, tedious 
 tales about his own vulgar exploits has no 
 fancy for what Mr Lebanon (excuse his 
 humour!) describes as "the top of the 
 social tree where the cocoanuts are." The 
 very fact of the existence of social ambition
 
 48 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 implies an instinct, however rudimentary, 
 for what Matthew Arnold called " fit and 
 pleasing forms of social life and manners." 
 Mr Lebanon has no such instinct, therefore 
 his anxiety " to cut an eight on the frozen 
 lake of gentility" has no apparent motive — 
 not even the desire to advance his financial 
 schemes at the expense of his aristocratic 
 acquaintances. No, Mr Lebanon is not 
 observed freshly, but taken for granted ; 
 and he ought not to be taken for granted 
 because, off the stage, he does not exist. 
 The rest of the characters, beyond the 
 four mentioned, merely serve to fill up 
 spaces. The Cabinet Minister is a play 
 that can always be counted upon to amuse, 
 but it goes no further than that. 
 
 Vastly better in every way is The 
 A7nazons, produced at the Court Theatre 
 in 1893, an d written after The Second Mrs 
 Tanqueray, apparently by way of relaxation. 
 Mr Pinero's art gained greatly, even in the 
 writing of a farce, from his more serious
 
 FARCE 49 
 
 effort to offer criticism upon life. The 
 Cabinet Minister was loosely planted in the 
 top soil of character. Its relation to life was 
 of the smallest. The Amazons has its roots 
 deep down. It is founded upon eternal 
 principles of human nature. In a jesting 
 manner it brings us face to face with realities. 
 There is more insight into the heart of 
 things in it, more sympathy with the beating 
 heart of humanity, than in any of the farces 
 Mr Pinero had given us before it. Take 
 the scene quite early in the play in which 
 Lady Castlejordan tells the old family 
 clergyman her life's sorrow. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. You knew Jack, my husband. 
 
 Minchin. Ah ! yes, indeed. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. What was he ? 
 
 Minchin. A gentle giant. A grand piece of muscular 
 humanity. In frame, the Vikings must have been of 
 the same pattern. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. And you remember me as I 
 was twenty years ago ? 
 
 Minchin {looking at her). I've no excuse for for- 
 getting. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. I was a fit mate for my 
 husband. 
 
 D
 
 50 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Minchin. Perfect. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Even in Jack's time I never 
 scaled less than ten stone, and he could lift me as if I 
 were a sawdust doll. Old friend — ! Oh ! old friend, 
 what a son my son and Jack's ought to have been ! 
 (She leans upon the gate.) 
 
 Minchin. But — but — but it didn't please Providence 
 to send you a son. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan (beating the gate). Oh ! oh ! 
 
 Minchin. Come, come, do learn to view the matter 
 resignedly. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Girls ! girls ! 
 
 Minchin. It's an old story now. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Girls ! 
 
 Minchin. Why despise girls ? Many people like 
 girls. Bless my heart, /like girls ! 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. You can recall Noeline's arrival. 
 I was sure she was going to be a boy — so was Jack. 
 I knew it — so did Jack. The child was to have been 
 christened Noel, Jack's second name. 
 
 Minchin. Yes, I was up at the Hall that night, 
 smoking with Castlejordan to keep him quiet. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Poor dear, I remember his 
 bending over me afterwards and whispering, " Damn 
 it, Miriam, you've lost a whole season's hunting for 
 nothing ! " Then the second. 
 
 Minchin. Lady Wilhelmina. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Yes, Billy came next. Jack 
 wouldn't speak to me for a couple of months after that, 
 the only fall-out we ever had. 
 
 Minchin. But your third, Lady Thomasine. 
 
 Lady Castlejordan. Dearest Tommy ! Oh, by that 
 time Jack and I had agreed to regard anything that was 
 born to us as a boy, and to treat it accordingly, and for
 
 FARCE 5i 
 
 the rest of his life ray husband taught our three children 
 — there never was another — to ride, fish, shoot, swim, 
 fence, fight, wrestle, throw, run, jump, until they were as 
 hardy as Indians and their muscles burst the sleeves 
 of their jackets. And when Jack went I continued 
 their old training. Of course I — I recognise my boys' 
 little deficiencies, but I'm making the best of the great 
 disappointment of my life, and I — well, call me the 
 eccentric Lady Castlejordan ! What do I care ? 
 
 {She sits, wiping her eyes.) 
 
 There is an undercurrent of tenderness 
 and sympathy beneath the light tone. There 
 is evidence in every line that the writer of 
 it understands the hidden tragedies of men's 
 and women's lives, and is set upon creating 
 character, not merely upon scratching a little 
 from off the surface aspect of things. The 
 three Amazons themselves are cleverly dis- 
 tinguished — Nceline, the average nice young 
 woman ; Wilhelmina, the embodiment of all 
 that is essentially feminine ; Thomasine, the 
 delightful tomboy, whose mannishness never 
 swaggers itself into vulgarity. The three 
 men are capitally drawn, too, though Lord 
 Tweenwayes strains a little one's belief, with
 
 52 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 his family pride even in the ailments that 
 have been transmitted to him from the 
 generations of his race who have " made 
 history." As he was played by Mr Weedon 
 Grossmith it was impossible to do anything 
 but laugh at the ridiculous lordling. But in 
 the printed book he seems a trifle overdrawn. 
 Andre de Grival is now and then just a 
 shade too much the stage Frenchman, but 
 then a Frenchman freshly observed and 
 faithfully presented might be resented by 
 the majority of playgoers as untrue to their 
 ideas. Altogether, The Amazons is a piece 
 full of entertainment and charm, and, as I 
 said above, a piece that strikes two or three 
 notes of a deeper tone than we find in any of 
 the other plays in Mr Pinero's category of 
 farce. To sum up in a few words, the 
 qualities that give these farces their special 
 merit are the substantial reality of the 
 character-drawing — not of the central figures 
 alone, but many of the subordinate char- 
 acters as well ; the natural manner in which
 
 FARCE 53 
 
 the plots and situations arise out of the 
 idiosyncrasies of the people ; the easy humour 
 and wit of the dialogue. They are not valu- 
 able as pictures of the manners of the time 
 as The Way of the World is valuable, and 
 The School for Scandal, and, in a sense, 
 Robertson's more sincere comedies. They 
 contain, indeed, little enough social observa- 
 tion ; their milieu is the accepted land of 
 theatrical make-believe, where people behave 
 as an average audience likes to think it 
 behaves itself. They will scarcely live, then, 
 as Congreve and Sheridan's plays live. But 
 they will not be willingly let die, at any rate 
 by this generation.
 
 V 
 
 SENTIMENT 
 
 Respect for dates and convenience of 
 arrangement both lead me to interpolate 
 between the consideration of the farces and 
 the serious plays of modern life some few 
 words on Mr Pinero's plays of sentiment. 
 Perhaps sentimentality would be the more 
 strictly accurate word to use. In Sweet 
 Lavender certainly, and in The Weaker Sex, 
 the playwright sought to draw the tear that 
 lies near the surface, to wring the feelings of 
 those whose emotions may be easily stirred. 
 The Times is based rather upon sentiment 
 than upon an entirely humorous view of life ; 
 its sentiment is more wholesome and bracing 
 than in either of the foregoing instances. 
 
 Trelawny of the Wells relapsed a little into 
 
 54
 
 SENTIMENT 55 
 
 sentimentality, but it could plead as excuse 
 that its fictitious date was that of a senti- 
 mental age. 
 
 In point of time The Weaker Sex was the 
 first ; in point of interest it is the least of the 
 four pieces thus grouped together. The 
 theme of a mother and daughter lovino- and 
 loved by the same man is a difficult theme to 
 handle with acceptance. There is something 
 in the idea so eminently distasteful to the 
 mind of the average healthy person that a 
 play dealing with it starts at a heavy dis- 
 advantage. Also, it is difficult to reconcile 
 such a situation with probability. In this 
 case Philip Lyster is obliged not only to 
 have been absent from E no-land for eighteen 
 years (just time enough for the daughter to 
 be born and grow up), but also to have 
 assumed another name, a poetical nom de 
 guerre, under which he is known to the 
 young girl. Our sense of the reasonable 
 and the likely is revolted as well by Lady 
 Vivash's sentimental treasuring up of the
 
 56 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 memory of the man she quarrelled with 
 eighteen years before the date of the play. 
 There are women who treat men badly — 
 she admits that she was " wilful, capricious, 
 cruel " — and then maunder over their bad 
 behaviour for the rest of their lives. But 
 the dramatist who takes a sane view of life 
 ought never to treat such women seriously. 
 They should be shown as they actually are 
 — monsters of egotism, going through life 
 wrapped in a mantle of selfish complacency 
 and self-consciousness, indulging themselves 
 with the luxury of a woe that has no exist- 
 ence save in their own trumpery imaginations. 
 Put such creatures into comedy and let 
 people laugh at them, and go away feeling 
 that you have cleared the air of a little cant. 
 But do not ask us to sympathise with their 
 smug pretence of emotion, with their endeav- 
 our to persuade themselves that they are 
 vastly interesting persons, consumed by a 
 passion of which they know perfectly well 
 they are by nature incapable.
 
 SENTIMENT 57 
 
 Of course Mr Pinero did not believe in 
 his theme. If he had he would hardly have 
 provided the play with alternative endings. 
 For the provinces he made Philip Lyster 
 marry Sylvia after all. In London the more 
 rational conclusion prevailed — if an un- 
 natural situation can have any natural 
 conclusion — and Philip passed out of the 
 lives of both mother and daughter. He 
 does it in the most approved manner of 
 the sentimentalist. 
 
 Dudley. Oh! Philip, is there no way but this? 
 
 Philip. None. You know it, Dudley. Once my 
 shadow is taken from the lives of these two women 
 there will be light again. I pray to time to do the rest. 
 Time will bless some worthier man than I with Sylvia's 
 sweet companionship, and then the first laugh from 
 Sylvia's lips will wake Mary from her long dream. 
 
 Cannot you hear the audience rustling 
 for its hats and coats and umbrellas and 
 murmuring to itself about getting out 
 before the crowd? Oh! sentiment, what 
 atrocities are perpetrated in thy name ! 
 
 I suppose Sweet Lavende?- is the most
 
 58 ARTHUR WING P I NERO 
 
 popular of Mr Pinero's plays. It is in 
 many ways a delightful entertainment, and 
 it is perfectly easy to understand its attrac- 
 tions. There is a great deal of fun in it 
 and a good deal of tenderness, and the 
 characters are so pleasantly unreal that we 
 judge them not according to our moral sense 
 of their conduct, but as beings who move 
 in a world that is not governed by the 
 hard facts of life as we know it. The 
 persons of the play are (as Charles Lamb 
 called those of the artificial comedy of the 
 eighteenth century) the "fictitious, half- 
 believed personages of the stage"; and 
 Sweet Lavender is a piece that allows us 
 "to escape from the pressure of reality." 
 Its popularity is generally explained by a 
 vague reference to its ''genial humanity" 
 and "kindliness" and "sweetness." I con- 
 fess I fail to see the "genial humanity" 
 of a man who ruins a woman and leaves 
 her with a child to become a lodging-house 
 drudge. I do not discern the "sweetness"
 
 SENTIMENT 59 
 
 of a frowsy old barrister with no occupation 
 but fuddling and scandalising- his neighbours. 
 I do not quite know that I duly appreciate 
 the "human nature" of the young man 
 who persuades himself that the daughter 
 of the lodging-house drudge, a child who, 
 so far as we see in the play, has not an 
 idea in her head, will make him a suitable 
 wife. But then Mr Pinero, having chosen 
 such characters, showed his cleverness by 
 working upon the general fondness for 
 unpleasant people who "have some good 
 in them after all." And really with Dick 
 Phenyl he succeeded wonderfully well. 
 Of course, Mr Edward Terry's talent for 
 presenting eccentric types of character was 
 of great service. But Dick Phenyl is a 
 character out of which any actor of parts 
 can make a good deal. To a certain 
 extent it plays itself. The actor helped 
 the author, but he certainly did not make 
 the play. Dick is too good to depend 
 upon the personality of any particular
 
 60 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 player. The old fellow is a genuine 
 creation, and the kind of creation you 
 cannot help liking. His reformation, like 
 Mr Wedderburn's remorse, comes a little 
 late in the day. These third-act repent- 
 ances always leave one in doubt as to how 
 long they will last. But then, in this case, 
 at any rate, we do not follow them out in 
 thought beyond the fall of the final curtain. 
 Thackeray outraged all right feeling when 
 he wrote, at the end of Vanity Fair, 
 
 "Come, children, let us shut up the box and the 
 puppets, for our play is played out." 
 
 But no one could resent Mr Phenyl and 
 pretty little Lavender and Mrs Gilfillian 
 and the charming Minnie and the "cool- 
 as-a-cucumber " Horace being called pup- 
 pets, for puppets they are, though it must 
 be admitted that they are "uncommonly 
 flexible in the joints and lively on the 
 wire." That is the secret of the enormous 
 success of Sweet Lavender — the frank un-
 
 SENTIMENT 61 
 
 likeness to life of the play as a whole ; 
 the great skill of the playwright in making 
 its details familiar and up to a certain 
 point real. Plays that deal with the sur- 
 face elements of life in such a fashion as 
 to make the majority of people laugh and 
 cry, and as not to make them think, will 
 be always popular if they are written so 
 cleverly as Sweet Lavender is written. 
 Much more of the playwright's knack is 
 needed to deal acceptably with a piece of 
 this class than to handle a serious theme 
 with sincerity. The very earnestness of 
 an inexpert dramatist will sometimes carry 
 him through in the latter case. Unless 
 you are by nature a sentimentalist you 
 must write pieces like Sweet Lavender 
 with your tongue in your cheek. 
 
 I am afraid I do not carry Mr Pinero 
 with me when I put The Times into the 
 class of pieces depending for their interest 
 more upon sentiment than upon humour. 
 In his introductory note to the printed
 
 62 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 play he says that " in its design it is a 
 comic play." Yet I am unrepentant. To 
 me The Times appeals by reason of its 
 sentiment, and I fancy it appealed to most 
 people in that way. For, look you, we are 
 not asked merely to laugh at Mr Egerton- 
 Bompas and his snobbery and cheap ambi- 
 tions. His wife is not drawn with the 
 sole view of exciting ridicule and pouring 
 contempt upon the figure that drapers' 
 wives cut in Society. No, we are invited 
 to extend to them a certain measure of 
 our sympathy, and what is more, Mr Pinero 
 compels us to sympathise with them. Percy 
 Egerton - Bompas is very human and real 
 almost all through. Mrs Bompas is entirely 
 real, a clever study and a genuine woman. 
 Bompas's unreal moments are few, but he 
 has them. In the last act, for example, 
 he is made to moralise in a preposterously 
 lifeless strain. 
 
 " I wasn't always as I am now. It is getting on in 
 the world that has ruined me. I've thought of it all night
 
 SENTIMENT 63 
 
 through. A self-taught man must always be a proud 
 fool ; he has a double share of vanity — the vanity of the 
 ready pupil and the vanity of the successful tutor com- 
 bined ! He is blown out till he bursts ! I say there 
 ought to be a law to stop men like me from ' getting on ' 
 beyond a certain point. Prosperity weakens our brains 
 and hardens our hearts." 
 
 All true enough of a certain kind of 
 parvenu, but quite out of place in Bompas's 
 mouth. It is the author speaking, not the 
 character. But this does not occur often 
 enough to spoil an admirably-drawn figure. 
 No play that I know, and scarcely any novel, 
 brings out the pathos of the "new man's" 
 position in Society more truly than The 
 Times. The fruitlessness of all his strivings 
 
 o 
 
 to take his place in a world that is not his, 
 the deceit and meanness into which his social 
 ambitions plunge him, the futility of all his 
 efforts to make money do what money alone 
 never can do — that is, to bestow content- 
 ment and happiness — all this is shown to 
 us without being too much insisted upon, 
 and we are left with something to think
 
 64 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 about when we have done laughing and the 
 play is over. Many dramatists have pictured 
 for us the disillusion of the man who will not 
 believe, until he has tried, how much, 
 
 "'Tis better to be lowly born, 
 And range with humble livers in content, 
 Than to be perked up in a glistering grief, 
 And wear a golden sorrow." 
 
 No one who has attempted to do this with 
 a light hand has done it more effectively than 
 Mr Pinero, and that is why I call The Times 
 a play of sentiment and not merely a comic 
 play. 
 
 What is it that makes most impression 
 upon us in The Times ? Not the purely 
 comic scenes, but those in which tears lie 
 not far beneath the humour. This one, for 
 example, at the beginning of the fourth act, 
 when all the Bompas troubles are ready 
 to come to a head at once. The unfortunate 
 Percy has been up all night trying to find 
 reasons for shifting his allegiance from the 
 Conservative side of the House to the Irish
 
 SENTIMENT 65 
 
 party — a change which he is compelled to 
 contemplate on pain of having his private 
 affairs disclosed by a reptile Irish member : — 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Old man, do you remember twenty 
 years ago when you'd just sold our business at Kenning- 
 ton and bought the two shops which were to grow into 
 our present colossal establishment? 
 
 Bompas. Rather, as if it were yesterday. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. And do you remember how we sat 
 down together, you and I, and drew up an announce- 
 ment to our old customers ? . . . Our ideas used to 
 flow in those days, didn't they, old man ? 
 
 Bompas. I — I suppose it was because we were 
 younger. 
 
 Both together {sighing). Ah'h ! {He sits beside 
 her.) 
 
 Bompas. But that was when we took a house at 
 Haverstock Hill; do you remember? 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Do I remember ! Our first home this 
 side of the water. 
 
 Bompas {sadly). How we have got on since then. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Haven't we ? It was a nice house, 
 though. 
 
 Bompas. You think so because we did so much to it 
 ourselves. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. I put up the short blinds in the bed- 
 rooms with my own hands — I know that. I preferred 
 doing it. 
 
 Bompas. I hung every blessed picture in that house. 
 I can almost feel the blisters from the cord now. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. I wonder what we would think of it all 
 to-day if we could see it again. 
 
 E
 
 66 ARTHUR WING FINER 
 
 Bompas. Not much — after this. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. I suppose not ; we've got on so since 
 then, haven't we ? 
 
 Bompas. Rather. 
 
 Both together (sighing). Ah'h ! (She gently puts 
 her hand in his.) 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Our first big half-past-seven dinner- 
 party ; do you remember ? 
 
 Bompas. Oh, lor', yes, Clara — never mind that. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Well, dear, we were inexperienced then. 
 We gave them plenty to eat, though, eh ? 
 
 Bompas. It took you half-an-hour to write each 
 menu. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Part of the food was sent in, I recollect, 
 and part of it was done at home. 
 
 Bompas. It doesn't matter much now. Many that were 
 there won't clatter another knife and fork — but to this 
 day I regret the part of it that was done at home. . . . 
 That was the night, too, when we had one of our 
 men from the shop, with " P. Bompas " round his coat- 
 collar, to announce the guests. 
 
 Mrs Bompas. It seemed all right then. 
 
 Bompas. Yes, by Jove, it's astonishing how we've got 
 on since. . . . 
 
 Mrs Bompas. Percy, old man, do you ever feel you'd 
 like to go back ? 
 
 Bompas. Back? 
 
 Mrs Bompas. I mean, to keep our experience but to 
 go back to the contented, simple part of the old times. 
 
 Bompas. It's no good wishing that, Clara. When 
 you've got knowledge you've got everything else. It 
 seems to me there's only one thing to do in this world — 
 to go on ; even if you're on the wrong road, Clara, 
 my dear, get on, get on.
 
 SENTIMENT 67 
 
 Even if Bompas were merely ridiculous 
 The Times could never be an entirely comic 
 play so long as Mrs Bompas remained in it. 
 There is a tragic suggestion about her — the 
 tragedy of a woman's life spoilt, of her true 
 instincts crushed, of her capacity for happi- 
 ness and content strained and twisted out of 
 its natural shape. She is a snob, too, but 
 she is so mainly because she. knows that 
 the gratification of snobbish instinct is her 
 husband's chief pleasure. When they have 
 secured the Maharaja to dine with them she 
 seconds Percy in scouting the idea that they 
 should ask their friends to meet him. " I 
 should like the best people in London," she 
 says, to which Mr Montague Trimble dis- 
 creetly adds " the best we can get." She 
 does not wince at the deception that is 
 practised with the object of making her son's 
 foolish marriage seem to be something quite 
 other than it really is. But there is a point 
 beyond which she cannot pass. When Bom- 
 pas wildly declares that their policy must
 
 68 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 be, for the future, self, and that they must 
 throw over their friends if they find it neces- 
 sary, Mrs Bompas sees the pitifulness of 
 such a resolve. She has still left some of the 
 feelings of honesty and loyalty that animate 
 her daughter Beryl. She cannot persuade 
 herself that a position in Society is worth all 
 that it costs. She it is, therefore, who puts 
 into her husband's head the idea of giving it 
 up. Her first thought is always for her 
 husband. She is always ready with a 
 cheerful, encouraging word. Beneath her 
 vulgarity there beats the heart of a true 
 woman. 
 
 Of the other characters, Trimble is the 
 only one who leaves a distinct impression on 
 the mind. It is a clever sketch of the 
 decadent aristocrat that Mr Pinero gives 
 us. There are numbers of Trimbles to be 
 found in these days acting as guides, philo- 
 sophers and friends to families of the 
 Egerton-Bompas type ; as jackals to the 
 husband, as social counsellors to the wife.
 
 SENTIMENT 69 
 
 The Trimbles are what Dumas fils called 
 the vibrions of Society — creatures engendered 
 from the corrupt artificiality of modern 
 manners and morals. One of Montague's 
 greatest troubles is when, " for the first 
 time for nearly forty years," he finds himself 
 at eight o'clock not in evening dress ! By 
 dwelling upon his little peculiarities Mr 
 Pinero gives us a vivid portrait of this con- 
 temptible parasite. He comes before us 
 clearly with his insinuating manner, his 
 anxiety to please, his habit of sucking 
 lozenges, his low cunning when difficulties 
 have to be met, his selfish annoyance when 
 his ingenuity fails to avert unpleasant occur- 
 rences. Montague Trimble is a creation, a 
 valuable footnote to the social history of the 
 period. 
 
 The moderate success which Tre lawny of 
 the Wells enjoyed was mainly a succes de 
 curiosite". If it had not been dressed in the 
 costumes of the crinoline period, it would 
 hardly have secured much of a hold upon
 
 70 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 playgoers. You may say, perhaps, that if 
 it had not been placed in this period Mr 
 Pinero would not have written it as he did. 
 It is a fair retort, yet it does not make my 
 statement any the less true. There was 
 much that was amusing in the story of the 
 actress of the mid-nineteenth century who 
 left her own tawdry little world to marry 
 into the great world, and found that the 
 great world bored her to death, and went 
 back to her profession, and found that making- 
 believe could not satisfy after her taste of 
 reality, and finally was reunited to her lover 
 and lived happily ever after. There was a 
 good deal that was tender, too, but somehow 
 the humour and the tenderness did not mix 
 very well. It was a fairy-tale, and as such 
 it ought to have kept our sympathies de- 
 cidedly in one direction, but in this somehow 
 it did not quite succeed. Perhaps it was 
 because the characters were so lightly 
 sketched, because we really knew so little 
 about them. Yet this, on the other hand,
 
 SENTIMENT 71 
 
 was an advantage, for, if they had been 
 more solidly blocked in, Mr Pinero's dainty 
 handling of them would have seemed insin- 
 cere. As it was, the characters and the 
 dramatist's treatment of his theme suited one 
 another exactly and furnished a pleasant 
 evening's entertainment. And as this was 
 what Mr Pinero aimed at furnishing, it is 
 both more courteous and more just to admit 
 so much frankly and freely than to complain 
 that Trelatvny of the " Wells" is not very 
 striking as a play. If one is inclined to 
 take the latter course, the reason must be 
 sought in the hopes that Mr Pinero had 
 inspired by the character of the work which 
 immediately preceded Trelawny. When a 
 man has just created a Paula Tanqueray 
 and a Mrs Ebbsmith and a Theo Fraser it 
 seems a little like retrogression to toy with a 
 Trelawny and a Sir William Gower. But 
 then this has always been Mr Pinero's way. 
 It is difficult to believe that he is greatly 
 interested in any one form of drama more
 
 72 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 than in the others. He has never taken a 
 line and kept to it. Any kind of framework 
 suits him so long as it gives free play to his 
 talents for construction and for studying fine 
 shades of eccentricity in character. He 
 appears to care more about the way in 
 which his neatness of hand enables him to 
 do things than about the things themselves. 
 Ideas are acceptable to him less for their 
 own sake than for the sake of the use to 
 which he can put them in drama. This, I 
 think, explains much that is otherwise diffi- 
 cult of explanation in Mr Pinero's play- 
 
 writino- career. 
 
 The comicalities of the player folk in 
 Tre lawny of the " Wells" had more life in 
 them than the sentimental side of the piece, 
 though more stress seemed to be laid upon 
 the latter side by the author himself. The 
 ridiculous airs of the jeune premier were 
 laughably hit off. The low comedian was 
 a very amusing little creature. The heavy 
 tragedian and his wife represented a real
 
 SENTIMENT 73 
 
 type not altogether extinct even to-day. 
 The farewell dinner in the first act and the 
 incursion of the soaked actors into Sir 
 William Gower's drawing-room during the 
 thunderstorm in the second were exceed- 
 ingly funny. But the two later acts had 
 less attraction. It was not easy to take 
 much interest either in Rose Trelawny's 
 love affair or in the efforts of the deserving 
 young playwright (supposed to have been 
 modelled on T. W. Robertson) to obtain a 
 hearing for his plays. Miss Irene Van- 
 brugh's performance helped to bring her 
 to the front, and Mr Dion Boucicault's strong 
 sense of character made Sir William a strik- 
 ing figure, and the eye was taken by the 
 familiar strangeness of the ladies' dresses, 
 with their enormous hoops and their staring 
 colours, and their white stockings and flat- 
 flooted, elastic-sided boots. But there was 
 little more in the piece to call for discussion, 
 nor is it likely to be reckoned among the 
 plays which gave Mr Pinero his name.
 
 VI 
 
 SATIRE 
 
 I am not sure whether the term " satirical " 
 will be held to cover the three plays which 
 I come now to consider. They are (in 
 order of production) The Hobby-Horse, Lady 
 Bountiful and The Princess and the Butter- 
 fly. They are certainly not farces, and they 
 are not altogether plays of sentiment. Your 
 sentimental drama must be sentimental with 
 a whole heart, with a relish for sentiment- 
 ality. But in each of these pieces Mr Pinero 
 is inclined to poke fun at sentiment, to indi- 
 cate, at all events, that it is an unsafe basis 
 to build upon for life. I think "satirical 
 comedy " would perhaps best describe the 
 class into which these three plays fall. They 
 may justly be termed comedy since, in Mr 
 
 74
 
 SA TIRE 75 
 
 George Meredith's phrase, they "deal with 
 human nature in the drawing-room of 
 civilised men and women, where we have 
 no dust of the struggling outer world, no 
 mire, no violent crashes to make the correct- 
 ness of the representation convincing." In 
 each of the three Mr Pinero sought "to 
 throw reflections upon social life." The 
 treatment of the characters of Mr and Mrs 
 Spencer Jermyn and their philanthropic 
 enterprises, of Miss Moxon and Mr Pinch- 
 ing, of Shattock and Pews, of Roderick 
 Heron, and the whole tone of the earlier 
 acts of The Princess and the Butterfly, justify 
 us in calling them satirical. 
 
 The Hobby-Horse is, to my mind, a very 
 pleasant, amusing and interesting piece. Its 
 serious side is treated with a light hand ; its 
 fun is rooted in character and never de- 
 generates into buffoonery. Yet The Hobby- 
 Horse did not at first hit the taste of any 
 large section of playgoers. Some people 
 said it was too serious ; others said it was
 
 76 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 not serious enough. One party cried out 
 that the author had ruined a fine situation 
 by handling it wittily and with humour. 
 The opposing group declared that they 
 expected to laugh and were made to cry. 
 Herein lies the great merit of the play. 
 The elements of humour and of pathos are 
 so mixed in it as they are mixed in life. 
 The whole plot springs naturally out of the 
 leading motive of the play. Mrs Jermyn's 
 anxiety to work in the East-End leads 
 directly both to her acquaintance with Noel 
 Brice and to the discovery of Jermyn's lost 
 son, and upon these threads the imbroglio 
 is woven. Of course there are more coin- 
 cidences in the play than one can reconcile 
 with absolute probability. But coincidences 
 only annoy us when we feel that the 
 dramatist would have been unable to work out 
 his theme without them. In a piece which 
 shows us such genuine characters as are 
 drawn in The Hobby-Horse we take little 
 heed of the means employed to exhibit
 
 SATIRE 77 
 
 and contrast them to the best advantage. 
 Both the Jermyns are quite real people 
 within limitations — the limitations, to wit, of 
 the author's interest in them. Noel Brice 
 is a really well-drawn parson of the muscular 
 Christian type, a charming fellow as well as 
 a good man. When he finds that he has let 
 himself think with affection of one whom he 
 mistakenly supposed to be an unmarried 
 woman, we sympathise sincerely with his 
 pain and shame. But he does not senti- 
 mentalise over his mistake and his bitter 
 disillusionment. He bears his trouble like 
 a man, and we cannot sentimentalise over 
 him. This affords one reason for the small 
 amount of popularity which the piece won 
 in 1886. The vast majority of playgoers 
 wanted to snuffle, to have their less noble 
 emotions titillated gently, instead of having 
 their finer feelings brought into play, and 
 their mind and heart braced up by the 
 dramatist's sane outlook upon life. By this 
 time, I fancy, the class of theatre-goers has
 
 78 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 been sufficiently leavened by persons of 
 wider culture and keener intelligence to 
 provide as many audiences as would make 
 a play like The Hobby-Horse a success 
 instead of a failure. In 1886 the new 
 dramatic movement had scarcely begun so 
 far as England was concerned. Of Ibsen 
 as yet only a very few people knew anything 
 at all. With Dumas fils and Augier and 
 Feuillet we had scraped a bowing acquaint- 
 ance, but they dealt so largely in sentiment 
 themselves that they scarcely served as a 
 tonic ; they did not greatly encourage us to 
 look at things as they are, and to develop 
 our dramatic ideas inexorably in accordance 
 with the laws of nature and of common life. 
 When we thought of the German drama we 
 thought of Klopstock and Kotzebue and 
 sentimentality run mad. What the play- 
 goer of 1886 felt, then, with regard to The 
 Hobby-Horse was that he had been defrauded 
 of the denouement which he had been led to 
 expect. If Noel Brice, the heroic young
 
 SA TIRE 79 
 
 clergyman, was allowed to fall in love with 
 Mrs Jermyn, then the unfortunate Mr 
 Jermyn ought to have fallen a victim in the 
 nick of time to the familiar maladie dn 
 cinquieme acte, and the curtain could have 
 come down upon a purpose of marriage. 
 Or, in the alternative course, the audience 
 ought to have been treated to some scene of 
 maudlin tears and sugary-sweet, unmanly 
 lamentation against Fate. To send the 
 poor young man about his business with 
 never so much as a single appeal to the 
 lachrymose sensibility of the easily-moved 
 was an unheard-of departure from precedent. 
 And yet who can read or hear the last little 
 scene in which Brice figures without a 
 glistening beneath the eyelids? It is as far 
 away from sentimentality as can be, but it 
 strikes a deep, true note of real emotion. 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Spencer, you know the mistake that 
 has occurred. Say what you like to me — but beg his 
 pardon, for I can't. 
 
 Mr Jermyn. Mr Brice, Mrs Jermyn tells me I 
 am to beg your pardon. I do so. I have married a
 
 80 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 very foolish, headstrong lady — I beg your pardon. Mrs 
 Jermyn keeps your niece company and assists you in 
 your parish work without my permission — I beg your 
 pardon. In the meantime you fall in love with my wife, 
 sir, and you ultimately propose marriage to her in my 
 presence — I beg your pardon. 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! You're not doing 
 it properly. 
 
 Noel Brice. Mr Jermyn, the tone you speak in 
 spares me the pain of thinking you believe an apology 
 is necessary. As for my mistake, it is slighter than you 
 imagine. 
 
 Mr Jermyn. Slighter ? 
 
 Noel Brice. Yes, sir. The only great mistake pos- 
 sible in proposing marriage is to select an unworthy 
 object. I fell into no such error. I believed Miss 
 Moxon to be a generous, warm-hearted lady whom any 
 man should be proud to call his wife. I thought that 
 and I think it still. 
 
 Mr Jermyn. But your Miss Moxon is Mrs Jermyn, 
 Mr Brice. 
 
 Noel Brice. So I find — and upon that I congratulate 
 you with all my heart. 
 
 Tom Clark, otherwise Allan Jermyn, and 
 Bertha, Noel's niece, are the pleasantest 
 pair of boy and girl lovers we can recall 
 out of endless plays in which such char- 
 acters, borrowed originally from the French, 
 have been held to be necessary. If ever 
 they were tolerable on the stage it would
 
 SATIRE 8 1 
 
 be in the persons of this breezy young 
 sailor and the charming little person to 
 whom he loses his boyish heart. Tom's 
 explanation of the manner in which he 
 proposes to inform his father of his mar- 
 riage is delicious in its humour and sim- 
 plicity. He has just opened his heart to 
 the supposed Miss Moxon, who is really 
 Mrs Jermyn, his step - mother. She 
 questions him about his prospects. 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Are you very well off then ? 
 
 Tom Clark. Haven't a brass button, you know. 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Really, Mr Clark ! 
 
 Tom Clark. But rny dear old father is rich. He and 
 I quarrel awfully. 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Well, then, how — 
 
 Tom Clark. Why, the moment I marry I write and 
 break it gently to the dad — " Dear Dad, I'm married. 
 Yours, etcetera ! " See ? 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. Perfectly. That couldn't be a shock 
 to him, could it? 
 
 Tom Clark. No. Well, then, what's the result? 
 Dad burning with anxiety to see my wife — my wife! 
 Oh, doesn't it sound jolly? 
 
 Mrs Jermyn. It sounds pretty well ! 
 
 Tom Clark. I take her home ! I can picture father 
 standing, glum and sulky, at the gate ! "Who's this?" 
 I can hear him saying it. "My wife, dad!" "Your 
 
 F
 
 82 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 wife ! What, that pretty little fairy ! I like your taste, 
 my boy — come in, we dine at seven." See? 
 
 Mr Pinching, the solicitor who always 
 thinks of the right thing to say just a 
 moment too late, is amusing, though cut 
 a little too rigidly to pattern. Miss 
 Moxon has more actuality, and perhaps 
 the author meant her to be not quite 
 a lady. The broken-down jockeys whom 
 Jermyn does his best to reclaim and 
 benefit are very funny and really not 
 exaggerated. The workmanship of the 
 play is excellent — even above Mr Pinero's 
 very high level of excellence in this 
 direction. 
 
 In the last act of Lady Bountiful I 
 cannot help thinking that the workman- 
 ship sank below that level, and to 
 this sinking was partly due the poor 
 success of the play in London. To drop 
 the curtain for a few moments to indicate 
 the flight of hours is a permissible device 
 in certain cases. But is this such a case ?
 
 SA TIRE 83 
 
 Here you have Miss Brent, who has long 
 loved and been loved by Dennis Heron, 
 about to marry a worthy but tedious old 
 gentleman. Why has she consented ? 
 Dennis has not seemed worthy of a 
 woman's love. Recollect the scene in 
 which he asks her to marry him. 
 
 Camilla. You've no right to speak to me like this ! 
 
 Dennis. No right ? Why, a man doesn't love by right. 
 
 Camilla. A man should love by right ; by the right of 
 some achievement which deserves reward, or some 
 failure which earns consolation. But you ! 
 
 Dennis. I know what you mean. Idle at school ; in 
 the wrong set at college ; and now if I started in the 
 race a boy would beat me. 
 
 Camilla (to herself). Ah ! 
 
 Dennis. And so I beg your pardon for dreaming you 
 could stoop to pick a weed from the bricks of your 
 stableyard. 
 
 Camilla. Dennis, it isn't great men women love 
 dearest, or even fortunate men ; often, I tell you, their 
 deepest love goes out to those who labour and fail. 
 But for those who make no effort, who are neither great 
 nor little, who are the nothings of the world — 
 
 Dennis. Who are the Dennis Herons of the world ! 
 
 Camilla. For those a true woman has only one 
 feeling — anger and contempt. 
 
 Camilla Brent is quite right — right in her
 
 84 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 opinion and right in telling her cousin what 
 it is. Stung to action by her plain speaking, 
 he determines to do something for his living. 
 Naturally he flies to an extreme. He has 
 little aptitude for any of the ordinary pursuits 
 of workaday life. But he is thoroughly at 
 home with horses. So he takes a situation 
 as a riding-master. To his genially selfish, 
 worthless and unprincipled father (whose 
 relationship to " the well-known family of the 
 Skimpoles " Mr Pinero acknowledged on the 
 play-bill) this decision seems little short of 
 madness. Why should they be ashamed of 
 living on Camilla's bounty ? 
 
 " Camilla is wealthy — no credit to her ; 
 she can't help it. We're poor — no discredit 
 to us ; we can't help it. Camilla has a large 
 house with empty rooms and beds in them — 
 why on earth shouldn't we occupy those 
 rooms and air those beds ? Camilla's cook 
 prepares a dinner for four persons — a dinner 
 for four is a dinner for six. Really, you 
 know, an extra oyster^in the oyster-sauce or
 
 SATIRE 85 
 
 an additional pinch of curry in the Mulli- 
 gatawny represents — looked at in the right 
 way — the extent of our obligations to 
 Camilla. ... So do, dear Dennis, abandon 
 this crazy desire to earn your own living. 
 It's not even original ; so many men have it. 
 And, great heavens, you'll compromise us — 
 you really will. If people learn that my son 
 is a cad of a riding-master they'll think I — 
 I've no means, you know ! ' 
 
 However, Dennis sticks to his determina- 
 tion, and when he finds that the pretty, 
 gentle, little daughter of the worthy man he 
 serves has lost her heart to her father's 
 assistant, he feels that he is bound to her in 
 oratitude and honour. So he marries this 
 pretty, gentle, little Margaret Veale. This 
 brings us to the end of the second act. In 
 the third act Margaret dies — dies in a scene 
 that is imagined with rare tenderness, written 
 with sympathy and power — a scene that 
 wrings the heart — dies, and leaves Dennis 
 free to find the happiness he surrendered in
 
 86 ARTHUR WING P J NERO 
 
 giving up all thought of Camilla. Five 
 years pass before he does find it ; in the 
 meantime he has prospered in America and 
 Camilla has agreed to marry an old admirer. 
 He reaches England on the eve of the 
 wedding, meets Camilla in the village 
 church, asks her to reconsider the answer 
 she gave him six years before, and learns 
 that her troth is plighted to another. Then 
 the momentary curtain parts one day from 
 the next, and we see the church next morn- 
 ing filled with guests and villagers. The 
 bride enters, sees Dennis, who is standing in 
 her path, " totters back with her hand to her 
 brow," and murmurs his name. Then the 
 old gentleman sees that his chance has fled, 
 and says — 
 
 " There shall be no marriage to-day. I think I know, 
 I think I know." 
 
 It is not the melodrama of this ending 
 that spoils it — it is its ineffectiveness. Often 
 a daring melodramatic touch will help to
 
 SATIRE 87 
 
 carry off a situation that is otherwise of the 
 serious order. But here the melodrama 
 falls absolutely flat. The lowering of the 
 curtain leads the audience to look for some 
 final scene of an unexpected, interesting 
 nature. This tame conclusion sends them 
 away disappointed, and, in their disappoint- 
 ment, they forget how good the rest of the 
 play has been. Mr Pinero, indeed, must 
 have forgotten this himself when he wrote 
 such a finish to it. The interest has been 
 an interest of character, and there is quite 
 enough of it left to carry the drama to its 
 close. No coup de thddtre was needed : 
 only a sincere gathering-up of threads in 
 such a manner as the author might have 
 thought most natural. But the courage 
 which had supported Mr Pinero in his desire 
 to make the play depend for its interest 
 upon character deserted him at the end. 
 He leans upon the broken reed of a well- 
 worn theatrical device, and lo ! it breaks in 
 his hand.
 
 88 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 The repetition of the letter trick, too, is 
 a trifle lacking in ingenuity. Dennis finds 
 a letter and learns that Margaret loves him. 
 Another letter which falls into his hands 
 by chance tells him that Margaret, before 
 she died, foresaw that he and Camilla would 
 come together in the end. In a drama of 
 action, of violent emotions, of scenes that 
 carry the spectator irresistibly with them 
 in a gust of passion, almost any expedient 
 for arriving at the necessary juxtapositions 
 of character will pass muster. But Lady 
 Bountiful is a play so slight in texture 
 that its theme demands all the vraisemblance 
 possible in treatment. 
 
 " My masters, will you hear a simple tale? 
 No war, no lust, not a commandment broke 
 By sir or madam, but a history 
 To make a rhyme to speed a young maid's hour." 
 
 So the author himself described it, and 
 some critics have found here the reason for 
 its failure to attract audiences. "The kind 
 of play," these critics call it, " of which
 
 SA TIRE 89 
 
 everyone approves in theory and from 
 which they unanimously stop away in prac- 
 tice." There is a good deal of truth in this 
 view. We English do undoubtedly try to 
 make each other, and even try to make 
 ourselves, believe that we are more strictly 
 moral and fonder of conventional virtue than 
 we should be found if our hearts could be 
 surprised and set in shop windows. We 
 could never bring ourselves, as a nation, to 
 confess that we accepted anything lower 
 than the standards of the highest morality. 
 Charrier, in Les Effrontes, excuses his 
 philosophy of life thus : — " Mon Dieu, je 
 sais bien que ce n'est pas la morale de 
 l'Evanofile, mais c'est celle du monde." 
 That is the French view of the case. We 
 prefer to practise la morale du monde while 
 we profess loudly all the time that we are 
 trying to live up to lEvangile. Perhaps a 
 good many of us are trying, but the fact 
 remains that very few succeed. At the 
 same time, numbers of plays have sue-
 
 90 ARTHUR WING FINER 
 
 ceeded which were equally qualified with 
 Lady Bountiful to " speed a young maid's 
 hour" — Liberty Hall, for example, and One 
 Summers Day, and A Pair of Spectacles 
 and the popular Little Minister. I look for 
 the reasons of Lady Bountiful 's small success 
 rather in the fact that it tried to combine two 
 kinds of play in one — that it fell between 
 two stools. 
 
 In a play of character the dramatist must 
 devote himself entirely to the few characters 
 which he seeks to exhibit. He does not 
 want subsidiary personages to fill up gaps, 
 or striking episodes to clear up situations. 
 There are three or four personages in Lady 
 Bountiful who would be better out of the 
 way. They contribute no variations to the 
 real theme, and the space which their re- 
 moval would release could have been used 
 by Mr Pinero in making clearer the char- 
 acters of Dennis and Camilla. We could 
 then have had more of Roderick Heron, 
 too, who was well worth more elaboration
 
 SATIRE 91 
 
 and a more intimate connection with the 
 thread of the story. As it is, he disappears 
 after the third act, and all we hear of him 
 is that in America he "has revealed capa- 
 bilities hardly suspected in England," and is 
 doing rather well, which, of course, we do 
 not for an instant believe. The Skim- 
 pole family remain Skimpoles to the 
 end. 
 
 In a play of sentiment, on the other hand, 
 the whole thing may be as unreal as the 
 playwright pleases. He may bring in char- 
 acters simply for the sake of extracting an 
 extra tear, invent the unlikeliest episodes 
 merely in order to pile up the agony, break 
 all the rules of drama and probability, so he 
 is rewarded by the facile sob, the guerdon 
 of " How pretty ! " or " How sweet ! " 
 
 Lady Bountiful is not a play of sentiment, 
 nor altogether a play of character. It did 
 not appeal sufficiently to the admirers of 
 either of these classes of piece to win their 
 whole-hearted adherence. Nor did it offer
 
 92 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 a mixture of styles so bizarre as to please 
 the large body of playgoers who seek ever 
 some new thing; its elements were not 
 so lively in themselves as to gain applause 
 for their own sake. Therefore, like many 
 another experiment, it failed. 
 
 The Princess and the Butterfly mixed up 
 almost equally sentiment and character. It 
 defied tradition, it outraged the accepted 
 canons of form and symmetry, its origin- 
 ality even hurled itself against the salutary 
 barriers of common sense. But, unlike 
 Lady Bountiful, this play had separate 
 elements which gave it a vogue. The 
 first three acts are occupied with exposition. 
 They have little interest in themselves, and 
 the scene with the boys in the St Roche's 
 smoking-room is tiresome and only serves 
 a far-off dramatic purpose. Yet the atten- 
 tion of the spectator is held, not firmly, it 
 is true, but with a gentle grip which seems 
 to herald developments of the gradually 
 unfolding plot. In the fourth act, better
 
 SA TIRE 93 
 
 late than never, these developments are 
 reached, and from this point until the end 
 the play is of a charm and an interest 
 that have not been surpassed in any of 
 Mr Pinero's works before or since. 
 
 The ostensible subject of the drama is the 
 malady of middle-age. Both the Princess 
 Pannonia and Sir George Lamorant have 
 reached this period of life. Both feel- that 
 they have tasted the best that existence has 
 to offer and that the future lies before them 
 joyless and unexciting. This is chiefly be- 
 cause they have never had anything to 
 do but amuse themselves, because they 
 have never really come to grips with life, 
 have never suffered, and have never 
 loved. They almost make up their minds to 
 end their long platonic affection, their per- 
 functory flirtation of so many years, by a 
 marriage which shall enable them to drift 
 quietly into old age holding each other's 
 hands, not with the close grip of passion, 
 but with the gentle clasp of a moderate
 
 94 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 tenderness, based partly on convenience and 
 partly upon mutual esteem. 
 
 Sir George. Well, suppose you and I became husband 
 and wife? I am sufficiently your senior. You are rich. 
 I am far from the state of a beggar. The world could 
 not throw up its hands in surprise. Would it not be in 
 all ways a suitable match? We both suffer — morbidly, 
 fantastically it may be — but we suffer. Should we not 
 find in each other a cure ? You dread being tempted to 
 marry unwisely. No such temptation, I believe, is likely 
 to befall me. But, at anyrate, your honouring me as I 
 propose would make both — safe. 
 
 The Princess. Safe — 
 
 Sir George. What do you say? 
 
 The Princess (her eyes closed). We should not — 
 naturally — love each other. 
 
 Sir George. At our age I suppose there is no love 
 but in folly. {She makes a movement.) Forgive me. The 
 expression, " our time of life," was your own. (She 
 assents by a nod.) I speak, of course, of passionate love. 
 Otherwise, am I quite outside the reach of your tender 
 regard ? As for passion, let us make ourselves believe 
 that we could not be five-and-twenty if we could ! Passion ! 
 My dear Laura, has it ever happened to you to stroll 
 through a garden on the morning following a great 
 letting off of fireworks ? Oh ! the hollow, blackened 
 shells of the spent cartridges trodden into the turf. We 
 should at least be spared the contemplation of that. 
 But you and I are already fast linked by many associations, 
 and sympathy is affection. Certainly, in that spirit, / 
 love you most sincerely.
 
 SA TIRE 95 
 
 The Princess (in a strange voice). Say three times 
 you love me. 
 
 Sir George (puzzled). Three times — ? 
 
 The Princess. " I love you," thrice. 
 
 Sir George (as if repeating a lesson). I love you. I 
 love you. I love you. (She throws her head back and 
 breaks i?ito a peal of hysterical laughter.) 
 
 What reason has the Princess for this 
 strange request ? Simply that a few minutes 
 earlier she has heard such a triple declaration 
 of love from the fervent lips of a young man 
 reallv in love with her. She has won the 
 heart of the preternaturally grave Edward 
 Oriel, and his habitual reserve has broken 
 down before the flood-tide of his emotion. 
 Fear of ridicule hinders her admission that 
 she loves Oriel, and she strives to per- 
 suade herself that she must accept Sir 
 George's lukewarm proposal. But before 
 the passing of the month for which she 
 has bargained with each of her suitors, 
 Sir George's heart is also engaged in 
 earnest. He has taken under his protec- 
 tion, almost adopted, an Italian girl whom 
 he believes to be his brother's child. She
 
 96 ARTHUR WING P1NER0 
 
 is a wayward, charming creature, with a 
 very tender heart hidden beneath her gaiety 
 and mischief. When he discovers first that 
 she is not his brother's child, and next that 
 she has learnt to love him, he very quickly 
 passes from affection to adoration. He and 
 the Princess make an effort to clinch their 
 half-concluded bargain, but it fails, and they 
 each take up their newly-found happiness to 
 the tune of a Hungarian march called "A 
 Szerelim mindig ifju marad," which, accord- 
 ing to Mr Pinero, means " Love is ever 
 young." 
 
 Unquestionably the last two acts of The 
 Princess and the Butterfly are fashioned with 
 a skill compelling admiration and touched 
 with a certain charm that prevents us from 
 analysing too closely the kind of happiness 
 which the Princess and the Butterfly have 
 found. At the moment we accept our 
 author's conclusion. The strains of the march 
 ring in our ears, the glamour of romantic 
 attachment dazzles our eyes. Yes, we cry,
 
 SA TIRE 97 
 
 love is ever young ; it can bring a fresh 
 interest and a vivifying tempest of emotion 
 even into the lives of the jaded victims of 
 Society, men and women who have done 
 nothing in the world but 
 
 " eddy about 
 Here and there — eat and drink, 
 Chatter," 
 
 without even the stimulus of love or hate, 
 without striving, though it be but blindly, 
 towards any aim. 
 
 But when you think it over quietly, as one 
 should think over any play that pretends to 
 offer us sincere criticism upon life, you have 
 an uncomfortable suspicion not only that the 
 world would write the Princess Pannonia and 
 Sir George Lamorant down as foolish people, 
 but that the world would probably be right. 
 For on what basis have they founded their 
 determination to defy the opinion of the 
 world ? So far as we can judge, "upon the 
 fugitive attraction of sex." Now, marriages 
 of men and women of tolerably equal age
 
 98 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 and of tolerably common tastes may be 
 based upon this attraction with every hope 
 of success. It is, after all, the natural basis. 
 Even when its first fine, careless rapture has 
 waned, the leaping flames of the fresh-lit 
 bonfire are succeeded by a steady glow 
 which gives out more warmth and comfort. 
 But a marked disparity of age and a striking 
 dissimilarity of taste and inclination are 
 seldom — very seldom — blended into har- 
 mony at the bidding of passion ; they are 
 stubborn bars of iron which cannot be per- 
 manently fused by the mere white-heat of 
 a sudden infatuation. If Mr Pinero had 
 shown us that there was more than infatua- 
 tion in the loves of his strangely - assorted 
 lovers, his conclusion would possibly bear the 
 test of reflection. If he had put the whole 
 story of their loves upon a higher plane, and 
 hinted to us that it is never too late to hope 
 that we may come upon the key to life's 
 puzzle, he would have given us a poetic and 
 a satisfying thought to take away with us.
 
 SA TIRE 99 
 
 " Only — but this is rare — 
 When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 
 When, jaded with the rush and glare 
 Of the interminable hours, 
 Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear ; 
 When our world-deafened ear 
 Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd — 
 A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. 
 The eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain, 
 And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we 
 
 know. 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow, 
 And hears its winding murmur ; and he sees 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 
 And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
 Wherein he doth for ever chase 
 That flying and elusive shadow, rest. 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 The hills where his life rose, 
 And the sea where it goes." 
 
 No one expects Mr Pinero to be a Matthew 
 Arnold, but there in those beautiful lines of 
 Matthew Arnold is a subject that a play- 
 wright of poetic feeling might well essay. 
 A true and tender devotion must always 
 help to make the path of life plainer, to clear 
 up the mists that gather round the wayfarer,
 
 ioo ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 to show that there is a definite plan of exist- 
 ence which perhaps he has before never 
 suspected. We may analyse this devotion 
 as we will. We may take the calm, con- 
 sidered view of Gibbon, who understood by 
 the passion of love "the union of desire, 
 friendship and tenderness which is inflamed 
 by a single female, which prefers her to the 
 rest of her sex, and which seeks her posses- 
 sion as the supreme or the sole happiness of 
 our being." Or we may incline to a more 
 mystical, transcendental view. But, how- 
 ever we regard it, we can only reason de- 
 ductively from its manifestations, and here is 
 the dramatist's opportunity. Mr Pinero had 
 such an opportunity in The Princess and the 
 Butterfly, but he hardly made the most of it. 
 It scarcely seems to have possessed much 
 interest for him. If it had, he would surely 
 have given us more of an insight into the 
 characters of the Princess and Sir George, 
 and also of Edward Oriel and Fay Zuliani. 
 But he only elaborates those characters just
 
 SATIRE io i 
 
 enough for the purposes of the play. This 
 is his way in all his plays, with the excep- 
 tion of Iris and The Second Mrs Tanqueray. 
 There he does appear to have been genu- 
 inely interested in the problems of character 
 that lay before him. In all the other plays 
 he gives his creations only just enough in- 
 dividuality to be effective on the stage, to 
 serve the ends of his dramatic scheme. 
 They are so cleverly presented that they 
 leave the impression of real characters, but 
 they are, as a rule, not more than half 
 characters. The author does not turn the 
 lieht of his revealing lantern all round them, 
 upon every side of their personality in turn, 
 but only upon the one or two sides that will 
 be useful to him. In other words, Mr Pinero 
 does not pursue character for the sake of 
 character, but for the sake of making stage- 
 plays. He does not take a handful of 
 people and let them work out their own 
 destinies. He is not so much the observer, 
 the recorder, as the puller of strings. He
 
 102 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 plays with his characters as you play with 
 chess men, moving them here and there, 
 wherever he sees the opportunity for an 
 effective combination. The combinations 
 he makes are immensely effective, but they 
 cannot in the nature of things produce upon 
 the spectator who looks closely into them the 
 effect of an unconstrained sincerity. Like 
 Dr Ibsen, Mr Pinero is a master of theatrical 
 craft, and, if he had the same interest in the 
 things of the mind that inspires Dr Ibsen, 
 he might have gained an equal reputation 
 as a philosopher without any more deserving 
 it than Dr Ibsen deserves his fame. A 
 genuine philosopher who wrote plays would 
 have to be very emphatically tin philosophe 
 sans le savoir. But a dramatist who has 
 the gift of fashioning his dramas with a 
 complete knowledge of stage effects and 
 how to produce them, and who further is 
 sincerely interested in the particular ques- 
 tions of mind and morals which occupy 
 his age, can easily win the name of a
 
 SATIRE 103 
 
 philosopher. Mr Pinero may indeed win 
 it yet. If our playwrights would make a close 
 study for a year of the modern French drama 
 since about i860, and of the serious German 
 drama during the last ten years, I believe 
 they would see the advantage of dealing in a 
 sincere spirit with the manners and pro- 
 blems of their time. And if they could at the 
 same time preserve their English sense of 
 humour, they would probably end by writing 
 much better plays than either the Germans 
 or the French.
 
 VII 
 
 NATIONALITY IN DRAMA 
 
 The digression into which The Princess and 
 the Butterfly has carried me leads up, I find, to 
 a branch of my subject in which I must plead 
 guilty to being greatly interested and with 
 which I may as well now deal. This is the 
 extent generally to which nationality can be 
 embodied and revealed in dramatic art, and 
 the extent in particular to which Mr Pinero's 
 have been essentially English in character. 
 The point which I have reached in the 
 consideration of Mr Pinero's plays is suffi- 
 ciently appropriate for this discussion. I 
 have just spoken of The Hobby-Horse and 
 Lady Bountiful. Of The Second Mrs Tan- 
 queray and The Benejit of the Doubt I am 
 
 just about to speak These plays are the 
 
 104
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 105 
 
 four out of all Mr Pinero's work which, to 
 my mind, really are distinctively English 
 in tone and feeling. The people to whom 
 they introduce us are the kind of people who 
 form the mass of the middle class of the 
 nation. They could not belong to any 
 nation but the English nation. You are 
 in no danger of thinking that the pieces 
 have been adapted from the French or the 
 German or the Norwegian or the Japanese. 
 They are contributions, therefore, in a real 
 sense, towards a national modern English 
 
 O 
 
 drama, such a drama as we shall only 
 possess in full measure when our vast 
 society, or a sufficient section of it, is united 
 in a common view of life, and in common 
 ideals capable of serving as a basis for it. 
 It is very important that we should under- 
 stand what are the qualities in plays 
 which go to make up a national drama, 
 because, if ever we are to have such a form 
 of art flourishing amongst us again, we must 
 be on the lookout for its earliest manifesta-
 
 106 ARTHUR WING PJNERO 
 
 tions and be ready to encourage them with 
 an intelligent sympathy. 
 
 Now, when we English people speak of 
 our national drama, we mean, nine in ten of 
 us, the drama of the Elizabethan poets. 
 That is the only dramatic literature we have 
 had which fully expressed the character and 
 the ideas and the aspirations of the English 
 race. You often hear it asked in wonder 
 why the theatre was in Shakespeare's day 
 the constant popular resort of all classes, and 
 why it has never enjoyed anything like the 
 same popularity since. The reason is clear. 
 The Elizabethan dramatists were closely in 
 touch with national sentiment. They bodied 
 forth in stirring language, they interpreted 
 by means of rich imagery the thoughts and 
 feelings that were in the mind and breast of 
 every Englishman. The court gallant and 
 the careful tradesman and the ruffling 
 'prentice took an equal delight in these 
 dramas, though possibly in different aspects 
 of them : each knew that the plays expressed
 
 NATIONALITY IN DRAMA 107 
 
 what he himself and everybody else felt but 
 could not put into words. "The rough mob 
 of the pit inspired, as it felt, the vigorous 
 life, the rapid transitions, the passionate 
 energy, the reality, the lifelike medley and 
 confusion, the racy dialogue, the chat, the 
 wit, the pathos, the sublimity, the rant and 
 buffoonery, the coarse horrors and vulgar 
 blood-shedding, the immense range over all 
 classes of society, the intimacy with the 
 foulest as well as the fairest developments 
 of human temper which characterised the 
 English stage" (J. R. Green. History of 
 the English People). Thus the sense of 
 sympathy grew to be an active principle of 
 life. All classes of the community were 
 brought closer together by the theatre. 
 The theatre was one of the main arteries of 
 national life. 
 
 Since then we have had a drama of the 
 town — the plays of the late seventeenth and 
 the eighteenth centuries, stretching from 
 Etherege and Sedley down to Goldsmith
 
 108 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 and Sheridan — a drama which expressed 
 merely a phase of society and appealed only 
 to a small class. The solid elements of 
 English life no longer frequented the 
 theatre. It was no longer a national 
 institution. It had ceased to be a national 
 institution, not so much because of the 
 Puritanical dislike and distrust of art in 
 any shape, as for these reasons — that a 
 national sentiment with power upon the 
 whole race no longer existed ; that the 
 break-up of "the Elizabethan social system 
 ordered and planetary in functions and 
 degrees as the angelic hierarchy of the 
 Areopagite" had plunged all but frivolous 
 or philosophic minds into the all-absorbing 
 tussle with religious and political problems ; 
 that the writers for the stage appealed to 
 the frivolous alone, and only recognised the 
 existence of the rest by an occasional sneer 
 or gibe. I think it is possible that if a 
 group of dramatists had set themselves to 
 deal seriously with noble themes and to
 
 NA TIONA LIT Y IN DRAMA 1 09 
 
 carry on the traditions of the Elizabethan 
 stage before its decline, they would have 
 won back the nation to the theatre. But 
 no such dramatists were found, and the 
 mass of the nation, deprived of the 
 emotional and imaginative stimulus of the 
 play, found substitutes for it in the 
 theatrical preaching of Whitefield and the 
 fervent sweetness of Charles Wesley's 
 hymns. The Puritans had tried to stamp 
 out of the English race its capacity for 
 emotion, and had completely failed. They 
 had, it is true, hindered sorely the develop- 
 ment of the art of England — we feel the 
 hindrance sorely^ to this day. But they had 
 only succeeded in turning emotion into 
 another channel. The stern intellectuality, 
 the chill repression of the Puritan faith 
 could never keep a hold upon the English 
 race. Persuaded that emotion called forth 
 by art was immoral, the nation surrendered 
 its ideals and grovelled for a period in a 
 slough of grossness and scepticism. From
 
 no ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 that slough it only escaped by making 
 religion emotional and finding in it the 
 solace it had once derived from drama, the 
 one art which had gained a really national 
 influence. All that was best in England 
 answered to the call — the larger number in 
 the religious revival of the eighteenth 
 century — a smaller, yet a more picked 
 band, not quite a hundred years later, 
 when the Oxford Movement gained its 
 fullest force. 
 
 All this while, then, the drama has lain 
 outside the track of English national life — so 
 completely outside that only within recent 
 years has it occurred to anyone to suggest 
 that some day it might possibly recapture the 
 place it once held. The suggestion, once 
 made, however, found ready welcome. The 
 subject of a national drama is now a stock 
 subject for discussion wherever interests go 
 a little beyond the material concerns of the 
 moment. It may be a mirage, a will-of-the 
 wisp, that we follow. But it does seem that,
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 1 1 1 
 
 if ever we are to see the revival for which so 
 many of us hope, the times are ripening 
 towards it now. The emotional force of 
 the religious revivals has spent itself. 
 Formalism and eccentricity have damped 
 down the fires of devotional fervour. For a 
 while it seemed as if the novel might take 
 
 O 
 
 its place as a vehicle for the expression of 
 ideas held in common by the nation at 
 large. Thackeray and Dickens between 
 them covered the whole ground, but neither 
 was able to cover it alone. And then, even 
 while we awaited the arrival of the man who 
 could make a wider appeal, the reading class, 
 for which novelists of intelligence wrote, was 
 swamped by the Education Act, and the day 
 when a book should be able to reveal the 
 nation to itself was postponed for many a 
 long year. 
 
 But the drama is not in the same case as 
 the novel. It makes a more direct call upon 
 the emotions : it does not demand for its 
 comprehension the same training of the
 
 ii2 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 mind as would be required to grasp the 
 same ideas conveyed in a book. A fine 
 play is like life itself: some see in it mean- 
 ings and suggestions that are hidden from 
 others : this man's delight in it is intellec- 
 tual, that man's purely sensuous ; you, 
 perhaps, are content merely to watch and 
 smile, while your neighbour is busy with 
 analysis and introspection ; but all have their 
 interest aroused and find in it some kind of 
 stimulus. Shakespeare makes some impres- 
 sion upon everyone, but makes it in widely 
 differing ways. One man, after a perform- 
 ance of Macbeth, will go home, like De 
 Ouincey, and write a philosophical essay 
 upon the knocking at the gate ; another will 
 say, with the north-country working-man of 
 whom Mr Frank Benson once told us, that 
 it has helped him to do a better week's 
 work. Hamlet is the most popular drama in 
 the world, because everyone can find in it 
 something to engage his attention and to 
 occupy his mind. We can scarcely expect
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 1 13 
 
 another Shakespeare. For myself, I doubt, 
 as Lowell doubted, "whether any language 
 be rich enough to maintain more than one 
 truly great poet — and whether there be more 
 than one period, and that very short, in the 
 life of a language when such a phenomenon 
 as a great poet is possible." But surely we 
 can have a national drama without another 
 Shakespeare. Other nations give expres- 
 sion to their national characteristics through 
 dramatic art, and yet the supply of great 
 poets is not any more plentiful with them 
 than it is amongst ourselves. What do these 
 other nations possess which we lack ? They 
 possess a class of writers for the stage who 
 strive to awaken an intelligent interest in 
 drama and to make it contribute to the 
 general flow of ideas ; who are not content 
 simply to provide entertainments which shall 
 distract after-dinner audiences and enrich 
 theatrical managers. These writers, unlike 
 ours, have sentiments in common with the 
 audiences they write for. They are moved 
 
 H
 
 U4 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 by the same springs of passion and emotion ; 
 they are interested in the same themes and 
 in the same modes of expression. They 
 appeal to their audiences not by a pro- 
 cess of calculation, but because both they 
 and playgoers are, in virtue of their nation- 
 ality, imbued with the same feelings, the 
 same general aspirations ; and because they 
 take, in a broad sense, the same view of life 
 and of dramatic art. 
 
 Consider for a moment a few of the foreign 
 plays with which English playgoers are most 
 familiar. Place atix dames. Take France 
 first. M. Rostand's L'Aiglon is not to us a 
 good acting play. The poetry that we find 
 in M. Rostand's noblest imaginings fails to get 
 over the footlights. Read the Wagram scene, 
 and you are struck by its power and beauty ; 
 pity and terror cleanse your soul — it is 
 mysterious, haunting, wonderful. On the 
 stage, with a crowd of hoarse " supers " 
 bawling behind the scene, and with Madame 
 Sarah Bernhardt, in incredibly tight uniform,
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 1 1 5 
 
 going off like an alarum clock every few 
 moments, the poetry, the imagination, the 
 mystery have evaporated. What is left 
 appeals not to the deeper emotions but to 
 the theatrical sense, to the fondness for 
 resonant declamation and striking contrast — 
 in a word, to the traditional French hanker- 
 ing after all that savours of la gloire. That 
 is why the piece carries a French audience 
 irresistibly along with it, whereas it leaves us 
 cold and dissatisfied. We English people 
 love poetry : the French people love rhetoric 
 and la gloire. We would have the poet sug- 
 gest to us more than he can put into words, to 
 give us " huge, cloudy symbols of a high 
 romance," to leave something to our imagina- 
 tion. " 'st' Inglesi son matti sul misticismo : 
 somiglia alle nebbie di la," says the scoffing 
 student in Rossetti's Hand and Soul. 1 
 Whereas the French mind dislikes anything 
 that is not logical, clearly expressed, well 
 within the four corners of its comprehension. 
 
 1 "Those English are mad upon mysticism, as cloudy as their 
 skies."
 
 n6 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 It agrees with Rossetti's other painter in 
 the Pitti Palace : " Je tiens que quand on 
 ne comprend pas une chose, c'est qu'elle 
 ne signifie rien." Here, then, is one side of 
 the French national character successfully 
 appealed to by L? Aiglon, as it has been 
 appealed to in the past by Victor Hugo and 
 Dumas pere, and M. Coppee and a host of 
 others. 
 
 Again, the average Frenchman's ideal 
 of life is the ideal (to use a phrase now 
 classic) of rhomme sensuel moyen. See 
 how faithfully the modern French play 
 represents that. La Dame aux Came" lias 
 represents it on the sentimental side. Sapho 
 and La Parisienne, in which Madame 
 Rejare exhibits the immense cleverness of 
 her realist method, reveal it upon its 
 moralising and its cynical sides. La Tosca is 
 the kind of piece which gratifies the appetite 
 for horrors and harlotry which I'komme 
 sensuel moyen must now and then indulge. 
 La Course du Flambeau catches him in a
 
 NA TIONA LITY IN DRAMA i 1 7 
 
 reflective mood — the mood of " the morning 
 after," when he feels doubtful about the 
 welfare of the human race. The main 
 thing I want to insist upon is that you can 
 trace in all of these plays, and they are a 
 fair selection from the modern French drama, 
 the existence of the ideal of the homme 
 sensuel moyen, which is the ideal both of the 
 playwright and of the spectators, and which 
 therefore gives the modern French drama 
 the title to be called a national drama in the 
 natural sense of the words. 
 
 You find when you examine the modern 
 German drama that it can make good the 
 same claim to this epithet "national." Its 
 ideals are quite different from the French 
 ideals. It sets itself for the most part to 
 discuss heavily, and without the smallest 
 spice of humour, the problems of our 
 super-civilised existence. It offers pictures 
 of provincial and metropolitan life that are 
 strangely real in externals and strangely 
 exaggerated in essence. But this exagger-
 
 ii8 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 ation is inevitable considering the methods 
 employed. The characters are scarcely 
 human beings, studied for their own sake, 
 so much as abstract types of passion or 
 peculiarity set up for the purpose of the 
 dramatist's theme. Colonel Schwarze in 
 Magda, for example, is an embodiment of 
 the parental idea ; Von Rocknitz in Gliick 
 im VVinkel merely sums up the German 
 notion of a full-blooded, magerful conreur 
 de femmes ; even in Johannisfeuer the 
 interest of the problem is rather universal 
 than personal. As it is with Sudermann, 
 so it is with Hauptmann as well ; perhaps 
 even more so. In Die Weber the characters 
 are the playwright's puppets : it is the 
 atmosphere and the episodes that give the 
 drama its marvellous power and intensity. 
 Einsame Menschen has more individual 
 interest, but here, too, the people of the 
 play are all carefully labelled. This is in 
 accordance with the German audience's 
 view of life, with the Teutonic attitude
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 1 19 
 
 of mind which prefers a studied philosophic 
 generalisation to the presentment of a par- 
 ticular human being. The serious drama 
 of Germany, in fact, expresses the serious 
 side of the national character, just as the 
 comic drama keeps touch with the German 
 weakness for fun cut in thick slices and for 
 elephantine gambols. Both varieties are 
 unmistakably German, as much in expres- 
 sion as in idea. 
 
 Turn now to a drama that is based upon 
 ideals very unlike those both of France and 
 of Germany — to the drama of Japan, as we 
 have had it interpreted for us by Japanese 
 players, the exquisite Sada Yacco, Mr 
 Kawakami and their troupe. Here is a 
 form of art that proceeds directly from 
 national character. What do the Japanese 
 chiefly delight in ? In beauty of colour and 
 form, from the simplest manifestations of 
 natural loveliness to the strange exotic 
 imaginings of an art based upon traditions 
 of incalculable antiquity, and followed with
 
 120 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 a passion for perfection that is shown as 
 clearly in trifles as in its most ambitious 
 attempts. First of all, then, the Japanese 
 drama satisfies this desire for beauty. 
 The very scenery brings to us Western 
 folk a sense of refreshment and satisfaction ; 
 the dresses are things of rare delight, every 
 one ; all the movements and gestures of the 
 actors fall into rich harmonies of expression, 
 and an entire absence of self-consciousness 
 lends them a charm like that of music, or 
 the ordered, inevitable processes of Nature. 
 And what of the matter of their plays? 
 They are rooted nearly all in that con- 
 ception of duty which is so strong an 
 element in the Japanese character — the 
 duty which men and women owe to them- 
 selves, to one another, and to the eternal 
 verities of justice and of truth. In minor 
 ways the drama of Japan satisfies to the 
 full the Japanese sense of the mysterious, 
 the terrible, the inevitable ; and it satisfies 
 as well their childlike delight in combats
 
 NA TIONALITY IN DRAMA 1 2 1 
 
 and in playfulness. These players have 
 studied every means of heightening the 
 effect of their efforts. Think of the inter- 
 mittent striking of the gong throughout the 
 intensely moving last act of The Wifes 
 Sacrifice, the wailing voice raised now and 
 again in melancholy chant, the stillness 
 broken only by these ominous sounds and 
 by the pathetic cheeping of the birds 
 without, symbolic of the heedlessness of 
 Nature to the little tragedies of humankind. 
 If this simple and unfamiliar art, with its 
 unsophisticated directness of method, can 
 produce so deep an effect upon us with our 
 abnormally-developed sense of the ridicu- 
 lous, imagine how it must affect the people 
 out of whose passion for beauty and out of 
 whose simple ethical code it has been 
 gradually developed. 
 
 And now let us think of our own drama, 
 and ask ourselves how far it expresses any 
 aspect of our national character. We can 
 claim to have evolved, during the past
 
 122 ARTHUR WING FINER 
 
 generation, two art-forms which are dis- 
 tinctively English — the Savoy opera and 
 Mr Pinero's farces of character. But, then, 
 neither of these have "made school." Both 
 depend, for the most part, upon the humour' 
 of individual men. They are not the in- 
 evitable outcome of a generally - accepted 
 view of life ; they are rather the crea- 
 tions of personal talent, forcing a certain 
 number of people to look at themselves 
 and the world in distorting mirrors. It is 
 true that our peculiar humour makes us, as 
 a race, derive a certain enjoyment from 
 being shown our own absurdities by keen- 
 witted satirists. We have no objection, 
 because we feel all the while that, even 
 with our absurdities, we are immeasurably 
 superior to all nations else : indeed, the 
 possession of a few absurdities which, 
 amongst our noble qualities, pass almost 
 unnoticed, serves to point and emphasise 
 our superiority. Exaggeration, too, seems 
 to come natural to us on the stage. So
 
 NA T10NALITY IN DRAMA 123 
 
 far, then, these two forms of drama are 
 based upon national characteristics, but so 
 far only and no farther. They are, in 
 Matthew Arnold's phrase, "at the bottom 
 fantastic " : not so utterly untrue to our real 
 selves as the sugar-plum play, or as the 
 many deodorised farces which we borrow 
 from the French and spoil in borrowing : 
 but still fantastic in being removed from the 
 main currents of the English spirit. A more 
 serious drama is needed to reflect these, and 
 that we lack. Mr Pinero, as I have said, 
 seemed to be striving towards it when he 
 wrote The Hobby-Horse and Lady Bountiful, 
 and later on when he gave us The Second 
 Mrs Tanqueray and The Benefit of the Dotibt. 
 The pity of it is that he did not persevere. 
 The two later plays of those just mentioned 
 come now in the natural order of our survey 
 to be considered, and I must try to show 
 in what way they reflected, more than Mr 
 Pinero's other dramas, the spirit of the 
 times as it affects the English race.
 
 VIII 
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 
 
 When Mr Pinero wrote The Profligate, in 
 
 1887, he followed up, after a long interval, 
 
 the line of advance upon which he started 
 
 with The Squire. Whether he chose to 
 
 deal with a grave problem of life — one of 
 
 the problems which face every man when 
 
 he enters the manly state, and which may 
 
 be offered for the solution of any woman 
 
 who has become a wife — whether he left 
 
 the comic and the sentimental highroads of 
 
 drama for this more strenuous path because 
 
 he felt impelled thereto by sympathy and 
 
 interest, or whether he merely judged that 
 
 the time was ripe for plays of serious intent, 
 
 I cannot tell. One is inclined to pin one's 
 
 belief to the former alternative when one 
 
 124
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 125 
 
 recollects that he has given us, since The 
 Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Notorious Mrs 
 Ebbsmith and The Benefit of the Doubt. 
 But we must also remember The Princess 
 and the Butterfly and The Gay Lord Quex. 
 Trelawny of the " Wells" he may have written 
 by way of recreation. The Princess and the 
 Butterfly even may have been treated as 
 he treated it of set purpose, though, as I 
 suggested just now, a deeper interest in 
 the eternal verities of existence would pro- 
 bably have brought the theme nearer home 
 to the mind and heart of the time. The 
 Gay Lord Quex is on a different plan 
 altogether. Here Mr Pinero took no side, 
 did not even show which way his sympathy 
 tended. He drew a picture — an exag- 
 gerated picture in most respects — of Society 
 in its most corrupt and unpleasing aspects, 
 and made the best use he could of his 
 materials from the point of view of theatrical 
 effect, without offering any moral or appear- 
 ing to enforce any lesson. What moral
 
 126 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 there was the spectator had to draw for 
 himself. How can we explain this change 
 of plan ? Had Mr Pinero changed his out- 
 look in the interval between 1887 and 1899? 
 If not (and it scarcely seems probable), how 
 can we reconcile the two methods of treat- 
 ment — the one bracing, ennobling, full of a 
 stimulating sincerity ; the other, frankly 
 cynical, making its appeal by dint of clever- 
 ness and not by dignity of purpose ? Only 
 by concluding that Mr Pinero has no par- 
 ticular fondness for either method, and that 
 he adopts the one or the other as his own 
 fancy and the fashion of the hour may 
 dictate. 
 
 To this it may be answered that Mr 
 Pinero is a writer not of one mood but 
 of many : that it is stupid to expect him 
 always to produce the same kind of play : 
 that, in short, his versatility of method is 
 his greatest merit and the surest proof of 
 his genius. 
 
 Well, for those to whom this is so, it is
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 127 
 
 so. It is, I grant with the utmost readiness, 
 a great merit to be versatile. But versatile 
 authors do not, as a rule, leave a deep 
 impression upon their age. Even when a 
 man has the brain and the heart of a 
 Robert Buchanan he cannot afford to 
 squander his genius in every direction. 
 Furthermore, an ingrained habit of mind 
 must leave its mark upon everything which 
 the mind produces. Over Mr Meredith's 
 work broods always the spirit of Comedy : 
 over Mr Hardy's always the Tragic Muse. 
 Richard Feverel and Beauchamp both come 
 to an end that might be, and generally is, 
 termed tragic. But consider cases closely 
 and you will find in each a certain freakish- 
 ness of circumstance which is alien to the 
 tragic manner. In neither case has the end 
 been foreseen as inevitable. In neither case 
 is it the result of conflict with one of the 
 great obstacles to the human will — Destiny, 
 Providence, a law of nature or a grand 
 passion. In Mr Meredith's books we see
 
 128 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 man contending with his fellow - men and 
 with the obstacles which their conventions 
 and prejudices set in his path. In Mr 
 Hardy's novels, on the other hand, the 
 catastrophe is to be apprehended from the 
 first. Humanity always "appears on the 
 scene hand in hand with trouble" — trouble 
 not created by its own actions, but trouble 
 which has its root in the very nature of 
 things. 
 
 Now, if Mr Pinero had an ingrained habit 
 of mind, a steadfast persistency of vision, 
 they would colour all that he wrote. They 
 might tinge it lightly, or they might deeply 
 dye it to a uniform hue. What is certain 
 is that in all his work we should find some 
 evidence of the point of view from which 
 he surveyed existence. Any such evidence 
 I must admit that I have failed to find. 
 It may be my own fault, my own dulness 
 of perception, but I have never heard 
 anyone else claim to have found it, and 
 until such a claim is put forward and justi-
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 129 
 
 fied I do not see that we can come to any 
 conclusion save that Mr Pinero has no 
 particular point of view, and that his plays 
 must be judged one by one, each on its own 
 merits, not in bulk, as a body of work express- 
 ing a considered and consistent criticismof life. 
 This, it will have been noticed, is the 
 plan I have adopted in discussing the plays. 
 In succession we have had under the glass 
 Mr Pinero's early efforts, his farces, his 
 dramas of sentiment, his satirical comedies, 
 and now we come to his plays of serious 
 intent. It is in these that I personally am 
 mainly interested, and since I believe the 
 majority of my readers will share this pre- 
 dilection, I shall offer no excuse for dealing 
 with them at some length. There is an 
 increasing number of playgoers who agree 
 with Alexandre Dumas fils that, while it is 
 good to laugh, it is not good to laugh at 
 everything ; and that there are certain sub- 
 jects which ought to be treated seriously even 
 
 in the theatre. 
 
 1
 
 130 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 " En France nous rions beaucoup des choses serieuses ; 
 c'est meme de celles-la, je crois pouvoir l'affirmer, qu'on 
 rit le plus. Moi, c'est un gout particulier, j'aime mieux 
 rire des choses qui ne sont pas serieuses et qui n'en ont 
 pas moins la pretention de l'etre ; ma conscience se 
 trouve ainsi de repos ; je suis sur d'avoir plus longtemps 
 des sujets de gaite et d'avoir finalement raison." 1 
 
 Holders of this opinion have had to bear 
 a sfood deal of ridicule in England as well 
 as in France, and also a good deal of 
 abuse. For a good many years " Ibsenite" 
 was a term of reproach implying, in the 
 person at whom it was hurled, not only 
 lack of taste, but irreligion. To admit 
 a liking for the "problem play" was to 
 write oneself down in general estimation 
 a raker amongst unsavoury garbage. Any 
 drama that dared to hold the mirror up to 
 Nature and to reveal what the polite world, 
 in the manner of Mr Podsnap, preferred 
 to wave aside, was decried as morbid, un- 
 wholesome, unpleasant. Any dramatist who, 
 in pursuit of better things, ventured to 
 
 1 " Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Volent."
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 131 
 
 " Take the suffering human race 
 
 To read each wound, each weakness clear ; 
 To strike his finger on the place 
 
 And say, ' Thou ailest here and here,' " 
 
 was convicted not only of tiresomeness, but 
 of immorality, whereas, of course, the only 
 immoral plays are the plays which represent 
 vice both as being- attractive and as having- 
 
 o o 
 
 no necessary, unpleasant consequences, which 
 vice always has. In a preface to a drama 
 produced at the Com^die Francaise as far 
 back as 1840, M. Walewski wrote a few 
 sentences on this subject which sum it up 
 very pithily and briefly. " L'immoralite," 
 said M. Walewski, " consiste a. deguiser 
 la laideur de la corruption et a parer le 
 vice des couleurs les plus seduisantes, 
 a trouver des phrases mignardes, des 
 affeteries de mot et de style pour voiler 
 la misere des civilisations corrumpues et 
 des ages pervertis. Mais, signaler la pro- 
 fondeur de la plaie, se tenir au bord du 
 precipice et le montrer du doigt afin qu'il
 
 i 3 2 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 soit evite, est-ce la de rimmoralite" ? " A 
 thousand times, no ! 
 
 Now in The Profligate Mr Pinero set 
 out to do just what the author of the play 
 of 1840 did — to stand on the edge of a 
 precipice and to warn all passers-by to give 
 it a wide berth. He set out to show, in 
 a word, that the man who leads a dissolute 
 life before marriage will pretty certainly 
 have bitter cause to repent it afterwards. 
 
 " It is a good and sooth-fast saw, 
 Half-roasted never will be raw ; 
 No dough is dried once more to meal, 
 No coach new-shapen by the wheel. 
 You can't turn curds to milk again, 
 Nor Now by wishing back to Then ; 
 And, having tasted stolen honey, 
 You can't buy innocence for money." 
 
 These were the lines Mr Pinero set upon 
 his playbill. They strike the keynote of 
 the play as he wrote it. Not, however, 
 as it was acted at the Garrick Theatre. 
 Mr Hare lacked Mr Pinero's courage. As 
 he afterwards admitted in a public letter, he
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 133 
 
 felt afraid of braving the popular prejudice 
 in favour of a "happy ending." He sug- 
 gested that Mr Pinero should give the 
 go-by to the stern logic which made 
 Dunstan Renshaw bear the consequences 
 of his profligacy. The counsel of expedi- 
 ency prevailed. The ending was re-written. 
 A " happy ending " was contrived, and 
 there was lost more than half the force of 
 the lesson Mr Pinero set out to teach. 
 The original ending — the ending which 
 Mr Pinero printed and to which he pre- 
 sumably adheres — is painful ; it presses 
 home with uncompromising force the 
 truth embodied in the lines just quoted. 
 The stage ending was not really "happier," 
 but it seemed so to the people who regard 
 only the outsides of things. How could 
 Renshaw and his wife ever be happy 
 again, she knowing the life he had lived 
 and he knowing that she knew? It was 
 not merely that he had lived what is called 
 with unconscious irony "a man's life."
 
 134 ARTHUR WING P1NER0 
 
 That might have been forgiven, as Hugh 
 Ardale's past is forgiven by Ellean ; for- 
 gotten, even, if Leslie only knew of it 
 vaguely and had no hideous details seared 
 into her brain. One can never tell of 
 what a loving woman's heart may be 
 capable. Renshaw, it is true, is a kind 
 of man for whom it seems at first impos- 
 sible to feel much sympathy. On the very , 
 eve of his marriage to the girl who has, 
 he declares, changed and purified his whole 
 nature, he indulges in a vulgar carouse. 
 On his wedding morning he shows no sign 
 of shame or regret when Murray speaks 
 of the smirched love he offers Leslie. He 
 jauntily says that he has taken the world 
 as he found it, and prates fatuously about 
 happy marriages being the reward of men 
 who have sown their wild oats. Women, 
 however, have loved such men, even when 
 they have guessed pretty shrewdly at the 
 truth about them, and will go on loving 
 them without a doubt. Dissipation of the
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 135 
 
 ordinary kind has been forgiven, and will 
 be forgiven so lonof as men are weak and 
 women steadfast. But Renshaw was not the 
 mere dissipated man-about-town. He was 
 a betrayer, a seducer, as well as a common 
 coureur de fenimes. His character is the 
 character of a profligate without any re- 
 deeming feature. It is not suggested that 
 the episode of Janet Preece stood alone. 
 No doubt "Laurence Kenward " had 
 duped and ruined other poor girls under 
 the cowardly refuge of a false name. But, 
 even if it did stand alone, is such an episode 
 ever to be forgiven by a wife who knows 
 all its foul details and has realised with 
 agonising exactness what its consequences 
 have been? If Leslie could have par- 
 doned Renshaw, could he ever have been 
 forgiven by her brother Wilfrid, who has 
 loved Janet and whose life is embittered 
 by Renshaw's crime ? No, between Leslie 
 and her husband would have stood always 
 the shadow of Janet Preece. No happi-
 
 136 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 ness was possible to them. Renshaw's 
 misery in the last act may incline us to 
 be merciful in our view of his faults. It 
 is difficult to withhold from him a measure 
 of pity, even of sympathy, when the change 
 which his marriage has made in him becomes 
 clear. 
 
 "I married," he tells Murray, "in dark- 
 ness, as it were ; she seemed to take me 
 by the hand and to lead me out into the 
 light. Murray, the companionship of this 
 pure woman is a revelation of life to me. 
 . . . But you know — because you read 
 my future — you know what my existence 
 has become. The Past has overtaken me ! 
 I am in deadly fear! I dread the visit 
 of a stranger or the sight of strange hand- 
 writing, and in my sleep I dream that I 
 am muttering into her ear the truth against 
 myself." 
 
 "Be sure your sin will find you out" 
 had been Murray's warning, and Renshaw 
 can only groan out that he spoke truly.
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 137 
 
 But neither pity, nor the latent tendency 
 in nearly all of us to believe in the 
 efficacy of eleventh hour repentances, 
 must blind us to the realities of things. 
 For a mean, despicable, unmanly sin like 
 the sin of Dunstan Renshaw there is no 
 forgiveness, and to make thoughtless people 
 believe that a "happy ending" is possible to 
 a story such as the story of The Profligate 
 is to palter with truth and to do an ill 
 service to the cause of morality. 
 
 It is this willingness to palter with truth 
 and conscience which has hindered the 
 drama in England from taking the place 
 it has taken in other countries. For a 
 writer to write against his own judgment 
 what will please the majority of people is 
 fatal to the interests of art. It robs the 
 artist's work of its interest, it robs his 
 calling of its dignity. Imagine a publisher 
 suggesting to Mr Meredith or Mr Hardy 
 that they should alter their novels in 
 order to make them more acceptable to
 
 138 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 the purchasing public! It is difficult to 
 imagine this. It is impossible to imagine 
 Mr Meredith or Mr Hardy consenting 
 to such a proposal. How can the theatre, 
 so lono; as managers and authors treat it 
 in this fashion, expect to be regarded as 
 anything but a form of light entertain" 
 ment ? And if our leading playwright, 
 with his position assured, is so easily 
 persuaded to sacrifice his ideas on the 
 altar of expediency, what courage or con- 
 sistency can be looked for in authors who 
 are struggling hard to make a living and 
 a name ? 
 
 If The Profligate were not a fine play, 
 one would less regret its author's in- 
 stability of purpose. It is a fine play in 
 spite of its occasional theatricality. It is 
 now and then a little too "well made" to 
 be absolutely convincing. But the theme 
 is handled with remarkable power. The 
 story holds the attention firm, and the pity 
 and pathos of broken lives touch the heart
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 139 
 
 with poignant force. Upon the reader it 
 produces almost as much effect as upon 
 the spectator in the playhouse — in the 
 later acts quite as much. This is the 
 test of eood drama now as it was in the 
 days of Aristotle. In the Poetics we 
 read that the plot of a tragedy "ought 
 to be so constituted that, even without the 
 aid of the eye, anyone who is told the 
 incidents will thrill with horror and pity 
 at the turn of events. . . . But to pro- 
 vide this effect by the mere spectacle is 
 a less artistic method and one dependent 
 upon the extraneous aid of stage manage- 
 ment. Those who employ spectacular 
 means to create a sense, not of the 
 terrible, but of the monstrous, are strangers 
 to the purpose of Tragedy." The Pro- 
 fligate is as truly a tragedy as any of the 
 great dramas of the Greeks which showed 
 men struggling in the grip of Fate. Fate 
 is, after all, only the nickname we give 
 to retribution — retribution for our own
 
 140 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 follies and blunders, or, it may chance, for 
 the long - past sin or thoughtlessness of 
 others. The Greeks bridged over the dim 
 relation between cause and effect by in- 
 venting a stern Power, which compelled 
 men hither and thither as it willed, now 
 in justice, now in irony. We see more 
 clearly that they are the victims, not of 
 any agency outside themselves, but of 
 their own acts. Destiny is, in short, no- 
 thing but Character. Here is the modern 
 basis of tragedy, and upon this basis both 
 The Profligate and The Second Mrs Tan- 
 queray are founded. 
 
 The one, indeed, is a pendant, a corol- 
 lary to the other. The story of Dunstan 
 Renshaw shows us that the profligate must 
 always 
 
 " Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week, 
 And sell eternity to gain a toy " ; 
 
 that a man cannot escape from his past. 
 The story of Paula Tanqueray enforces
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 141 
 
 the same truth as it applies to the woman. 
 Paula, like Dunstan, wanted to leave be- 
 hind all that had marred her life, to let 
 it be as if it had never been. But she 
 finds the burden of her former self dog- 
 ging her every footstep just as he did. 
 It is not merely that the outward conse- 
 quences of her acts rise up to cloud her 
 horiz n : her very nature bears the im- 
 press of perverted instincts. " There's 
 hardly a subject you can broach," Aubrey 
 tells Cayley Drummle, "on which poor 
 Paula hasri't some strange, out-of-the-way 
 thought to give utterance to, some curious, 
 warped notion. They are not mere worldly 
 thoughts — unless, good God ! they belong 
 to the little hellish world which our black- 
 guardism has created : no, her ideas have 
 too little calculation in them to be called 
 worldly. But it makes it the more dread- 
 ful that such thoughts should be ready, 
 spontaneous ; that expressing them has 
 become a perfectly natural process ; that
 
 142 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 her words, acts even, have almost lost 
 their proper significance for her and seem 
 beyond her control." Paula cannot do or 
 be what she would. She wants to be a 
 kindly, trusty comrade to Aubrey, but she 
 can never miss an opportunity of saying 
 an ill-natured word. She longs to make 
 Ellean love and confide in her, but she 
 is always on the watch for signs of 
 distrust and is for ever revealing" her 
 morbid jealousy of the tie that binds 
 Ellean and her father together. She 
 would like to receive Mrs Cortelyon in 
 such a manner as she knows both pru- 
 dence and politeness dictate, but, instead 
 of this, she behaves like a madwoman. 
 She cannot go back to her former friends ; 
 she has outgrown them. The vulgarity of 
 Lady Orreyed and the toping imbecility of 
 Sir George fill her with disgust. The 
 past hangs its loathsome weight about her 
 memory ; the present leaves her unsatisfied 
 and ill-content ; the future terrifies her
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 143 
 
 with its long; vistas of weariness and 
 horror. Read her last long speech to 
 Aubrey. Is there any passage in con- 
 temporary literature which compresses into 
 more striking words the Nemesis that 
 waits for all, men or women, who live as 
 Paula Tanqueray had lived ? The sudden 
 appearance of Captain Ardale has shown 
 her in a flash that the past can never 
 be shaken off. Her husband tells her that 
 her nerves are unstrung ; " that sort of 
 thing isn't likely to recur. The world 
 isn't quite so small as all that." 
 
 Paula. Isn't it. The only great distances it contains 
 are those we carry within ourselves — the distances that 
 separate husbands and wives, for instance. And so it'll 
 be with us. You'll do your best. Oh ! I know that — 
 you're a good fellow. But circumstances will be too 
 strong for you in the end, mark my words. . . . Of course 
 I'm pretty now — I'm pretty still — and a pretty woman, 
 whatever else she may be, is always — well, endurable. 
 But even now I notice that the lines of my face are 
 getting deeper; so are the hollows about my eyes. Yes, 
 my face is covered with little shadows that usen't to be 
 there. Oh ! I know I'm " going off." I hate paint and 
 dye and those messes, but by-and-by I shall drift the 
 way of the others ; I sha'n't be able to help myself.
 
 144 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 And then some day — perhaps very suddenly, under a 
 queer fantastic light at night, or in the glare of the 
 morning — that horrid, inevitable truth that physical 
 repulsion forces on men and women will come to you, 
 and you'll sicken at me. . . . You'll see me then, at 
 last, with other people's eyes ; you'll see me just as your 
 daughter does now, as all wholesome folks see women 
 like me. And I shall have no weapon to fight with — 
 not one serviceable little bit of prettiness left me to 
 defend myself with ! A worn-out creature — broken up, 
 very likely, some time before I ought to be — my hair 
 light, my eyes dull, my body too thin or too stout, my 
 cheeks raddled and ruddled — a ghost, a wreck, a 
 caricature, a candle that gutters, call such an end what 
 you like ! Oh ! Audrey, what shall I be able to say to 
 you then ? And this is the future you talk about ! I 
 know it — I know it." 
 
 It is an awful speech, this of Paula's, a 
 speech that rings in the ears for days. And 
 it is, every word of it, true, not of Paula's 
 case alone, but of every case like hers, and 
 in a modified degree its truth comes home 
 to all who wantonly break the laws which 
 the experience of the world has made for 
 men and women. There may for certain 
 people be a higher morality than the world's, 
 but in their individual equation wantonness 
 can be no factor. Many are offended by
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 145 
 
 plain-speaking on these points. " We need 
 no such warnings," they say. " Why recog- 
 nise the existence of women of Paula's class 
 at all ? These subjects are not for public 
 discussion, even by the preacher. We 
 should be kept from all knowledge of such 
 things." Yet neither the preacher nor the 
 dramatist do their duty to their age if they 
 see a precipice yawning in the path and fail 
 to warn the passers-by. The social evil 
 with which Mr Pinero dealt in The Profli- 
 gate and in The Second Mrs Tanqueray is a 
 precipice that has engulfed more lives than 
 can be counted, and it is not by looking 
 away from it that the evil can be cured. 
 Cured perhaps it never can be, but to 
 make manifest its hideousness is the best 
 means of lessening the number of its 
 victims, and that is what Mr Pinero did 
 in these two plays, with the skill of the 
 artist as well as the philosopher's calm 
 insistence upon the lesson he has in 
 
 mind. 
 
 K
 
 146 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Compare with this pitiful prophecy of 
 Paula's the speech in which Renshaw fore- 
 casts the only life which he and Leslie 
 could live in common. 
 
 " Supposing there is some chance of my regaining 
 her. Regaining her ! How dull sleeplessness makes 
 me ! How much could I regain of what I've lost ! 
 Why, she knows me — nothing can ever undo that — 
 she knows me. Every day would be a dreary, hideous 
 masquerade ; every night a wakeful, torturing retrospect. 
 If she smiled, I should whisper to myself, ' Yes, yes, that's 
 a very pretty pretence, but she knows you I ' The 
 slamming of a door would shout it, the creaking of a 
 stair would murmur it — ' she knows you ! ' And when 
 she thought herself alone, or while she lay in her sleep, 
 I should be always stealthily spying for that dreadful 
 look upon her face, and I should find it again and again 
 as I see it now — the look which cries out so plainly, 
 ' Profligate ! you taught one good woman to believe in 
 you, but now she knows you I ' " 
 
 The same note of hopelessness sounds 
 here, the same terrible certainty that, as 
 men and women shape their lives, so they 
 must live them until the end. It was this 
 hopelessness that made Mr Pinero close 
 both plays with the suicide of the being 
 whose existence was thus blighted. This
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 147 
 
 was another concession, surely, to the 
 fashion which demands that plays shall 
 come to some definite conclusion. Would 
 it not have been even more effective to 
 leave Dunstan and Paula face to face 
 with the necessity of living on somehow ? 
 Suicide ought only to be permitted in 
 fiction to characters which we may justly 
 regard as heroic. It ought not to be 
 allowed to dignify weak characters which 
 have no heroic elements about them. It 
 is in no sense an expiation ; it is merely 
 a way of escape, and a way which very 
 few of the Paulas and Dunstans take, 
 however much they may talk about it. 
 The total number of people who kill 
 themselves is quite small, and of this 
 total number there is but a small per- 
 centage who are driven to commit suicide 
 
 o 
 
 by any real trouble or misfortune. I quite 
 admit that neither the average reader of 
 books nor the average spectator at plays 
 likes to be left with a problem unsolved.
 
 148 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Either there must be a " happy ending," 
 which need not trouble the mind with 
 speculation, or the knot must be cut by- 
 death, This is not the way of life at 
 all, and it is a pity that the unthinking 
 should be encouraged to suppose that 
 it is. 
 
 The "make" of The Second Mrs Tan- 
 queray is more finished, and therefore more 
 convincing in detail than that of The 
 Profligate — or perhaps I should say than 
 that of the earlier part of The Profligate. 
 Compare the openings. Hugh Murray's 
 conversation with Lord Dangars scarcely 
 bears upon it the stamp of nature. 
 Aubrey's dinner-party is a perfect piece 
 of exposition. The whole situation is 
 unfolded simply, easily, naturally, not a 
 word too little or too much, we are in- 
 terested at once, and our attention is 
 never allowed to wander for a moment 
 from the problem in hand. The author's 
 purpose is effected without any straining
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 149 
 
 of probability, without even making the 
 spectator or the reader conscious of the 
 artifice that is used. There are co- 
 incidences in either piece, but they need 
 not trouble us. It might be better if they 
 were less long-armed, but coincidence is 
 always permissible on the stage so it be 
 not merely episodic. Here, it matters little 
 by what means Janet and Ardale are 
 brought into the lives of Leslie and of 
 Ellean. The great matter is to press 
 home the author's conclusions, and this 
 demands their presence in the plot. They 
 are brought in to serve the definite end 
 of the whole play ; the coincidences, in 
 themselves, are of no interest at all. On 
 the other hand, the characters are all 
 drawn so as to interest us for their own 
 sake, as well as in their general bearing 
 upon the leading motive. Ellean is typical 
 of a certain kind of girlhood peculiarly 
 English. Her shrinking from Paula, and 
 her swift accusation of herself, at the end,
 
 150 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 of having helped to kill her step-mother, 
 are equally true to this type. So is the 
 illogical but very natural feeling which 
 prompts her to forgive Ardale for having 
 been "a bit wild at one time," because 
 of what he has done since in India! 
 Cayley Drummle is delightful — as shrewd, 
 as kind-hearted and as amusing a little 
 man as ever wasted his time in hanoino- 
 about London clubs half the year and 
 country-houses the rest. Sir George and 
 Lady Orreyed (tide Miss Mabel Hervey, 
 "type of a class which is immortal") may 
 seem a trifle overdrawn, but could be 
 amply justified by human documentation. 
 The dialogue all through is admirable — 
 witty when the occasion permits — one 
 thinks at once of Cayley 's description of 
 the first Mrs Tanqueray, indeed of 
 Cayley's talk throughout the play ; at a 
 high level of seriousness and power in the 
 long closing scenes. Indeed, the piece, 
 regarded as a whole, strikes one as being
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 151 
 
 finer and more worthy of respect every 
 time one sees or reads it afresh. The 
 French writer, M. Charles Hastings, was 
 not going beyond the generally-accepted 
 opinion when he wrote of it : — " C'est, de 
 l'avis des meilleurs critiques, l'ceuvre la 
 plus remarquable de l'histoire du Theatre 
 Anglais pendant la deuxieme partie du 
 XIX e - siecle." 1 
 
 While I subscribe readily to this opinion, 
 I am inclined, as a matter of personal pre- 
 ference, to regard The Benefit of the Doubt 
 as the play of Mr Pinero's which, on the 
 whole, has given me the most pleasure. It 
 had nothing like the success of The Second 
 Mrs Tanqueray. A great many people who 
 heartily admire Mr Pinero's work look 
 blankly at you when you mention it, and 
 admit that they have never seen this excel- 
 lent piece. I think its failure to hit the 
 popular taste must be set down to the fact 
 that its theme is not direct and single like 
 
 1 Le Thidtre Frattfais et Anglais. Firmin-Didot, Paris. 1900.
 
 152 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 that of the earlier work, but complicated and 
 of a criss-cross texture ; that sympathy is 
 drawn different ways, and the spectator com- 
 pelled to consider the nature of the situation 
 instead of being allowed to start from a point 
 at which everything can be taken for granted. 
 Furthermore, there is nothing heroic about 
 any of the characters. Fraser of Locheen 
 is a dull fellow who has married the wrong 
 woman. Theo is a poor, tawdry, flighty 
 little person who has accepted the wrong 
 man. Jack Allingham and his wife are an 
 equally ill-assorted pair. Her jealousy 
 makes his existence with her unendurable, 
 because he has not strength of mind enough 
 to endure and to convince her by degrees 
 that her state of mind is absurd. Nor has 
 he sufficient consideration for his old friend 
 Theo to prevent him from compromising her 
 reputation by stupid thoughtlessness. Sir 
 Fletcher Portwood is a wind-bag, Claude 
 Emptage a fribble, Justina little better than 
 a minx, and Mrs Emptage a fit mother for
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 153 
 
 such children. Remains Mrs Cloys, the 
 
 Bishop's wife — well, in Mrs Cloys there is 
 
 an element which does approach the heroic, 
 
 but it stops short at the approach. It may 
 
 be heroic to flout the prejudices of the world, 
 
 but it can never be heroic, however judicious 
 
 and proper it may be, to shape one's conduct 
 
 with the view of conciliating the world. And 
 
 that, after all, is what Mrs Cloys thinks 
 
 about principally when she plays the dea e 
 
 machina and offers to rehabilitate Theo in 
 
 Society's esteem by taking her niece under 
 
 her wing. What does she say herself ? Not 
 
 that it is a censorious, evil-thinking world, 
 
 and that no heed need be paid to what 
 
 scandal-mongers and worldlings may say. 
 
 Oh, no ! that would not be at all in keeping 
 
 with Mrs Cloy's character. It is of the 
 
 effect of her action upon the world that she 
 
 is thinking all the time. 
 
 " Both in London and at St Olpherts Theophila will 
 be my close companion. In our little London gaieties 
 she will figure prominently. At certain formal gatherings 
 she will share the responsibility of the hostess. If any
 
 154 ARTHUR WING FINER O 
 
 paragraph concerning our doings should creep into the 
 newspaper it will concern the Bishop of St Olpherts, 
 Mrs Cloys and Mrs Fraser of Locheen. Oh, I don't 
 think there will be many to wag evil tongues against Mrs 
 Fraser a few months hence ! " 
 
 A kindly speech, if you will, and a speech 
 wise from the world's point of view, but not 
 heroic. 
 
 Now, the average audience in an English 
 theatre likes the heroic in drama. The 
 popularity of the melodrama is due to this 
 taste more than to anything else. The 
 average audience likes to see people per- 
 forming noble, improbable actions. For one 
 thing, these actions remove the play so far 
 outside the realm of reality that the spectator 
 does not have to think much about it either 
 at the time or afterwards. It will not bear 
 thinking about; he is not meant to think 
 about it. The Benefit of the Doubt does not 
 at all gratify this taste for the heroic, but it 
 does make an audience think. It ran about 
 ioo nights, which is as much as most really 
 good plays can expect to do ; it did not take
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 155 
 
 hold of the average play-going public, nor 
 did it become fashionable. It has never 
 been revived, though it is certainly a play 
 which ought to be acted, and, if we had any- 
 thing in the nature of a repertory theatre, 
 would be acted frequently. 
 
 The opening is quite as clever and even 
 more interesting and entertaining- than that 
 of The Second Mrs Tanqueray. With con- 
 summate skill we learn the whole story up 
 to the point at which the play starts from 
 the snatches of conversation in the Emptages' 
 drawing-room while the verdict of the Divorce 
 Court in the action of " Allingham v. 
 Allingham, Fraser intervening," is being 
 anxiously awaited. The arrival of succes- 
 sive friends from the court itself keeps the 
 interest strung up to the highest dramatic 
 pitch. By the end of the act we know the 
 outlines of the characters of all the persons 
 who have been introduced, and the develop- 
 ment of the imbroglio is attended with keen 
 expectation.
 
 156 ARTHUR WING P1NER0 
 
 The second act certainly does not dis- 
 appoint us. Theo, when she has left home 
 after her husband's cold refusal to take her 
 view of their position, goes straight to the 
 man from whom she had got the sympathy 
 which she asked in vain from Fraser of 
 Locheen. Her action is wildly indiscreet, 
 but her intentions are the most innocent in 
 the world. All she wants is to borrow 
 enough money to take her abroad, to enable 
 her to join a friend in Paris. At the 
 moment when Allingham receives a note 
 from her asking if he can see her at his 
 Epsom country cottage, he has in the house, 
 not only his wife, who has come to see if 
 some reconciliation can be arranged, but also 
 Mrs Cloys, Sir Fletcher Portwood, and 
 Claude, who have set off for Epsom as 
 soon as Theophila's flight became known. 
 Allingham tells them all what Theo's note 
 says. Mrs Allingham seizes the opportunity 
 at once. If the relations between Jack and 
 Theo were entirely innocent, and if the judge
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 157 
 
 was riofht in o^ivin^ them " the benefit of the 
 doubt," let them prove it now. Let Theo be 
 admitted and let her talk to Jack, imagining 
 they are quite alone, while Mrs Allingham is 
 concealed in the adjoining room. For the 
 sake of peace Allingham consents. Theo's 
 relatives are bundled into the dining-room, 
 Olive takes up her position in the library, 
 and Theo is ushered in. 
 
 At first the result of the experiment justi- 
 fies Allingham in permitting it. Theo ex- 
 plains her position. Her husband, to whom 
 she looked to stand by her, has failed. He 
 doubts her innocence, and, instead of facing 
 the world boldly, he proposes to take her 
 abroad. Therefore she has done with 
 Fraser of Locheen. 
 
 "You know," she says, "there's always a 
 moment in the lives of a man and woman 
 who are tied to each other when the man 
 has a chance of making the woman really, 
 really his own property. It's only a moment ; 
 if he lets the chance slip it's gone — it never
 
 1 5 8 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 comes back. I fancy my husband had his 
 chance to-day. If he had just put his hand 
 on my shoulder this afternoon and said, 
 ' You fool, you don't deserve it, for your 
 stupidity, but I'll try to save you'; if he 
 had said something, anything of the kind to 
 me, I think I could have gone down on my 
 knees to him and — . But he stared at the 
 carpet and held on to his head and moaned 
 out that he must have time, time ! " 
 
 What Theo says about her friendship with 
 Jack is more than enough to convince Mrs 
 Allingham, but yet she delays to strike the 
 bell which was to be the sign that she had 
 heard enough. At last Allingham persuades 
 Mrs Fraser, half-fainting as she is, to drink 
 a glass of champagne, and then another. 
 She has eaten nothing all day, she is beside 
 herself with excitement and fatigue, and the 
 wine affects her brain at once. She becomes 
 loud and slangy and confidential as to her 
 future, and then, worked up to a state of 
 delirium, she wildly begs Jack to fly with
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 159 
 
 her. At this moment her relations, con- 
 sidering that the interview has lasted quite 
 long enough, knock loudly for admittance. 
 Their appearance naturally bewilders Theo, 
 and before she has recovered from this 
 shock she receives another — Mrs Allingham 
 reveals herself. Theo understands the plot 
 that has been laid for her, and her mind 
 gives way. As the curtain descends upon 
 the act she falls in a swoon at Allingham's 
 feet. 
 
 It is a situation full of significance, charged 
 with dramatic intensity. The whole act is 
 brilliant in invention and construction, and 
 this scene forms a climax to it that could not 
 be more powerful. It has, however, this 
 one drawback — it makes the writing of the 
 third act an extraordinarily difficult task. 
 The solution of the problem is found 
 eventually, as I have already indicated, by 
 Mrs Cloys, and this solution seemed to 
 many critics to be weak and inconclusive. 
 It is inconclusive, certainly. No play that
 
 160 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 deals sincerely with human beings can be 
 brought to a " conclusive " finish unless all 
 the characters are killed off. Nothing in 
 life is ever final — except death. But I 
 cannot see that it is a weak ending. The 
 charge of weakness seems to me to be the 
 direct outcome of the hankering after the 
 heroic which I remarked upon a few pages 
 back. It is a natural ending. It is just 
 such a compromise as the English nature 
 loves in practice, however much it may- 
 prefer, in theory, fireworks and the beating 
 of the breast. They are ordinary people, 
 and this is an ordinary expedient for getting 
 them out of their difficulties. One critic 
 whose appreciations, as a rule, are of more 
 than ordinary insight and judgment, made 
 complaint of a falling-off in the last act, and 
 then wrote, as a justification for his dis- 
 content : " The author has presented his 
 problem ; but not even he can offer a 
 satisfactory solution of it." Surely this is 
 to take a wrong-headed view of the play
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 161 
 
 altogether. It is not intended by the author 
 to be either a neatly-rounded moral apologue 
 or an ingeniously-solved chess problem. 
 The man who could offer a "satisfactory 
 solution " of any of the real problems of 
 life would be hailed as a great philosopher 
 or the founder of a new religion. To such 
 criticism as this Mr Pinero might well make 
 answer with the King of Israel, " Am I 
 God to kill and to make alive?" All that 
 a dramatist can do is to tear you a page out 
 of life. He is not concerned to get his 
 characters out of all the difficulties into 
 which they are involved. He is the holder 
 of no universal panacea for the misfortunes 
 of the human race. You may, if you like, 
 hold the opinion that neither Theo and 
 Fraser, nor Mrs Allingham and Jack, could 
 ever live happily together. But you must 
 not imagine that Mr Pinero said or thought 
 they could. He does not pretend to leave 
 them in the way of living happily ever after. 
 He merely closes the particular episode in
 
 1 62 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 their history with which his play has been 
 concerned. 
 
 I have never heard anyone suggest a more 
 natural or a more effective ending, however 
 much they may have disliked the ending 
 conceived by Mr Pinero. And, whatever 
 has been urged against the conception, I 
 have never heard anyone deny the skilful 
 treatment of the last act of The Benefit of 
 the Doubt. The interest is kept up with 
 wonderful dexterity, and though we do not 
 get any further light upon the characters of 
 the four people whose fortunes we follow, yet 
 they all behave as we should expect them to 
 behave, knowing them already as we do. 
 And really, after the two preceding acts, 
 there is nothing more to be done in the way 
 of revealing character. By his daring ex- 
 pedient of the champagne Mr Pinero has 
 opened to us the mind and heart even of the 
 complex Theo, a tawdry little person, as I 
 have said, who might seem at first scarcely 
 worth studying even as a specimen of a large
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 163 
 
 but not very interesting class. But the 
 dramatist, like the naturalist, can find points 
 of interest in every specimen that he places 
 under the glass. Here, for instance, we have 
 Theo proving to us the eternal truth that 
 between a man and a woman of presentable 
 appearance and of anything like an equal age 
 there can never exist a friendship which lacks 
 altogether the disturbing element of sex. 
 She and Jack Allingham have imagined 
 honestly that " there never was one single 
 thought of anything but friendship on either 
 side." But the something else was there, as 
 it always must be, whether the man and the 
 woman know it or not, and they very often 
 do not know it. This may seem incredible 
 to the people who think that all the mysteries 
 of life can be solved by accepting the basest 
 explanations of them. But it is a fact that 
 must be apparent to anyone who has studied 
 human nature as closely, for example, as Mr 
 Pinero has studied it. As soon as Theo is 
 thrown off her balance the something that
 
 1 64 ARTHUR WING P1NER0 
 
 has been at the back of her mind emerges 
 into consciousness. The result is her deliri- 
 ous appeal to Jack. Her husband tells her 
 that she was not herself, that the fatigue of 
 the day and the preceding days, the excite- 
 ment, the wine, had taken away her real 
 personality. She replies, truly enough, that 
 it was, on the contrary, her real personality 
 which revealed itself. "It was myself, the 
 dregs of myself, that came to the top last 
 night." The revelation is a bitter surprise, 
 but it bids fair to leave a lasting effect for 
 good upon Theo's nature. It is in many a 
 case a sudden illuminating- flash like this 
 which alters the whole course of a life. Of 
 course the champagne was a block of offence 
 to numbers of people. The sight of a woman 
 affected by alcohol is so terrible and so re- 
 volting that the use of such a device certainly 
 ought to be carefully hedged about. But in 
 this instance the device had a definite pur- 
 pose to serve, a purpose which could have 
 been achieved by no other means. Further,
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 165 
 
 it was introduced with so careful a hand and 
 in so artistic a spirit that it could not be 
 regarded as offensive by anyone who judged 
 the play as a whole. Interesting as The 
 Benefit of the Doubt is to read, it must be 
 seen upon the stage to be fully appreciated. 
 Yet it has never been acted in London since 
 its original production in 1895. Until we 
 have a theatre which shall form a repertory 
 of pieces, and play them all in turn, adding 
 to them gradually as time goes by, we shall 
 be unable to judge fairly the life work of any 
 British dramatist of our own time. And not 
 only is the student of the drama a loser by 
 the absence of any machinery for keeping 
 modern plays before the world ; the drama- 
 tist must be sorely hindered and discouraged 
 as well. If his effort is merely to be a 
 nine-days' wonder, to occupy the boards 
 for a season and then to be laid aside and 
 forgotten, how can we expect him to put 
 his best work into it ? Must he not trim 
 his sails so as to catch the passing breeze
 
 1 66 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 of popular favour instead of steering such 
 a course as may, if his vessel be seaworthy 
 and built to endure, bring him at last into 
 the Harbour of Lasting Fame ? " For a 
 spirit of any delicacy and dignity," wrote 
 Matthew Arnold in his essay on Joubert, 
 "what a fate, if he could foresee it, to be 
 an oracle for one generation and then of 
 little or no account for ever." But what a 
 vastly more despicable fate to entertain a few 
 hundred theatre-fulls of playgoers and then 
 to pass out of mind ! How can the theatre 
 expect to attract to its service a sufficient 
 volume of talent to furnish forth a modern 
 English drama? Mr Pinero has done his 
 part well in face of discouragement, but 
 one dramatist cannot make a school any 
 more than one small stream can irrigate 
 a wilderness. 
 
 Of Sir Fletcher Portwood I have said a 
 word or two, but not enough to do justice 
 to one of the most comical portraits Mr 
 Pinero has drawn in any of his plays. Sir
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 167 
 
 Fletcher is a perpetual joy. His cheery 
 self-assertion and pomposity are hit off to the 
 life. What a delicious scene that is in which 
 he explains the true inwardness of his niece's 
 acquittal. 
 
 Mrs Twelves. It has been awfully reassuring to see 
 you beaming in court, Sir Fletcher. 
 
 Sir Fletcher. Ha ! I daresay my attitude has been 
 remarked. Beaming? Why not? I've had no doubt as 
 to the result. 
 
 Mrs Twelves. No doubt of Theo's innocence — of 
 course not. 
 
 Sir Fletcher. Innocent ; that goes without saying — 
 my niece. But the result, in any case, would have been 
 much the same, I venture to think. 
 
 Mrs Twelves. Really ? 
 
 Sir Fletcher. You see, my own public position, if I 
 may speak of it — 
 
 Mrs Twelves. Oh, yes. 
 
 Sir Fletcher (smiling). And I happen to know the 
 judge — slightly perhaps ; but there it is. 
 
 Mrs Twelves. But judges are not influenced by con- 
 siderations of that kind ? 
 
 Sir Fletcher. Heaven forbid I should say a word 
 against our method of administering law in this country. 
 The House knows my opinion of the English Judicial 
 Bench. At the same time judges are mortal — I have 
 never concealed that from myself; and Sir William and 
 I have met. (To Claude.) You saw the judge look at 
 me this morning, Claude? 
 
 Claude. No.
 
 1 63 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 Sir Fletcher. No ? Oh, yes, and I half smiled in 
 return. Yesterday I couldn't catch his eye, but to-day 
 I've been half smiling at him all through the proceedings. 
 
 Again, Sir Fletcher's fussy anxiety in the 
 last act to "arbitrate " between the husbands 
 and the wives is vastly entertaining. He is 
 a recognisable figure in modern life, this 
 respectable nonentity, who began to "apply 
 the lever to the mountain " at an early age, 
 and who ends with a seat in Parliament and 
 a kniohthood. Thus he is not onlv amusino- 
 but a valuable record of a contemporary 
 type. Claude Emptage is very humorously 
 sketched in also, and is equally true to life. 
 He has all his uncle's sense of self-import- 
 ance without the pushing energy which has 
 made Sir Fletcher's position. 
 
 All through the play one is struck by Mr 
 Pinero's knowledge of stage effect and of the 
 thousand little ways in which a dramatist 
 can keep his audience interested and in a 
 good humour. Even when he introduces a 
 servant for no more than a moment he can
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 169 
 
 contrive to suggest character and to create 
 amusement without hindering the develop- 
 ment of the plot or deliberately turning aside 
 to be funny. Consider the manservant 
 Ouaife, for example. His wife is "exceed- 
 ingly healthy for a stout person " ; the boy 
 is not ready to carry bags to the station, 
 but he "can be worried till he's ready." 
 This may be called the mint and anise 
 and cummin of play-writing, scarcely worth 
 mentioning in comparison with the weightier 
 matters of the dramatist's art. But it all has 
 its effect in building up a solid impression 
 and creating an atmosphere of reality. 
 
 There will, to revert for a moment to the 
 main current of the play, be always people 
 who shrink from looking upon the petty- 
 tragedies of life with the satirist's eye. Such 
 people, while they are filled with admiration 
 for The Profligate and The Second Mrs 
 Tanqueray, find in The Benefit of the Doubt 
 a flavour that grates upon their palate. The 
 same people would no doubt call Thackeray
 
 170 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 "cynical," as the fashion goes in words. 
 They would avow their liking for plays 
 either avowedly comic and light-hearted, or 
 else cast throughout in a serious mould. 
 But they forget that life is of a tangled web, 
 good and ill together, serious and comic 
 elements inextricably interwoven, and that 
 often we know not whether to laugh or to 
 cry at the fantastic tricks of our fellow- 
 creatures. Merely to laugh at the troubles 
 of the Frasers and the Allinghams would 
 be to bring our merriment under the sentence 
 of Solomon : 'twould be but the crackling of 
 thorns under the pot. And yet to deal in 
 a tragic spirit with Theo and her husband 
 would be to dignify them unduly, and would 
 point to faulty perspective in a dramatist's 
 mental picture of life. They have their 
 moments of exaltation, as Becky Sharp and 
 Rawdon, for example, have theirs. Rawdon 
 rises to moral grandeur when he flings the 
 jewel at Lord Steyne. Every now and then 
 Becky reveals some trait that seems to put
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 171 
 
 her whole character on a higher plane. We 
 forget Theo's tawdry nature when she falls 
 senseless after realising the full extent of 
 her half-delirious indiscretions at the Epscm 
 cottage. But it showed a just estimate, on 
 Mr Pinero's part, of the theme dealt with in 
 The Benefit of the Doubt that he treated it 
 in the vein of satire. He lost nothing of 
 the humanity of his characters, nothing of 
 the interest of their story. He tore a leaf 
 out of the Book of the Age. He exhibited at 
 once his surpassing skill as a maker of plays 
 and the fruits of his labour as a student of 
 human character. 
 
 In both these respects The Notorious Mrs 
 Ebbsmith fell short of The Benefit of the 
 Doubt. The first two acts and half the third 
 are written with a firm grip upon reality 
 and a keen literary instinct as well. But 
 after that the play falls to pieces. The lesser 
 characters are exceedingly well sketched in. 
 The Duke of St Olpherts is drawn in a vein 
 of literary sarcasm, but he is true in essence
 
 172 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 and also very amusing. The English parson 
 is (contrary to the custom of our stage) not 
 in any way exaggerated or held up to cheap 
 ridicule. His sister, Mrs Thorpe, is a 
 woman who, in the hands of most play- 
 wrights, would have been a prig ; as it is, 
 she is sympathetic, natural, lovable. The 
 persons who merely appear and disappear 
 have each a subtle flavour of individuality. 
 In 1895 Ibsen had begun to be generally 
 recognised in this country as a master of 
 dramatic craft, and The Notoriotis Mrs Ebb- 
 smith shows more than any other of the 
 plays the influence of Ibsen, and especially 
 the influence of Ibsen's studies in femininity. 
 Even Mrs Thorpe's fancy about her little 
 boy's grave — " You know I still tuck my 
 child up at night-time, still have my last peep 
 at him before going to my own bed ; and it 
 is awful to listen to these cold rains drip, 
 drip, drip upon that little green coverlet of 
 his " — even that reminds us of Ag-nes in 
 Brand placing her candle in the window so
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 173 
 
 that its light may fall across the snow on 
 her boy's grave and give him a gleam of 
 Christmas comfort. But the scene in which 
 Aenes hurls the Bible into the stove and 
 then snatches it again is very far from the 
 method of the Norwegian master. Nothing 
 in the character of Agnes has prepared us 
 for it, nor does the ending of the play seem 
 anymore natural. If Agnes had ever been 
 convinced that she was grievously wronging 
 Mrs Lucas Cleeve by keeping Lucas away 
 from her, she would surely have gone back to 
 her old lonely life. Women of her tempera- 
 ment do not fall back upon the consolations 
 of religious faith, because they have never 
 found in religion anything to console them. 
 It is true that Agnes's sex has found her out, 
 as she says, in one direction ; but there is no 
 reason to suppose that, because a thwarted 
 instinct takes its revenge, the mental habits 
 of a lifetime would give place to an attitude 
 of mind to which she has never been any- 
 thing but a complete stranger. There is
 
 174 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 nothing wonderful in the mutual confession 
 of Theophila and Jack Allingham that, in 
 their distress, they have gone back to the 
 habit of prayer, for with them praying, or 
 " saying their prayers," had once been a 
 habit, and the mind slips back easily, under 
 stress of pain or deep emotion, into grooves 
 that have been formed in the impressionable 
 early years of life. But Agnes Ebbsmith's 
 father " believed in nothing that people who 
 go to church are credited with believing in," 
 and he brought her up to take his view of 
 existence and of the world around her. 
 When she cries out that she had trusted in 
 the Bible and clung to it, and that it failed 
 her, we feel that this must be some other 
 woman who has strayed into the piece in 
 order to help the author towards a striking 
 finish to his third act. This is not the Mrs 
 Ebbsmith we have known up to that point. 
 And we are sorely disappointed, for up to 
 that point Mrs Ebbsmith has aroused our 
 intense interest and has seemed to be the
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 175 
 
 finest, most complex study of womanhood 
 under the conditions of to-day that Mr Pinero 
 or any other modern playwright has drawn 
 for us. 
 
 In essence, The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith 
 enforces the same lesson as The Benefit of 
 the Doubt — the lesson that a platonic rela- 
 tion between a man and a woman is 
 impossible for nine out of every ten women 
 and for ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 men. The lesson is, of course, weakened a 
 little from one side by making Lucas so poor 
 a creature ; but this, on the other hand, puts 
 the woman's infatuation in a more striking 
 light. Again, if the man in the case had 
 been drawn as an exception to all ordinary 
 rules in the opposite sense to Lucas, he 
 would have been railed at as unnatural — and 
 also there would have been no play! Even 
 as it is there is scarcely a complete play, 
 for such a subject cannot be fully discussed 
 before a mixed theatre-full of men and women 
 of all ages. It is not, therefore, I think,
 
 176 ARTHUR WING FINER O 
 
 quite a suitable subject for drama under 
 present conditions. When Agnes resolves 
 that, if she cannot keep Lucas by her side 
 in her way, she will descend to his level and 
 hold him by the power that all women can 
 exercise over men, enough is said to leave 
 half of the spectators mystified and the other 
 half uncomfortable. Yet the situation is not 
 really made clear, for the reason that it must 
 remain obscure without the addition of what 
 has to be left unsaid. It is really the whole 
 mystery of the sex relation that we are 
 invited to ponder. This is too large a sub- 
 ject for the theatre to tackle all at once in 
 its present stage of development. 
 
 For this very reason, however, The Notori- 
 ous Mrs Ebbsmith with all its defects 
 as drama is more stimulating to thought 
 than any other of Mr Pinero's plays. Just 
 because it casts into the arena of discussion 
 a subject so important to nearly all the men 
 and women in the world, it gives us fruitful 
 matter for reflection, a mental cud to chew
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 177 
 
 for so long as we choose to let our minds 
 work upon it. Agnes tried to persuade 
 herself that she was one of the exceptional 
 women to whom this subject is unimportant. 
 The process of her undeceiving provides the 
 stuff of the drama. When she finds that 
 this weak, vain, egotistical Lucas has no idea 
 of finding in her merely an intellectual 
 comrade, a spiritual affinity, does she at 
 once renounce their compact of partnership ? 
 Her head resents the intrusion of the flesh- 
 and-blood element, but her heart holds her 
 back from any attempt at renunciation. 
 Lucas's feeling towards her is the outcome 
 of passion. She has learnt to love him with 
 the self-denying tenderness that seeks rather 
 to offer service than to extract gratification. 
 The greatest sacrifice that a woman like 
 Agnes can make is the sacrifice of her con- 
 victions and ideals. Her love for Lucas 
 persuades her to throw them over at the 
 very first thought of the possibility of her 
 losing him. The Duke of St Olpherts 
 
 M
 
 178 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 verifies, in his brutally frank manner, the 
 impression of Lucas's character which has 
 been gradually forcing itself upon Agnes. 
 She sees that there is nothing for it but to 
 surrender her own and to accept Lucas's 
 standpoint. She is not the woman to be 
 content with half-measures. Her mind is 
 made up quickly, and she acts at once upon 
 her determination. The dress that Lucas 
 has ordered for her comes into her thoughts. 
 Only an hour before she has expressed her 
 disgust at the idea of wearing it. Recollect 
 her conversation about it with Lucas. 
 
 Agnes. And when would you have me hang this on 
 my bones? 
 
 Lucas. Oh, when we are dining, or — 
 
 Agnes. Dining in a public place ? 
 
 Lucas. Why not look your best in a public place ? 
 
 Agnes. Look my best ! You know I don't think of 
 this sort of garment in connection with our companion- 
 ship, Lucas. 
 
 Lucas. It is not an extraordinary garment for a 
 lady. 
 
 Agnes. Rustle of silk, glare of arms and throat — they 
 belong, in my mind, to such a very different order of 
 things from that we have set up.
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 179 
 
 An hour afterwards she has realised clearly 
 the only condition upon which she can 
 hold Lucas to her. It revolts her to submit 
 to it, but she has no choice. She puts on 
 the dress that has aroused her scorn ; 
 she transforms herself from a dowd in- 
 to a beautiful woman. The effect upon 
 Lucas is immediate. At first he cannot 
 understand the sudden alteration in her 
 appearance. 
 
 Lucas. Why, what has brought about this change in 
 you? 
 
 Agnes. What? 
 
 Lucas. What? 
 
 Agnes. I know — 
 
 Lucas. You know ? 
 
 Agnes. Exactly how you regard me. 
 
 Lucas. I don't understand you. 
 
 Agnes. Listen. Long ago, in Florence, I began to 
 suspect that we had made a mistake, Lucas. Even 
 there I began to suspect that your nature was not one 
 to allow you to go through life sternly, severely, looking 
 upon me more and more each day as a fellow-worker 
 and less and less as a woman. I suspected this — oh, 
 proved it ! but still made myself believe that this com- 
 panionship of ours would gradually become in a sense 
 colder — more temperate, more impassive. (Beating her 
 brow.) Never ! never ! Oh, a few minutes ago this man,
 
 180 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 who means to part us if he can, drew your character, 
 disposition, in a dozen words. 
 
 Lucas. You believe him I You credit what he says 
 of me ! 
 
 Agnes. I declared it to be untrue. Oh, but — 
 
 Lucas. But — but — ! 
 
 Agnes. The picture he paints of you is not wholly a 
 false one. S-s-sh ! Lucas. Hark ! attend to me ! I 
 resign myself to it all. Dear, I must resign myself to it ! 
 
 Lucas. Resign yourself? Has life with me become 
 so distasteful ? 
 
 Agnes. Has it? Think! Why, when I realised the actual 
 conditions of our companionship — why didn't I go on 
 my own way stoically ? Why don't I go at this moment ? 
 
 Lucas. You really love me, do you mean — as simple, 
 tender women are content to love ? (She looks at him, 
 nods slowly, then turns away and droops over the table. 
 He raises her and takes her in his arms.) My dear girl, 
 my dear, cold, warm-hearted girl ! Ha ! You couldn't 
 bear to see me packed up in one of the Duke's travelling 
 boxes and borne back to London, eh ? (She shakes her 
 head ; her lips form the word "No.") No fear of that, my 
 — my sweetheart ! 
 
 Agnes. Quick, dress, take me out. ... I won't 
 oppose you, I won't repel you any more. 
 
 It is a powerful, pitiful scene this. It is 
 the tragedy of the exceptional woman's life. 
 Few women, luckily for themselves, luckily 
 for the continuance of the human race, are 
 born like Agnes Ebbsmith. There are two
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 181 
 
 ways of love — the man's and the woman's — 
 though sometimes we see the positions 
 reversed — the woman, masterful, passionate ; 
 the man, patient, tender, serviceable. But 
 the two ways in their extremes are seldom 
 brought to a clash so violently as they are 
 in the case of Lucas Cleeve and Agnes 
 Ebbsmith. Seldom is so complete a sacri- 
 fice of inclination and ideal called for as that 
 which this scene presents to us. 
 
 This is a tragedy in itself, this surrender 
 of the higher nature to the lower, the failure 
 of a strong soul to escape from the common 
 burdens of humanity. But there is an even 
 more poignant sequel. For no sooner has 
 the sacrifice been offered than Agnes finds 
 that it has been ineffectual as a means of 
 binding more closely to her the man who 
 pretends to love her — who honestly believes 
 that he loves her, so low is his conception of 
 the tie that means so much to her. A 
 proposal is made that he shall consent 
 to a feigned reconciliation with his wife in
 
 i82 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 order that her position may be regulated and 
 that he may resume his political career. 
 His relations with Agnes are to continue as 
 little changed as need be, but the situation 
 is to be saved in the world's eyes and a 
 scandal avoided. Of course, Agnes expects 
 that Lucas will repudiate this degrading 
 suggestion with anger and contempt. But 
 the wretched creature shows only too 
 evidently that he would grasp at it if he 
 dared. This is the final disillusioning touch, 
 and, unfortunately, it is here that we get 
 our final glimpse of the real Mrs Ebbsmith 
 in Mr Pinero's play. We can all form our 
 own notions of the further development of 
 the situation at which we have arrived 
 towards the close of the third act. Of one 
 thing we may feel, I think, certain : that 
 the end which Mr Pinero gave us is neither 
 likely nor convincing, and that nothing in 
 the play has prepared us for so strange and 
 seemingly unnatural a conclusion. Even 
 Mrs Thorpe startles us towards the end of
 
 SERIOUS INTENT 183 
 
 the third act with a sudden declaration that 
 she too had an unhappy married life — a 
 declaration which was perhaps needed in 
 order to lead up to the Bible-burning 
 episode, but which is so unexpected as to 
 be almost laughable. One cannot but feel 
 that the agony of unfortunate marriages is 
 being piled up a little too high. It is a 
 thousand pities that a drama of sincere 
 analysis and great power, such as we find 
 in the earlier part of the play, should remain 
 merely a torso, a fragment, instead of grow- 
 ing: under the dramatist's hand into a 
 coherent and satisfying finished work of 
 art.
 
 I X 
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 
 
 Up to 1899, then, Mr Pinero had written 
 
 four plays of serious intent, all dealing with 
 
 the relations between men and women. 
 
 Two of them showed how impossible it is 
 
 for a man or a woman to get rid of the 
 
 burden of an evil past. The other two 
 
 pointed out the obstacles that lie in the 
 
 way of mere friendship between the sexes. 
 
 So far Mr Pinero seemed to have based his 
 
 serious work upon a settled view of life and 
 
 human nature — a sound view, a broad view, 
 
 a view that experience and intuition alike 
 
 supported. But in 1899 came The Gay 
 
 Lord Quex. The theory of Mr Pinero's 
 
 " settled view " seemed to be overturned. 
 
 Most people could see no sign in this 
 
 184
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 185 
 
 brilliantly-clever play of anything but an 
 anxiety to make the most of exceptionally 
 interesting dramatic material. If The Gay 
 Lord Quex expressed any view at all, it 
 appeared to be a view directly opposite to 
 that which its author expounded in The 
 Profligate. Here was Quex — "the wicked- 
 est man in London," according to Sophy 
 Fullgarney, who knows most things — able 
 to shake off his burden of loose living and 
 settle down, apparently a model husband, 
 with "the typical creamy English girl," 
 Muriel Eden. He has "reformed," it is 
 true, but so had Dunstan Renshaw. He 
 is genuinely in love, but Renshaw's passion 
 was no less genuine. All the force that 
 there was in Mr Pinero's handling of The 
 Profligate theme seemed to be dissipated 
 by the manner in which he treated the 
 same subject in The Gay Lord Quex. But 
 was this the final word on the subject ? 
 How if the object of the latter play was to 
 show what a low tone of morals and manners
 
 1 86 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 prevailed in Society at the close of the 
 nineteenth century ? How if the whole 
 piece was conceived in a mood of bitter 
 irony? "If it were so," you may reply, 
 " there would surely be one character to 
 act the part of the ancient chorus ; to 
 indicate, not necessarily by words, but by 
 general attitude of mind, that the author's 
 purpose was satire ; to represent a higher 
 type than the Quexes and the Fraynes and 
 the Bastlings and the Mrs Jack Edens of 
 this world. For dramatic purposes we must 
 have contrast, and that is just what we miss 
 in The Gay Lord Qtiex." There is weight 
 in these arguments, I admit, but I am 
 inclined to believe — I wish to believe — that 
 they can be answered. Look at the plays 
 of the eighteenth-century dramatists. They 
 are valuable beyond compare as evidence of 
 the prevailing tone of the age in which 
 they were written. Is it not at least 
 possible that Mr Pinero set himself the 
 task of drawing a picture of decadent
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 187 
 
 Society as it appeared to him, and leaving 
 the spectators each to draw the moral for 
 himself? It is true The Gay Lord Quex 
 gives us the unpleasant sensation of having 
 passed an evening with a collection of 
 people whom we dislike and despise. But 
 is not that just the impression which Mr 
 Pinero intended it to produce? He takes 
 a theatre-full of people, five-sixths of whom 
 are dominated by an absurd reverence for 
 rank and fashion, and he shows them how 
 exceedingly unpleasant people of rank and 
 fashion can be ; he shows that (to amplify 
 a verdict said to have been passed by one 
 ornament of Society upon another in recent 
 years) they have the manners of organ- 
 grinders and the morals of monkeys. 
 Naturally, then, in such a play as this 
 we miss any appeal to the heart. It makes 
 its appeal entirely to the head. There is 
 no one with whom we really sympathise, 
 except, perhaps, the dear old lady whose 
 hospitality and confidence are so shamefully
 
 188 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 abused. Muriel Eden is a featureless 
 Society doll, with just enough cunning to 
 carry on an intrigue, even after she is 
 engaged to Quex, with a young man of 
 whom she knows nothing. As for Captain 
 Bastling, the young man in question, we 
 know that he is stupid, and we are told 
 that he is immoral — a very unattractive 
 combination. Mr Pinero, by the way, has 
 a poor opinion of young men. Renshaw, 
 Ardale, Bastling, Denstroude, all are of the 
 same vicious type, and naturally enough 
 they develop into the Quexes and the 
 Fraynes and the Peter Jarmans and the 
 St Olphertses of middle and later life. As 
 for Sophy Fullgarney, she is a wonderfully 
 interesting study, but Quex is right when 
 he calls her, in his elegant way, "a low spy, 
 an impudent, bare-faced liar, a common 
 kitchen-cat who wriggles into the best 
 rooms, gets herself fondled, and then spits." 
 Quex is interesting, too, but he is three 
 parts a cad, as well as a hunter after sordid,
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 189 
 
 commonplace adventures, lacking the excuse 
 even of romance or passion. 
 
 Consider the course of the plot for a 
 moment. Sophy, the New Bond Street 
 manicurist, is Muriel Eden's foster-sister. 
 She is capable, common to a degree in manner 
 and mind, warm-hearted, excitable. She is 
 the daughter of a bailiff on the Eden estates, 
 but her character is that of a typical London 
 gamine. The Edens have set her up in 
 Bond Street (which shows an amazing ignor- 
 ance on their part of the usual nature of 
 the manicuring industry), and the two girls 
 have kept up their childish affection. When 
 the Marquess of Quex, with a reputation 
 that is only faintly adumbrated by the epi- 
 thet gay, has offered himself, at the age of 
 forty-eight, and been accepted by Muriel 
 under pressure of her family, Sophy is 
 sorely troubled at the thought of " her 
 darling " being sacrificed to an old rake. 
 She determines to catch Ouex tripping if 
 she can, for Muriel, who has listened to
 
 i go ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 squalid records of her future husband's 
 "gaieties," avows that "if she found him 
 up to anything of the sort now," she 
 would break off her engagement and marry 
 Bastling. But Quex is not to be caught 
 by the pretty manicurist's sly blandishments. 
 "A kiss or a squeeze of the waist — any- 
 thing of that sort " would do, but Sophy 
 looks and sighs and pouts all in vain. 
 This method failing, she will spy upon him 
 and find out whether any other succeeds 
 where she has failed. Soon she does find 
 something out. The Duchess of Strood, a 
 foolish, extravagantly sentimental creature 
 of thirty-seven, has been one of Lord 
 Quex's ckeres amies, and, much to his 
 annoyance, she demands a farewell scene. 
 She is staying with Quex's aunt at Rich- 
 mond, and for some unaccountable reason 
 he consents to " a parting in keeping with 
 their great attachment " in the boudoir 
 adjoining her bedroom late at night. By 
 chance Sophy, who has been allowed to
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 191 
 
 spend an afternoon in the grounds, over- 
 hears enough to guess that something of 
 the kind is intended, and her suspicions 
 are strengthened when the Duchess an- 
 nounces that she has had to send her maid 
 home. She rises to the occasion and offers 
 to take the absent maid's place. Then, of 
 course, all happens in due course. Quex 
 goes to the Duchess's apartments merely 
 to return her presents, and presently Sophy 
 is discovered at the keyhole. 
 
 The scene which follows between Quex 
 and the girl who is determined to ruin his 
 chance with Miss Eden is the most in- 
 genious Mr Pinero has ever written. The 
 Duchess has been sent away by Quex to 
 share a friend's room on pretence of 
 "nerves." He remains — to try and save 
 her reputation, even if he cannot mend his 
 own. His offers of money are scornfully 
 rejected. Sophy will tell all she knows 
 (which is not much, for Quex has been ice 
 to his old flame's blandishments) and dis-
 
 192 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 close the damning fact of his midnight visit. 
 Quex's next move is more effective than the 
 attempt to buy silence. He has locked the 
 doors of the rooms, and he declares that if 
 Sophy denounces him she shall denounce 
 herself too. She may rouse the house, but 
 the Duchess is safe ; Sophy and Quex will 
 be found alone. Her story will not be 
 believed. Her character will be pfone. 
 Neither her rage nor her appeals have any 
 effect. At last, in her dread of such an 
 exposure (which would also mean the ending 
 of her own engagement to a Bond Street 
 palmist) the girl consents to hold her tongue. 
 She is made to write a letter which puts her 
 in Quex's power if ever he should produce it, 
 and she turns to go. But suddenly the thought 
 of Muriel comes into her head. " Why, 
 it's like selling Muriel ! " she cries. " Just to 
 get myself out of this I'm simply handing 
 her over to you ! I won't do it ! I won't ! " 
 And she pulls violently at the bell. Her 
 sudden, self-sacrificing change of front has
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 193 
 
 a remarkable effect on the man. Mumbling 
 words of admiration, he thrusts the letter 
 into her hand, unlocks the door leading to 
 her bedroom, and flings it open. But first 
 the awakened servants at the other door 
 must be dismissed with some explanation of 
 the loud ringing. A message about the 
 Duchess's letters in the morning is invented 
 by Quex, and when Sophy, all unnerved and 
 almost hysterical, has repeated it and totters 
 across the room, he speaks in an altered 
 tone. "Be off," he says kindly, "go to 
 bed. Serve me how you please. Miss 
 Fullgarney, upon my soul I — I humbly beg 
 your pardon." And the curtain falls on 
 Sophy's "God bless you. You're a gentle- 
 man! I'll do what I can for you!" 
 
 No one, however much they disliked the 
 piece as a whole, could deny the great 
 power and grip of this remarkable scene. 
 Given the characters of Quex and Sophy, 
 it is thoroughly natural, full of observation 
 and of absorbing interest. No one who saw
 
 i 94 ARTHUR WING FINER O 
 
 it on the night of the first performance, when 
 the house was in the dark as to how the 
 scene would end, is likely to forget the in- 
 tensity with which it was followed, or the 
 outburst of applause, of pent-up excitement 
 and admiration, at the close of the act. 
 Nothing more ingenious in this kind, 
 nothing cleverer, has been written by an 
 English playwright since Sheridan wrote 
 the screen scene in The School for 
 Scandal. 
 
 After this nothing remains but to get 
 Bastling out of the way, and this is 
 accomplished by Sophy without any diffi- 
 culty at all. She has somehow or other 
 overlooked this delightful young man's real 
 character. Quex tells her, however, that 
 "he's just what I was at eight-and-twenty 
 — what I was — and worse," and Sophy now 
 determines to apply to him the same test 
 by which Quex's fidelity -to Muriel was 
 proved. Bastling falls into the trap at 
 once. Her suggestion that she would
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 195 
 
 appreciate "a little more than plain thanks " 
 for her help to him and to Muriel, leads 
 to a kiss. Muriel is a witness, and Bastling 
 hurries out like a whipped dog. So far 
 as the audience has had its sympathies 
 aroused at all, they are now with Quex, 
 and the curtain falls upon the prospect of 
 Muriel's early marriage to him. 
 
 No romance here, and, according to my 
 view, no suggestion of romance intended. 
 Just a picture of the way in which marriage 
 was regarded and everyday life in London 
 lived at the end of the nineteenth century. 
 Not a pleasant picture, not a picture that 
 makes us feel more reconciled to the ugliness 
 of life, but one that may brace us up, never- 
 theless, by bringing us face to face with 
 facts, and filling us with a healthy disgust of 
 the kind of world in which the Ouexes and the 
 Sophy Fullgarneys live and move and have 
 their restless, worthless being. If a poet 
 (and dramatists are poets, even though 
 they never write verse) can make us
 
 196 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 face life with renewed confidence and 
 vitality, and can tune our minds to 
 
 " Oh ! world as God has made it, 
 All is beauty," 
 
 he is beyond question a benefactor to his 
 age. But as our bodies sometimes need un- 
 pleasant medicine — medicine which perhaps 
 makes us worse before we are better — so do 
 our minds now and then require an astringent 
 tonic, some plain presentment of unpleasant 
 facts that pulls us up short and sets us think- 
 ing of the goal whither we tend. Such a 
 tonic was The Gay Lord Quex. I am 
 afraid most people regarded it merely in the 
 light of an exciting entertainment, akin to 
 lion-taming or walking the slack wire, a 
 performance that stirred their sluggish 
 interest and helped them to get through 
 an evening without being bored. That is 
 why, even though I cling to the hope that 
 Mr Pinero meant it to be something more 
 than this, I am sorry that a serious purpose 
 was not more definitely indicated.
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 197 
 
 Now, in Iris a serious purpose was indi- 
 cated beyond all doubt. Everyone is agreed 
 upon that — even the casual playgoer who 
 pronounced it dull. But as soon as you 
 inquire what Mr Pinero's purpose was, agree- 
 ment vanishes : a hundred voices offer a 
 hundred varying explanations. Here is one 
 apologist inviting you to consider Mrs Bellamy 
 the victim of circumstances. The fate of 
 Iris, he cries, might be the fate of any 
 moderately good woman against whom 
 chance and Mr Frederick Maldonado in- 
 cessantly warred. That acute student, Mr 
 W. L. Courtney, tells us that Iris is merely 
 weak, not wicked, and that Mr Pinero meant 
 to show how wrong it is to let oneself drift, 
 or to be too fond of soft cushions and the 
 sunny side of the Street of Human Life. A 
 third suggestion is that Iris is a thoroughly 
 bad woman. A fourth, that she is at heart 
 a thoroughly good woman, sorely sinned 
 against. And so on to the hundredth, 
 possibly beyond.
 
 198 ARTHUR WING P1NER0 
 
 After studying the play with care, both in 
 the theatre and from the printed page, I 
 think there can be no doubt that Iris is a 
 worthless woman, weak, self-indulgent, and 
 incapable of appreciating what is right and 
 what wrong ; not an immoral woman, but a 
 non-moral, one who lacks both the will- 
 power and the intelligence to grasp even the 
 outlines of morality. She seems to be in 
 this respect intended as a contrast to Mrs 
 Tanqueray, and, even more so, to Agnes 
 Ebbsmith. Both Paula and Agnes knew 
 well enough when they were so acting as to 
 be true to themselves, to the better instincts 
 of their natures. When they were false to 
 those instincts they were deliberately false. 
 They allowed their passions or their worse 
 instincts to carry them away with a full 
 knowledge that they must in some way pay 
 the price for self-indulgence. Of such 
 natures is the stuff of drama compounded. 
 In a play you want a conflict between the 
 force of will and some opposing force, it may 
 
 \
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 199 
 
 chance of nature or of some other will. 
 Your characters must know their own minds. 
 They must aim at something, whether a 
 good end or a bad. In the larger drama of 
 existence, also, the men and women who 
 play the prominent parts are those who of 
 set purpose shape means to ends. Of the 
 nerveless, the undetermined, nothing is to 
 be hoped. The world has no use for them. 
 If a man or a woman is wicked energetically, 
 and deliberately chooses to be wicked, there 
 is a chance that some day they may alter 
 their line of conduct and may benefit Society 
 instead of harming it. 
 
 " They say best men are moulded out of faults, 
 And oftentimes become much more the better 
 For being a little bad." 
 
 Much better have them in your com- 
 munity than people who are merely good 
 from unthinking habit, and who, if it became 
 fashionable to lie and steal, would eschew 
 truth and honesty as readily as they now 
 profess these virtues. The bitterest fate of
 
 200 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 all in Dante's Inferno was reserved for the 
 souls of those 
 
 "Che visser senza infamia e senza lodo," 
 
 who in their lives earned neither praise nor 
 blame. Heaven cast them forth lest they 
 should stain its fair courts ; Hell would have 
 •none of them, for even in Hell the wicked 
 would have taken place above them. 
 
 " Questi non hanno speranza di morte, 
 E la lor cieca vita e tanto bassa 
 Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte." 1 
 
 Among these wretched spirits Dante 
 would, I fancy, have placed the soul of Iris 
 Bellamy. She answers to the letter his 
 description of the feeble folk resembling 
 " that caitiff choir of angels who are neither 
 rebels nor God's faithful servants, but 
 thought of their own selfish interests 
 alone." 
 
 Observe how this selfishness colours every 
 act of Iris Bellamy's life. She cannot make 
 
 1 " These have no hope of death, and their blind life so meanly 
 drags that they are envious of every other fate."
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 201 
 
 up her mind to marry Laurence Trenwith, 
 because she loses her fortune if she marries 
 again. Yet she feels that if she is left to 
 herself she is in danger of marrying him and 
 so becoming poor. What does she do ? 
 Stiffen her resolution and stand firm ? No, 
 she decides to accept an offer of marriage 
 from Maldonado, her millionaire admirer.' 
 She does not love him — she does not like 
 him even, as a lover. But he is rich, and her 
 engagement sets up a barrier between Laur- 
 ence and herself. Well, at all events, she 
 has taken a step — I had nearly written a 
 decisive step — but it is only decisive until 
 she next sees Laurence alone, which is a 
 few hours later. Looking into his eyes, 
 feeling his kiss hot upon her lips, she casts 
 away her anchor, breaks her word to Mal- 
 donado, and accepts Trenwith as a lover. 
 She will not have a poor man for a husband, 
 but she has no objection to making this 
 young man play an unpleasantly equivocal 
 part, no reluctance to become his mistress.
 
 202 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 The boy, however, has a sense of what befits 
 a man. He cannot earn a living at home. 
 His only chance is to farm in Canada. Iris 
 is incapable of understanding why he declines 
 to live upon her money, equally unable to 
 see why he will not agree to accept "some 
 suitable occupation in town," a secretaryship, 
 for instance, that imaginary refuge of the 
 incapable and the unlucky — " the sort of 
 billet,'' as Laurence says, "that provides a 
 man with gloves and cab fares, and a flower 
 for his coat." She has no conception of the 
 feelings that spur a man on to be independent 
 and to make a place for himself in the world. 
 She has always taken, as they came, the good 
 things with which from childhood Fortune 
 
 o 
 
 has furnished her ; has always been profuse, 
 extravagant, with money earned by other 
 people. Why should Laurence insist upon 
 talking about " that terrible ranche " at Chil- 
 coten ? What does his career matter ? Why 
 cannot he snuggle down comfortably, as she 
 has done, and make an ignoble ease his only
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 203 
 
 aim in life? "Another time" is her cry 
 when he speaks of the possibility of her 
 joining him on the ranche and becoming his 
 wife. " Let us discuss the point another 
 time." 
 
 Before " another time " arrives, the news 
 comes that Iris has lost her fortune. Her 
 solicitor and trustee has fled, leaving ruin 
 behind him (a timely hit this, in 1901). All 
 that is left to her is a beggarly ^150 a year. 
 Surely she need not any longer stand out 
 against Laurence's pleading. There is no 
 reason whatever why she should. He offers 
 her independence and a home, not luxurious, 
 but as comfortable as she can make in Eng- 
 land on her ^150 a year; and if she loves 
 him, as she protests — but is it a case of the 
 lady protesting too much ? She does, it is 
 true, announce her engagement to Trenwith 
 immediately, but she will not go to Canada 
 with him. He can make a home and come 
 back for her in a few years' time. Evidently 
 she counts unconsciously upon something
 
 204 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 better turning up in the meantime — thinks, 
 perhaps, that her ^150 will go some way 
 towards comfort in cheap pensions (she knows 
 little enough about them !) — shrinks, at any- 
 rate, from the idea of the ranche. But of 
 course she does not put it in this way, even 
 to herself. She persuades herself that she is 
 acting nobly. She tells Laurence that he 
 would despise her if he recollected that she 
 declined to marry him when she was well- 
 off— 
 
 " that it wasn't until I was poor — almost as poor as 
 yourself — that I would marry you ; and that then I 
 promptly hung myself round your neck like a stone." 
 
 And to Laurence, reminding her that, 
 whenever she joins him, she will still be a 
 poor woman, she talks in this exalted strain. 
 She will go to him 
 
 "after I have had my own struggle, my own battle 
 with poverty, singly, alone; after I have proved to you 
 that I can live patiently, uncomplainingly, without 
 luxury, willingly relinquishing costly pleasures, content 
 with the barest comfort — yes, yes, after I have shown 
 you that there are other and better and deeper qualities
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 205 
 
 in my nature than you have suspected, than I myself 
 have suspected — then, then I'll join you, Laurie." 
 
 She deceives herself, she deceives her 
 lover, she deceives her friends. And when 
 a woman of this character begins to suffer 
 from the delusion that there are hidden 
 depths of gold in the trashy ore of her 
 nature, she becomes more dangerous than 
 ever. This is the mood in which she works 
 the most complete destruction. 
 
 One friend, however, is not deceived. 
 Maldonado knows pretty well the nature of 
 the woman in whose pursuit the sting of 
 passion keeps him steadfast. He plays the 
 part of the magnanimous friend, takes Laur- 
 ence under his especial care, sees him off 
 with false good-nature and a devilish chuckle, 
 then goes back to bid Iris farewell, and to 
 leave with her a cheque-book that she can 
 use at will. She protests that she will never 
 use it, is angered when he insists upon leav- 
 ing it for her to destroy. A sudden need for 
 money to satisfy a generous impulse sends
 
 206 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 her to it — thoughtlessly perhaps. Yet, when 
 she realises that she has used one of 
 " Maldo's" cheques, she does not tear it up. 
 Nor, when the servant comes to take her 
 dressing-bag, does she forget to drop the 
 cheque-book into it. And then, of course, 
 " almost from the very moment of my receiv- 
 ing it, my hand accustomed itself to scrawling 
 cheques for one object and another " until 
 the account considerately opened by Mal- 
 donado is overdrawn. This naturally enough 
 brings Maldo to her side, "pocket-book in 
 hand." But the repulsion he excites is still 
 strong enough to stimulate her to flight. 
 Then follows a period of poverty. Why 
 does not Iris write to Trenwith to say that 
 she is in dire need? It is hard to say. Mr 
 Pinero offers us no help. Perhaps she still 
 calculated on " something turning up." No 
 doubt the idea of the ranche was still dis- 
 tasteful. She thought at first she could live 
 upon her friends. But they turned their 
 backs upon her, all but Maldonado. He fur-
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 207 
 
 nished a flat close to his house in Mount 
 Street. He kept it ready for occupation at 
 any moment. He was always on the look- 
 out for the tenant he meant to have. And 
 one evening-, when Iris was at her last 
 shilling almost, he met her and gave her the 
 key, and she — she used it. 
 
 Thus the fourth act of the play shows Iris 
 in this flat with Maldonado still her lover, 
 more her lover than ever, it seems ; for he is 
 urging her to marry him and to accept a 
 settled position. He admits that he has 
 " treated her a bit roughly," and frankly owns 
 that he meant to have his revenge, if he 
 could get it, " for her caprice in throwing 
 him over for a lover." Now he is anxious 
 " to make it up to her." But Iris still dreams 
 of the time for Trenwith's return. It does 
 not occur to her that the altered state of her 
 life will alter Laurie's love for her or inter- 
 fere with their plans. By this time he must 
 have made a fairly comfortable home. She 
 will be delighted to leave Maldonado and to
 
 2o8 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 go away with the man she loves. So she 
 puts Maldo off, asks for time, promises to 
 think it over. A few minutes later comes 
 the one old friend who has been faithful with 
 the news that Trenwith is back in England. 
 Her instant thought is that the old friend 
 shall act as a go-between. Her undeveloped 
 moral sense sees no reason why he should 
 dislike the office. His protest she meets 
 with an air of pained surprise. In the end, 
 however, he undertakes to let Trenwith 
 know where she is. The same evening 
 Trenwith appears, and Iris stammers out 
 her story. She is plainly incapable of per- 
 ceiving anything in it except that she has 
 had an unpleasant time and deserves sym- 
 pathy. When Laurence has heard her to 
 the end and, murmuring incoherent words, 
 takes up his hat and coat, she finds it hard to 
 believe that he intends to leave her. Even 
 then she cannot see things as they are. It 
 is " the little good in her that has proved her 
 downfall." It was her love for Laurence
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 209 
 
 that prompted her first downward step. So 
 she discovers her excuses. But they are 
 powerless to stay Trenwith's steps. He 
 stumbles out, dazed with the shame and 
 distress of her story, and then comes 
 Maldonado, wild with rage, having dis- 
 covered his mistress's deceit and heard all 
 from the neighbouring room. His first im- 
 pulse is to kill her, but he subdues it and 
 turns her out into the night. And, when she 
 has gone, his wild anger returns, and the 
 curtain falls upon him as he breaks every- 
 thing within his reach. 
 
 "Not an edifying story' was the general 
 verdict, but no doubt a lifelike picture. It 
 lacked some of its likeness to life on the 
 stage, because Iris was played by an actress 
 unsuited to the part. Miss Fay Davis was 
 unequal to realising such a character as that 
 of Iris. Her ingemie moods and graces were 
 irritating ; they stood between the audience 
 and the dramatist's intention. At least this 
 
 is the impression that a reading of the play 
 
 o
 
 2io ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 leaves on the mind. It is essentially a 
 study of one woman, and it demands a really 
 great actress to interpret it — an actress who 
 can express experience and intuition in 
 terms of emotion. Mr Pinero concentrated 
 all his effort upon the portrayal of Iris, and 
 his effort has lost half its effect, so far as the 
 theatre is concerned, because it was not 
 seconded by his chief player. The minor 
 characters have less to do in this than in any 
 other of the dramas we have been consider- 
 ing. The actual writing is simpler. The 
 play contains few of these biting phrases 
 that stick in the memory and show us the 
 value to a playwright of a pretty wit aided 
 by a full notebook. It is not even con- 
 structed with Mr Pinero's usual deftness. 
 There is one piece of extremely clever stage- 
 craft — the scene in which Maldonado finds the 
 fragments of a letter that tells him of Tren- 
 with's intended visit to Iris. By making him 
 put the fragments together, and then silently 
 extract the latch-key from an ornament
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 211 
 
 where he has placed it just before, the 
 author conveys to the audience, without a 
 word spoken, the nature of the development 
 they are to expect. The scene which shows 
 the reception of the news that Mr Archie 
 Keen, the well-known solicitor, has decamped 
 is very naturally conceived and written too. 
 But, taken as a whole, the piece cannot be 
 considered to represent worthily Mr Pinero's 
 standard of craftsmanship. The division of 
 acts into scenes ; the long interval which the 
 spectator's imagination has to bridge over 
 between the end of the third act, when Iris 
 begins her life of hardship, tempered by 
 Maldo's cheque-book, and the opening of 
 the fourth, which shows her in Maldo's flat ; 
 the sketchy treatment of side issues — all 
 are sisms that the author's interest was in 
 the play of character alone. And it was a 
 masterly study of character that he gave us, 
 even though Iris be not a masterly play. It 
 is, it seems to me, the one play which he 
 has written rather in order to follow out his
 
 212 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 own interest in his subject than to make an 
 effective stage-piece. In each of the others 
 he sacrificed something in order to be 
 dramatic. In Iris it was drama that went 
 by the board. We must look to Mr Pinero's 
 future for a work that shall be, like Iris, the 
 result of keen interest in some particular 
 problem of character, and which shall, at the 
 same time, be constructed with the ingenuity 
 and the apt employment of convention that 
 must go to the making of a perfect play. 
 It was said that after Iris Mr Pinero had no 
 intention to write more serious plays. The 
 announcement was, of course, very wide of 
 the mark. If we had no other indication 
 that Mr Pinero feels within his mind the 
 seeds of many other such works, we have at 
 anyrate the closing words of his intro- 
 duction to Mr W. L. Courtney's interesting 
 and illuminating essay on "The Idea of 
 Tragedy" (1900): "And now, my dear 
 Courtney, you tell us you perceive signs 
 encouraging you to hope that the tragic idea
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS 213 
 
 may yet find fruitful stimulus in the great 
 tumult of imperial emotions at present 
 stirring the world - spirit of our peoples. 
 With all my heart I trust it may prove so ; 
 and that we poor modern playwrights will 
 not be found wanting, at least in the 
 endeavour to respond to lofty and heroic 
 inspiration."
 
 X 
 
 4/ 
 
 
 MR PINERO S ACTORS 
 
 A few words in conclusion about the 
 actors and actresses who have helped to 
 interpret Mr Pinero's plays to the world 
 of theatre-goers and who have been *, 
 helped by him to take leading rank in 
 their profession. The benefit is mutual. 
 A dramatist must have players of ability 
 to act his plays, and players must find 
 clever inventors of character if they are 
 to exhibit their ability to the best ad- 
 vantage. Mr Pinero, like Dr Ibsen, is an 3? 
 actor's dramatist. His plays never fail to 
 offer to his players notable opportunities 
 for the exercise of their art. All intelli- 
 
 gent actors and actresses will tell you that 
 
 2-
 
 MR PINEROS ACTORS 2 1 5 
 
 it is a pleasure to perform in the plays of 
 a man who is at once a student of humanity 
 and a master of stage-craft ; that it is a 
 task akin to the making of bricks without 
 straw to aim at putting life into the stiff 
 motions and awkward phrases of a mere 
 stage-puppet. There have been players, it 
 is true, who have taken more pleasure in 
 filling out and in endowing with a sem- 
 blance of life some figure of straw, imitated 
 abominably from nature by a hack play- 
 maker, than in carrying out the intention 
 of a clever dramatist. But these are 
 nowadays of an elder fashion. Note how 
 eager our best-graced actors and actresses 
 are to act the characters of Ibsen. See 
 how many reputations Mr Pinero has 
 helped to make. The persons in his plays 
 are so real that in many cases they "play 
 themselves," as the phrase goes. To adopt 
 another idiom, they are " actor-proof parts." 
 Failure in them is scarcely possible. I 
 have often been struck by this very great
 
 216 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 merit in Mr Pinero's plays when under- 
 studies have been playing leading parts, 
 or when I have seen provincial companies 
 performing them. Two or three Paula 
 Tanquerays, notably Miss Granville's 
 (though not Mrs Kendal's), were worthy 
 to be placed alongside of Mrs Patrick 
 Campbell's. No one has ever failed to 
 get an immense amount of fun out of the 
 Magistrate, or the Dean of St Marvell's, 
 or Dick Phenyl. On the other hand, the 
 parts written specially for Mrs John Wood 
 are by no means for every talent. Can 
 one ever forget her " George Tid " in Dandy 
 Dick ? Yet Miss Violet Vanbrugh, with 
 all her distinction and cleverness, was never 
 the real sportswoman for a moment ; she 
 was a charming woman of the womanly 
 type pretending to be mannish and horsey, 
 just as Miss Ellen Terry in Madame Sans- 
 gene is a delightful, refined, captivating 
 creature trying to persuade us that she is 
 a vulgar washerwoman. Madame Rdjane
 
 MR PWERGS ACTORS 217 
 
 is, for the time being, the very person 
 whom history and M. Sardou have in- 
 vented ; Mrs John Wood was the actual 
 " Georee Tid " of Mr Pinero's brain. 
 
 The notable acting quality in Mr Pinero's 
 work was noticeable very early in his career. 
 The Money - Spinner, with its deft and 
 vigorous characterisation, has attracted a 
 whole generation of amateurs. The Squire 
 found Mrs Kendal, no bad judge of an 
 effective part, ready to lend the assistance 
 of her art to the embodiment of Kate 
 Verity. When Miss Kate Rorke revived 
 this play in 1900 one saw the qualities in 
 the piece which had appealed to Mrs 
 Kendal. Miss Rorke's was a performance 
 instinct with charm, and of a restrained 
 intensity in the more strenuous scenes. 
 It reminded one a little of her Lady 
 Bountiful. Miss Rorke was the Leslie, 
 too, in The Profligate, a tender, touching, 
 girlish figure. But it is to actresses of a 
 more versatile talent than Miss Rorke's
 
 218 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 that Mr Pinero has been of most service. 
 The Second Mrs Tanqueray made Mrs 
 Campbell's reputation. The Gay Lord 
 Qtiex set the seal upon Miss Irene Van- 
 brugh's patent of superiority, and placed 
 her definitely in the front rank. Miss 
 Winifred Emery has never done anything 
 so good as her Theo Fraser in The 
 Benefit of the Doubt. Miss Emery has, 
 unfortunately, never had another part in a 
 Pinero play. Nor has Mr Cyril Maude, 
 who caught so exactly the spirit of Cayley 
 Drummle and who played Sir Fletcher Port- 
 wood with so exquisite a sense of character 
 and humour, ever been enlisted again under 
 Mr Pinero's command. As a rule one 
 success of this kind leads to others. Mrs 
 Campbell followed up Paula Tanqueray 
 with her exceedingly clever performance 
 in The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith. Miss 
 Irene Vanbrugh had proved herself in 
 Trelawny before she made her great hit 
 as Sophy Fullgarney. Mrs Kendal, too,
 
 MR PINERGS ACTORS 219 
 
 was faithful to the author who had given 
 her so fine an opportunity in The Squire. 
 It is true that not even her brilliant ability 
 could put life into The Weaker Sex, but 
 her Mrs Jermyn, in The Hobby - Horse, 
 was a performance that dwells in the 
 memory. Take Miss Fay Davis for another 
 example of the actresses who have never 
 found their mitier so truly as in Mr 
 Pinero's drama. Never has Miss Davis 
 made so deep an impression, never has 
 she acted better than in The Princess and 
 the Butterfly. The reason must be that 
 Fay Zuliani is a real person, a distinct 
 individuality, standing well out in the 
 mind as someone we have known and 
 studied, whereas most of Miss Davis's 
 other parts have been mere stock stage 
 types, shadowy and incorporeal. These 
 sentences were written before Iris was 
 produced. Miss Davis failed in that 
 because the part was altogether beyond 
 her powers.
 
 220 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 Turning from actresses to actors, the one 
 who detaches himself from the rest as the 
 player to whom Mr Pinero has given the 
 greatest number of chances is surely Mr 
 John Hare. Think of Mr Hare as the 
 good-hearted, irascible Spencer Jermyn ; 
 recall the charming touch-and-go manner of 
 his Roderick Heron ; pass in review the 
 cleverly differentiated types of aristocratic 
 roue which he offered in the parts of Lord 
 Dangars, the Duke of St Olpherts and the 
 Marquis of Quex. Mr Hare's method in 
 acting has, indeed, much in common with 
 Mr Pinero's method in play-writing. It is 
 neat, incisive, fined down to a sharp point 
 and a delicate edge. It aims just a shade 
 more at effect than at nature. The actor 
 has always perfect command over himself ; 
 the playwright never seems to let his 
 emotions break a certain bound. By both, 
 in short, emotions appear rather to be 
 regarded as playthings, or as means to an 
 end, rather than as an end in themselves ;
 
 MR FINER aS ACTORS 221 
 
 neither seems inclined to treat them very 
 seriously. In author and actor alike we 
 mark the qualities proper to the polished, 
 observant, rather cynical man of the world. 
 We could never imagine Mr Hare tearing 
 passions to tatters, or splitting the ears of 
 the groundlings, any more than we could 
 figure to ourselves Mr Pinero's eye in a fine 
 frenzy rolling, or Mr Pinero's pen running 
 away with him and inditing rhapsodies of 
 passion or mysticism. It is no wonder that 
 such an affinity of spirit should have brought 
 playwright and player together, or that such 
 a partnership should have yielded such excel- 
 lent results. 
 
 Next to Mr Hare in the category of those 
 actors who have shone especially in Mr 
 Pinero's characters come Mr Edward Terry, 
 Mr Arthur Cecil, Mr John Clayton, and, 
 perhaps, Mr Weedon Grossmith. Has there 
 ever been a Mr Posket quite like Mr Cecil, 
 or a Dean of St Marvell's in all respects so 
 unimpeachably clerical and so irresistibly
 
 222 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 funny as Mr Clayton? It may be that 
 distance lends enchantment to the memory 
 of the old playgoer. But we may safely 
 say that the characters have never been 
 played better. When Dandy Dick was 
 revived in 1900, Mr Alfred Bishop was 
 certainly a delightful Dean, suave and digni- 
 fied and simple-minded. It seemed unkind 
 to hint that Mr Clayton got more out of the 
 part, and yet, and yet — As for the Blore of 
 the revival, it could not be put anywhere 
 near the inimitable Blore of Mr Cecil — the 
 Blore of cherubic countenance and deep 
 underhand cunning, portliest and rosiest 
 of Deanery butlers, most abandoned of 
 gambling manservants. And Mr Cecil's 
 Vere Queckett, too, what a naughty little 
 boy of a man, full of a childlike gamesome- 
 ness, an infantile insouciance. What a 
 delicious contrast, with his inbred politeness 
 and delicacy of manner, to the noisy, out- 
 spoken Admiral of Mr Clayton, the very 
 embodiment of all that we have agreed to
 
 MR PINERO'S ACTORS 223 
 
 denote by the useful adjective "bluff." As 
 the Cabinet Minister again, who could have 
 hit off Sir Julian Twombley's peculiarities 
 with so light a hand as Mr Cecil ? have 
 played the flute with an air of such melan- 
 choly enjoyment, or have endured public 
 and private tribulations with so resigned a 
 fortitude? Only so long-suffering a husband 
 could have endured so irrepressible a wife 
 as Lady Twombley became in the hands of 
 Mrs John Wood. The English stage lost a 
 notable pair of comic actors when Mr 
 Clayton and Mr Cecil died. 
 
 Of Mr Edward Terry it is difficult to 
 think without at the same time remembering 
 Dick Phenyl. Seldom has an actor identified 
 himself so closely with a particular part. 
 What an immense amount of pleasure he 
 has given by his vastly humorous impersona- 
 tion of the broken-down barrister! How 
 deftly he drew a tear now and again by a 
 pathetic touch among the comicalities of the 
 repentant toper. The part might have been
 
 224 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 played in several ways other than that which 
 Mr Terry chose, but he impressed his per- 
 sonality so firmly upon it that his Dick 
 Phenyl always seems to be the real one 
 and those of other actors either imitations 
 or deflections from the true type. Mr Terry 
 in The Times again had great opportunities, 
 and made the most of them. Egerton 
 Bompas was a genuine character in his 
 hands. He hit off with a masterly breadth 
 of treatment the frenzied determination of 
 the parvenu to succeed in Society, his morbid 
 self-consciousness and fear that the world, as 
 it eddied around him, was thinking of his 
 draper's shops. He caught, too, just the 
 tone of pathos which was needed here and 
 there to win our half-scornful sympathy with 
 Bompas's aspirations, to keep the character 
 human and prevent it from becoming a mere 
 type held up to contempt and ridicule. Of 
 Mr Terry's earlier performances in The 
 Rocket, and one or two other of Mr Pinero's 
 'prentice efforts I cannot speak, but I have
 
 MR PINERGS ACTORS 225 
 
 heard them, as the invaluable Baedeker says 
 about hotels, well spoken of. 
 
 Mr Weedon Grossmith made such excel- 
 lent play with the parts of Mr Joseph 
 Lebanon and the Earl of Tweenwayes in 
 The Amazons that it has been a disappoint- 
 ment not to see him again in a Pinero play. 
 How capitally the fatuous aristocratic manner 
 of Tweenwayes would have suited Sir Sand- 
 ford Cleeve ! How admirably would Mr 
 Weedon Grossmith's other manner — smug, 
 self-satisfied, underbred — have sat upon 
 Claude Emptage in The Benefit of the 
 Do2ibt. It is true that Mr Aubrey Fitz- 
 gerald played Claude to perfection in an- 
 other way, and upon a method that is, 
 perhaps, nearer to life than Mr Grossmith's 
 — think, too, of Mr Fitzgerald's footman in 
 Trelaivny — but it would have been interest- 
 ing to see what Mr Grossmith made of Theo 
 Fraser's absurd brother. Such comparisons 
 as this, between the styles and conceptions of 
 different actors, we miss altogether in London.
 
 226 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 If we had a repertory theatre we should soon 
 begin to take, as a community, more interest 
 in acting as an art, for we should see various 
 actors in the same part, and be able to con- 
 trast and judge between their renderings as 
 the audience at the Theatre Francais does in 
 Paris. There would be certain parts in the 
 modern drama, just as in the classic drama, 
 in which every actor on his way up the 
 ladder would be anxious to appear, and in 
 which his admirers would wish to see him. 
 Also, we should watch the playing of small 
 parts with more interest when they were in 
 the hands of actors and actresses whose 
 progress we were watching from day-to- 
 day. But I will not digress further upon 
 my idde fixe. We must return to Mr 
 Pinero. 
 
 In serious parts Mr Pinero's chief exponents 
 amongst actors have been Mr Forbes Robert- 
 son and Mr Alexander. Mr Forbes Robertson 
 was just the figure for a Dennis Heron, but 
 he scarcely looked the kind of man who had
 
 MR PINERO'S ACTORS 227 
 
 led the life of Dunstan Renshaw, nor were 
 his romantic personality and sympathetic 
 method suited to the feebleness and petul- 
 ance of Lucas Cleeve. Mr Courtenay 
 Thorpe was much better fitted to give a 
 convincing version of Agnes Ebbsmith's 
 weak-natured lover. Mr Alexander showed 
 a capacity for self-sacrifice rare among actor- 
 managers when he cast himself for Aubrey 
 Tanqueray. He certainly played the part 
 well, as well perhaps as it could be played, 
 but he gained little of the distinction which 
 actor - managers are reputed to covet. In 
 The Princess and the Butterfly he had a 
 better chance, and his portrait of the man 
 who is afraid of middle age was sketched 
 with humour and a grasp of what small 
 amount of character Sir George Lamorant 
 was allowed to exhibit. It was throughout 
 a pleasant performance, and in the scenes 
 with Fay Zuliani there was a pretty note 
 of tenderness. A grand passion was scarcely 
 suggested, but then love - making on the
 
 228 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 English stage seems bound to be of the 
 cup and saucer variety — it can be done in 
 the intervals of afternoon tea. Mr Herbert 
 Waring; was a dignified, earnest Noel Brice 
 many years ago, and lent the same strenuous 
 air, which was in those days his speciality, to 
 the part of the young man in The Cabinet 
 Minister who has no patience with the ways 
 and mariners of the polite world. Mr 
 Oscar Asche made a consistent and im- 
 pressive study of Maldonado in Iris, and 
 Mr Dion Boucicault gave a finished little 
 sketch of Croker, which was of service to 
 the play just as his eccentric old Vice- 
 Chancellor was valuable in the representa- 
 tion of Trelawny. Mr Fred Kerr is another 
 actor with a talent for neat characterisation 
 whom Mr Pinero has provided with several 
 good opportunities. His Horace Vale, his 
 Bream in Sweet Lavender, his Major 
 Tarvey and his Litterly were all perform- 
 ances that one can recall distinctly and 
 with recollections of enjoyment. Miss
 
 MR PINEROS ACTORS 229 
 
 Rose Leclercq left no actress behind her, 
 when her death bereft our stage of so 
 bright an ornament, who could rival her in 
 parts of the grande dame order. Her Lady 
 Castlejordan in The Amazons was a finished 
 performance, abounding in delightfully rich 
 humour and in touches of moving pathos 
 when the scene called for a deeper note. 
 Equally good in its way was her Mrs Cloys, 
 the capable, practical woman of the world, a 
 Mrs Proudie of later date, with much less 
 of the hard, domineering qualities of a 
 traditional bishop's wife than Trollope's 
 character. 
 
 The pleasure which a retrospect like this 
 can give to the hardened playgoer is a sure 
 proof of the notable qualities of Mr Pinero's 
 drama. You can think over his characters 
 long after you have seen them embodied on 
 the stage without feeling that they were 
 merely children of fancy. You chuckle 
 over their eccentricities, think kindly of 
 their foibles, recall their generous words
 
 230 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 and deeds with softened heart. They dwell, 
 each distinct, in the memory. They are 
 genuine creations, not mere pastiches of 
 scrappy observation and theatrical effect.
 
 XI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINERO S PLAYS 
 
 This list is as complete as I can make it so 
 far as London is concerned. To include 
 even notable casts in the country, or in 
 America, or in Australia, would fill too 
 many pages. The writing of accurate 
 theatrical history is made difficult by the 
 absence of any regular record of produc- 
 tions. I have had to hunt through many 
 files to get some of these names, and often 
 the result did not seem worth so much time 
 and trouble. However, I have persevered, 
 and I have had much help from Mr Pinero's 
 secretary, Mr F. A. Besant Rice, for which 
 I am exceedingly grateful, and here the list 
 is. I hope it will be useful. Anyone who 
 
 can help me to amend or extend it may be 
 
 231
 
 532 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 assured beforehand of my thankful readiness 
 
 to accept suggestions. I have not attempted 
 
 to include all revivals — only those of special 
 
 interest. 
 
 TWO HUNDRED A YEAR 
 
 Globe Theatre, October 1877 
 
 Jack Meadows ' . . . Mr F. H. Macklin 
 
 Mrs Meadows . . . Miss Compton 
 
 Lawyer's Clerk 
 
 Mr Bradbury 
 
 TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, 1877 
 
 Acted by Mr Archer, Mr Lyons, Mr Pinero himself, 
 and Miss Sedley. 
 
 DAISY'S ESCAPE 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, September 1879 
 
 Augustus Caddel . . . Mr Pinero 
 
 Mr F. Cooper 
 
 Tom Rossiter 
 Bullamore 
 Tulk . 
 Major Mullet 
 Molly 
 Daisy White 
 
 Mr Ganthony 
 Mr Tapping 
 Mr C. Cooper 
 Miss Harwood 
 Miss Alma Murray 
 
 HESTER'S MYSTERY 
 Folly (afterwards Toole's) Theatre, June 1880 
 Mr Owen Silverdale . . Mr H. Westland 
 
 John Royle. 
 
 Joel . 
 
 Nance Buttervvorth 
 
 Hester 
 
 Mr Joseph Carne 
 Mr G. Shelton 
 Miss Eliza Johnstone 
 Miss Effie Liston
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINERGS PLA YS 233 
 
 BYGONES 
 Lyceum Theatre, September 1880 
 
 The Hon. Curzon Gramshawe 
 The Rev. Giles Horncastle . 
 Professor Giacomo Mazzoni . 
 Bella .... 
 Ruby .... 
 
 Mr Elwood 
 Mr Carter 
 Mr Pinero 
 Miss Moreley 
 Miss Alma Murray 
 
 THE MONEY-SPINNER 
 St James's Theatre, November 1880 
 
 Lord Kingussie 
 Baron Croodle 
 Harold Boycott 
 Jules Faubert 
 A Porter 
 Millicent Boycott 
 Dorinda Croodle 
 Margot 
 
 Mr Kendal 
 
 Mr Hare 
 
 Mr John Clayton 
 
 Mr Mackintosh 
 
 Mr De Verney 
 
 Mrs Kendal 
 
 Miss Kate Phillips 
 
 Mrs Gaston Murray 
 
 IMPRUDENCE 
 Folley's Theatre, July 1881 
 
 Coxe Dalrymple, C.B. 
 
 Captain Rattlefish, R.N. 
 
 Parminter Blake 
 
 George Castleton 
 
 Barnes Uurant 
 
 Doby 
 
 Mrs Parminter Blake 
 
 Zaida Dalrymple 
 
 Lazenby 
 
 Mattie 
 
 Mr Clifford Cooper 
 Mr A. Wood 
 Mr Edward Righton 
 Mr Leonard Boyne 
 Mr Carton 
 Mr Redwood 
 Miss Compton 
 Miss Kate Bishop 
 Miss Emily Miller 
 Miss Laura Linden
 
 '34 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 THE SQUIRE 
 St James's Theatre, December 1881 
 
 The Rev. Paul Dormer . 
 
 Lieutenant Thorndike 
 
 Gilbert Hythe 
 
 Gunnion . 
 
 Izod Haggerston . 
 
 Fell 
 
 Robjohns, Junior . 
 
 The Representative of ThePagley 
 
 Mercury 
 Kate Verity 
 
 Christiana Haggerston . 
 Felicity Gunnion . 
 
 Mr Hare 
 
 Mr Kendal 
 
 Mr Herbert Waring 
 
 Mr Mackintosh 
 
 Mr Charles Burleigh 
 
 Mr Sims 
 
 Mr E. Hendrie 
 
 Mr Branscombe 
 Mrs Kendal 
 Miss Rose Murray 
 Miss Blanche Horlock 
 
 GIRLS AND BOYS 
 
 Toole's Theatre, October 1882 
 
 Solomon Protheroe 
 Josiah Papvvorth 
 Murch 
 Mark Avory 
 
 Joe Barfield 
 Billy Sunnocks 
 Susie Tidby 
 Honor 
 
 Jenny Kibble 
 Gillian West 
 
 Mr J. L. Toole 
 Mr John Billington 
 Mr G. Shelton 
 Mr E. D. Ward 
 Mr E. W. Garden 
 Master Solomons 
 Miss Nelly Lyons 
 Miss Eliza Johnstone 
 Miss Ely Kimpster 
 Miss Myra Holme (now 
 Mrs A. W. Pinero) 
 
 THE RECTOR 
 Court Theatre, March 1883 
 
 The Rev. Humphrey Sharland . Mr John Clayton 
 
 Dr Oliver Fulljames . 
 Captain Jesmond Ryle 
 
 Mr H. Kemble 
 Mr A. Elwood
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PI NERO'S PLA YS 235 
 
 Connor Hennessy 
 Mr Hockaday 
 Octavius (his son) 
 Mr Gilks 
 Mr Voss 
 Saul Mash 
 Tony . 
 
 Hope Hennessy 
 Sally Brotherhood 
 
 Mr Arthur Cecil 
 Mr Mackintosh 
 Master Phillips 
 Mr A. Trent 
 Mr Milles 
 Mr Philip Day 
 Mr Maurice 
 Miss Marion Terry 
 Miss Kate Rorke 
 
 LORDS AND COMMONS 
 
 Haymarket Theatre, November 1883 
 
 Earl of Caryl 
 
 Lord Percy Lewiscourt 
 
 Sir George Parnacott, M.D. 
 
 Tom Jervoise 
 
 Mr Smee . 
 
 MrChadd . 
 
 Mr Tredger 
 
 Pressenger . 
 
 Countess of Caryl 
 
 Lady Nell . 
 
 Mrs Devenish 
 
 Miss Maplebeck 
 
 Mr Forbes-Robertson 
 Mr C. Brookfield 
 Mr Elliott 
 Mr Bancroft 
 Mr Alfred Bishop 
 Mr Girardot 
 Mr Albert Sims 
 Mr Percy Vernon 
 Mrs Stirling 
 Miss Calhoun 
 Mrs Bernard-Beere 
 Mrs Bancroft 
 
 THE ROCKET 
 Gaiety Theatre, December 1883 
 
 The Chevalier Walkinshaw 
 
 Lord Leadenhall 
 
 John Mable 
 
 Joslyn Hammersmith 
 
 Clement (Waiter at the "Belle 
 
 Vue") .... 
 Chatwood (Waiter at the "Lord 
 
 Gordon") 
 
 Mr Edward Terry 
 Mr J. W. Adams 
 Mr M. Kinghorne 
 Mr H. C. Sidney 
 
 Mr F. Martineau 
 
 Mr C. Amalia
 
 236 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Lady Hammersmith 
 Rosaline Fabre Ouette 
 Florence 
 Georgette . 
 Bingle 
 
 Miss Maria Jones 
 Miss Ethel Castleton 
 Miss F. Sutherland 
 Miss A. Aubrey- 
 Miss E. Maribel 
 
 LOW WATER 
 
 Globe Theatre, January 1884 
 
 Lord George Ormolu 
 
 Mr Vereker, Q.C. 
 
 Captain Todhunter 
 
 Mr Algernon Linklater . 
 
 Josey 
 
 Dicky Smallpage 
 
 The Chevalier Adolphe Victorin 
 
 de Montfallet 
 Mr Dottridge 
 
 The Rev. Cyril Charlesworthy 
 Dr Medwin 
 Mr Passmore 
 Skilliter . 
 Sloman 
 
 " Gas Light & Coke Co. " 
 Anne ("The Major") 
 Rosamond ("The Beauty") 
 Miss Butterworth 
 
 Mr Charles Cartwright 
 
 Mr Carton 
 
 Mr R. Dartrey 
 
 Mr J. F. Young 
 
 Mr E. Hamilton Bell 
 
 Mr J. L. Shine 
 
 Mr Charles A. Smily 
 Mr T. Squire 
 Mr Frank Evans 
 Mr Harry Leigh 
 Mr Richardson 
 Mr E. W. Gardiner 
 Mr Albert Chevalier 
 Mr W. Guise 
 Miss Compton 
 Miss Abington 
 Miss Maria Daly 
 
 THE IRONMASTER {after " Le Maitre de Forges," by 
 
 Georges Ohnet) 
 
 St James's Theatre, May 1884 
 
 Due de Bligny 
 
 Octave 
 
 Baron de Prefont 
 
 Philippe Derblay 
 
 General de Pontac 
 
 Moulinet 
 
 Mr Henley 
 
 Mr Geo. Alexander 
 
 Mr H. Waring 
 
 Mr Kendal 
 
 Mr Brandon 
 
 Mr J. F. Young
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINERGS PLA YS 237 
 
 Bechelin 
 
 Dr Servan . 
 
 Old Gobert . 
 
 Young Gobert 
 
 Mouchot 
 
 Servant of the Marquise . 
 
 Servant of Philippe Derblay 
 
 Marquise de Beaupre 
 
 Baronne de Prefont 
 
 Claire de Beaupre . 
 
 Athenais 
 
 Suzanne Derblay . 
 
 Brigette 
 
 Mr J. Maclean 
 Mr A. Knight 
 Mr R. Cathcart 
 Mr Day 
 Mr Daniels 
 Mr De Verney 
 Mr T. Lovell 
 Mrs Gaston Murray 
 Miss Linda Dietz 
 Mrs Kendal 
 Miss Vane 
 Miss Webster 
 Miss Turtle 
 
 IN CHANCERY 
 Gaiety Theatre, December 1884 
 
 Montague Joliffe 
 
 Captain Dionysius M'Cafferty 
 
 Dr Titus 
 
 Mr Hinxman 
 
 Mr Buzzard 
 
 Mr Gawge 
 
 John 
 
 Mrs Smith 
 
 Mrs Marmaduke Jackson 
 
 Patricia M'Cafferty 
 
 Amelia Ann Buzzard 
 
 Walker . 
 
 Kittles 
 
 Mr Edward Terry 
 
 Mr Alfred Bishop 
 
 Mr Laye 
 
 Mr John Dallas 
 
 Mr Guise 
 
 Mr Sherrard 
 
 Mr Lyndal 
 
 Miss Phyllis Broughton 
 
 Miss Gladys Homfrey 
 
 Miss Maria Jones 
 
 Miss Oliver 
 
 Miss Emma Broughton 
 
 Miss Clara Jecks 
 
 REVIVAL 
 Terry's Theatre, November 1890 
 Montague Joliffe . . Mr Edward Terry 
 
 Captain Dionysius M'Cafferty . 
 Dr Titus (his medical attendant) 
 Mr Hinxman (a detective) 
 
 Mr Julian Cross 
 Mr F. \V. Irish 
 
 Mr Prince Miller
 
 238 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 John (Mrs Smith's servant) 
 Mr Buzzard (a butcher) . 
 Mr Gawge (a draper) 
 Mrs Smith 
 
 Mrs Marmaduke Jackson 
 Patricia M'Cafferty 
 Amelia Ann Buzzard 
 Walker (Mrs Smith's maid) 
 Kittles 
 
 Mr Henry Dana 
 Mr Robert Soutar 
 Mr Geo. Belmore 
 Miss Elinor Leyshon 
 Miss Alice Yorke 
 Miss Kate Mills 
 Miss Jessie Danvers 
 Miss Violet Armbruster 
 Miss Rose Dearing 
 
 THE MAGISTRATE 
 Court Theatre, March 1885 
 
 Mr Posket . 
 
 Mr Bullamy . 
 
 Colonel Lukyn 
 
 Captain Horace Vale 
 
 Cis Farringdon 
 
 Achille Blond 
 
 Isidore 
 
 Mr Wormington 
 
 Inspector Messiter 
 
 Sergeant Lugg 
 
 Constable Harris 
 
 Wyke 
 
 Agatha Posket 
 
 Charlotte 
 
 Beatie Tomlinson 
 
 Popham 
 
 Mr Arthur Cecil 
 
 Mr Fred Cape 
 
 Mr John Clayton 
 
 Mr F. Kerr 
 
 Mr H. Eversfield 
 
 Mr Albert Chevalier 
 
 Mr Deane 
 
 Mr Gilbert Trent 
 
 Mr Albert Sims 
 
 Mr Lugg 
 
 Mr Burnley 
 
 Mr Fayre 
 
 Mrs John Wood 
 
 Miss Marion Terry 
 
 Miss Norreys 
 
 Miss La Coste 
 
 MAYFAIR (adapted from " Maison Neuve" by Sardou) 
 St James's Theatre, October 1885 
 
 Lord Sulgrave 
 Captain Marcus Jekyll 
 Nicholas Barrable . 
 Geoffrey Roydart . 
 
 Mr Cartwright 
 Mr Brookfield 
 Mr Hare 
 Mr Kendal
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINERO'S PLA YS 239 
 
 Mr Perricarp 
 
 
 
 Mr Maclean 
 
 Mr Jowett . 
 
 
 
 Mr Hendrie 
 
 Rudolph Rufford 
 
 
 
 Mr Elvvood 
 
 Andrew Moorcroft 
 
 
 
 Mr H. Reeves Smith 
 
 Mr Cashew . 
 
 
 
 Mr Paget 
 
 Ogilvy 
 
 
 
 Mr W. T. Lovell 
 
 Agnes 
 
 
 
 Mrs Kendal 
 
 Edna 
 
 
 
 Miss Webster 
 
 Hilda Ray . 
 
 
 
 Miss Fanny Enson 
 
 Priscilla 
 
 
 
 Mrs Gaston Murray 
 
 Louison 
 
 
 
 Miss Linda Dietz 
 
 THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 
 Court Theatre, March 1886 
 
 The Hon. Vere Queckett 
 
 Rear-Admiral Archibald Rankling, C.B 
 
 Lieut. John Mallory 
 
 Mr Saunders 
 
 Mr Reginald Paulover 
 
 Mr Otto Bernstein 
 
 Tyler . 
 
 Goff . 
 
 J affray . 
 
 Mrs Rankling 
 
 Miss Dyott 
 
 Dinah . 
 
 Gwendoline Hawkins 
 
 Ermyntrude Johnson 
 
 Peggy Hesslerigge 
 
 Jane Chipman . 
 
 Mr Arthur Cecil 
 Mr John Clayton 
 Mr F. Kerr 
 Mr Edwin Victor 
 Mr H. Eversfield 
 Mr Chevalier 
 Mr W. Phillips 
 Mr Fred Cape 
 Mr Lugg 
 Miss Emily Cross 
 Mrs John Wood 
 Miss Cudmore 
 Miss Viney 
 Mis La Coste 
 Miss Norreys 
 Miss Roche 
 
 THE HOBBY-HORSE 
 
 St James's Theatre, October 1886 
 
 The Rev. Noel Brice . . Mr Herbert Waring 
 
 Mr Spencer Jermyn 
 Mr Pinching 
 
 Mr Hare 
 
 Mr C. W. Somerset
 
 240 
 
 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 Mr Shattock 
 
 Mr Pews 
 
 Mr Lyman 
 
 Mr Moulter 
 
 Tom Clark 
 
 Hewett 
 
 Tiny Landon 
 
 Mrs Spencer Jermyn 
 
 Mrs Porcher 
 
 Miss Moxon 
 
 Bertha 
 
 Mrs Landon 
 
 Mr Mackintosh 
 
 Mr Hendrie 
 
 Mr W. M. Cathcart 
 
 Mr Thomas 
 
 Mr Fuller Mellish 
 
 Mr Albert Sims 
 
 Master Reid 
 
 Mrs Kendal 
 
 Mrs Gaston Murray 
 
 Mrs Beerbohm Tree 
 
 Miss Webster 
 
 Miss Huntley 
 
 DANDY DICK 
 Court Theatre, January 1887 
 
 The Very Rev. Augustin Jedd, 
 
 Sir Tristram Mardon, Bart. 
 
 Major Tarvey 
 
 Mr Darbey 
 
 Blore 
 
 Noah Topping 
 
 Hatcham . 
 
 Georgina Tidman 
 
 Salome 
 
 Sheba 
 
 Hannah Topping 
 
 D.D. Mr John Clayton 
 
 Mr Edmund Maurice 
 Mr F. Kerr 
 Mr H. Evers field 
 Mr Arthur Cecil 
 Mr W. H. Denny 
 Mr W. Lugg 
 Mrs John Wood 
 Miss Marie Lewes 
 Miss Norreys 
 Miss Laura Linden 
 
 REVIVAL 
 Wyndham's Theatre, February 1900 
 
 The Dean 
 
 Sir Tristram 
 
 Major Tarvey 
 
 Mr Darbey 
 
 Blore 
 
 Noah Topping 
 
 Hatcham 
 
 Mr Alfred Bishop 
 Mr Edmund Maurice 
 Mr A. Vane-Tempest 
 Mr Stanley Cooke 
 Mr George Giddens 
 Mr W. H. Denny 
 Mr A. E. George
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR P1NERVS PLA YS 241 
 
 Georgina Tidman 
 Salome . 
 Sheba 
 Hannah Topping 
 
 Miss Violet Vanbrugh 
 Miss Maud Hoffman 
 Miss Grace Lane 
 Miss Annie Hughes 
 
 SWEET LAVENDER 
 Terry's Theatre, March 1888 
 
 Geoffrey Wedderburn 
 
 Clement Hale 
 
 Dr Delaney 
 
 Dick Phenyl 
 
 Horace Bream 
 
 Mr Maw . 
 
 Mr Bulger . 
 
 Mrs Gilfillian 
 
 Minnie 
 
 Ruth Rolt . 
 
 Lavender . 
 
 Mr Brandon Thomas 
 Mr Bernard Gould 
 Mr Alfred Bishop 
 Mr Edward Terry 
 Mr F. Kerr 
 Mr Sant Matthews 
 Mr T. C. Valentine 
 Miss M. A. Victor 
 Miss Maude Millett 
 Miss Carlotta Addison 
 Miss Norreys 
 
 THE WEAKER SEX 
 Court Theatre, March 1889 
 
 Lord Gillingham 
 Hon. George Liptrott . 
 Mr Bargus, M.P. 
 Captain Jessett 
 Dudley Silchester 
 Ira Lee 
 
 Mr Hawley Hill 
 Mr Wade Green 
 Spencer (servant at Lord 
 
 lingham's) 
 Lady Gillingham 
 Lady Liptrott . 
 Lady Struddock 
 
 Gil 
 
 Mr A. W. Denison 
 Mr E. Allan Aynesworth 
 Mr Edward Righton 
 Mr A. B. Francis 
 Mr W. H. Vernon 
 Mr Kendal 
 Mr W. Newall 
 Mr Eric Lewis 
 
 Mr H. Deane 
 Miss Violet Vanbrugh 
 Miss Patty Chapman 
 Miss E. Mathews
 
 24: 
 
 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 Lady Vivash 
 Sylvia (her daughter) 
 Mrs Hawley Hill 
 Mrs Boyle-Chewton 
 Rhoda (her daughter) 
 Miss Cardelloe . 
 Petch (servant at Mrs 
 Chewton's) 
 
 Boyle- 
 
 Mrs Kendal 
 Miss Annie Hughes 
 Miss Trevor Bishop 
 Miss Fanny Coleman 
 Miss Olga Brandon 
 Miss Blanche Ellice 
 
 Miss C. Lucie 
 
 THE PROFLIGATE 
 Garrick Theatre, April 1889 
 
 Lord Dangars 
 
 Dunstan Renshaw 
 
 Hugh Murray 
 
 Wilfred Brudenell 
 
 Mr Cheal . 
 
 Ephgraves 
 
 Weaver 
 
 Mrs Stonehay 
 
 Leslie Brudenell . 
 
 Irene 
 
 Janet 
 
 Priscilla . 
 
 Mr John Hare 
 Mr Forbes-Robertson 
 Mr Lewis Waller 
 Mr S. Brough 
 Mr Dodsworth 
 Mr R. Cathcart 
 Mr H. Knight 
 Mrs Gaston Murray 
 Miss Kate Rorke 
 Miss Beatrice Lamb 
 Miss Olga Nethersole 
 Miss Caldwell 
 
 THE CABINET MINISTER 
 Court Theatre, April 1890 
 
 Earl of Drumdurris . 
 Viscount Aberbrothock 
 Right Hon. Sir Julian Twom- 
 
 bley, G.C.M.G, M.P. 
 Brooke Twombley 
 Macphail of Ballocheevin 
 Mr Joseph Lebanon . 
 
 Mr Richard Saunders 
 (An Infant in arms) 
 
 Mr Arthur Cecil 
 Mr E. Allan Aynesworth 
 Mr Brandon Thomas 
 Mr Weedon Grossmith
 
 BIBLIOGRAPH Y OF MR PINERO'S PLA YS 243 
 
 Valentine White 
 
 Mr Mitford (subsequently 
 
 changed to Melton) 
 The Munkittrick 
 Probyn 
 Dowager Countess of Drum 
 
 durris 
 Lady Euphemia Vibart 
 Countess of Drumdurris 
 Lady Twombley 
 Imogen 
 
 Lady Macphail 
 Hon. Mrs Gaylustre 
 Angele 
 Miss Munkittrick 
 
 Mr Herbert Waring 
 
 Mr Frank Farren 
 Mr John Clulow 
 Mr Ernest Paton 
 
 Miss R. G. Le Thiere 
 Miss Isabel Ellissen 
 Miss Eva Moore 
 Mrs John Wood 
 Miss Florence Tanner 
 Mrs Edmund Phelps 
 Miss Rosina Filippi 
 Miss Marianne Caldwell 
 Miss Florence Harrington 
 
 LADY BOUNTIFUL 
 
 Garrick Theatre, March 1891 
 
 Sir Lucian Brent, Bart. 
 
 Sir Richard Philliter, Q.C. 
 
 Roderick Heron 
 
 Dennis Heron 
 
 John Veale 
 
 Pedgrift 
 
 Wimple 
 
 Floyce 
 
 A Villager 
 
 Miss Brent 
 
 Camilla Brent 
 
 Beatrix Brent 
 
 Mrs Veale 
 
 Margaret Veale 
 
 Mrs Hodnutt (a pew opener) 
 
 Amelia 
 
 A Villager 
 
 Mr Gilbert Hare 
 Mr C. W. Somerset 
 Mr John Hare 
 Mr J. Forbes-Robertson 
 Mr Charles Groves 
 Mr R. Cathcart 
 Mr John Byron 
 Mr R. Power 
 Mr Henry Rivers 
 Miss Carlotta Addison 
 Miss Kate Rorke 
 Miss Beatrice Ferrar 
 Miss Dolores Drummond 
 Miss Marie Linden 
 Miss Caroline Elton 
 Miss Webster 
 Miss E. Turtle
 
 244 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 THE TIMES 
 
 Terry's Theatre, 
 
 Denham, Viscount Lurgashall 
 
 Hon. Montague Trimble . 
 
 Percy Egerton-Bompas, M.P. 
 
 Howard 
 
 Timothy M 'Shane, M.P. 
 
 Jelf 
 
 Countess of Ripstow 
 
 Mrs Egerton-Bompas 
 
 Beryl 
 
 Mrs Hooley 
 
 Honoria 
 
 Miss Cazalet 
 
 Lucy Tuck . 
 
 October 1891 
 
 Mr W. T. Lovell 
 Mr Elliott 
 Mr Edward Terry 
 Mr Henry V. Esmond 
 Mr Fred Thorne 
 Mr Albert Sims 
 Miss M. Talbot 
 Miss Fanny Brough 
 Miss Annie Hill 
 Miss Alexis Leighton 
 Miss Barradell 
 Miss Helena Dacre 
 Miss Hetty Dene 
 
 THE AMAZONS 
 
 Court Theatre, 
 
 Earl of Tweenwayes 
 
 Viscount Litterly 
 
 Count de Grival 
 
 The Rev. Roger Minchin 
 
 Fitton 
 
 Youatt . 
 
 Orts 
 
 Marchioness of Castlejordan 
 
 Lady Noeline Belturbet 
 
 Lady Wilhelmina Belturbet 
 
 Lady Thomasin Belturbet 
 
 " Sergeant " Shuter 
 
 March 1893 
 
 Mr Weedon Grossmith 
 Mr F. Kerr 
 Mr Elliott 
 Mr J. Beauchamp 
 Mr W. Ouinton 
 Mr Compton Coutts 
 Mr R. Nainby 
 Miss Rose Leclercq 
 Miss Lily Hanbury 
 Miss Ellaline Terriss 
 Miss Pattie Browne 
 Miss Marianne Caldwell 
 
 THE SECOND MRS TANQUERAY 
 
 St James's Theatre, May 1893 
 Aubrey Tanqueray . . Mr George Alexander 
 
 Paula 
 
 Mrs Patrick Campbell
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINEROS PLA YS 245 
 
 Ellean 
 
 Cayley Drummle . 
 
 Mrs Cortelyon 
 
 Captain Hugh Ardale 
 
 Gordon Jayne, M.D. 
 
 Frank Misquith, Q.C., M.P. 
 
 Sir George Orreyed, Bart 
 
 Lady Orreyed 
 
 Morse 
 
 Miss Maude Millett 
 Mr Cyril Maude 
 Miss Amy Roselle 
 Mr Ben Webster 
 Mr Murray Hathorn 
 Mr Nutcombe Gould 
 Mr A. Vane-Tempest 
 Miss Edith Chester 
 Mr Alfred Holies 
 
 REVIVAL 
 Royalty Theatre, September 1901 
 
 Aubrey Tanqueray 
 Cayley Drummle 
 Captain Hugh Ardale 
 Gordon Jayne 
 Frank Misquith, Q.C 
 
 M.P. 
 Sir George Orreyed 
 
 Morse 
 
 Paula 
 
 Ellean 
 
 Mrs Cortelyon 
 
 Lady Orreyed 
 
 Mr G. S. Titheradge 
 Mr George Arliss 
 Mr Gerald du Maurier 
 Mr J. W. Macdonald 
 
 Mr Caleb Porter 
 Mr Arthur Bromley-Daven- 
 port 
 Mr Sydney Laurence 
 Mrs Patrick Campbell 
 Miss Winifred Fraser 
 Miss Katharine Stewart 
 Miss Rose Dupre' 
 
 THE NOTORIOUS MRS EBBSMITH 
 
 Garrick Theatre, March 1895 
 
 Duke of St Olpherts 
 Sir Sandford Cleeve 
 Lucas Cleeve 
 
 Rev. Amos Winterfield 
 Sir George Brodrick 
 Dr Kirke . 
 Fortune" 
 
 Mr John Hare 
 Mr Ian Robertson 
 Mr Forbes-Robertson 
 Mr C. Aubrey Smith 
 Mr Joseph Carne 
 Mr Fred Thorne 
 Mr Gerald du Maurier
 
 246 
 
 ARTHUR WING PI NERO 
 
 Antonio Peppi 
 Agnes 
 
 Gertrude Thorpe 
 Sybil Cleeve 
 Nella 
 Hepzibah . 
 
 Mr C. F. Caravoglia 
 Mrs Patrick Campbell 
 Miss Ellis Jeffreys 
 Miss Eleanor Calhoun 
 Miss Mary Halsey 
 Mrs Charles Groves 
 
 REVIVAL 
 Royalty Theatre, February 1901 
 
 Agnes 
 
 Lucas Cleeve 
 
 Sybil Cleeve 
 
 Sir Sandford Cleeve 
 
 Duke of St Olpherts 
 
 Gertrude Thorpe . 
 
 The Rev. Amos Winterfield 
 
 Sir George Brodrick 
 
 Dr Kirke . 
 
 Fortune" 
 
 Antonio Peppi 
 
 Nella 
 
 Hepzibah . 
 
 Mrs Patrick Campbell 
 Mr Courtenay Thorpe 
 Miss Beryl Faber 
 Mr Gerald du Maurier 
 Mr George Arliss 
 Miss Winifred Fraser 
 Mr Berte Thomas 
 Mr Howard Sturge 
 Mr F. W. Permain 
 Mr Burton 
 Mr Vincent 
 Miss Italia Conti 
 Miss Leila Repton 
 
 THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT 
 
 Comedy Theatre, October 1895 
 
 Mrs Emptage 
 
 Claude Emptage . 
 
 Justina Emptage 
 
 Theophila Fraser 
 
 Sir Fletcher Portwood, M.P. 
 
 Mrs Cloys 
 
 Rt. Rev. Anthony Cloys, D.D 
 
 Bishop of St Olpherts 
 Alexander Fraser (" Fraser of 
 
 Locheen") 
 
 Miss Henrietta Lindley 
 Mr Aubrey Fitzgerald 
 Miss Esme" Beringer 
 Miss Winifred Emery 
 Mr Cyril Maude 
 Miss Rose Leclercq 
 
 Mr Ernest Cosham 
 
 Mr J. G. Grahame
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PINERO'S PLA YS 247 
 
 John Allingham 
 
 Denzil Shafto 
 
 Peter Elphick 
 
 Horton 
 
 Quaife 
 
 Olive Allingham 
 
 Mrs Ouinton Twelves 
 
 Mr Leonard Boyne 
 Mr J. W. Pigott 
 Mr Stuart Champion 
 Mr Mules Browne 
 Mr J. Byron 
 Miss Lily Hanbury 
 Miss Eva Williams 
 
 THE PRINCESS AND THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 St James's Theatre, March 1897 
 
 Sir George Lamorant, Bart. 
 
 Edward Oriel . 
 
 Mr St Roche . 
 
 Lieut.-Col. Arthur Eave 
 
 Hon. Charles Denstroude 
 
 Sir James Velleret, M.P. 
 
 Mr Adrian Mylls 
 
 Mr Bartley Levan 
 
 Mr Percival Ord 
 
 Maxime Demailly 
 
 Major - General Sir Robert 
 
 Chichele, K.C.B. 
 Count Vladislaus Reviczky 
 General Yanokoff 
 Kara Pasha 
 Col. the Hon. Reginald Ugh 
 
 brook, C.B. . 
 Faulding 
 
 Princess Pannonia 
 Mrs Marsh 
 Annis Marsh 
 Lady Ringstead 
 Lady Chichele . 
 Mrs Sabiston . 
 Mrs St Roche . 
 Blanche Oriel . 
 
 Mr George Alexander 
 Mr H. B. Irving 
 Mr H. V. Esmond 
 Mr C. Aubrey Smith 
 Mr Ivo Dawson 
 Mr R. Dalton 
 Mr George Bancroft 
 Mr Gerald Gurney 
 Mr A Vane-Tempest 
 Mr Arthur Royston 
 
 Mr H. H. Vincent 
 Mr S. Hamilton 
 Mr Richards 
 Mr Robert Soutar 
 
 Mr C. Stafford 
 
 Mr A. W. Munro 
 
 Miss Julia Neilson 
 
 Mrs Kemmis 
 
 Miss Dorothy Hammond 
 
 Miss Rose Leclercq 
 
 Miss Pattie Bell 
 
 Mrs Cecil Raleigh 
 
 Miss Granville 
 
 Miss M. Hackney
 
 248 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Mrs Ware 
 Madame Yanokoff 
 Mrs Ughbrook . 
 Catherine 
 Fay Zuliani 
 
 Miss Julie Opp 
 Miss Ellen Standing 
 Miss Leila Repton 
 Miss Eleanor Aickin 
 Miss Fay Davis 
 
 TRELAWNY OF THE " WELLS " 
 
 Court Theatre, January 1898 
 
 Theatrical Folk 
 
 James Telfer 
 
 Augustus Colpoys 
 
 Ferdinand Gadd . 
 
 Tom Wrench 
 
 Mrs Telfer (Miss Violet Sylvester) 
 
 Avonia Bunn 
 
 Rose Trelawny 
 
 Imogen Parrott . 
 
 O'Dwyer . 
 
 Members of the Company 
 the Pantheon Theatre . 
 
 Hall-keeper at the Pantheon 
 
 of 
 
 Mr Athol Forde 
 Mr E. M. Robson 
 Mr Gerald du Maurier 
 Mr Paul Arthur 
 Mrs E. Saker 
 Miss Pattie Browne 
 Miss Irene Vanbrugh 
 Miss Hilda Spong 
 Mr Richard Purdon 
 
 rMr Vernon, Mr Foster, 
 Mr Milton, and Miss 
 
 I Baird 
 Mr W. H. Quinton 
 
 Non-tJieatrlcal Folk 
 
 Vice - Chancellor 
 
 Gower, Kt. 
 Arthur Gower "\ 
 Clara de FcenixJ 
 Miss Trafalgar Gower 
 Captain de Fcenix 
 Mrs Mossop 
 Mr Ablott 
 Charles 
 Sarah 
 
 Sir William 
 
 his grandchildren 
 
 1 
 
 Mr Dion Boucicault 
 Mr James Erskine 
 Miss Eva Williams 
 Miss Isabel Bateman 
 Mr Sam Sothern 
 Miss Le Thiere 
 Mr Fred Thorne 
 Mr Aubrey Fitzgerald 
 Miss Polly Emery
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MR PIAERO'S PLA YS 249 
 
 THE GAY LORD QUEX 
 Globe Theatre, April 1899 
 
 Mr John Hare 
 
 The Marquis of Quex . 
 
 Sir Chichester Frayne (Gover 
 
 nor of Uumbos, West Coast 
 
 of Africa) 
 Captain Bastling 
 " Valma," otherwise Frank Pol 
 
 litt (a professional palmist) 
 The Duchess of Strood 
 Julia, Countess of Owbridge 
 Mrs Jack Eden 
 Muriel Eden (her sister-in-law) 
 Sophy Fullgarney (a manicurist) 
 Miss Moon 
 Miss Huddle 
 Miss Claridge . 
 Miss Limbird . 
 
 A young 
 patrons 
 garney 
 
 Lady and 
 of Miss 
 
 other 
 Full- 
 
 Servants at Fauncey Court 
 
 Mr Gilbert Hare 
 Mr Charles Chens 
 
 Mr Frank Gillmore 
 Miss Fortescue 
 Miss Fanny Coleman 
 Miss Mona K. Oram 
 Miss Mabel Terry-Lewis 
 Miss Irene Vanbrugh 
 Miss Laura M'Gilvray 
 Miss Doris Templeton 
 Miss Victoria Addison 
 Miss Marion Dolby 
 I Miss K. Carpenter, Mrs 
 
 Copleston, Miss B. 
 
 Coleman, Mr Richard 
 
 Lambart, and Mr Hu- 
 \ bert Evelyn 
 Mr Abbot and Mr 
 
 Lennox 
 
 IRIS 
 
 Garkick Theatre, September 1901 
 
 Frederick Maldonado 
 Laurence Trenwith 
 Croker Harrington 
 Archibald Kane . 
 Colonel WynniiiL; 
 Servant at Mrs Bellamy's 
 Servant at the Villa l'rigno 
 
 Mr Oscar Asche 
 Mr Charles Bryant 
 Mr Dion Boucicault 
 Mr Jerrold Kobertshaw 
 Mr Bayntun 
 Mr Sims 
 Mr Thomas 
 
 R
 
 !5o 
 
 ARTHUR WING PINERO 
 
 Iris Bellamy 
 Fanny Sylvain 
 Aurea Vyse . 
 Mrs Wynning 
 Miss Pinsent 
 Women-servants 
 
 Miss Fay Davis 
 
 Miss Beryl Faber 
 
 Miss Nora Lancaster 
 
 Miss Repton 
 
 Mrs Maesmore Morris 
 
 Miss Deane and Miss Francis 
 
 Cols foil 6^ Coy. Limited, Printers. Edinburgh
 
 €n#tid/i Writer* of To- Way : 
 
 A Series of Monographs on living Authors. 
 
 Each containing Portrait and Bibliography. 
 
 New Volumes, Crown Zvo, doth gilt, y. 6d. each. 
 
 GEO. MEREDITH. By Walter Jekrold. 
 
 ARTHUR W. PINERO. By Hamilton Fyke. 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING. Third and Enlarged Edition by 
 G. F. Monkshood and Geo. Gamble. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. — "He writes fluently, and he has genuine enthusiasm for his subject, 
 and an intimate acquaintance with his work. Moreover, the book has been submitted to 
 .Mr Kipling, whose characteristic letter to the author is set forth on the preface. ... Of 
 Kipling's heroes Mr Monkshood has a thorough understanding, and his remarks on them 
 are worth quoting " (extract follows). 
 
 Scotsman. — " This well-informed volume is plainly sincere. It is thoroughly well studied, 
 and takes pains to answer all the questions that are usually put about Mr Kipling. The writer's 
 enthusiasm carries both himself and his reader along in the most agreeable style. One way 
 and another his book is full of inteiest, and those who wish to talk about Kipling will 
 find it invaluable, while the thousands of his admirers will read it through with delighted 
 enthusiasm.'' 
 
 HALL OAINE. By C. Fred Kenyon. 
 
 OutlOOk. — "This book is well worth reading. 
 Glasgow Evening Times. — " Decidedly interesting." 
 Publishers' Circular. — "A bright, readable volume." 
 
 Liverpool Mercury.— " Mr Kenyon writes fluently and well. His style is interesting, 
 and his book eminently readable." 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. By 
 
 Theodore Wratislaw. 
 
 Daily News. — " Mr Wratislaw's work is always dignified and eloquent, and not without 
 critical acuteness." 
 
 Review Of the Week.—" It is not only a study, it is an entertainment. It has dignity 
 and no dulness. . . . Though an appreciation, it is not an exaggeration. The summing 
 up, though masterly, is not tyrannical. It i rid sufficient, and is as artistically 
 
 written as artistically informed. Author and publisher have combined to make the book one 
 not only to peruse, but to possess. The price is more than moderate, the format more 
 than presentable." 
 
 BRET HARTE, By T. Edgar Pemberton. 
 
 Spectator. — " A highly interesting book." 
 
 Daily Mail. — " An interesting biography full of good thin 
 
 Sunday Sun. — ''A pleasant and interesting men 
 
 Whitehall Review. — "A truly delightful hook. . . . Written in no mean spirit of 
 adulation, it i-. a well-balanced, characteristic, and fair estimate of a personality and a 
 mind far above the average." 
 
 Sunday Special. — "It is an intensely interesting life story Mr Pemberton has to tell. 
 . . . This little volume is eminently readable, full of excellent stories and anecdotes, 
 and is in short a very admirable commentary upon the work of one of the brightest 
 masters of the pen that the great continent over ea has produced.'
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 RFC'O LOURL 
 
 MAY 41983 
 
 at Apr i o 2aoi 
 
 •URT 
 
 197S 
 
 Rl 
 
 I tost. 
 
 315 

 
 ,^ SOUTHERN regional 
 
 LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 M 000 371 113
 
 
 Un