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ESSAYS ON 
 MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
BY 
 
 WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 
 
 The Twentieth Century Theatre 
 
 Essays on Modern Novelists 
 
 Essays on Russian Novelists 
 
 Essays on Books 
 
 Reading the Bible 
 
 Teaching in School and College 
 
 The Advance of the English 
 Novel 
 
 The Advance op English Poetry 
 IN THE Twentieth Century 
 
 Archibald Marshall 
 
 Browning: How to Know Him 
 
 The Beginnings of the English 
 Romantic Movement 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 
 
 Lampson Professor of English Literature 
 at Yale 
 
 Il3eto gorb 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1921 
 
 AU rights reserved 
 
m 
 
 >S41 
 
 Oopyriftht, 1920 and 1921 
 
 By the north AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING 
 COMPANY. 
 
 Copyright, 1920 and 1921 
 By the YALE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Copyright, 1920 
 
 By THE NEW YORK EVENING POST PUBLISHING 
 COMPANY 
 
 COPYKIGHT, 1921, 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1921 
 
TO 
 
 ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY 
 
 PRESIDENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 1899 — 1921 
 WITH LOYALTY AND AFFECTION 
 
 439825 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I have not selected these dramatists be- 
 cause I believe them to be exclusively the 
 best, but because I chose to write about them. 
 Their work interests me, and they are mod- 
 ern. Four of them are alive, and the other 
 two ought to be. 
 
 The last thirty years will probably be re- 
 garded by future historians as a great cre- 
 ative period in the drama. Perhaps con- 
 temporary criticism gains in intimacy what 
 it loses in authority. If some of the Eliza- 
 bethans had only written less about Seneca, 
 and more about Shakespeare ! 
 
 W. L. P. 
 
 Yale University 
 Tuesday, 4 January 1921 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I J. M. Barrie . 1 
 
 II George Bernard Shaw 67 
 
 III John Galsworthy 99 
 
 IV Clyde Fitch 142 
 
 ^ V Maurice Maeterlinck 179 
 
 VI Edmond Rostand 229 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 J. M. BARBIE 
 
 Perhaps the most intelligent attitude to 
 take toward the plays of J. M. Barrie is un- 
 conditional surrender. If one unreservedly 
 yields one's mind and heart to their enfold- 
 ing charm, then one will understand them. 
 Otherwise never. Understanding of many 
 things comes only through submission. A 
 work of art is as sublime as a work of nature ; 
 no one can appreciate natural scenery with- 
 out yielding to it. Men with beam-eyes are 
 always looking for motes. We know that 
 there are human creatures who find the Grand 
 Canyon of the Colorado disappointing. 
 
 For it is an unfortunate fact that many 
 persons lack the blessed gift of admiration. 
 These self-deceived worthies imagine that 
 their powers of criticism are sharpened by 
 the absence of enthusiasm, when they are 
 really destroyed. Tolstoi was one of the 
 
 1 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 first creative artists and one of the last 
 critics. His absurdity as a critic rose from 
 his lack of admiration, from his inability to 
 surrender. He often complained that friends 
 would not listen to him when he tried to con- 
 vince them that Shakespeare was a bad 
 writer. **I spoke to Turgenev about it, and 
 he would not argue; he only turned sadly 
 away.'' Naturally; he was sorry for Tol- 
 stoi. Why argue with a blind man who in- 
 sists there is nothing in the world worth 
 looking at? 
 
 J. M. Barrie is the foremost English-writ- 
 ing dramatist of our time, and his plays, 
 taken together, make the most important con- 
 tributiQn to the English drama since Sheri- 
 dan. He unites the chief qualities of his con- 
 temporaries, and yet the last word to describe 
 his work would be the word Qfilfifilic- For he 
 • is the most original of them all. He has the 
 intellectual grasp of Galsworthy, the moral, 
 earnestness of Jones, the ironical mirth of 
 Synge, the unearthly fantasy of Dunsany, 
 the consistent logic of Ervine, the 'w^it of 
 Shaw, the technical excellence of Pinero. In 
 addition to these qualities, he has a combi- 
 nation of charm and tenderness possessed by 
 
 2 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 no other man. I am aware that the last two 
 sentences will seem to many readers mere 
 hyperbole. I will refer such doubters to the 
 published plays. 
 
 Years ago, that grand old golfer, Harry 
 Vardon, said, **It is easier to make a repu- 
 tation than to keep it.'* This truth applies 
 to works of art as well as to golf. Think 
 how enormously the reputation made by The 
 Little Miyiister was heightened by The Ad- 
 mirable Crichton, Peter Pan, and What 
 Every Woman Knows! Every woman knows 
 now that while no one will be able to guess 
 the theme of Barrie's next play, nor its con- 
 clusion after the first act, it will be worth 
 seeing and hearing, it will not disappoint. 
 It is something to have maintained a high 
 level of production for twenty-three years, 
 and to have gained the confidence of hun- 
 dreds of thousands. 
 
 J. M. Barrie ought to be the happiest man 
 in the world. Not because he has contributed 
 so much happiness to so many people, though 
 that ought to be a source of joy in dark hours, 
 but because he is one of those extremely rare 
 artists who can actually embody their con- 
 ceptions. His dreams come true. At his 
 
 3 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 desk, he is visited by visions so fantastic that 
 he must often laugh aloud in solitude; but 
 the amazing thing is that he can make the 
 whole world see them as he sees them. The 
 tragic disparity between conception and exe- 
 cution that tortures even accomplished art- 
 ists, vanishes here before the creative power 
 of genius. 
 
 That literary men cannot write plays is a 
 lusty myth. Authors of inane, reverberating 
 claptrap never tire of repeating it. Yet the 
 three foremost playwrights of the modem 
 English Theatre, Shaw, Galsworthy, Barrie, 
 were all distinguished novelists before any- 
 one thought of them in connexion with the 
 footlights. So was St. John Ervine; Dun- 
 sany was a writer of prose tales, and John 
 Drinkwater a professional poet. To com- 
 mand an excellent literary style is not neces- 
 sarily a fatal handicap. 
 
 Although Mr. Barrie had written a number 
 of books before The Little Minister appeared 
 in 1891, it was this thrilling story that liter- 
 ally spread his fame over the wide earth. 
 One of the most fortunate results of its publi- 
 cation was that it attracted the attention of 
 Stevenson, on the other side of the world. 
 
 4 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 Stevenson's heart was always in Scotland; 
 and the appearance of a good book by a Scots- 
 man gave him a thrill quite unlike any other 
 sensation. Twice he essayed to write a let- 
 ter to his young countryman, and succeeded 
 only at the third attempt. He seems to have 
 been instantly aware of the extraordinary 
 powers of the new man, and equally certain 
 that The Little Minister was only a prologue 
 to the swelling act. In February 1892, Stev- 
 enson overcame a shyness characteristic of 
 both men (surely not of all Scots) and wrote, 
 **you are one of four that have come to the 
 front since I was watching and had a corner 
 of my own to watch, and there is no reason, 
 unless it be in these mysterious tides that 
 ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder 
 the works of poor scribblers, why you should 
 not do work of the best order. . . . We are 
 both Scots besides, and I suspect both rather 
 Scotty Scots. . . . Lastly, I have gathered 
 we had both made our stages in the metrop- 
 olis of the winds, our VirgiPs *grey metrop- 
 olis,* and I count that a lasting bond. No 
 place so brands a man.'' In December of 
 the same year, having read A Window in 
 Thrums, Stevenson wrote again, **I don't say 
 
 5 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 that it is better than The Minister . . . but 
 somehow it is — well, I read it last anyway, 
 and it's by Barrie. And he's the man for 
 my money. The glove is a great page ; it is 
 startlingly original, and as true as death and 
 judgment. . . . Thomas affects me as a lie 
 — I beg your pardon ; doubtless he was some- 
 body you knew, that leads people so far 
 astray. The actual is not the true. I am 
 proud to think you are a Scotchman. . . . 
 There are two of us now that the Shirra 
 [Walter Scott] might have patted on the 
 head. And please do not think when I thus 
 seem to bracket myself with you, that I am 
 wholly blinded with vanity. Jess is beyond 
 my frontier line ; I could not touch her skirt ; 
 I have no such glamour of twilight on my 
 pen. I am a capable artist ; but it begins to 
 look to me as if you were a man of genius. 
 Take care of yourself for my sake. *' A year 
 later, December 1893, at the close of a long- 
 ish letter, Stevenson was bold enough to 
 write, ** Whereupon I make you my salute 
 with the firm remark that it is time to be done 
 with trifling and give us a great book.'' De- 
 spite his enthusiasm for Thrums and The 
 Little Minister, Stevenson seems to have 
 
 6 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 known well enough that Barrie would sur- 
 pass them; anyhow, he did. He replied by 
 writing Sentimental Tommy, which Steven- 
 son never lived to see in print, but the char- 
 acter and plot awakened his liveliest curi- 
 osity, all the more that in some features he 
 was the hero ; had he lived to see it completed, 
 he would have welcomed it as one of the great 
 British novels, which it undoubtedly is. The 
 evidences of amateurishness in The Little 
 Minister vanished, and we have the work of 
 a master's hand. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that in the early 
 nineties, two novelists of genius — who were 
 later to become intimate friends — were both 
 struggling to win distinction on the British 
 stage; J. M. Barrie and Henry James. Af- 
 ter a few false starts, the former fairly sur- 
 passed expectation; the latter totally failed. 
 The reasons for this failure are conclusively 
 though unconsciously given by the aspirant 
 himself, in the wonderful Letters, published 
 in 1920. And the main reason is not because 
 Mr. James failed to master the technique of 
 the stage, while Mr. Barrie succeeded; the 
 failure was inherent in the temperament and 
 mental processes of the great American. In 
 
 7 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 order to achieve the success in the theatre 
 that he reached in short stories, novels, and 
 literary criticism, Henry James would have 
 required a play twelve hours long, a dialogue 
 enunciated with the deliberation of a glacier, 
 and an intellectual audience endowed with 
 divine patience. For the effect produced in 
 his novels — of which I am almost a fanatical 
 admirer — is produced by the accumulation of 
 atoms; one pauses in reading, one reflects, 
 one reads back, one finally sees; and then, 
 after finishing the last page, one really ought 
 to read the whole book through again in the 
 light of the conclusion. There is hardly time 
 for that method at the theatre ; there, instead 
 of an effect produced by a large collection of 
 tiny units, one word, one gesture, one smile, 
 or one silence must do it all. 
 
 Herein lies one of the chief elements in Mr. 
 Barriers success. He reveals a situation as 
 a lightning flash reveals an object in gross 
 darkness. It is probably necessary for ordi- 
 nary aspirants to study the * technique of 
 the drama'^; I do not know, for I suppose I 
 am the only white man who never wrote a 
 play. But it is not necessary for genius. If 
 a prize had been offered in 1605 for the best 
 
 8 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 treatise on dramatic construction, I do not 
 think Shakespeare could have secured honour- 
 able mention; while it is probable that Ben 
 Jonson would have carried off the palm. 
 Mr. Barrie is a great playwright because he 
 understands human nature, knows how to 
 represent it in conversation and in action, 
 has enormous sympathy with his characters, 
 and what is equally important, has enormous 
 sympathy with the audience. His plays are 
 full of action ; and yet the story of each play 
 can usually be given in a few sentences. 
 What is it then, keeps the audience at 
 strained attention? If some character ask 
 a question, we would not miss the answer for 
 all the w^orld. His people capture us almost 
 instantly, because, while composing the play, 
 their creator himself felt their reality. They 
 were right there, in the room with him. He 
 saw their faces and heard their voices. In a 
 conversation with Mr. John D. Williams, he 
 said, ^^It is my contemptible weakness, that if ll 
 I say a character smiled vacuously, I must ' 
 smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I 
 frown or leer ; if he is a coward and given to 
 contortions, I cringe, or t^vist my legs until I 
 have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow 
 
 9 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 with him, eat with him, and gnaw my mus- 
 tache with him. If the character be a lady 
 with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify 
 you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of 
 the astounding versatility of an actor who is 
 stout and lean on the same evening, but what 
 is he to the novelist who is a dozen persons 
 within the hour? Morally, I fear, we must 
 deteriorate ; but that is a subject I may wisely 
 edge away from.'' 
 
 Now this method, so delightfully described 
 in the above conversation, is similar to the 
 method used by the founder of modern 
 French dramatic realism, Henry Becque. 
 While he was writing his masterpiece, Les 
 CorheauXj in which every person has an al- 
 most intolerable air of reality, the author 
 would rise, stand in front of a tall mirror, 
 and go through an extraordinary series of 
 gesticulations and grimaces corresponding to 
 the appearance of his imagined men and 
 women. 
 
 There is no doubt that shyness — so char- 
 acteristic of the literary as distinguished 
 from the rhetorical temperament — is an im- 
 mense asset to a creative artist. Being a 
 
 10 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 mute in general conversation, especially in 
 youth, having no part to play and praying to 
 escape from, rather than to attract the gen- 
 eral attention, the unavoidable hours spent 
 in society, in eating, and in travel, are spent 
 in acute observation. Men and women who 
 cannot listen — who talk incessantly — are al- 
 most invariably poor judges of human na- 
 ture ; their loquacity is both cause and effect 
 of this ignorance. Mr. Barrie, more ques- 
 tioned than questioning, is an admirable^ 
 listener; in a long conversation I once had 
 with him, I was both gratified and ashamed 
 by the serious attention I received. The 
 capacity to observe, combined with an endless 
 capacity for human sympathy, are evident in 
 all his literary work. 
 
 A certain gentleness goes with understand- 
 ing; your robustious fellows do not know 
 much about men and women. There are 
 many men whose family fireside conversa- 
 tion is a succession of stump speeches; do 
 their wives understand them or do they not? 
 Do you think they understand their wives? 
 Is not the silent listener at the hearth often a 
 judge as well as an audience? 
 
 11 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 (By the way, how much better it is to listen 
 to a stump speech that sounds like intimate 
 conversation, than to etc.) 
 
 The year 1891 was memorable, for in that 
 year Barrie published his first famous novel. 
 The Little Minister ^ and made his first ap- 
 pearance on any stage. With Mr. Marriott- 
 Watson as collaborator, he produced a drama 
 that had a run of exactly one day. The play 
 was Richard Savage, and I wish I knew where 
 I could lay my hands on a copy, for it would 
 be interesting not only in itself, but for its 
 ex post facto potentialities. Some twenty- 
 two years ago, Mr. Edward Morton gave an 
 entertaining account of it, by which we learn 
 that it was a romantic drama of the eight- 
 eenth century, with real persons, Steele, 
 Savage, and Jacob Tonson. The prologue 
 was written by W. E. Henley, and the scenes 
 that followed were filled with plots and coun- 
 ter-plots, strange oaths and the clashing of 
 swords. Mr. Morton says that the future 
 dramatist is revealed *4n the scene in which 
 Steele frees two lovers from an irksome en- 
 gagement to marry, from which both are 
 eager to be released, and leaves each disposed 
 to think the other has been called upon to 
 
 12 
 
J. M. BAKRIE 
 
 make a sacrifice. ' ^ This situation, I may add, 
 Barrie repeated in Walker, London. 
 
 One would think that the prodigious suc- 
 cess of The Little Minister and the failure of 
 Richard Savage would indicate to the author 
 his true *^line.'* But Barrie, encouraged by 
 success, was inspired by failure, for in the 
 same year he produced two other plays of no 
 importance, Ibsen's Ghost and Becky Sharp, 
 The former was an unsuccessful parody on 
 Ibsen, the preliminary necessary study of the 
 Scandinavian genius bearing fruit later in 
 The Twelve-Pound Look and in The Will, 
 The other trifle was made by arranging the 
 language of Thackeray. 
 
 These three finger-exercises merely indi- 
 cate gromng facility in practice ; all depends 
 on some element outside of the author 's mind. 
 He hitched his wagon, not to a star, but to 
 the nearest convenient post. In 1892, how- 
 ever, he wrote a purely original play, which, 
 devoid of even a suggestion of literary value, 
 indicated mastery of the playwright's art. 
 This is Walker, London, produced at Toole's 
 Theatre, London, on 25 February 1892. The 
 entire action takes place on a houseboat 
 on the Thames, and the humour — it is pure 
 
 13 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 farce — arises from a case of mistaken iden- 
 tity. The ideas in Ibsen's DolVs House — 
 which are to be taken seriously later in The 
 Twelve-Pound Look, are plentifully ridiculed 
 here. The strangest thing about Walker — 
 when one remembers the later plays — is that 
 it betrays no sign of its author's literary abil- 
 ity. The difficulty with most plays is that 
 they are all talk and no action. Barrie 
 seemed to feel that danger, for we have here 
 a rapid succession of farcical situations — 
 only the small boy showing anything resem- 
 bling the quality of the later work. The 
 ** technique'' is admirable; the playwright set 
 himself a difficult task, and performed it in 
 the smoothest manner. The moderate suc- 
 cess of this amusing farce was a real peril to 
 its author, for had he continued in this vein, 
 he would have been a popular caterer, instead 
 of a great dramatist. Even so it seems in- 
 credible that the creator of The Admirable 
 Crichton can be the manufacturer of Walker, 
 London. Perhaps, having learned technique 
 in that farce, he felt that it had served him 
 well. 
 
 The next year, with Conan Doyle as part- 
 ner, he wrote Jane Annie; or the Good Con- 
 
 14 
 
J. M. BAERIE 
 
 duct Prize, in which the small boy Caddie was 
 the chief character and made the success of 
 the piece. 
 
 Although neither Walker, London nor Jane 
 Annie gave Barrie any reputation, they indi- 
 cate his determination to succeed in a difficult 
 art. He must have written to Stevenson 
 about the former, and perhaps confided to 
 him something of his ambition, for in Novem- 
 ber 1892, we find a significant sentence in a 
 letter from R. L. S. After outlining the plot 
 of what was to be his masterpiece, Weir of 
 Hermiston, Stevenson says, ** Braxfield [Her- 
 miston] is my grand premier; or since you 
 are so much involved in the British drama, 
 let me say my heavy lead. ' * 
 
 After four years of faithful effort, he pro- 
 duced in 1895 The Professor^s Love Story, 
 his first successful play, which was revived 
 in London in the season of 1916-1917. This 
 has always been a favourite of its author's, 
 not merely for the charm of sentiment in it, 
 but because it gave him public recognition as 
 a dramatist. 
 
 In the year 1897 his fame as a playwright 
 equalled his fame as a novelist — and the same 
 book is responsible for this right and left 
 
 15 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 shot, The Little Minister. It was the fashion 
 at that time to turn *^best sellers'' into plays, 
 a fashion that began with Trilby and The 
 Prisoner of Zenda, and continued until every 
 one wearied of it. Nearly all of these dram- 
 atised novels were grotesquely inept; and 
 perhaps Mr. Barrie was led to make his at- 
 tempt in order to show how it ought to be 
 done. ^*If the public will insist on having 
 their favourite fiction-characters incarnate, 
 let us have the process artistic." The au- 
 thor did not hesitate to alter many details, for 
 he was forced to change time-exposures into 
 snap-shots. The play is even better than the 
 book — each person is sharply individualised, 
 and by a word or a look both character and 
 biography are revealed. Jean is walking to 
 church, and on being accosted, almost intones 
 the following : * * I can neither hear nor see. I 
 am wearing my best alpaca. ' ' 
 
 In those days Mr. Norman Hapgood was a 
 professional dramatic critic. He went to see 
 The Little Minister five times, and it never 
 staled. He wrote, ^ * The public like The Lit- 
 tle Minister, and there is more skill in it than 
 in the whole work of many playwrights who 
 pretend to a place just ahead of the age. 
 
 16 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 There is no superfluous word, scene, or move- 
 ment, no excrescence and no self-conscious- 
 ness, but a steady movement carries the story 
 directly, with a delicate, artificial, and yet 
 human touch, through devices as fresh as 
 they are moderate. The comedy line just 
 this side of farce is followed with an unerring 
 ability which makes the play — cheerful, easy 
 and distinct — as charming to the simple as 
 it is to the shrewd/* 
 
 There is another reason why we should al- 
 ways hold this drama in grateful remem- 
 brance. It was the establishment in America 
 of an alliance between Mr. Barrie and Mr. ' 
 Charles Frohman as manager, with Miss 
 Maude Adams as chief impersonator — a posi- 
 tion for which she was foreordained. Al- 
 though I do not believe either in the man- 
 agerial monopoly or in the star-system, and 
 will never cease to pray for that happy time 
 when all the cities in America can have the 
 opportunity of seeing a new Barrie play at 
 the same moment — if we must have the mon- 
 opoly and the star, nothing could have been 
 better than this alliance in business and in 
 art. Three things may be remembered to the 
 honour of Charles Frohman: he was loved, 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 trusted, respected by J. M. Barrie ; he never 
 made a written contract with anybody, his 
 word always being sufficient; just before the 
 Lusitania sank, on being asked if he were 
 afraid of death, he replied with a smile, 
 **Why, I have always looked upon death as 
 the greatest of all adventures/' 
 
 The stunning success of The Little Minis- 
 ter was followed by six lean years, during 
 which Mr. Barrie 's career as a dramatist was 
 identified in the popular mind with the clever 
 remodeling of one sensational novel. In 
 1900 appeared the sequel to Sentimental 
 Tommy, called Tommy and Grisel, which is 
 perhaps as good as most sequels. Senti- 
 mental Tommy gave evidence of inspiration ; 
 Tommy and Grizel of perspiration. After he 
 had cleansed his bosom of this perilous stuff, 
 he made the year 1903 memorable by produc- 
 ing three original plays. Little Mary, a farce ; 
 Quality Street, a light comedy; The Admir- 
 able Crichton, the greatest English drama of 
 modern times. 
 
 The first of these is a trifle light as air; it 
 has the essence of laughter. The second is 
 full of grace and full of charm; it will live 
 longer than thousands of so-called serious 
 
 18 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 plays. It was highly successful during its 
 first season, and twelve years later was re- 
 vived with every sign of popular approba- 
 tion. The ingredients are kindly mixed ; it is 
 made up of humour, pathos, romance, and 
 mystery. Like his first attempt, it is a 
 romantically- realistic drama of the eight- 
 eenth century, but this time the hand that 
 fashioned it had attained mastery. When it 
 revisited the stage during the World War, 
 the opening scene startled the audience: 
 **Miss Fanny is reading aloud from a library 
 book while the others sew or knit. They are 
 making garments for our brave soldiers now 
 far away fighting the Corsican ogre." 
 
 As a series of pictures. Quality Street has 
 all the charm of Cranford; as a stage-play it 
 is a delicate bit of confectionery, a Whimsy 
 cake. But The Admirable Crichton is meat 
 for men. It has given solid nourishment to 
 democratic ideals for seventeen years and if 
 its substance could be universally and thor- 
 oughly absorbed, it really would make the 
 world safe for democracy. Men of letters 
 have always done more for democracy than 
 statesmen. 
 
 I doubt if we shall ever penetrate to the 
 19 
 
 / 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 last significance, to the final essence, of the 
 play. Every time I read it there is a new 
 revelation, with a hint of something vastly 
 important not plainly shown. Its philosophy 
 contains a disturbing challenge to the audi- 
 ence, as every good drama should do. In- 
 stead of a manufactured puzzle with a trick 
 solution — a common notion of what plays 
 should be — it leaves the spectators unsatis- 
 y fied. Instead of merely drawing our atten- 
 tion to the characters in the story, it directs 
 imperiously our attention to the structure of 
 ^ society, to life itself. Call it unreal, call it 
 fantastical, if you like; its scenery may be 
 romantic, but its thought is realistic. It is 
 founded on the basal traits in human nature, 
 and on the history of the development of 
 human society. Crichton is a pragmatist; 
 the Truth is that power, not ourselves, which / 
 works for efiiciency. Nature is his goddess ; | 
 and the natural life in London may be exactly ( 
 contrary to the natural life on a desert island. *^ 
 He believes in the only true form of democ- 
 racy — not the nose-counting method, but a 
 system of representative government, where 
 the best men are chosen not as the agents of 
 the majority that elected them, but as free- 
 
 20 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 minded rulers, who will use their own judg- 
 ment for the best interests of those less fitted 
 to assume responsibility. 
 
 Crichton is a born aristocrat, like every 
 superman. His disgust at the counterfeit 
 radicalism of Lord Loam in the early scenes, 
 where an unnatural tea-party once a month 
 is forced on the unwilling household above 
 and below stairs, is the logical antagonism 
 of a man who rules below as his Lordship 
 rules above. As soon as the conventions of 
 society disappear before the importunate 
 necessities of nature, we find Crichton not 
 only ruling, but surrounding himself with all 
 the outward signs of majesty, even as the 
 First Consul became the Emperor. 
 
 In a very wise book we are told that among 
 those things for which the earth is disquieted, 
 and which it cannot bear, is a servant when 
 he reigneth. The earth presumably means 
 organised society. Many instances of the 
 failure of this experiment occurred in the 
 early days of both the French and the Rus- 
 sian revolutions; but when by a single acci- 
 dent, the centuries of human development are 
 swept away, and the complexities of life are 
 transformed into a simple question of exist- 
 
 21 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ence, service and peerage are seen to be ex- 
 ternal as Piccadilly garments; the strongest 
 man comes to the top. It is notable that on 
 the island was only one book ; that book was 
 brought there by Crichton, and the dramatist 
 repaid the kindness of the poet who wrote a 
 prologue for his first play, by making this 
 book a volume of Henley's poems. 
 » It is clear that the play is a tragedy, not 
 only for Crichton, but for Lady Mary — ^yes, 
 perhaps for Lord Loam when the change 
 from open air, exercise, simple food, to their 
 opposites, brings on some horrible disease of 
 the liver. For the very organisation of so- 
 ciety, necessary though it be, is contrary to 
 the natural instincts of man. You cannot 
 have your cake and eat it too, which so many 
 grown-up children are forever trying to ac- 
 complish. If it is pleasant to have well- 
 heated-and-lighted houses, opportunities for 
 learning and for pleasure, adequate police 
 protection, so it is decidedly unpleasant to 
 conform every day and every night to the 
 artificial restraints of convention. There is 
 a price for everything and that price must 
 be paid. Crichton knew well enough that it 
 was better for Lady Mary to live in London 
 
 22 
 
J. M. BABRIE 
 
 than on the island, and that in London a 
 reigning servant would be unendurable. 
 Their natural instincts therefore had to be 
 crucified, as natural instincts are every day 
 and everywhere. Remember the stress laid 
 on the word * ' natural ' ' throughout the play 
 — it is Crichton's touchstone for truth. 
 Their parting is tragic in the extreme. All 
 parting of lovers is tragic. And the reason 
 why this comedy is a tragedy is not because 
 either Crichton or Lady Mary falters at the 
 essential moment, but because the conditions 
 of life make their mutual happiness impossi- 
 ble. They may eventually attain happiness 
 in separation, but never together. The 
 sharp pain of the unspoken farewell may 
 eventually become the fragrance of rosemary. 
 But n(m- these predestined natural lovers 
 part, arid awake from a beautiful dream to 
 cold facts. 
 
 If we may judge by the newspaper criti- 
 cism of the London revival of 1919 — which of 
 course was immensely successful, for people 
 forget how good Barrie is till they hear him 
 again — a slightly different ending was pro- 
 vided to the play. I cannot help doubting 
 this; but if it be true, what were Barriers 
 
 23 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 reasons? Was it a sop to vociferous democ- 
 racy, or was it a result of the war, which 
 in real life would have provided another con- 
 clusion? For during the war Crichtons cer- 
 tainly came to the front, in every sense of 
 that word. Anyhow, if it were changed by 
 the author, we may for once, permissibly 
 doubt his wisdom. The ending in the book 
 is perfect. 
 
 Lady Mary. Tell me one thing; you have not 
 lost your courage ? 
 
 Crichton. No, my lady. 
 
 {She goes. He turns out the lights.) 
 
 The dramatic critic, A. B. Walkle>, pro- 
 tested in The Times against changing the 
 flawless close. But either his recollection of 
 the first performance played him false, or 
 else Barrie omitted — as he did elsewhere — 
 some spoken lines when he put the play into 
 the permanent form of print. Mr. Walkley, 
 in his review of the revival, says of Crichton : 
 **He left you with the announcement of his 
 intention of settling down with Tweeny in a 
 little ^pub' in the Harrow Road. This struck 
 the perfect note, the final word of irony. '^ 
 Now in the book, there is no mention of a 
 
 24 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 'pub,' nor indeed of any future plan, al- 
 though of course everyone foresees the mar- 
 riage of Crichton with the adoring Tweeny. 
 Mr. Walker continues: **You didn't need to 
 be reminded of the superman. You could do 
 that for yourself. But now the author in- 
 sists upon superfluously reminding you. 
 The Harrow Road *pub' has been dropped 
 out. Crichton glares at his old island sub- 
 jects, and they cower with reminiscence. He 
 glares at the formidable Lady Brocklehurst, 
 and she, even she, quails. Lady Mary re- 
 minds him of the past, and even a redinte- 
 gratio amoris is hinted at. In short, the au- 
 thor * hedges' — * hedges' against his own old 
 irony, that perfect thing." 
 
 The book was printed long after the first 
 stage success, and before the revival criti- 
 cised by Mr. Walkley. Is it not possible that 
 the revival follows the text, and that either 
 the actors gave a false interpretation, or that 
 the critic missed even more than the *pub'? 
 Let us hope so. 
 
 In 1920 a French translation of The Admir- 
 able Crichton was produced on the Paris 
 stage, by the clever actor-manager, Firmin 
 Gemier. It was put on at the Theatre An- 
 
 25 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 toine, the most hospitable of all Parisian 
 play-houses. The version followed the Eng- 
 lish text closely, and there, at all events, the 
 ending was not altered, for Crichton is defi- 
 nitely a servant in the last act. The audience 
 gave every sign of enthusiasm and delight, 
 for which I am glad. Paris needs Barrie as 
 much as America needs him. Additional 
 humour was provided by the extraordinary 
 discussion which arose in the foyer as to how 
 Crichton should be pronounced; Creeton, 
 Crikton, and Crishton were confidently cham- 
 pioned, and Paris had a new subject of table- 
 talk. According to the Christian Science 
 Monitor, which gave an excellent account of 
 the French production in its issue for 7 Sep- 
 tember 1920, the Parisians now know what 
 a ^^Barrieism" is. *^Sir James enriched the 
 English language with a new phrase — *to 
 Barrie.' A *Barrieism' was something that 
 could be recognised and * to Barrie ' was to do 
 something that could hardly be otherwise de- 
 scribed. ' ' 
 
 In the cinema version provided for Ameri- 
 can consumption, I feared that in a land 
 which loves to hear the scream of the eagle, 
 / the play would end with the marriage of Lady 
 
 26 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 Mary and Crichton. That error was not 
 committed ; in order to explain to the specta- 
 tors, always eager for sentiment, the impos- 
 sibility of this union, a lady was introduced 
 who had married her chauffeur, with disas- 
 trous results. *' You see, dear friends, it sim- 
 ply won't do.'' The final scene takes us to a 
 distant farm in America — where Crichton and 
 Tweeny live happily forever after. This is 
 not a bad guess at what might easily be the 
 sequel to Mr. Barrie's play. Back to the 
 land — for a wide western farm is the nearest 
 approach to the conditions of an island. 
 
 The iilm play unfortunately suffered under 
 the Biblical title Male and Female — which for 
 that matter might be the title of nine-tenths 
 of the motion pictures — and was also marred 
 in the opening scenes by some gratuitous and 
 inexcusable vulgarity. After that the play 
 progressed extremely well ; the pictures were 
 admirable, and the story dramatically and 
 skilfully presented. Many have felt that **a 
 protest ought to be made" against putting 
 Barrie on the screen. Personally, under 
 present conditions, I rejoice that it was done, 
 and I hope to see Peter Pan and other mas- 
 terpieces. If we had a repertory company in 
 
 27 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 every town, with the right to produce these 
 plays on the legitimate stage, then it would 
 be unfortunate to present them only in pic- 
 tures; but, as this drama itself teaches us, 
 the natural instinct of healthy Americans to 
 see good plays is thwarted by a system of 
 theatrical monopoly; and it is better to see 
 Barrie on the screen than not to see him at 
 all. And it is better to see Barrie on the 
 screen than to see almost anything else. 
 
 Apart from the profound ideas expressed 
 in this work with such a combination of mirth 
 and sentiment, the situations are truly dra- 
 matic from beginning to end, one more proof 
 of how this man of letters does not depend 
 wholly or even mainly on the written word. 
 If you stop to think of it, there is no more 
 dramatic figure than a butler — consider 
 Fanny's First Play; consider Dear Brutus; 
 consider the frequency with which the figure 
 of a butler appears on the modern stage. 
 He is picturesque and even startling; have 
 you reflected on the astounding process of 
 civilisation which has brought about such a 
 situation as that of a man handing food three 
 times a day to healthy and able-bodied indi- 
 viduals ? 
 
 28 
 
J. M. BABEIE 
 
 Lady Brocklehurst, terrible as an army 
 with banners, an old woman who must bring 
 joy to the heart of Hugh Walpole, probes into 
 human nature by a method so simple it is 
 a wonder that it is not more generally 
 adopted. How should I feel? what should I 
 say if I were in his position! It is the old 
 Charles Eeade formula, Put Yourself in His 
 Place. We are all alike in sensations and 
 reactions and impulses; but we differ so 
 radically in imagination that the truth re- 
 mains in darkness when it might easily be 
 brought into the light. 
 
 Owing to the powerful impression made 
 by this play, it is probable that in the minds 
 of most people to-day the Admirable Crich- 
 ton means Barriers butler ; perhaps it will not 
 be an insult to readers if I recall the fact that 
 the original person who earned the adjective 
 was James Crichton, born in Scotland, 19 
 August 1560, famous for his immense learn- 
 ing and accomplishments. At the age of 
 seventeen, it is said (I doubt it) that he was 
 the master of twelve languages. Thus 
 equipped, he traveled on the Continent, en- 
 listed in the French army, later went to Italy, 
 engaged in public debates, wrote clever Latin 
 
 29 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 poems, and was dexterous with the sword. 
 He had a four days debate with the faculty 
 of the University of Padua on the true mean- 
 ing of the Aristotelian philosophy, completely 
 vanquishing those Pundits. In Mantua he 
 killed a famous swordsman in a duel that at- 
 tracted as much attention as a modern prize- 
 fight. Finally he was murdered in a street 
 attack at night. He left this world with 
 a magnificent gesture, for recognising the 
 leader of the assassins as his pupil, he offered 
 him his own sword handle first; the gentle- 
 man accepted it and slew him. This hap- 
 pened in July 1583, the Admirable Crichton 
 being twenty-two years of age. If the half 
 of his biography be true, Mr. Barriers hero 
 is not necessarily overdrawn. 
 
 The first two of the plays released for sep- 
 arate publication were Quality Street and 
 The Admirable Crichton, Each appeared in 
 a sumptuous large volume, with so many 
 illustrations by Hugh Thomson that it is the 
 next thing to being in the theatre. Mr. 
 Thomson, who was born only a few days after 
 J. M. Barrie, had an almost uncanny under- 
 standing of these dramas; the pictures are 
 exceedingly beautiful and worthy of all 
 30 
 
J. M. BAERIE 
 
 praise as interpretations. I wish the com- 
 plete plays were in this form. 
 
 In the year 1904 came Peter Pan, and it i 
 had a succes fou. This is no spring jflower, / 
 or hothouse plant; it is a hardy perennial, \ 
 and will delight thousands of spectators after / 
 we shall have all made our exit from the 
 planet. It is one of the most profound, orig- 
 inal, and universal plays of our epoch. No 
 London Christmas would be complete without 
 it. It is just as appeaUng in 1920 as it was 
 in 1914, and there is no reason why it should 
 not produce the same effect in 2020. It is the 
 rapture of children, the joy of old age; and 
 it ought to take its place with Rohinson 
 Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, The Pied Piper 
 Story, Alice in Wonderland, and other 
 classics founded on some eternal principle of 
 youth. 
 
 At all events, in this play, Mr. Barrie cre- 
 ated a character, a personality; Peter Pan 
 is an addition to literature and an addition 
 to humanity. He is a real person — already 
 proverbial — and it seems incredible that he 
 can ever be forgotten. 
 
 No wonder the famous author enjoyed 
 Daisy Ashford^s Young Visiters; the man 
 
 31 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 that wrote Peter Pan was the first man in the 
 world to appreciate the character and adven- 
 tures of Mr. Salteena. George Meredith said 
 of Henry James 's book, The American Scene, 
 **It is really a tour of Henry James's in- 
 side. ' ' Well, the play Peter Pan, with all its 
 objective pictures and thrilling climaxes, is 
 really a tour of the inside of a child's mind. 
 The play, supposedly written by a child, is a 
 child 's view of the world ; the tick-tock croco- 
 dile, the pirate smoking cigarettes like a 
 candelabra, the fairies and the flying are all 
 romantically true to life. Yet it is nowhere 
 invertebrate ; it is not a series of pretty pic- 
 tures, it is emphatically a play, and no one 
 but a great dramatist could have produced it. 
 
 It is curious that there should have been 
 any doubt as to the audience's reception of 
 the question — Do you believe in fairies? 
 Audiences will always respond to an appeal 
 to what is best in them. This question and 
 answer united stage and auditorium, and 
 made every listener an integral part of the 
 play. 
 
 As stodgy elders frequently fear that the 
 reading of detective stories will draw boys 
 into a career of crime, so there was one New 
 
 32 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 York winter when many feared that Peter 
 Pan would cause appalling infant mortality. 
 Nor, from any point of view, could their fears 
 be called groundless. All the children were 
 trying to fly, and wished to begin at the near- 
 est window. Nurses literally had their hands 
 full. 
 
 I said that Mr. Barrie was fortunate in 
 having so fine an artist as Hugh Thomson to 
 illustrate his plays. He is equally fortunate 
 in the bronze statue of Peter Pan in Kensing- 
 ton Gardens. It seems almost miraculous 
 that such a creation of air could be so beauti- 
 fully expressed in a rigid form. But the 
 bronze figure is a marvel of lightness and 
 grace, and has given abiding pleasure to 
 the playwright. As a rule, statues are not 
 erected to persons until after their death. 
 In this instance, it was hopeless to await such 
 an event. 
 
 For that matter not merely the statue, but 
 the Serpentine and the island have now, in 
 addition to their historical associations, a 
 new literary geography. 
 
 George Llewellyn Davies was the little boy 
 who was the original of Mr. Barriers Peter 
 Pan. He was sick in bed when the first per- 
 
 33 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 formance of the play was given, but tliroug'}! 
 the kindness of Charles Frohman the com- 
 pany gave a special presentation which he 
 could see in his room. He became the 
 adopted son of the dramatist, and was killed 
 in battle, early in the war. 
 
 The late Joyce Kilmer (who was to share 
 the same tragic fate) published an article on 
 Mr. Barrie in the New York Times for 12 
 November 1916, from which we learn the 
 origin of the name Wendy. Alice, the tiny 
 daughter of W. E. Henley, was devoted to 
 the poet's friend; she tried to call him 
 ** Friendly, '' but she actually managed only 
 ** Wendy." She died; and her pet name has 
 become enshrined in the play. 
 
 Mr. Barrie 's brain is divided into two com- 
 partments; with one he writes novels and 
 with the other, plays. He never makes the 
 mistake of using the wrong implements for 
 the allotted task, an error common to literary 
 men, and to men not at all literary. That he 
 is himself quite aware of the distinction be- 
 tween these forms of art is plain from 
 the first paragraph of Alice-Sit-hy-tJie-Fire 
 (1905). Alluding to the impossibility of re- 
 vealing the secrets of Amy's diary: **Is it 
 
 34 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 because this would be a form of eavesdrop- 
 ping, and that we cannot be sure our hands 
 are clean enough to turn the pages of a young 
 girPs thoughts? It cannot be that, because 
 the novelists do it. It is because in a play 
 we must tell nothing that is not revealed by 
 the spoken w^ord; you must find out all you 
 want to know from them ; there is no weather 
 even in plays nowadays except in melodrama ; 
 the novelist can have sixteen chapters about 
 the hero's grandparents, but we cannot even 
 say he had any unless he says it himself. 
 There can be no rummaging in the past for 
 us to show what sort of people our characters 
 are; we are allowed only to present them as 
 they toe the mark; then the handkerchief 
 falls, and off they go." 
 
 Maeterlinck's Betrothal had not appeared 
 when these words were written ; but even so, 
 they hold good for realistic plays. 
 
 In Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, not only is every 
 individual character laughed at, but boyhood, 
 girlhood, youth, manhood and womanhood 
 are all enveloped in a sea of mirth. It is a 
 comedy of situations very close to farce; its 
 conventional feature is the complete misun- 
 derstanding among the actors, with the audi- 
 
 35 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ence in full possession of the truth, enjoying 
 it all. There are times indeed when we feel 
 the intrusion of the regular formula for pro- 
 ducing laughter — bewilderment. Yet al- 
 though it is perhaps the least important of its 
 author's mature work, it is saved from cheap- 
 ness by its revelations of human nature and 
 by its tenderness. One expects the brother 
 and sister to be absurd ; their absurdity helps 
 to make them irresistible; **for aye'' is as 
 delightful as ^^ me thinks" in Sentimental 
 Tommy; but how about Stephen! Are full 
 grown men so vain as that, so easily made 
 idiotic by gross flattery? They are. 
 
 J. M. Barrie was the last of all the play- 
 wrights to obey the call of the publisher. 
 The printing of plays, traditional on the Con- 
 tinent, is a recent phenomenon in England 
 and in America; and until 1892, with a few 
 exceptions that belonged more to literature 
 than to the stage, they were not worth print- 
 ing. But in the twentieth century, we had 
 on our library shelves Wilde, Synge, Yeats, 
 Pinero, Jones, Galsworthy, Barker, Shaw, 
 Hankin, Fitch, Moody, Thomas — whilst Bar- 
 rie, who could best afford to accept the chal- 
 lenge of type, remained obstinately inaccess- 
 
 36 
 
J. M. BAREIE 
 
 ible. In the year of grace 1918, he consented 
 to the publication of all his plays, but they do 
 not come fast enough. 
 
 Now it is more necessary that English 
 plays should be published than the works of 
 Continental writers. For on the Continent 
 every one is permitted to go to the theatre 
 and see a new production ; whereas in Amer- 
 ica only those who are able to be in New 
 York are allowed this privilege. The mod- 
 ern drama simply does not exist in Chicago, 
 Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, 
 New Orleans, and San Francisco. If it were 
 not for the publication of plays, American 
 people living outside of New York would 
 know not much more of contemporary British 
 and American dramas than they know of the 
 Japanese. So long as the citizens of the 
 great centres of population away from New 
 York are content with this situation, so long 
 will it continue to exist. 
 
 The reason why the author hesitated to 
 give his consent to the publication of his 
 plays is because they were written for the 
 theatre; as soon as one was produced, and 
 the stress of its preparation and rehearsal 
 over, he had had enough of it, he was done 
 37 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 with it; he was eager to begin a new work. 
 Now to print it, as he conceived of the under- 
 taking, was not merely to print the dialogue, 
 with a list of dramatis personce, and a few 
 stage directions ; he felt that it was essential 
 to write stage directions and supplementary 
 explanations so extensively, that the reader 
 would be as nearly as possible in the position 
 of the spectator in the darkened auditorium. 
 At all events, these stage directions are 
 among the most original and most brilliant 
 compositions that have ever flowed from their 
 author's pen; they are unlike any other stage 
 directions in the history of the drama; they 
 not only establish as intimate and fluid a rela- 
 tion between play and reader as exists be- 
 tween actor and spectator; they are, and are 
 intended to be, centrifugal; they throw the 
 emphasis away from the individual charac- 
 ters toward human nature in general, and 
 make the reader aware of himself and of his 
 identity with the follies, weaknesses and sel- 
 fishness exhibited on the stage. Mr. Barrie 
 is never primarily didactic ; but being a Scots- 
 man, he cannot help trying to bring some 
 ** lesson home'' to his reader. Thou art the 
 man. So far from this being a source of 
 
 38 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 irritation, if all sermons were as impressive 
 and as charming as these plays, it would be 
 quite possible to carry out Bernard Shaw's 
 suggestion, and have admittance to the thea- 
 tres free, while charging three dollars for a 
 seat in. church. 
 
 Mr. Barrie prints no list of dramatis per- 
 sonce; just as in the theatre we become ac- 
 quainted with each person as we see him, so 
 in the text the introductions are separate and 
 consecutive. They are permeated with that 
 quality which is a secret of the author. Even 
 the furniture of a room is alive. In Alice- 
 Sit-by-the-Fire, **The lampshades have had 
 ribbons added to them, and from a distance 
 look like ladies of the ballet. The flower-pot 
 also is in a skirt. Near the d6or is a large 
 screen, such as people hide behind in the 
 more ordinary sort of play; it will be inter- 
 esting to see whether we can resist the temp- 
 tation to hide some one behind it.'' 
 
 In Rosalind, we have a picture of the 
 young Oxford man who is not only the per- 
 fect type of the English undergraduate, but 
 with the change of a few words will represent 
 with equal clearness the type so easily recog- 
 nised at Yale, Harvard and Princeton. This 
 
 39 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 introduction is an admirable illustration of 
 the author's powers of satire, so dilferent in 
 their quality from the tone of his friend 
 Bernard Shaw. The young man, to use 
 Browning's phrase, is ^' empty and fine as a 
 swordless sheath,'' but he is satirised by sym- 
 pathy, not by scorn. One feels sure, ten 
 years hence, the boy will be doing a man's 
 work in the world. 
 
 Before Mrs. Quickly has reached the dcor it 
 opens to admit an impatient young man in knicker- 
 bockers and a Norfolk jacket, all aglow with rain- 
 drops. Public school (and the particular one) is 
 written on his forehead, and almost nothing else; 
 he has scarcely yet begun to surmise that anything 
 else may be required. He is modest and clear- 
 eyed, and would ring for his tub in Paradise; 
 (reputably athletic also), with an instant smile 
 always in reserve for the antagonist who accident- 
 ally shins him. Whatever you, as his host, ask 
 him to do, he says he would like to awfully if you 
 don't mind his being a priceless duffer at it; his 
 vocabulary is scanty, and in his engaging mouth 
 ** priceless" sums up all that is to be known of good 
 or ill in our varied existence ; at a pinch it would 
 suffice him for most of his simple wants, just as one 
 may traverse the continent with Comhien? His 
 brain is quite as good as another's, but as yet he 
 has referred scarcely anything to it. He respects 
 
 4(1 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 learning in the aged, but shrinks uncomfortably 
 from it in contemporaries, as persons who have 
 somehow failed. To him the proper way to look 
 upon ability is as something we must all come to 
 in the end. He has a nice taste in the arts that 
 have come to him by the way of socks, spats, and 
 slips, and of these he has a large and happy collec- 
 tion, which he laughs at jollily in public (for his 
 sense of humour is sufficient), but in the privacy of 
 his chamber he sometimes spreads them out like 
 troutlet on the river's bank and has his quiet thrills 
 of exultation. Having lately left Oxford, he is fac- 
 ing the world confidently with nothing to impress 
 it except these and a scarf he won at Fives (beat- 
 ing Hon. Billy Minhorn). He has not yet decided 
 whether to drop into business or diplomacy or the 
 bar. There will be a lot of fag about this ; and all 
 unknown to him there is a grim piece of waste 
 land waiting for him in Canada, which he will 
 make a hash of, or it will make a man of him. 
 (Billy will be there too.) 
 
 For sheer audacity, it would be difficult to 
 parallel the opening of What Every Woman 
 Knows (1908). The curtain rises and not a 
 word is spoken for seven minutes. To con- 
 ceive and to insist on such a situation is an 
 indication of how much confidence the play- 
 wright had in himself, and in his audience. 
 His confidence was justified, though it would 
 
 41 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 be foolhardy for another to imitate it. I re- 
 member hearing of one play, where the cur- 
 tain rose on an empty room ; a dim lamp was 
 burning; a woman in black entered, took a 
 seat at the table, and gave vent to a long sigh. 
 Some one in the gallery said kindly, ** Well, 
 don't let us keep you up,'' and the audience 
 went into such hysteria that the play could 
 not go on. 
 
 In the beginning of this play, one sees that 
 the author's silences are as impressive as his 
 dialogue — in fact, it is dialogue, a kind of 
 song without words. Silence is used for 
 comedy, as Maeterlinck uses it for tragedy. 
 The two men at the dambrod, the alternation 
 of triumph and despair, were greeted by the 
 audience with every indication of joyful 
 recognition ; and at the pat moment, in walks 
 David, and removes his boots. You can hear 
 the clock ticking, and when the silence is 
 finally broken by David's voice, not one guess 
 in a million would have predicted what the 
 granite-like Scot would say — it is a quota- 
 tion from Tennyson's Maud! 
 
 This is one of the masterpieces, in the same 
 class with The Admirable Crichton and Dear 
 Brutus, The construction of the piece is as 
 
 42 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 near perfection as the human mind can make 
 it; the unexpected happens in every scene, 
 just as it does in history. The surface 
 caprices and quiddities of human nature are 
 all accurately charted, and the depths of pas- 
 sion — love, jealousy, ambition — are revealed. 
 If the dramatist had written only this play, 
 we should know that he was a man of genius. 
 No amount of toil can turn out work like this ; 
 it is sheer revelation ; it is, as Turgenev wrote 
 to Tolstoi, a gift coming from that source 
 whence comes all things. 
 
 The scene in the third act is a scene of tre- 
 mendous passion — the air is tense with it; 
 and yet, with keen excitement, there is not 
 even a penumbra of melodrama. It is as 
 though the suffering were so intense and ter- 
 rible that we can have no smell of the theatre 
 in these flames ; that we can have only reality, 
 too harsh and bitter — and too infinitely ten- 
 der — for any play-acting. Then we suddenly 
 remember, after the scene is over, that it was 
 *'only a play.'' Just that: ''only a play'' — 
 only a great work of art, only a profound 
 revelation of the evil and of the sublimity 
 hidden in every man and woman. 
 
 Here is a decisive battle between love and 
 43 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DEAMATISTS 
 
 lust — ^between the grace of God and the power 
 of the world. Maggie says to her brother, 
 **I'll save him, David, if I can.'' *^Does he 
 deserve to be saved after the way he has 
 treated youT' **You stupid David. What 
 has that to do with it?'' 
 
 In the published version, two passages are 
 omitted, both of which made a palpable hit 
 in the theatre. I do not know why Mr. 
 Barrie cancelled them, but it is fair to guess. 
 The first is in the great scene in the third act : 
 Maggie 's father and two brothers pass by the 
 self -condemned and yet defiant John Shand: 
 every one of the three brands him with a 
 monosyllabic epithet; I remember only the 
 third. Let us suppose the first man hissed 
 ** Scoundrel ! " the second, *' Traitor!" now 
 the third, with terrific emphasis shouted 
 ^* ENGLISHMAN!" At the London per- 
 formance, this word drew more delighted 
 laughter and applause than any other speech. 
 Is it not possible that in some ways the Eng- 
 lish have a more acute sense of humour than 
 the Irish! This speech is one of Mr. Bar- 
 rie 's greatest audacities, but he knew his 
 audience; he foresaw the result. Suppose a 
 similar scene was presented with the Scots- 
 44 
 
J. M. BAERIE 
 
 man shouting Irishman! He would be 
 mobbed. 
 
 Perhaps in print the author could not be 
 sure that the reader would hear the proper 
 tone of the voice, nor that he would under- 
 stand it. Furthermore, the play was pub- 
 lished during the dark hours of the war, and 
 he could not bring himself to say that word in 
 that way, even in jest. This, anyhow, is my 
 guess ; but I am sorry for every one who did 
 not hear the original version. 
 
 The other omission is just before the click 
 of the final curtain. This is what happened 
 in the theatre. **0h, John, if I could only 
 make you laugh at me ! * ' * ' I can 't laugh, and 
 yet I think you are the drollest thing in all 
 creation.'* **We're all droll to them that 
 understand us, and I'll tell you why; Eve 
 wasn't made out of Adam's rib; she was 
 made out of his funnybone." Now I think 
 the reason why he left this out is because it is 
 not good enough ; it is good enough for most 
 dramatists; it would make the fortune of 
 some; but it is not good enough for J. M. 
 Barrie. In my opinion, the printed version 
 gains by its omission. 
 
 45 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 *'0h, John, if only you could laugh at me." 
 
 * ' I can 't laugh, Maggie. ' ' 
 
 {But as he continues to stare at her a strange 
 disorder appears in his face. Maggie feels 
 that it is to he now or never.) 
 
 ** Laugh, John, laugh. Watch me; see how easy 
 it is." 
 
 (A terrible struggle is taking place within him. 
 He creaks. Something that may he mirth 
 forces a passage, at first painfully, no more joy 
 in it than in the discoloured water from a 
 spring that has long been dry. Soon, however, 
 he laughs loud and long. The spring water is 
 becoming clear. Maggie claps her hands. He 
 is saved.) 
 
 Never shall I forget that Monday afternoon 
 in the spring of 1909 when Maude Adams 
 presented this play in New Haven. She pre- 
 sented it in every sense of the word, making 
 an outright gift of the gross receipts to the 
 Yale University Dramatic Association. She 
 hired the theatre, paid the salaries of the 
 actors, paid for the transportation of the 
 company and the scenery from New York and 
 return, so that every cent taken was given to 
 the beneficiary. The performance began at 
 one o'clock, as the play had to fill its regular 
 date in New York at eight. The theatre was 
 jammed; and the special occasion put both 
 
 46 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 actors and audience on edge. There was a 
 tenseness in the atmosphere that it is impossi- 
 ble to describe — the actress and her company 
 fairly outdid themselves, and everyone in the 
 house, from President to sweep, was melted 
 — I remember one grey-bearded professor sit- 
 ting near me, who, as the tears coursed down 
 his whiskers, exclaimed, **I thought you said 
 this was a comedy !*' It was impossible to 
 restrain one's emotion; and that it reacted 
 on the stage may be surmised from the fact 
 that in the last scene both Miss Adams and 
 the leading man were so overcome that they 
 could scarcely articulate. After a score of 
 recalls, an undergraduate, representing the 
 Dramatic Association, stepped on the stage, 
 announced that Maude Adams had been made 
 an honourary member, and presented a medal. 
 She was both laughing and crying, and it 
 seemed impossible that she could make a 
 speech. But she did. She surprised us even 
 as Maggie surprised John Shand at the end 
 of the second act. With an affectionate 
 gesture that embraced the audience she 
 said: 
 
 My Constituents! 
 47 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 One reason why it is more difficult to write 
 a play than a novel, is because in a novel you 
 can say that your characters are witty and 
 brilliant conversationalists, without writing 
 any witty or brilliant conversation. On the 
 stage you have got to prove it. What a test 
 for Barrie to create a character like Maggie 
 Shand! the audience must really hear her 
 Shandisms, and they do. 
 
 I think the critic of the Literary Supple- 
 ment of the London Times is mistaken in 
 finding this play cruel and depressing; *Sve 
 are shut up in a cage of makeshift, of a clear- 
 sighted, tolerant despair.^' He finds a 
 *' clear cruelty, a strong hint of sneering.*' 
 A play where a lost soul is redeemed by the 
 laughter of love, a play where love triumphs 
 over the forces of evil, can hardly be charac- 
 terised in such terms. Tragedy is there in 
 plenty; but a woman's wit puts it to flight. 
 
 This is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true ; 
 Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. 
 If you loved only what were worth your love, 
 Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you ; 
 Make the low nature better by your throes ! 
 
 It is possible that if Ibsen had never writ- 
 48 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 ten A BolVs House y Barrie would not have 
 written The Twelve-Pound Look (1910). It 
 certainly harks back to the great Norwegian, 
 only there is an improvement even on that 
 master of economy, for the whole story is 
 squeezed (as Henry James would have said) 
 into one act. It has the depth of Ibsen with- 
 out his grimness, and a marriage history is 
 revealed in fifteen minutes. It is the tragedy 
 of failure in success ; the husband, identified 
 by Barrie with eveiy man in the audience, 
 had a complacency that literally made his 
 lawful spouse run for her life. There was 
 not the faintest spark of an adventure about 
 such a domestic existence — 
 
 We have not sighed deep, laughed free, 
 Starved, feasted, despaired — been happy. 
 
 Nora slammed the door, in order that the 
 audience might hear it; and she did this at 
 the last moment of the play. Kate slipped 
 out quietly many years before the rise of the 
 curtain; and her subsequent adventures, to- 
 gether with the slow poisoning of her suc- 
 cessor, form a sequel to the DolVs House, 
 The combination of Ibsen and Barrie (at 
 their best) is a delight to gods and men. I 
 
 49 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 remember when I saw this play, brilliantly 
 interpreted by Ethel Barrymore, I had that 
 keen intellectual pleasure experienced only in 
 the contemplation of the work of a master. 
 Barrie was three thousand miles away; but 
 we had the chance of watching his mental 
 activities, as the story progressed. It was a 
 great theme handled with absolute ease, a 
 man rejoicing in the fullness of his powers. 
 
 A reason why Barrie wrote it in one act, is 
 because he could not bear to have the logical 
 sequence interrupted. I have often wished 
 at good plays that there might be no inter- 
 missions. Who wants to leave the room at 
 an exciting moment? These between-the- 
 acts are as acute a nuisance as the persons 
 who stood between the sunshine and 
 Diogenes. 
 
 I wonder if the human mind really requires 
 as much **resf as seems to be commonly 
 supposed. I am quite sure that most human 
 minds do not require rest, for that is their 
 normal state. What they need is develop- 
 ment; even if the process should demand 
 acute stimulation. Is it impossible for the 
 average man to listen to a good play more 
 than thirty minutes? Is it impossible to lis- 
 
 50 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 ten to Beethoven without watching the body 
 of some female * interpreting'' him? 
 
 They used to say that if Sarah Bernhardt 
 ever grew old, it would be between the acts. 
 Intermissions are of course often necessary, 
 but why have them when no change of scene 
 or of costume demands it? At the end of 
 some plays, one 's confused recollection of the 
 evening is of a long series of varied amuse- 
 ments, social conversation, night air, ciga- 
 rettes, and liquid refreshments — with little 
 dabs of stagestuff interposing, even as in 
 modem magazines the advertisements are 
 held together by bits of ** literature/' 
 
 In 1913 appeared The Legend of Leonora, 
 not the greatest but in some ways the most 
 original of all its author's productions. This 
 is one of my favourite plays, although it was 
 coldly received by both English and Ameri- 
 can critics. To omit this comedy from Mr. 
 Barrie's works would be a visible subtrac- 
 tion ; it is unlike any of the others both in the 
 humour of character and in the humour of sit- 
 uation. It seemed to me that the critics 
 rather misunderstood its significance — they 
 thought it either a meaningless and therefore 
 irritating whimsical absurdity, or else they 
 
 51 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 regarded it as an overdone burlesque. Now 
 it is not a satire, it is not a burlesque, and it is 
 not meaningless. It is only apparently fan- 
 tastic; fundamentally it is not fantastic at 
 all. Instead of dramatising action and con- 
 versation, he has dramatised motives and 
 impulses — which in organised society cannot 
 possibly come to fruition. 
 
 A common speculation is the horror of em- 
 barrassment that would fall on a social gath- 
 ering should every one present suddenly 
 speak out exactly what was in his mind, and 
 act out every wayward impulse. Think of 
 the vagaries, the insults, the flatteries, the 
 blows and the kisses that would fill the air! 
 I suppose everyone w^ho has sat in church, or 
 at a solemn assembly, and has had the dia- 
 bolical urge to shout something unspeakable, 
 has experienced a reaction of shame some- 
 what akin to what one would feel had the 
 awful thing really happened. 
 
 Now in The Legend of Leonora, we have 
 two ideas presented; one, that no individual 
 can be described by a formula; on different 
 days in the life of the same person, that per- 
 son may behave as irregularly and inconsist- 
 ently as the weather. On Tuesday she may 
 
 52 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 want you to pick up her handkerchief; but 
 who can predict that she will have the same 
 desire on Thursday? We are constantly de- 
 manding of dramatists and novelists that 
 they make their characters consistent, when 
 in real life there are no such animals. Much 
 of the enormous labour spent on the talk and 
 deeds of Hamlet might be saved if this pri- 
 mary fact were borne in mind. 
 
 The second idea, on which the comedy is 
 really founded, is the dramatisation of im- 
 pulse instead of the representation of action. 
 Leonora's little girl had a cold, just a snufiQy 
 cold; and when' the lady requested the gen- 
 tleman to close the train-window, and he 
 rudely refused, she killed him. So far from 
 attempting to excuse herself, or to pretend 
 that it was an accident, she insists that she 
 meant to kill him, and is glad she did. 
 ''Can't yon understand? My little girl had 
 a cold and the man wouldn't shut the win- 
 dow." It is not she who is crazy, but every- 
 one else. Now of course a woman travelling 
 with a sick child would not kill a man who 
 refused to shut a window ; but she would want 
 to. The same dramatisation of motive and 
 impulse appears in the trial scene. One 
 
 53 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 critic showed a misconception of this, saying 
 that he thought it a poor burlesque. Of 
 course the point is that it is not a burlesque 
 at all. The prisoner is beautiful, centri- 
 petally attractive ; the judge, the prosecuting 
 attorney, the jury show her every attention, 
 vying with one another in claiming her 
 notice; when the jury retire, they soon send 
 in a message, requesting the prisoner's com- 
 pany during their deliberations. Now none 
 of these things could (I admit) happen in a 
 court of law; the judge and prosecuting at- 
 torney would not flatter the prisoner, nor 
 would the jury request her presence; but if 
 the prisoner were radiantly beautiful, this is 
 exactly what every man of them would want 
 to do. She gladly accedes to the wish of the 
 jury and enters their room carrying an enor- 
 mous bouquet; when she returns, she has al- 
 most nothing of it left ; but when the jury ap- 
 pear, every one of them has a flower in his 
 buttonhole. 
 
 Human nature may be faithfully and truth- 
 fully represented in unnatural speech and in 
 unnatural conduct, and this is what Barrie 
 has done. Sudi at all events is my under- 
 standing of the play, as I give it remembering 
 
 54 
 
J. M. BA'RRIB 
 
 the happy day I saw it on the stage. I 
 eagerly await its appearance in print, 
 whether or not my impression will be con- 
 firmed. 
 
 In A Kiss for Cinderella (1916) we have 
 one of the lesser plays, but for all that a thing 
 of beauty. Here he returns to favourite 
 ground, representing life through the imagi- 
 nation of an elementary mind. The old char- 
 woman attends the royal function, where the 
 king and queen are sitting in rocking-chairs 
 and eating ice-cream cones. Lord Times is 
 even higher, as the Quiet was above Setebos. 
 This play indicates that the tenderness in the 
 author's heart cannot be killed by circum- 
 stances; in the scene where the charwoman is 
 taking care of the babies, one of them hap- 
 pens to be German. ^^I couldn't help taking 
 her!'' In her poverty and in her charity 
 is there not a rebuke both to those who had 
 much and gave little and to those who foamed 
 at the mouth with indiscriminate hate? 
 
 The World War naturally appears in the 
 dramas written between 1914 and 1918. Our 
 author has the distinction of having written 
 the worst and the best war-play — I refer to 
 Der Tag and to The Old Lady Shows Her 
 
 55 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Medals. The first edition of the latter was 
 printed complete in the New York Times, and 
 gave many thousand Americans an unpleas- 
 ant shock. It is the only writing by Barrie 
 that is flat. Then it was generally agreed 
 that in one respect Barrie was like other 
 dramatists — he could not write a good play 
 about the war. But he could and did, not 
 once, but several times. In the volume called 
 I Echoes of the War (1918), we have four 
 short dramas, all interesting and effective, 
 and one overwhelmingly impressive. One of 
 these is The New Word, which together with 
 a burlesque written by Barrie for the late 
 Gaby Deslys ( !) had its first performance on 
 the London stage in March 1915. The 
 AthencBum nearly fainted from the shock. I 
 can forgive the critic for his regret that so 
 distinguished an author should write such a 
 thing, but I cannot forgive him for using the 
 past tense in his closing sentence — **A11 this 
 comes from one who has, or had, the gift of 
 getting psychological insight across the foot- 
 lights. *' The critic really knew better than 
 that. 
 
 And his disgust at the burlesque enven- 
 omed his review of The New Word, which he 
 
 56 
 
J. M. BAKEIE 
 
 called a lost opportunity; it is really most 
 commendable in that it avoids any semblance 
 of slushy sentiment and melodrama, at the 
 very time when such deplorable affairs in the 
 theatre were most in vogue. A normal Eng- 
 lish boy takes leave of a normal English 
 father and mother, as he departs for the 
 front; the two farewells are quite different. 
 Father and son are both cursed with the im- 
 possibility of expressing their emotions, and 
 the father knowing that this is the last time 
 he may see one whom he loves more than any- 
 thing else on earth, realises that it is now or 
 never. The embarrassment of the two is 
 both amusing and painful ; but it is real ; the 
 father cannot let the boy go in ignorance of 
 how (literally) inexpressibly his father loves 
 him; but how to make this clear without a 
 **scene'^? The boy in discovering his 
 father's love, must not lose respect for him. 
 No one could have written this little drama 
 so well as Barrie. Once more we may re- 
 member that although the family is English, 
 fathers and mothers are much alike in every 
 country. It is easier to overemphasise na- 
 tional differences than to bear in mind the 
 essential kinship of all men. Barrie makes 
 
 57 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 no such error. The printed play opens with 
 these words: **Any room nowadays must be 
 the scene, for any father and any son are the 
 dramatis personce. We could pick them up 
 in Mayfair, in Tooting, on the Veldt, in rec- 
 tories or in grocers' back parlours, and tell 
 them to begin. ' ' 
 
 We are perhaps made aware of the fact 
 that French fathers are more like English 
 fathers than is commonly supposed, if we 
 remember a scene near the beginning of 
 Dumas' deathless romance Les Trois Mous- 
 quetaires, where young d'Artagnan leaves 
 the parental roof. This might easily have 
 served as a prototype for Barriers play. 
 
 **En sortant de la chambre paternelle, le 
 jeune homme trouva sa mere qui I'attendait 
 avec la fameuse recette dont les conseils que 
 nous venous de rapporter devaient necessiter 
 un assez frequent emploi. Les adieux furent 
 de ce cote plus longs et plus tendres qu 'ils ne 
 Pavaient ete de Pautre, non pas que M. 
 d 'Artagnan n 'aimat son fils, qui etait sa seule 
 progeniture, mais M. d'Artagnan etait un 
 homme, et il eut regarde comme indigne d 'un 
 homme de se laisser aller a son emotion, 
 
 58 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 tandis que madame d'Artagnan etait femme 
 et de plus etait mere.'' 
 
 The greatest play produced by the war is 
 The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, It is a 
 tragedy, as every war-play should be. Go- 
 ing the rounds of the theatres and witnessing 
 the average sentimental melodrama or propa- 
 ganda-thesis inspired by the titanic struggle, 
 one would imagine that there were no impor- 
 tant casualties. It is like the ironical story I 
 once read of a railway accident — *^only the 
 fireman.'' The hero invariably comes back 
 in triumph, the war being the luckiest and 
 happiest thing in his life, for it brought him 
 advancement, fame, and love. Barrie is too 
 honest for any sweetish illusions. Just as 
 he takes the ordinary themes of the theatre 
 in times of peace, and creates something per- 
 manent and beautiful, so he takes the uni- 
 versal theme of the war, and shows how its 
 tragedy reaches down into the humblest lives. 
 No Oxford or Cambridge here ; we have only 
 charwomen, who preserve social distinction 
 with more rigidity than prevails in Mayfair. 
 (A favourite theme with Barrie; remember 
 Crichton below stairs. The last persons who 
 
 59 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DEAMATISTS 
 
 will ever accept democracy are the servants.) 
 ** Altogether, she is of a very different social 
 status from one who, like Mrs. Haggerty, is 
 a charw^oman but nothing else.'* The entire 
 play takes place under ground, like Gorki's 
 Night Asylum, which in other respects it does 
 not resemble ! we shall see that the basement 
 will be illuminated by Love, like that wonder- 
 ful subterranean home of Tolstoi's shoe- 
 maker. 
 
 Four of them are having tea, with Mrs. 
 Dowey as hostess. * * There is no intention on 
 their part to consider peace terms until a 
 decisive victory has been gained in the field 
 (Sarah Ann Dowey), until the Kaiser is put 
 to the right-about (Emma Mickleham), and 
 singing very small (Amelia T^vymley).'' 
 Their pride in having sons at the front, in 
 owning war savings certificates, in being bit- 
 ter-enders, is precisely like that of their sis- 
 ters in Park Lane. Across every title-page 
 of Barrie's books might be written, ** Human 
 nature is always and everywhere the same." 
 
 Mrs. Dowey 's conquest of her hypothetical 
 son cannot possibly be described; only Bar- 
 rie, with his insight born of divine sympathy, 
 could have imagined it. The big, rough 
 
 60 
 
J. M. BARRIE 
 
 ** chunk of Scotland/' burstin^^ with vitality, 
 leaves her for the front, as his time is up; 
 we hear him in the street; **that is he laugh- 
 ing coarsely with Dixon. . . .'' In the last 
 scene not a word is spoken. Kenneth has 
 been killed. The *^old lady'' is in her work- 
 ing-clothes, about to start off for her day's 
 toil. But before going, she shows her 
 medals. 
 
 It is, like all Barrie 's plays, like the story 
 of every human life, a tragi-comedy. The 
 early scenes arouse inextinguishable laugh- 
 ter; in the last act, the ordinary relation of 
 audience to stage is reversed. Instead of 
 noise on the stage and silence in the audi- 
 torium, the solitary woman moved about in 
 absolute stillness while unrestrained sobbing 
 was heard all over the house. I could no 
 more help crying than I could help breathing. 
 
 The heroine is a charwoman, elevated to a 
 vertiginous height by solemn pride. 
 
 The latest play to fall within the scope of 
 this essay (how happy I am that I cannot 
 make it complete !) is Dear Brutus y which had 
 its first regular American performance in 
 New York, 23 December 1918, and ran until 
 the closing of the theatre in hot weather. 
 
 61 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 The title of course is taken from the speech of 
 Cassius in Julius Ccesar: 
 
 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 
 
 ^ But I think the germ of the play and its 
 main idea are to be found in The Admirable 
 Crichton, in one of the stage directions of the 
 third act : the slacker Ernest, transformed in 
 appearance by Crichton 's discipline, appears 
 hard at work, and here is the comment by the 
 dramatist : 
 
 We should say that he is Ernest completely 
 changed if we were of those who hold that 
 people change. 
 
 t That people do not change is the law of 
 which this drama is a brilliant illustration 
 and like all rules it is proved by its excep- 
 tions. All the persons of the play, have, by 
 
 .the magical agency of Lob (see Midsummer 
 Night's Dream) a second chance; and al- 
 though their circumstances are different, 
 their characters are the same. With one ex- 
 ception. The artist and his wife, at the close 
 of the play, seek out a new and better exist- 
 ence, because they have passed through a 
 
 62 
 
J. M. BARBIE 
 
 spiritual revolution. The fault then really is 
 in ourselves, and Barrie is true to the Shakes- 
 pearean quotation. Ninety-nine out of a 
 hundred would be the same, even if they had 
 their heart's desire — an opportunity to try 
 again ; but there is the hundredth man. The 
 play is disheartening when we think of the 
 average person ; but inspiring when we think 
 of the possibilities of human nature. The 
 one hope of the world is not that human 
 nature will change, for it never will. The 
 hope lies in the possibility of controlling 
 human instincts, in the coming of that time 
 when man's energy, conscience, reason, and 
 will power will control his passions, rather 
 than being their obedient servants. 
 
 Nothing could surpass, it would seem, the 
 skill in construction shown in this comedy. 
 The curtain has not been up two minutes be- 
 fore the audience are in a fever of suspense 
 and excitement. This is caused not by any 
 melodramatic event, but by intense curiosity, 
 arising out of the conversation of some ladies 
 returning from the dining-room. Barrie 
 possersses the power of clutching the mind 
 of an audience in the initial moment. W^e 
 simply must know what is behind all this talk. 
 
 63 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 In the American performance, the play was 
 adequately acted by every man and woman in 
 the cast ; and the initial effect was heightened 
 by the butler, whose part was given to one 
 of the most capable and intelligent actors in 
 
 ^ the world, Mr. Louis Calvert. This butler is 
 no Admirable Crichton ; his petty thieving in 
 the first act continues on a colossal scale in 
 the second, when he is a millionaire (Barrie 
 the true democrat). And in the third act, 
 he slips back into servility as smoothly as an 
 old shoe, and not by a mighty consecrated 
 
 t self-sacrifice, as in the former drama. Bar- 
 rie will not say that one person is a con- 
 temptible sneak thief, and the other a king 
 of finance; the second is merely a rascal on 
 a bigger scale. Why may we not draw the 
 same comparison between an electrocuted 
 murderer and Napoleon Bonaparte? 
 
 The second act is in fairy land. It is like 
 the life after death, where Barriers phi- 
 losophy has the mighty support of the Apo- 
 calypse. **He that is unjust, let him be un- 
 just still: and he which is filthy, let him be 
 filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him 
 be righteous still : and he that is holy, let him 
 be holy still. * ' Even in the gorgeous scenery 
 
 64 
 
J. M. BAERIE 
 
 of Paradise, human nature does not change; 
 and it does not change in the beauty of Bar- 
 rie's moonlit forest. 
 
 This same second act brought in a love 
 duet — in the key of conversation, but purely 
 lyrical — between a father and his imaginary ' 
 daughter. In the American performance, 
 this will remain vivid in the minds of those 
 who heard it; for the two actors were a be- 
 loved veteran of the stage, William Gillette, 
 and a young girl, hardly more than a child, 
 Helen Hayes, who passed from obscurity to 
 fame in less than an hour. 
 
 It seemed incredible that the third act could 
 be anything but an anticlimax; but there is 
 no surer proof of Barriers genius than his 
 last acts, the final test of constructive power. 
 I will go so far as to say that even in most 
 successful plays, the last act is either a down- 
 right failure or at best a falling away. But 
 in Dear Brutus, as in The Admirable Crich- 
 ton, in What Every Woman Knows, and in 
 all Barriers plays, the last act crowns the 
 work. 
 
 Barrie is not a self-appointed prophet; he 
 doesVnot assume intellectual leadership; he 
 is neither cynic nor schoolmaster; he never 
 
 65 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 scolds; but he has done more to elevate the 
 English stage than any other man of our time. 
 And he has accomplished this simply by writ- 
 ing plays that are built on the permanent 
 foundations of human nature, that are full 
 of action, shining with brilliant dialogue, 
 sparkling with wit and humour, heart-shaking 
 with tragedy, and clean as the west wind. 
 His is the drama of ideas, as distinguished 
 from the drama of opinions. 
 
 Barrie 's plays are the shows of this world. 
 He gives us pictures of all humanity — our 
 follies, our impossible and futile dreams, our 
 sordidness, our nobility, our vanity; and he 
 accomplishes this without a trace of venom 
 or of scorn, without a flavour of superiority ; 
 he loves men, women, and children. But i n 
 him Love is never blind. 
 
 66 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Although Ireland has never contributed to 
 English Literature a poet of the first rank, to 
 English prose in general and to the drama in 
 particular her additions have been frequent 
 and important. If I had to name the great- 
 est master of English prose style, I should 
 vote for Jonathan Swift. Think of the im- 
 mense richness of English Literature between 
 1640 and 1892, two hundred and fifty years of 
 daily book-making; yet in that span of time, 
 there are only three dramas that continue 
 to shine, and they were written by two Irish- 
 men, Goldsmith and Sheridan. In the year 
 1892, British Drama came to life again, and 
 once more by means of two Irishmen, Ber- 
 nard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. The so-called 
 stolid Englishmen are incurable Romantics, 
 which may be a reason that they write such 
 wonderful poetry ; the excitable and tempera- 
 mental Irish are masters of the fine weapons 
 of comedy and satire, which require for ac- 
 
 67 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 curacy of thrust a cool head and a steady 
 hand. 
 
 It is the same difference which is so strange 
 and yet so obvious as that which separates 
 English from French literature. The Eng- 
 lish are sober in politics and intoxicated by 
 romance; the glory of their literature is 
 poetry and the romantic drama. The French 
 are hot-headed and fickle in politics, whereas 
 in literature their ideal is self-restraint and 
 reserve. They have produced an amazing 
 number of great prose writers, for which 
 their admirable language seems particularly 
 designed. In poetry — well, the poets who 
 seem to foreigners their best are not accepted 
 at all by many Frenchmen. 
 
 In addition to the work of Oscar Wilde and 
 Bernard Shaw, the present great age of Eng- 
 lish Drama has been enriched by the plays of 
 J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, 
 Lord Dunsany and St. John Ervine. The 
 omissions in this list would enrage some 
 critics, but I include only those playwrights 
 of international reputation. In the republic 
 of art, it is more important to be an artist 
 than a patriot, or even a personality. Un- 
 
 68 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 questionably the greatest personality in Ire- 
 land to-day is ^. But he is not the greatest 
 dramatist. 
 
 In one respect Shaw is just the opposite of 
 Hamlet. They agree that the world is out of 
 joint ; but Shaw's chief happiness comes from 
 the thought that he was born to set it right. 
 No one has ever had so good a time lecturing 
 humanity. If we in the audience enjoy his 
 wit so much, think what delight it must give 
 him. He hears it first. 
 
 Perhaps no man of our time — except John 
 Morley — has lived so exclusively the life of 
 reason. Shaw is unaffected by public senti- 
 ment — we always say public sentiment, public 
 opinion, never public reason. Reason is a 
 private and individual affair, and has nothing 
 to do with a crowd, a community, or a nation. 
 Reason is a steady light. A man can look at 
 a will o' the wisp, but he cannot read a book 
 by it, or trust its guidance. 
 
 Perhaps it is not quite true to say that 
 Shaw is unaffected by public sentiment for it 
 does affect him negatively. It affords him a 
 daily text for satire. He might say with 
 Touchstone, **It is meat and drink to me to 
 
 69 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 see a clown ; by my troth, we that have good 
 wits have much to answer for; we shall be 
 flouting; we cannot hold/' 
 
 And as he is never turned from his course 
 by public sentiment, so the ordinary emotions 
 of humanity, the passion in the blood, the love 
 of a home, the passion of patriotism, the love 
 of war, the worship of heroes, the idealisation 
 of ordinary life, — he breathes the pure air of 
 reason, apart from these mists. He was not 
 married until he was over forty, he sees only 
 the evil side of patriotism, he hates war, he 
 reduces Napoleon, Csesar, and Shakespeare to 
 ordinary dimensions, he believes that nothing 
 that glitters is really gold. He will eat no 
 meat; and his favorite recreation is ** any- 
 thing except sport.'' 
 
 It is impossible to believe that in normal 
 times he does not enjoy this splendid isola- 
 tion. *^It is a pleasure to stand upon the 
 shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea ; 
 a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, 
 and to see a battle and the adventures thereof 
 below; but no pleasure is comparable to the 
 standing upon the vantage ground of truth 
 (where the air is always clear and serene) 
 and to see the errors, and wanderings, and 
 
 70 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 mists, and tempests, in the vale below.'' 
 I say he enjoys this isolation in normal 
 times. The life of reason being perforce as 
 solitary as the life of asceticism — when the 
 whole community is swept by one mighty 
 wave of passion, as in the abnormal tidal 
 wave of war, then there is no place at all for 
 the individualist. The lover of literal truth 
 must sacrifice this intellectual luxury for the 
 other aspect of truth, which is Loyalty. A 
 man can be true to facts, and untrue to a 
 cause or to a person. 
 
 What so false as truth is, 
 False to thee ? 
 
 As millions sacrifice their homes, their 
 property, their comforts, their limbs and their 
 lives, so the few whose dearest possession is 
 the love of truth, find that they must sacrifice 
 that. This is one — and not the least — of the 
 innumerable evils of war. People suffer in 
 their hearts, but also in their minds. Some 
 cannot understand this latter pain, because 
 they have no mind. In the World War, as we 
 stand in the presence of those who have lost 
 their health and activity, and of those who 
 have lost members of their family, we can say 
 
 71 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 nothing; we can only silently nncover and 
 salnte. But there is another tragedy — the 
 tragedy of the crneified Mind, which few un- 
 derstand. I think very few comprehend what 
 agony and torture men like John Morley and 
 Bernard Shaw suffered every day during the 
 years from 1914 to 1918. They had spent 
 their lives in the pleasant glow of reason; 
 now there was darkness everywhere. 
 
 judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
 And men have lost their reason ! 
 
 In the case of Shaw, his nemesis was the 
 nemesis of every honest man who has never- 
 theless minimised the virtues of loyalty and 
 cooperation. These too, are real virtues, al- 
 most the only ones in times of universal peril. 
 The lonely philosopher may not fear the scorn 
 of the crowd; but he must fear his solitude, 
 as he eats out his own heart. And his seren- 
 ity must be clouded by the doubt as to 
 whether after all his way is the only way. 
 
 If any one believes that I have pictured 
 Shaw's tragedy too sombrely, I suggest that 
 he read the preface to Heartbreak House. 
 That book was treated harshly in almost 
 every review of it ; there is no harshness like 
 
 72 
 
GEOKGE BERNAED SHAW 
 
 the brutality that cannot understand. With 
 the exception of a few sentences — Shaw's 
 genius was ever greater than his taste — the 
 preface should be read with sympathy, if not 
 with reverence; for it is the confession of a 
 pilgrim and a stranger in this world. 
 
 Shaw has spent his life trying to make 
 people listen to him — he became a dramatist 
 partly by accident, and only after he had 
 tried other forms of address. He used the 
 drama, as the Elizabethans used it, because 
 in 1600 and in 1900 drama was the highest 
 form of expression, the best channel of ideas. 
 Like Barrie and Galsworthy, he had been a 
 novelist — in the eighties he wrote novels so 
 brilliant that it seems amazing that they at- 
 tracted no attention. When William Archer, 
 who has introduced so many good things to 
 the British public, sent Stevenson a copy of 
 Casliel Byron's Profession, Stevenson went 
 into a delirium of rapture. ^*If he has writ- 
 ten any other, I beg you will let me see it.*' 
 In a subsequent letter, ^^Tell Shaw to hurry 
 up: I want another.'' 
 
 Shaw's early plays attracted no general at- 
 tention, and from 1895 to 1898 he was Drama- 
 tic Critic for the Saturday Review. Fortu- 
 
 73 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 nately his criticisms were subsequently 
 (1906) published in two thick volumes, under 
 the heading Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 
 He has also written much criticism of music, 
 and his modernity was established by his 
 continual efforts in behalf of those two 
 mighty men, Wagner and Ibsen. 
 
 It was not until the year 1898 that he be- 
 came famous, the cause of his fame being the 
 publication of two volumes of Unpleasant and 
 Pleasant Plays. For years after that date 
 he was regarded as more dramatist than 
 playwright, and more literary than either. 
 Apart from the intrinsic worth of his pro- 
 ductions, he owes his success on the stage 
 more to Granville Barker than to any other 
 man. At first he would have none of the ef- 
 forts of Barker, saying that it was impossible 
 that a man with such a name could have any 
 intelligent comprehension of his work. But 
 Shaw has an enormous respect for pounds, 
 shillings, and pence ; no business man among 
 the despised Philistines can drive a better 
 bargain, or is more tenacious of his '^rights.'' 
 Barker convinced Shaw by the thing that is 
 said to talk. 
 
 No wonder we learn to despise public opin- 
 74 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 ion when we find over and over again, that 
 in matters of art, at all events, it is so often 
 not only incorrect, but the exact opposite of 
 the truth. ** Browning is a philosopher, but 
 no poet,'' and there is no poetry more beau- 
 tiful. ** Wagner is ingenious, but cannot 
 write melodiously,'' and his operas are worth 
 all the other operas in the world put together. 
 *^ Ibsen is a grim and morbid pessimist, but 
 no dramatist," and his plays delight audi- 
 ences in all the capitals of Europe. ^^Shaw 
 is a literary satirist and iconoclast, but no 
 playwright" — how absurd that sounds, when 
 I recall the thrilling nights at the theatre lis- 
 tening to Androcles and the Lion, The Doc- 
 tor's Dilemma, You Never Can Tell, Fanny's 
 First Play, Major Barbara, Man and Super- 
 man, Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra, and 
 many others. Instead of being *^no play- 
 wright," he is one of the greatest in the his- 
 tory of the stage. The man who wrote the 
 second act of Major Barbara has an absolute 
 genius for drama. 
 
 In the days of his obscurity, he was always 
 debating. At radical meetings he mounted 
 the platform on every possible occasion, and 
 even now, when his real audience is under 
 
 75 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the solitary lamp, his chief recreation, his 
 form of bodily exercise is public speaking. 
 These who were young and now are old tes- 
 tify to the power of his rhetoric, and remem- 
 ber the inspiration ; but I am glad he became 
 a writer of books. For although we live in 
 the golden age of English Drama, the Eng- 
 lish Theatre is in such a condition that a 
 thousand must read Bernard Shaw for one 
 who can hear him. 
 
 St. John Ervine and Henry Nevinson as- 
 sert that they have learned more from and 
 therefore owe more to Bernard Shaw than to 
 any modern man. They regard him as the 
 boldest, most courageous, and most germinal 
 thinker of our time. Yet thousands look 
 upon him as merely a public entertainer, in- 
 deed as a clown. When all is said, he has 
 more admirers than disciples; but it is curi- 
 ous that one of the stock subjects for dis- 
 cussion all over the world is whether or not 
 Bernard Shaw should be taken seriously. 
 This is of course partly his own fault, as such 
 a confusion necessarily must be; his ardent 
 admirers insist that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
 Ezekiel were not more serious or earnest 
 than he. 
 
 76 : 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 I do not know which would annoy him more 
 — to be taken for a jester, or to be literally 
 followed. To take a man of genius as an 
 amusement is certainly unfortunate for the 
 crowd; but on the other hand, it is worth 
 while to remember the words of Oscar Wilde : 
 **In a temple everyone should be serious ex- 
 cept the thing worshipped/' 
 
 As to whether he should be taken seriously 
 or not, there can be only one true answer. 
 Art is always to be taken seriously. 
 Whether Bernard Shaw is a prophet or not, 
 in literature he is a star of the first magni- 
 tude. Although minor poets do not like it, 
 there is only one road to eminence in litera- 
 ture, and that is by good writing. The rea- 
 son why everybody who reads anything reads 
 Bernard Shaw is because he is a literary 
 genius, who adorns with his art every sub- 
 ject that he touches. It does not make any 
 difference whether he talks about this or that, 
 he captures the interest of the reader every 
 time. The real subject of all his remarks is 
 Bernard Shaw — and we read him for the 
 same reason that students elect courses in 
 college, not because of the subject, but be- 
 cause of the man who teaches it. Now there 
 
 77 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 are so many dull people in the world, and 
 such a countless number of dull books, that 
 when an author appears who is certain to 
 interest the reader every time, we repay him 
 not only with intellectual homage, but with 
 hearty affection. He may irritate us, he may 
 shock us so that we say this is the last time 
 he will have the opportunity ; but in our heart 
 of hearts, we know that we shall read his next 
 book. The fact is that we cannot live with- 
 out our literary artists ; we always place them 
 above men of science and men of adventure, 
 because we know that they are necessary to 
 brighten the monotony of our lives. The 
 man of science saves you from death; the 
 man of letters saves you from life. 
 
 To many Shaw seems like a nuisance ; but 
 there is only one kind of critic who is really 
 a nuisance. That is the man who thinks he 
 is filled with righteous indignation, when in 
 reality he is only peevish; who, instead of 
 being pertinent, is petulant; who is in short 
 a common scold. Shaw has never descended 
 to that level. He is a nuisance as Conscience 
 is a nuisance. 
 
 While Shaw is awake, the world will never 
 go to sleep. A gadfly is a torment, but if one 
 
 78 
 
GEORGE BEENARD SHAW 
 
 were sinking in a stupour in a snowdrift, then 
 an active gadfly would be a blessing. Every 
 institution, every organisation, and eveiy 
 person need intelligent opposition. The true 
 teacher needs pupils who are more thoughtful 
 than docile ; obedience is not the prime virtue, 
 even in school. The minister would profit if 
 there were men in every congregation who 
 questioned everything he said, and told him 
 so. Without intellectual resistance the 
 teacher and the preacher grow unctuous, 
 flabby, intolerable. Ever^^ powerful political 
 party needs a resourceful, active, relentless 
 opposition. Many of the most valuable con^ 
 tributions to the Christian Church have been j 
 made by those who were determined to de-j 
 stroy it. God needs the Devil. 
 
 Yet those who believe in the infallibility of 
 the Pope and those who find apparent contra- 
 dictions no insurmountable obstacle to faith, 
 need never surrender to Shaw. The famous 
 remark applied to so many individuals is par- 
 ticularly applicable here. The Pope is not 
 so sure of anything as Shaw is of everything. 
 And what shall we say of the consistency of 
 a thinker who is at the same time the most 
 extreme individualist in the world and the 
 
 79 
 
1(: 
 
 ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 strongest Socialist? It is like trying to have 
 Liberty and Equality at the same time. You 
 had better make up your mind which you pre- 
 fer, or you will get neither. You cannot 
 have both. 
 
 G. K. Chesterton made a most happy com- 
 parison, when he compared Shaw's philoso- 
 phy with coffee. ^*I have often been haunted 
 with a fancy that the creeds of men might be 
 paralleled and represented in their bever- 
 ages. Wine might stand for genuine Cath- 
 olicism and ale for genuine Protestantism; 
 for these at least are real religions with com- 
 fort and strength in them. Clean, cold Ag- 
 nosticism would be clean, cold water — an ex- 
 cellent thing if you can get it. Most modern 
 ethical and idealistic movements might be 
 well represented by soda water, which is a 
 fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard Shaw's 
 philosophy is 'exactly like black coffee — it 
 awakens, but it does not really inspire. 
 Modern hygienic materialism is very like 
 cocoa ; it would be impossible to express one's 
 contempt for it in stronger terms than that." 
 
 There is only one word I should like to 
 change in Mr. Chesterton's liquid language; 
 X-^hottldliker to substitute the word **jiour- 
 
 80 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 ish'' for the word Alinspire." Black coffee 
 really does inspire, and so does Bernard 
 Shaw; but they give no nourishment. Yet 
 after all the characterisation was true, for 
 Mr. Chesterton was of course thinking of 
 English coifee. 
 
 Goethe said that whenever he opened 
 Kant's Kritik of Pure Reason, he felt as if 
 he had stepped into a brilliantly-lighted 
 room. With less genius on the part of 
 reader and writer, that expresses the imme- 
 diate effect of almost any of Shaw's books. 
 
 Just as it makes no difference to the party 
 man what principles appear in the platform 
 or what candidate attempts to stand upon it, 
 for he will support the regular ticket any- 
 how, so your extreme individualist may al- 
 ways be found on the Opposition bench. 
 Bernard Shaw is by nature an individualist, 
 a free lance, a rebel; a destructive critic; **I 
 don't know who the new Minister of Public 
 Instruction is," said the Frenchman, *^but 
 I'm tired of him." 
 
 The individualist has no responsibility, and 
 is naturally more radical than those in power. 
 There are so many more things in the world 
 that we don't want than there are that we 
 
 81 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 can 't get, that the radicals, like the poor, will 
 be always with us. A person who could 
 not see in an hour's walk in any modern city 
 a hundred things that ought to be changed, 
 would be a dull observer. Society is as full 
 of faults as a porcupine is of quills, and they 
 are quite as obvious. 'Thus it is compara- 
 tively easy to attack, either with the bludgeon 
 of denunciation or the rapier of satire; diffi- 
 culties begin when a substitute plan that will 
 work, is called for. ^^ 
 
 Who is it who said that so soon as an advo- 
 cate of anything wins a disciple, his own faith 
 is weakened? Shaw is certainly an honest 
 and an able man. Suppose he were made 
 Lord Dictator of the British Empire, with 
 absolute power, would the Millennium dawn ? 
 Should we really be much better off? ' I do 
 not know what his plans are; but I think it 
 would sober him considerably if they were 
 adopted.'^ 
 
 It cannot be said that we need men like 
 Shaw, for there never was anyone like him, 
 nor will there ever be ; in the history of liter- 
 ature, he is an original and a unique figure. 
 But we need him. We need him as Athens 
 needed Socrates; as the Mediaeval Church 
 
 82 
 
GEOKGE BEENARD SHAW 
 
 needed Luther; as England needed Crom- 
 well; as France needed the Revolution; as 
 George III needed George Washington. 
 
 What we want is usually quite different 
 from what we need. 
 
 Shaw's pages bristle with ideas; and every 
 living idea is a challenge. This is why his 
 plays are so much more interesting than most 
 plays. They answer no questions, but they 
 ask many. For some in the audience the end 
 of his play is the beginning of mental activity. 
 Instead of giving us food, he gives us an 
 appetite. 
 
 Bernard Shaw in one respect is the exact 
 opposite of Shakespeare, and in this particu- 
 lar his dramas are the oppomte of true drama. 
 Shakespeare has presented every aspect of 
 human life, and we do not know whether he 
 was a Christian or an atheist, an aristocrat 
 or a democrat, an optimist or a pessimist. 
 His plays reach the goal of objective art — 
 there is no alloy of the author in any of the 
 characters, as there is in The Ring and the 
 Booh, Now Shaw is wholly subjective; eveni 
 if he had not written the brilliant Prefaces,' 
 every play and every person represent the! 
 author."^ That he did write the Prefaces is a 
 
 83 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 proof of his aim ; so far from concealing him- 
 self, he uses every means to reveal himself. 
 
 He is a great Teacher ; and if you ask me, 
 What does he teach ? I confess I do not know. 
 The main business of the teacher is not to 
 impart information, to transfer facts from 
 his skull to the skulls of the pupils with as 
 little friction as possible. The business of 
 the Teacher is to raise a thirst. Shawns 
 melhad, like the method of many great teach- 
 i ers, is the P^mdos,. Now a paradox, taken 
 literally, may be absurd; but it usually con- 
 tains some important truth. Paradox is 
 oyer-emphasis, and every teacher knows the 
 value of emphasis. A curious thing about 
 the teaching of paradoxes is this ; what seems 
 paradoxical to the generation to whom it is 
 delivered, may seem reasonably true in later 
 centuries. **This was some time a paradox, 
 but now the time gives it proof.'' 
 / The paradox method of teaching was the 
 /method employed by Socrates, by Thomas 
 ' Carlyle, by Ibsen, by Nietzsche, by Browning; 
 . and by the greatest Teacher in all history. 
 
 Truth is many-sided, and all sides need 
 emphasis. The main thing in drama is em- 
 phasis. The late Paul Armstrong told me 
 
 84 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 once in his own peculiar accents, ** The Ameri- 
 can audience has got just a quarter of an inch 
 exposed between the hair and the eyes, see? 
 The business of the dramatist is to hit that 
 mark with a wedge, seeT' I saw. 
 
 Although Bernard Shaw is an original 
 writer, if there ever were one, he has learned 
 much and been greatly influenced by his pre- 
 decessors. That he has been profoundly af- 
 fected by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Ib- 
 sen would be perfectly clear even if he had 
 not denied it; his debt to Samuel Butler he 
 takes pleasure in acknowledging. In the 
 Preface to Major Barbara, he says, '*The late 
 Samuel Butler, in his own department the 
 greatest English writer of the latter half of 
 the XIX century, steadily inculcated the 
 necessity and morality of a conscientious 
 Laodiceanism in religion and of an earnest 
 and constant sense of the importance of 
 money. It drives one almost to despair of 
 English literature when one sees so extra- 
 ordinary a study of English life as Butler's 
 posthumous Way of All Flesh making so little 
 impression that when, some years later, I 
 produce plays in which Butler's extraordi- 
 narily fresh, free and future-piercing sugges- 
 
 85 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 tions have an obvious share, I am met with 
 nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and 
 Nietzsche, and am only too thankful that they 
 are not about Alfred de Musset and Georges 
 Sand. Eeally, the English do not deserve to 
 have great men. They allowed Butler to die 
 practically unknown, whilst I, a compara- 
 tively insignificant Irish journalist, was lead- 
 ing them by the nose into an advertisement 
 of me which has made my own life a burden. '* 
 He carries the burden with exceeding ease; 
 and perhaps one reason why the English al- 
 lowed Butler to die practically unknown was 
 because he would not allow his masterpieces 
 to be published while he was alive. 
 
 Although Rousseau and Shaw are about as 
 different as two men could be, Rousseau's 
 _weapon being Sentiment and Shaw 's Reason, 
 still the latter shares the fate of all modern 
 artists, thinkers, and writers in being influ- 
 enced by Jean-Jacques, who was not only the 
 greatest Force but the greatest Source in 
 modem times. Nothing could indicate more 
 clearly that the mass of men are swayed by 
 emotion rather than by thought, than the ab- 
 solutely universal influence of that eight- 
 eenth-century Frenchman. I had not sup- 
 
 86 
 
GEORGE BEENARD SHAW 
 
 posed that it would be possible to point out 
 any specific indebtedness, however, until I 
 happened to see in The Athenceum some years 
 ago, the suggestion that Shaw took the hint 
 for Pygmalion from Rousseau. A corre- 
 spondent contributed the following : 
 
 While German critics, seeking for Quellen, have 
 been attempting to trace affinities between Mr. 
 Shaw's Pygmalion and a play of Smollett, a far 
 more obvious source of inspiration has been over- 
 looked. Rousseau 's little ' ' scene lyrique, ' ' Pygma- 
 lion, contains these lines (Pj'gmalion is speaking) : 
 
 '*Je me suis trompe: j'ai voulu vous faire 
 nymphe, et je vous ai faite deesse." 
 
 *'I1 te manque une ame: ta figure ne pent s'en 
 passer. ' ' 
 
 ''Pygmalion, ne fais plus des dieux, tu n'es qu'un 
 vulgaire artiste." 
 
 Dryden's Prefaces are far better than his 
 Plays; indeed the filth and stupidity of his 
 comedies do not counter-balance the splendid 
 gift of their introductions. I once heard 
 Mark Twain present a speaker to an audi- 
 ence, in the most graceful, witty, and brilliant 
 fashion — and the speaker could not say a 
 word, but stared at the people in dumb stage- 
 fright. It would be agreeable if Dry den's 
 
 87 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 prefaces had been written for blank-books. 
 Now I mil not say that Shaw's prefaces are 
 always better than his plays ; but he has spent 
 to advantage as much time on the art of pre- 
 fatory writing as on the art of the drama. 
 
 His prefaces are not always better than 
 his plays, but they are sometimes. If it be 
 true that no normal woman ever reads a pre- 
 face, what would she think of Heartbreak 
 H ousel Imagine, if you can, an intelligent 
 woman, who finally decides that she must read 
 something by Shaw, merely in self-defense. 
 She takes up the volume, Heartbreak House, 
 and skips the preface. What does she find? 
 She finds a dull, incomprehensible play called 
 Heartbreak House that fills one hundred and 
 twenty-two pages; it has all the apparent 
 formlessness of Chekhov without any of his 
 illuminating genius ; and it is followed by five 
 playlets, only one of which, 0' Flaherty V. C 
 is worthy of the author. That is a sparkling 
 jewel, almost lost in a dustheap. Her puzzle, 
 after vainly trying to comprehend why the 
 book was published, would be to account for 
 the international reputation of G. B. S.^ 
 
 1 However, in the autumn of 1920, the Theatre Guild in 
 New York successfully produced Heartbreak House. 
 
 88 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 But the preface is one of the most pro- 
 found, original, and to the sympathetic mind, / 
 heart-breaking essays that can be discovered "^ 
 in modern literature. It should remain as a 
 revelation of the mind of a philosopher in 
 time of war. 
 
 The preface to Androcles and the Lion is a 
 contribution to literature, to religion, to 
 political economy, to sociology, to New Testa- 
 ment interpretation. One need not agree 
 with it to learn from it. And it is inspiring 
 to see our iconoclast standing in reverence 
 before the King of Kings. 
 
 Although Bernard Shaw ridicules both 
 human conceit and most dogmas, no writer 
 — even in this age of self-trumpeting — is 
 more egotistical or more dogmatic. This 
 never offends most lovers of his works, and 
 it remained for G. K. Chesterton to give the 
 reason. In the New York Sun for 1 Septem- 
 ber 1918, Mr. Chesterton, with his accus- 
 tomed combination of wit and grandeur, 
 says: **I revolt, not against the loud egotist, 
 but the gentle egotist; who talks tenderly of 
 trifles; who says *A sunbeam gilds the amber 
 of my cigarette-holder: I find I cannot live 
 without a cigarette-holder.' I resist this ar- 
 
 89 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 rogance simply because it is more arrogant. 
 For even so complete a fool cannot really 
 suppose we are interested in his cigarette- 
 holder; and therefore must suppose that we 
 are interested in him. But I defend a dog- 
 matic egotist precisely because he deals in 
 dogmas. The Apostles Creed is not re- 
 garded as a pose of foppish vanity; yet the 
 word ^I^ comes before even the word 'God.' 
 The believer comes first; but he is soon 
 dwarfed by his beliefs, swallowed in the cre- 
 ative whirlwind and the trumpets of the 
 resurrection. '^ 
 
 It is a significant fact that a dramatist does 
 not have to be successful at the box-office in 
 order to exert a powerful influence on the 
 modern stage. Many honest folk sincerely 
 believe that a play, in order to be called a 
 play at all, must be written primarily for the 
 box-office, but fortunately for the cause of 
 art, such a belief is not justified in the world 
 of fact any more than in the moral world. 
 Nearly all the plays of Hauptmann have been 
 ^'failures''; even in his own land he is not 
 presented nearly so often as some of his con- 
 temporaries; but his influence on the art of 
 the theatre, on play-writing, has been and is 
 90 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 wide and deep. Ibsen is seen on the stage 
 seldom in France, England, and America ; but/ 
 every modern playwright, except Rostandi 
 has been affected by Ibsen. On the othe^r 
 hand an astonishingly successful dramatist, 
 like Somerset Maugham, for example, has had 
 no influence at all; modern dramatic history 
 would be the same if he had never written a 
 play. In art it is always quality, not quan- 
 tity, that counts. 
 
 Bernard Shaw is a living force in the mod- 
 ern German drama of ideas, not because he 
 is seen on the stage in Germany, though for- 
 tunately his plays frequently do appear there, 
 but because the leaders of modem German 
 drama study him with zeal. I wish I knew 
 the exact relation between Shawns Ccesar and 
 Cleopatra and Hermann Bahr's JosepMne. 
 Hermann Bahr is one of the most distin- 
 guished writers now living. His comedy Das 
 Konzert is one of the great comedies of the 
 present era, although those w^ho saw it trans- 
 formed and deformed in the American ver- 
 sion might not think so. The play Josephine 
 is magnificent when properly acted; I saw a 
 thrilling performance in Munich. Now the 
 treatment of Napoleon both in the drama 
 
 91 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 itself, and in the philosophical introduction, 
 certainly calls to mind Shaw's treatment of 
 Caesar and to a less extent the treatment of 
 Napoleon in TJie Man of Destiny, This lat- 
 ter play was written in 1895, rejected by 
 Richard Mansfield (for whom it was written) 
 in 1897, and first published in 1898 — it was 
 not acted in Germany until 1904. The same 
 year, 1898, which saw the publication of The 
 Man of Destiny^ was made memorable by the 
 composition of Cccsar and Cleopatra, and the 
 production of Josephine in Germany. In 
 1900 Cccsar and Cleopatra was published. 
 Apparently Josephine was written just prior 
 to the composition of Cccsar and Cleopatra 
 and to the publication of The Man of Destiny, 
 Yet it seems as though there must be some 
 vital relation between the German and the 
 English plays. Archibald Henderson, in his 
 monumental Life of Shaw, perhaps the most 
 completely documented biography ever pro- 
 duced of a living man, contents himself with 
 saying, **The German Shaw, Hermann Bahr, 
 has paralleled, if not followed," etc. But 
 that is exactly what I should like to know; 
 did he parallel or did he follow him? We 
 know that Bahr has an immense admiration 
 
 92 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 for the Irish dramatist ; he says a Shaw pre- 
 miere is as great an event in Berlin as a 
 Hauptmann premiere , he has written acute 
 criticisms of Shaw's plays; which were pub- 
 lished too late to throw any light on the ques- 
 tion of influence. 
 
 One remark by Bahr should be remembered 
 by every one who reads The DeviVs Disciple; 
 we know how angry the author was when the 
 actor put in love-business, in order to ascribe 
 a motive for the sacrifice, possibly because he 
 thought the audience would not understand 
 it othermse, possibly because he could not 
 understand it himself; the whole point was 
 that the hero did not himself know why he 
 behaved in such a manner. Bahr is speaking 
 only generally, but the statement applies par- 
 ticularly to this play: *^This very uncertainty 
 in the elements of our primitive feelings, j/^ 
 Shaw expresses with a mad, malicious joy. 
 Indeed, one might say, first and foremost, 
 that Shaw is the poet of our uncertainty." 
 
 It is significant of public taste that Shaw's 
 success from the financial point of view dates 
 from 1905 in America, and 1911 in England, 
 and in each instance from one of the least 
 important of his works. It was not until 
 
 93 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Arnold Daly put on You Never Can Tell in 
 New York that the theatre-going public were 
 converted in America, and not until Gran- 
 ville Barker produced Fanny ^s First Play — 
 which ran two years — that London audiences 
 discovered the author's powers of entertain- 
 ment. Yet Eichard Mansfield, Forbes Eob- 
 ertson, and Ellen Terry had all appeared in 
 plays by Shaw. 
 
 The typical British attitude toward Ber- 
 nard Shaw — even that of dramatic critics — is 
 curiously illustrated by the English corre- 
 spondent of the New York Sun^ in a two- 
 column article published 24 May 1908, under 
 /the heading Shaw Puzzles the Critics. * ' The 
 I greatest dramatist and the greatest conversa- 
 y J tionalist in England each treated the public 
 \ to a new play this week. The dramatist dis- 
 / appointed one audience and his critics, and 
 the conversationalist alternately perplexed 
 and enraged the other, which is probably just 
 what he intended to do. A play from the pen 
 of that master of stagecraft Pinero and a 
 series of brilliant ideas and epigrams from 
 that mental gymnast Bernard Shaw make an 
 eventful dramatic week, even though both 
 
 94 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 efforts fell far below the standard hoped for 
 by the followers of their originators.*' 
 
 These are strange pronouncements. Pi- 
 nero was not the *' greatest dramatist be- 
 cause Barrie, Shaw, and Galsworthy are 
 greater; and the play that **fell far below*' 
 was The Thunderbolt, which is perhaps 
 Pinero's masterpiece, or at all events one of 
 the best three among his numerous works. 
 That the critics were puzzled by Getting Mar- 
 ried is, however, quite true. After Shaw had 
 read the fulminations, he remarked, ^^The 
 whole explanation of their criticism is this. 
 They were unanimous in liking the first act 
 best, the second act much less and the third 
 act not at all. They want to know what I 
 mean by the third act. Well, the first act is 
 farcical comedy, which they understand and 
 like, the second act is sociological comedy, 
 which they do not understand or like, and the 
 third act is dramatic poetry, which is simply 
 Chinese to them.*' 
 
 It will be remembered that in 1916 William 
 Faversham presented Getting Married in 
 New York, and that it was fairly successful. 
 
 Even if Shaw were not a genius in litera- 
 95 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ture and drama, which he assuredly is, he 
 could not have failed to attract some atten- 
 tion merely by the size of the forces he at- 
 tacks. He is like a man on a crowded pave- 
 ment, who is the only person in the throng 
 ** going his way.*' The mere friction of his 
 advance w^ould draw universal attention, and 
 arouse irritation from all against whom he 
 rubbed. He has decided to fight the ordinary 
 view of religion, the ordinary view of the 
 V state; what is more the universal love of 
 romance. In the year 1898, in the Preface 
 to the Four Pleasant Plays, he wrote, **my 
 conception of romance as the great heresy to 
 be rooted out from art and life — as the root 
 of modern pessimism and the bane of modern 
 self-respect.'' ^^Idealism, which is only a 
 flattering name for romance in politics and 
 morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in 
 ethics or religion." 
 
 It is easier to understand, after reading 
 that Preface, why it is, with all his skill as a 
 playwright and all his brilliancy in dialogue, 
 that those of us who delight in seeing his 
 plays presented have still for the most part 
 to depend on freak theatres and repertory 
 companies. The ordinary theatre-goer is 
 96 
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 ready to surrender to the atmosphere of ro- 
 mance; and what he gets is a cold douche. 
 Shaw's plays are cleanly, antiseptic, stimu- 
 lating ; his laughter clears the air. But plays 
 that substitute the laughter of reason for the 
 warm glow of romance lack something that is 
 generally believed to be essential ; instead of 
 having an emotional interest, they have the 
 keen play of dialectic. It is the same with 
 his characters ; even his greatest single char- 
 acter, Candida, has no charm; there is in all 
 his plays only one figure that has any charm, 
 and that is the Lion. The beast is irresist- 
 ible; everybody in the audience wants to 
 stroke him. 
 
 It would be enormously interesting if 
 Shakespeare in his plays had told us about 
 his contemporaries, about currents of Eliza- 
 bethan thought, and had expressed his opin- 
 ions ; but he invariably chose to be universal 
 rather than local. This is why in the year 
 1920 he is more contemporary than the morn- 
 ing paper, because while he is never per- 
 sonal, he is always true. Shaw complains 
 of Shakespeare's silences, but Shakespeare 
 chose to deal with human life rather than 
 with human opinions. I fervently hope that 
 
 97 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Shaw 's plays will last ; that in a century from 
 now, they will appear on the stage more fre- 
 quently than they do to-day; but if not, it 
 will be because of their modernity. The very 
 reason for their interest and applicability 
 may be the reason for their remaining on the 
 shelves. Already Ibsen ^s DolVs House is be- 
 ginning to seem more old-fashioned than 
 Ibsen's Pretenders, 
 
 But if they cease to attract audiences, it is 
 incredible that they should cease to attract 
 readers. Students of social history will be 
 compelled to study them, and those who love 
 the pure art of literature will not be able to 
 leave them alone. 
 
 98 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 The speed ^\ith which John Galsworthy 
 climbed from the vale of obscurity to the 
 heights of fame is more than a tribute to his 
 ability; it is a proof that popular taste is 
 better than those who form it seem to think. 
 His novels and his plays have no tricks ; the 
 deserts of his tragedies have no springs of 
 laughter; even on the stage he usually ap- 
 peals moreTo reason than to sentiment; his.^ 
 vitality is the vitality of the mind rather 
 than of the passions; he seems to think that 
 the drama is an art, not a trade. 
 
 Nor was his reputation made by one novel, 
 or one play, or one lucky hit. It was made by 
 a rapid succession of masterpieces. A life- 
 time of arduous endeavour would seem too 
 short for what he accomplished in eight years. 
 From 1906 to 1914 he produced the following 
 works. Novels: The Man of Property, The 
 Country House, Fraternity, The Patrician, 
 The Dark Flower. Plays: The Silver Box, 
 
 99 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Strife, Justice, The Eldest Son, The Pigeon, 
 The Fugitive. During these eight years he 
 found time to write and produce other books 
 not so notable, and during the war — though 
 actively engaged in helping — he produced 
 three novels, some essays and verses, and has 
 now (1920) published three new plays, and 
 a full length novel. Though his books natu- 
 rally vary in value, he has never printed any- 
 thing negligible. 
 
 Our three foremost living English- writing 
 dramatists represent, curiously enough, Eng- 
 land, Scotland, Ireland. Shaw is an Irish- 
 man : Barrie is a Scot ; Galsworthy is an Eng- 
 lishman. 
 
 John Galsworthy is purely English in 
 birth, breeding, and education. He was born 
 in Surrey, and passed through the tj^pical 
 preliminaries leading to the career of Eng- 
 lish gentleman. He spent five years at Har- 
 row, and three years at New College, Oxford. 
 In his undergraduate days he gave little indi- 
 cation of the intense seriousness that was 
 later to be his main characteristic; he was 
 indeed simply a good fellow, enjoying the 
 usual things, and might have been an original 
 for Barriers portrait of the Oxford man in 
 100 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 Rosalind. After graduation he (Entered the 
 profession of law, the common refuge of 
 those who do not know what they want. He 
 said of this, *^I read in various chambers, 
 practised almost not at all, and disliked my 
 profession thoroughly. ' ' 
 
 Then he traveled extensively, visiting many 
 remote places. His voyages seem to have 
 had this interesting effect. Instead of giving 
 him *^ material'' for subsequent novels and 
 dramas, they made him see England more 
 sharply and clearly. The material is in his 
 own mind. Hardly any famous writer has 
 traveled so much and said so little about it. 
 Practically all his themes are English; he 
 writes of English town and country life, and 
 almost wholly of English people. Far away 
 from home, in a totally different environment, 
 he saw England as Ibsen saw Norway from 
 sunlit Italy. Many hours must have been 
 spent in meditation about the distant island, 
 and in comparisons of home with foreign life. 
 He became a citizen of the world ; wholly Eng- 
 lish in ancestry, boyhood environment, and 
 education, he was able to look at things-taken- 
 for-granted with the eyes, let us say, of some 
 highly educated cosmopolitan Russian. This 
 101 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 partly accounts for the extraordinary insu- 
 larity of his subjects, and for the even more 
 extraordinary impartiality with which they 
 are presented. He really possesses the 
 power, prayed for by Burns, of seeing him- 
 self as others see him. 
 
 Although his rise from obscurity to fame 
 was rapid, he spent sixteen years — from the 
 age of twenty-three to the age of thirty-nine 
 — in more or less unconscious preparation for 
 his career. He became a lawyer in 1890, used 
 up much time in travel, reflection and read- 
 ing, and his first play appeared in 1906. He 
 had then, however, been writing for eight 
 years, trying his hand at novels and short 
 stories. In 1904 he produced a work of fic- 
 tion that he called, prophetically. The Island 
 Pharisees. This would do well enough as a 
 title for his complete works, as the general 
 effect of his writing is plainly that of an in- 
 dictment. This note of satire and denuncia- 
 tion is naturally stronger in the earlier novels 
 and plays than in the later ones ; age mellows 
 us all, if we do any thinking and learn any- 
 thing, and whilst Mr. Galsworthy still hates 
 hypocrisy and self-righteousness, he hates 
 strife even more. He has discovered that the 
 102 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 active force of love is more efficient than the 
 bludgeon of scorn — a truth that was taught 
 some nineteen centuries ago. 
 
 John Galsworthy is an aristocrat in blood 
 and in intellect. But unfortunately for his 
 peace of mind, he has an annoyingly impor- 
 tunate conscience. It is just the opposite of 
 the robust conscience advocated by Hilda 
 Wangel; it will not let him rest. He is not 
 a Socialist, but his sympathy with the poor is 
 so strong that he cannot enjoy himself. 
 There are many people living in poverty who 
 think it an outrage that they should suffer 
 from the lack of necessities when so many 
 have a superfluity of luxuries ; but John Gals- 
 worthy, while it is impossible that he should 
 share their condition, actually shares their 
 rage. When he wakes up in the morning in 
 pleasant surroundings and sits down to an 
 excellent breakfast, his pleasure in it is poi- 
 soned by the fact that so many persons of 
 equally estimable character are condemned 
 to hardship. This is the kind of thing that 
 ultimately drove Tolstoi into madness; but 
 Mr. Galsworthy will be saved from extremes 
 by his inheritance of English common sense. 
 
 To be a penniless communist is mentally 
 103 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 comfortable, as it is to be a radical without 
 any responsibility ; to be a selfish plutocrat is 
 both physically and mentally comfortable; 
 but to be an unselfish aristocrat with burn- 
 ing sympathy for the *4ower classes'' and 
 yet to realise one 's impotence to change social 
 conditions, is not to have an ideally happy 
 state of mind. When those two champions. 
 Theory and Practice, engage in a daily duel 
 on the stage of one's brain, the result is 
 tragedy. And it is real tragedy, because it 
 is an intolerable situation from which there 
 is no way out. It ought not to continue, yet 
 it can neither cease nor change. 
 
 During the war, when we all knew that 
 many persons in Europe were starving and 
 babies dying for the lack of milk, it seemed 
 abominable to many American women to con- 
 sider thoughtfully what they should select 
 from the grocer for the household dinner ; but 
 what was to be done ? Go without eating be- 
 cause others were forced to do so I Eat with 
 such remorse as to ensure indigestion? Be- 
 come hardhearted and eventually callous? 
 
 These divagations may seem absurdly far 
 from the consideration of the plays of John 
 Galsworthy ; but I think that it is out of such 
 104 
 
JOHN GALSWOETHY 
 
 interior conflicts that the plays have come 
 into being. It is seldom indeed that one finds 
 a writer whose artistic conscience and whose 
 moral conscience are both so highly devel- 
 oped. 
 
 A sentence in the novel Beyond might apply 
 to the author of it. **He had, in these last 
 three years, become unconsciously inimical to 
 his own class and their imitators, and more 
 than ever friendly to the poor — visiting the 
 labourers, small farmers, and small trades- 
 men, doing them little turns when he could, 
 giving their children sixpence, and so forth. ' ' 
 How the late Samuel Butler would have de- 
 spised such an attitude! But fortunately 
 few of the children of men resemble that 
 iconoclast. 
 
 Whatever may be the ultimate solution of 
 social problems like poverty, prostitution, 
 city slums, and inequality before the law, 
 poets, novelists, and dramatists are deter- 
 mined that we shall not forget them. Our 
 creative artists are often the conscience of 
 the public. ^^You may not be able to settle 
 these questions, '^ they say to us; **but you 
 shall not dismiss them from your mind. We 
 shall convict you of sin, if we can ; we shall 
 105 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 rob you of your complacency ; you shall share 
 with us the mental torment and distress from 
 which our novels and dramas are born.'* In 
 all of Mr. Galsworthy's plays, as Mr. Eaton 
 said of Justice, the Audience is the Villain. 
 The unpardonable sin is indifference. 
 
 His first play, The Silver Box, which, like 
 so many plays in dramatic history, is named 
 from an inanimate object, itself a shining 
 symbol, arrays class against class in a man- 
 ner prophetic of its author's subsequent 
 work. Since the first night of Sudermann's 
 Die Ehre, VorderJiaus and Hinterhaus have 
 frequently been the theme of conflict, with 
 the former represented as predatory ; it is so 
 here. The first line in the list of Dramatis 
 PersoncB, is ironical — John Barthwich, M.P., 
 a wealth!/ Liberal. Despite his liberal views, 
 he and his family are really predatory in the 
 community; for they do not hesitate to de- 
 stroy a weaker family that gets in their way. 
 The son-and-heir from Oxford is in the very 
 first scene coupled with an out-of-work 
 scoundrel named Jones ; they are both drunk. 
 Young Barthwick in his revels has stolen a 
 purse of money from a woman, and Jones in 
 alcoholic excitement, steals the silver cig- 
 106 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 arette box from Barthwick. In the last act 
 — which has an admirable trial scene, the 
 young patrician goes free, while Jones is 
 condemned. 
 
 Magistr^vte. This is your first offence, and I 
 am going to give you a light sentence. [Speaking 
 sharply f hut without expression.] One month with 
 hard labour. 
 
 [He hends, and parleys with his Clerk. The 
 Bald Constable and another help Jones from 
 the dock.] 
 
 Jones. [Stopping and twisting round.] Call 
 this justice? What about 'im? 'E got drunk! 
 'E took the purse — 'e took the purse but [in a 
 muffled shout] 'it's 'is money got 'im off — Justice! 
 
 [The prisoner's door is shut on Jones, and from 
 the seedy-looking men and women comes a 
 hoarse and whispering groan.] 
 
 Magistrate. We will now adjourn for lunch! 
 [He rises from his seat.] 
 
 [The Court is in a stir. Roper gets up and 
 speaks to the reporter. Jack, throwing up 
 his head, walks with a swagger to the cor- 
 ridor; Barthwick follows.] 
 
 Mrs. Jones. [Tu^rning to him with a humble 
 gesture.] Oh! Sir! — 
 
 [Barthwick hesitates, then yielding to his 
 nerves, he makes a shame-faced gesture of re- 
 107 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 fusal, and hurries out of Court. Mrs. Jones 
 stands looking after him.] 
 
 The curtain falls. 
 
 Although this is its author's first play, it 
 is a finished masterpiece, with no sign of 
 weakness, no touch of crudity. It sets class 
 against class with no melodrama, no violence, 
 no sentimentality, no exaggeration. You 
 will not find the hard and cruel rich man, the 
 honest and deserving poor man, the utterly 
 base son of the house, the corrupt and vindic- 
 tive Judge. On the contrary. The rich fa- 
 ther means well, but, like many politicians, 
 lacks intelligence, imagination, and courage; 
 Jones is after all a drunken, lazy brute^ who 
 beats his wife ; the son-and-heir is typical of 
 gilded youth, easy-going, and not__jcnale- 
 volent, an amiable zero; the Judge with the 
 evidence before him, is scrupulously fair. 
 Yet horrible injustice is committed, and our 
 blood boils in futile rage. 
 
 In the end the one who suffers most is mo- 
 rally and socially the finest character in the 
 play — Mrs. Jones. By ^* socially '^ I mean of 
 course her value to society. She is a good 
 woman who wishes to bring up her children 
 properly, and who is willing to work every 
 108 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 day to that end ; she claims no privileges and 
 asks no favours. She and her helpless chil- 
 dren are left to starve. 
 
 (Personally I think the spineless Liberal 
 Member of Parliament will hope to assist 
 her; it will not be the first time that the 
 cheque-book tries to atone for sin. But can 
 he find her? She and her children have 
 been evicted, and with the husband and fa- 
 ther in prison, they are on the street.) 
 
 The dramatist is indeed the Judge, and the 
 criminal is Society. The impartiality of the 
 playwright is all the more remarkable, when 
 we know how he really feels about it. The 
 scenes and the dialogue are magnificent in 
 their reserve, characteristic of the author at 
 his best. Every one who has seen or read 
 anything by Galsworthy feels this quality ; it 
 is one of his contributions to modern drama. 
 He is as far from the paradoxes of Shaw 
 and Wilde as he is from the cheapness of the 
 typical sentimental writer. Galsworthy ^s 
 plays are solid and honest, with no orna- 
 mentation, and no claptrap. He aims di- 
 rectly at the intelligence of the spectators, a 
 faint and difficult target. 
 
 Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn, who has some ad- 
 109 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 mirable pages on Galsworthy in his valuable 
 book, The Modern Drama, need not have 
 made an exception of The Silver Box. **In 
 this play only, however, is the wrong wholly 
 on one side/' Surely Jones is an abomina- 
 tion and we should all rejoice at his incar- 
 ceration could his wife escape injury, and the 
 young gentleman suffer equally. 
 
 The equipoise and restraint of our dra- 
 matist seem to have been misunderstood by 
 at least one German critic, who missed that 
 sentimentality so dear to the German heart, 
 and who felt that Galsworthy did not have 
 the courage in this play to go to the depths 
 of tragedy. This is curious, for we feel that 
 the muffled tones are all the more impressive, 
 just as the grief of a man is more terrible 
 than the grief of a child, though the latter 
 be accompanied by more noise. On 6 June 
 1914, The Silver Box — Die Zigarettenhasten 
 — ^had its first German performance at 
 Frankfort. It was brilliantly successful. 
 One critic said that all the circumstances 
 pointed to unrelieved tragedy, but that the 
 author took good care to arrange that the 
 audience should be spared excessive emotion. 
 It has the stamp of *' English good-nature,'' 
 110 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 so that instead of being gloomily impressive, 
 it becomes almost an idyl. *^In its whole 
 style it is through and through English/' 
 
 To the credit of German audiences, how- 
 ever, let it be said that Galsworthy is highly 
 appreciated. He has recently announced 
 that all royalties coming from the acting or 
 printing of his plays in Germany, shall be 
 given to the relief of starving German chil- 
 dren. This is something more than **eng- 
 lische Gemiitlichkeit''; it is Christianity. 
 
 Although Galsworthy is highly respected 
 in England and in America, his plays are 
 not presented nearly so often as they de- 
 serve to be. We must rely mainly on stock 
 and repertory companies for opportunities to 
 see them. When I was in London in the 
 Spring of 1912, the plays produced at the 
 West End theatres did not compare in value 
 with the programme presented by Miss Hor- 
 niman's Manchester players, who fortunately 
 happened to be visiting the metropolis. 
 They had an out-of-the-way playhouse, and 
 their prices were low. They gave The Silver 
 Box in a manner that left nothing to be de- 
 sired; the art shown in the whole presenta- 
 tion, the perfect teamplay of the company, 
 111 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 and the intelligence displayed in bringing out 
 the value of every speech, are things I shall 
 remember. 
 
 The four best plays of Mr. Galsworthy are 
 The Silver Box, Strife, Jiistice, and The 
 Pigeon, They are practically without the 
 element of love and they have no sex inter- 
 est. It is astonishing how successfully he 
 can play the game without any trumps. His 
 success emphasises the fact that he appeals 
 to the mind almost exclusively ; his plays are 
 naturally devoid of charm, except the charm 
 that is inherent in admirable structure, and 
 the swift sword-play of intelligence. Of 
 late years he has seemed to be falling into 
 the obsession of sex, more in his novels, how- 
 ever, than in his dramas. It mil be fatal to 
 his genius. He is at his best when his mind 
 is clearest. The Man of Property is a much 
 greater novel than The Dark Flower, and 
 there is no comparison at all between The 
 Silver Box and The Fugitive. 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy has all the thoughtfulness 
 and earnestness of Brieux, and he is an in- 
 comparably finer artist. Brieux has never 
 written anything equal to The Silver Box or 
 Strife, while the subtlety and fantasy dis- 
 112 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 played in The Pigeon are wholly beyond the 
 grasp of the Frenchman. The two men are 
 most nearly alike in Justice and La Rohe 
 Rouge. But Justice, with all its stirring 
 scenes, is quite inferior to the three other 
 plays (just mentioned) by its author, and is 
 inferior for precisely the same reason that 
 makes Brieux inferior to Galsworthy. 
 
 Brieux is primarily an advocate, Gals- 
 worthy is primarily an artist. Many play- 
 wrights whose works are devoid of cerebra- 
 tion and who succeed merely by ** action '' 
 and excitement and suspense, and the fa- 
 miliar bag of tricks, could take lessons in 
 technique from Mr. Galsworthy. Omitting 
 the content (if one could) The Silver Box is 
 a magnificent play. Not even Clyde Fitch, 
 that master of beginnings, ever captured an 
 audience more suddenly or more completely 
 than they are caught at the first rise of the 
 curtain in this drama. It is a perfect open- 
 ing, and from the start every speech and 
 every gesture push the action along to the 
 triumphant conclusion. It is extraordinary 
 that an author's first piece should be so 
 weighty in thought and so brilliant in action. 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy's second play, Joy, was 
 113 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 presented at the Savoy Theatre, London, 24 
 September 1907. It is a scherzo, and seems 
 even slighter than it is, because it comes be- 
 tween two mighty works. 
 
 On 9 March 1909, at the Duke of York^s 
 Theatre, and under the management of 
 Granville Barker — the best producer of Eng- 
 lish plays in modern times, to whom all 
 lovers of good drama owe so much — ap- 
 peared Strife. The London AthencBum, 
 which had then a reputation, after speaking 
 of the admirable stage effects, and particu- 
 larly of the acting of Norman McKinnel and 
 Fisher White, said, *^The play, however, 
 overtops the acting ; it bears out the promise 
 of The Silver Box, and adds distinction to 
 our stage.'' 
 
 In the autumn of 1909, the New Theatre 
 opened its doors in New York. The first 
 performance was Antony and Cleopatra, and 
 was one of the most elaborate failures ever 
 known. Then came The Cottage in the Air, 
 which made only a faint impression. On 17 
 November was produced Strife. I have al- 
 ways believed that if the New Theatre had 
 opened with this play, its history would have 
 been happier. Like all new enterprises, it 
 114 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 had to fight for its life; it had terrible ob- 
 stacles to contend wdth, including powerful 
 antagonists who were determined in advance 
 to destroy it, and whose joy at the initial dis- 
 aster knew no bounds. Everything then 
 contributed to fasten upon the New Theatre 
 the chains of Dullness; it was known as a 
 ^* highbrow'' undertaking, where every nor- 
 mal man in the audience would be bored to 
 death. Now when Strife appeared, the 
 friends of the company cried ^^At last! this 
 is what we expected! this is what we have 
 been waiting for!'' If only this play could 
 have been chosen for the opening night, hos- 
 tility would have been silenced, and a tri- 
 umphant blow struck for the good cause. 
 
 The production of Strife was in every way 
 worthy of the author and his drama. The 
 New Theatre had the best stock company 
 ever seen in America — a company fully on a 
 par with the Comedie Frangaise. You will 
 never see anywhere in Europe a more fin- 
 ished or more intelligent presentation than 
 that of Strife. There is to-day nothing in 
 New York that can for a moment bear com- 
 parison with the standard of excellence main- 
 tained at the New Theatre. 
 115 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 I regret that the scenes were changed from 
 Great Britain to the United States. It was 
 unnecessary, for labour-strikes are not con- 
 fined to one nation, and human nature is the 
 same. This was the only alteration, and the 
 author made it. 
 
 No one who witnessed it will forget the 
 thrilling power of the acting. Mr. Louis 
 Calvert was an ideal President Anthony, his 
 cold steely speech contrasting powerfully 
 with the lava-like eloquence of Mr. Albert 
 Bruning, who took the part of Roberts, the 
 strike-leader; Mr. Ferdinand Gottschalk and 
 Mr. Robert Homans were at their best. That 
 was a great day in the history of the stage. 
 
 The New York Sun, under the heading, 
 **New Theatre has a *Hit,' ^' commented as 
 follows: **With the production of Strife, 
 first seen in America last evening, the New 
 Theatre did the right thing in the right way. 
 It will be surprising if this fine play, coupled 
 with the powerful acting of a company that 
 cannot be matched in this country for all 
 around excellence, does not give a new and 
 vigorous impetus to the New Theatre's sea- 
 son, whose beginning, though displaying 
 much promise, fell short of the full achieve- 
 116 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 ment desired by its best friends. Strife is 
 the work of John Galsworthy, an English- 
 man who has won for himself an honorable 
 position both as novelist and playwright. 
 He is the author of The Silver Box, in which 
 Miss Barrymore appeared here several years 
 ago with credit to herself, though the public 
 did not care to see her in a part which re- 
 quired the disguise of her good looks. . . . 
 It would have been difficult to improve upon 
 the acting in most of the parts. The princi- 
 pal honors of the evening were fairly divided 
 by Louis Calvert as the beaten corporation 
 president and Albert Bruning as the discom- 
 fited firebrand. Mr. Calvert played with a 
 poise and reserve and a dramatic insight that 
 are rare indeed upon our stage, making the 
 most incisive effects with a minimum of visi- 
 ble effort. Mr. Bruning was a very whirl- 
 wind of prejudice and passion, lighting up 
 his stormy scenes with the true fire of irre- 
 concilable fanaticism. ' ' 
 
 The whole action takes place between noon 
 and six on one February afternoon, the 
 hatreds and struggles of years, one might say 
 of centuries, coming to a terrific climax. It 
 is pure tragedy, for the irresistible force 
 117 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 meets the immovable object. Mr. Gals- 
 worthy does not tell us about the strike, he 
 takes us there. We are in the centre of the 
 storm. We attend a meeting of the Board 
 of Directors, presided over by the implacable 
 Anthony, who has won four strikes and ex- 
 pects to win this. His speeches would have 
 delighted an economist of the old school. 
 Everything leading to reconciliation seems to 
 him cant. Labour and capital are mortal 
 foes, and must fight to a finish every time. 
 Every one who believes in any form of com- 
 promise or mutual forbearance seems to him 
 as impotently sentimental as pacifists seem to 
 everybody in war time. This is war, believes 
 old Anthony; and sheer common sense de- 
 mands no peace without victory, in order that 
 the sacrifices already made shall not be in 
 vain. Don't talk while we are fighting — 
 simply hit harder ! It is a clear and logical 
 position, universally followed in interna- 
 tional conflicts. Mr. Anthony has all the 
 strength that comes from absolute convic- 
 tions, shaded by no penumbra of doubt. 
 
 The leader of the strikers asks nothing bet- 
 ter. Roberts also believes in fighting to a 
 finish. Not merely this particular issue is at 
 118 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 stake, the whole cause of Humanity demands 
 that we continue the conflict. What matter 
 if children starve, and his own wife dies? 
 Shall a man place children and his wife, his 
 own selfish affairs, above Honour? 
 
 And now the audience is taken from the 
 Directors' meeting to the kitchen of Rob- 
 erts's cottage, where we see what we see in 
 every strife, the suffering of helpless women. 
 Then comes the meeting of the strikers, and 
 the fiery address of the unyielding Roberts. 
 To him Capital is as real as the Devil to our 
 ancestors. **If we can shake that white- 
 faced monster with the bloody lips. ' ' In the 
 midst of his eloquence, word is brought to 
 him that his wife is dead. 
 
 Anthony and Roberts both lose in the end 
 — each leader is outvoted by his own party. 
 A compromise is arranged under the precise 
 terms that were proposed before the strug- 
 gle began. Thus all the sacrifices are in 
 vain, and nothing has been accomplished ex- 
 cept to prove the futility of strife. Hu- 
 manity however will learn little either from 
 this play or from the struggle it represents, 
 for men (and women too) have such an in- 
 tense love of war that nothing can keep them 
 119 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 out of it. The voice of reason in a storm of 
 passion is like a whisper in a north-east gale. 
 
 The duel comes to a close with the two 
 beaten champions staring dully at each other 
 in a kind of stupefied respect; each believes 
 not only that his own heart's desire is 
 crushed, but that the world has received a 
 fatal setback. The world however has sur- 
 vived the vain struggles of passion-blinded 
 men for many generations, and will probably 
 continue to do so. 
 
 It is a great play. It is built not merely 
 on the contemporary warfare between capital 
 and labour, but on the eternal fighting instinct 
 in human nature, an instinct as firmly im- 
 planted as hunger and lust. Not until Rea- 
 son and Religion — which are very similar 
 — control this instinct, will society be safe, 
 and productive ; every man sitting under his 
 own vine and fig-tree in security, with none 
 to make him afraid. That time will come; 
 but it will come many centuries hence, for 
 it is the method of humanity to try every 
 wrong way before choosing the right one. 
 Perhaps a thousand years from now the 
 world will listen to the greatest Political 
 120 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 Economist of all time, the author of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. 
 
 It is nothing short of amazing that Mr. 
 Galsworthy could have written a play, wholly 
 taken up with the strife between Labour and 
 Capital, without making it an exposition 
 rather than a drama, and without making it 
 propaganda. Yet such is the fact. It is a 
 work of art, not a sermon; and it is a play 
 of action rather than talk. There is not one 
 dull moment. Mr. Galsworthy has selected 
 his material from human nature, and used it 
 like an artist. Just as one dramatist will 
 take love, another lust, another robbery, an- 
 other jealousy, another ambition, and all will 
 attempt to represent men and women mov- 
 ing in the labyrinth of error, crime, and folly, 
 the clear-headed and superior audience 
 watching with pity, or indignation, or 
 laughter — so Mr. Galsworthy puts these di- 
 rectors and strikers under the lens of his 
 powerful mind, even as Thoreau put the ants 
 under a glass and watched them fight it out. 
 We see their criminal stupidity, condemn it, 
 and go on living in the same old way. The 
 Spanish dramatist, Benavente, says, **One- 
 121 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 fourth part of the morality, goodness, and 
 sense of justice which an audience brings into 
 the theatre, would, if left outside, make the 
 world over into paradise/' 
 
 The next play. Justice, produced for the 
 first time in London, 21 February 1910, has 
 less equality in the scales than its title would 
 seem to demand. In fact we have here less 
 balance and more bias. The restraint and 
 austerity so characteristic of The Silver Box 
 and of Strife are less in evidence. This play 
 is propaganda. The real criminal on trial is 
 civilised society, its particular offence is the 
 prison system, and it is found guilty. Soli- 
 tary confinement is a bad business, and like 
 all deliberate cruelty, is worse than ineffi- 
 cient. It is pleasant to know that as a re- 
 sult of the sensation produced in Great 
 Britain by this play, certain much needed 
 reforms were actually put through. Here 
 Galsworthy stands by the side of Dickens, 
 Brieux, and all literary men who have used 
 their art for a distinct moral purpose. 
 
 But although the intention of the author 
 
 is evident, the play being conceived in an 
 
 ecstasy of rage against human oppression, 
 
 the restraint of the artist controls most of 
 
 122 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 the scenes. He does not give ns a noble hero 
 unjustly imprisoned; he does not give us a 
 hero at all. William Falder, the victim, is a 
 weak, spineless young man, who is in love 
 with a married woman, and has forged a 
 cheque to pay their travelling expenses to a 
 far country; curious, isn't it, how eagerly we 
 respectable citizens wish he had succeeded in 
 the endeavour? Possibly Browning would 
 have said that his real crime consisted in the 
 fact that he did not succeed in getting away, 
 and that he allowed himself to be crushed by 
 the terror and remorse brought on by soli- 
 tary confinement. A true hero would have 
 rejoiced in his crime, since he did it, like 
 Ibsen's Nora, for love; he would have told 
 the Judge boldly that he could do nothing 
 else; and the weeks of solitary confinement 
 would have been bright to him because he 
 knew he was suffering for the woman of his 
 heart. But alas, Falder is no hero. Legally 
 he is fairly imprisoned, and on his release, 
 his broken spirit makes him more incom- 
 petent than ever; so that when he is finally 
 arrested again, he commits suicide, not be- 
 cause of any one misfortune, but because of 
 the proverbial last straw. He could not stag- 
 123 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ger along one inch further under the accumu- 
 lating burdens society placed on his back. 
 
 Falder was quite lacking in the heroism 
 that supports failure, and in the humour that 
 supports failure. He really had no resources 
 in his own soul. When Dickens first visited 
 this country, he was taken to see a criminal 
 who had spent many years in solitary confine- 
 ment. Dickens looked at him in an access of 
 horror and sympathy. **My God, man, do 
 you mean to say you have been in solitary 
 confinement all these years? How have you 
 stood it r ^ The man phlegmatically replied, 
 * ^ Well, sonny, 'taint what you 'd call a rowdy 
 life.'' 
 
 There is only one villain in the play, and he 
 does not appear. He is the drunken rufiian, 
 Ruth's husband, who beats both her and the 
 children, and from whom under the English 
 law she can find no way of escape. All the 
 other people are a mixture of good and evil, 
 and all seem to have good intentions. What 
 they lack is precisely the lack that enrages 
 Galsworthy ; they lack human understanding, 
 and the sympathy bom of it. They cannot 
 put themselves in the place of the suffering 
 man and woman — if they could, oppression 
 124 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 would cease and war be no more. From the 
 point of view of orthodox political economy, 
 Falder's suicide is a good thing; for his 
 problem is thus eliminated. We need not 
 worry about his case any further — only the 
 woman and her children now remain on our 
 hands. But from the point of view of Chris- 
 tianity, which is Mr. Galsworthy ^s view — 
 whatever he calls himself — every human soul 
 is precious in the sight of God and man. For 
 a matter of a trifling sum of money, which he 
 who lost it could afford to lose, two souls suf- 
 fer shipwreck. 
 
 What shall we say to these things? Shrug 
 our shoulders in the good old non possumus 
 gesture? Or ask ourselves if we are really 
 offending against the least of these ? Falder 
 is convicted of forgery. We are convicted of 
 murder. 
 
 Notwithstanding the intrusive propaganda, 
 Justice is a great play. As in Strife he takes 
 us into the heart of the storm, so here, we 
 are not told about prisons, we visit the con- 
 victs. The way the terrific climax of the de- 
 lirious door-beating is reached, is one of the 
 finest illustrations of Mr. Galsworthy's art. 
 We are shown into the general office, like any 
 125 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 visitor; we hear the various views of the 
 prison doctor, the prison chaplain, and so on. 
 Gradually we inhale the atmosphere ; we feel 
 a sense of imprisonment ourselves. Out- 
 doors looks good. Then come the interviews 
 with the unfortunates, and the steady rise to 
 climax. 
 
 The only artistic blot in this play is the 
 last curtain speech. It is curious that this 
 should ring so false, for our dramatist is a 
 master of the difficult art of conclusion. The 
 persons are grouped around the dead body of 
 Falder, and we long for the curtain to fall. 
 Suddenly the old clerk says, * * No one '11 touch 
 him now! Never again! He's safe with 
 gentle Jesus!" 
 
 This distracted everybody's attention from 
 the tragedy, as completely and as discord- 
 antly as if some one on the stage had fired off 
 a gun. The audience looked at each other in . 
 consternation, as though some hideously 
 awkward thing had happened; as though 
 some beautiful and brilliant comedy had 
 ended with a particularly bad joke. Nor was 
 this in the slightest degree the fault of the 
 actor; for Mr. 0. P. Heggie was throughout 
 the evening adequate in every respect. 
 126 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 The first American performance was given 
 by amateurs at Hull-House, Chicago, in 
 April 1911. That it was impressive may be 
 gathered from a letter I received from a uni- 
 versity man. **I have just come back from 
 Hull-House where I went to see a perform- 
 ance of Galsworthy's Justice. It was one of 
 the most astounding presentations I have 
 ever seen. . . . The acting of the parts — by 
 the members of the various Hull-House 
 Clubs — was wonderful. ' * 
 
 Six years after the successful London first 
 night passed before the play was seen on the 
 American professional stage. Perhaps we 
 might never have had the opportunity had it 
 not been for the fact that there was a news- 
 paper uproar over the management of Sing 
 Sing Prison, and thus the occasion seemed 
 timely. Even so, it required some courage 
 to risk the undertaking. I am told that the 
 play had been submitted to seven managers, 
 who rejected it in turn, saying, **The Ameri- 
 can people will never stand for that high- 
 brow stuff. ' ' Finally that enterprising man, 
 John D. Williams, presented it, and it is 
 pleasant to remember that New York re- 
 sponded so enthusiastically that the experi- 
 127 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ment was as successful financially as it was 
 in every other way. It was also important as 
 the beginning of the career of John Barry- 
 more, who for the first time gave full evi- 
 dence of his true powers as an actor. 
 
 The first American night was on 2 March 
 1916, at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven. 
 It was an occasion. The university and the, 
 city turned out in force; dramatic critics 
 came from many other places, and Mr. Mo- 
 derwell wrote a page in the following Mon- 
 day's Boston Transcript^ full of praise for 
 Mr. Williams and of acute criticism of the 
 play. It was one of the most exciting first 
 nights I have ever witnessed. As I inched 
 along in the crowded aisle after the final cur- 
 tain, a lady asked me if I did not find this 
 drama very depressing. I told her it had ex- 
 actly the contrary effect on me ; it was thrill- 
 ing, exhilarating, transporting. There is 
 nothing depressing on the stage except stu- 
 pidity. Musical-comedy I find depressing.^ 
 
 Any dramatist of the first-class, backed by 
 sincere moral indignation, might have writ- 
 
 1 (By the way, the best description of Musical-Comedy 
 that I have ever read is in Arnold Bennett's novel, The 
 Roll-Call, Chapter IX. It describes both actors and audi- 
 ence with an accuracy that leaves nothing to be desired.) 
 
 128 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 ten Justice. Only three men in the world 
 could have written The Pigeon — Galsworthy, 
 Barrie, Shaw, and it happens to have been 
 written by Galsworthy. In many respects it 
 is his greatest play. It has the superb con- 
 struction, continuous movement — never halt- 
 ing between strokes — and economy of gesture 
 so characteristic of its author's genius; in 
 addition, it is filled with the atmosphere of 
 poetry, mystery, and imagination — it has an 
 irresistible wistful charm. 
 
 It would be instructive to compare this 
 play with that sinister masterpiece of Ib- 
 sen's, The Wild Duck. There the Reformer 
 only adds to the tragic misery of those he 
 wishes to help ; it is the lowest chord of pes- 
 simism sounded by a pessimist. Here the 
 Reformer — if such he may be called — is, from 
 the point of view of professors of political 
 economy, equally inefficient ; but is their view 
 the only view? 
 
 Mr. Ashley Dukes, in his sometimes-pene- 
 trating book, Modern Dramatists, in com- 
 menting on Galsworthy, says *^It should be 
 the tritest commonplace to say that no play- 
 wright can make great drama out of little 
 people. ' ' Perhaps there are no little people ; 
 129 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 but taking the adjective in its ordinary sense, 
 many a dramatist has made great drama out 
 of precisely this class, the intensity being 
 heightened by the def encelessness of the char- 
 acters. Clyde Fitch used to say, ** Great 
 things do not happen to dramatists; great 
 things happen to the little people they de- 
 scribe." We need, however, only to think 
 of Galsworthy's plays to disprove what Mr. 
 Dukes thinks ought to be a truism. It is 
 surprising how much resemblance there is 
 between a pint of water taken from a creek 
 and a pint of water taken from Lake Su- 
 perior. 
 
 The first night of The Pigeon took place at 
 the Royalty Theatre, London, 30 January 
 1912. This is a study of an interesting tem- 
 perament, and the effect produced upon it by 
 men and women who are not merely little, 
 but superfluous. An acute remark by George 
 Meredith might serve as the gloss. **Much 
 benevolence of the passive order may be 
 traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon 
 ourselves." 
 
 When Andrew D. White was Minister to 
 Russia, he took a walk on the streets of Mos- 
 130 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 cow mth Count Tolstoi. A swarm of beg- 
 gars approached the novelist, and he gave 
 some kopecks to every one, for which he was 
 taken to task by the American philosopher. 
 Mr. White expressed the opinion that so far 
 from indiscriminate alms doing good, they 
 were positively injurious to the recipients 
 and hence to society; to which Tolstoi re- 
 plied that he could not concern himself with 
 the ultimate results of any action; his re- 
 ligion commanded him to give to him that 
 asketh, and he could not have peace of mind 
 except by following the commands of Christ. 
 Thus Christopher Wellwyn — is the name 
 significant! — the plucked pigeon of this play, 
 cannot be happy mth abundant and unruf- 
 fled plumage. That sense of well-being 
 which to many people is more comforting 
 than religion, is torture to this man, so long 
 as others are living in distress. The au- 
 thor's inward torment is reflected in' this 
 protagonist — why cannot he enjoy his meals 
 and his clothes as others do? Well, he can- 
 not — and this three-act ^^fantasy'^ helps to 
 relieve his mind. Wellwyn 's last pair of 
 trousers are more galling than the shirt of 
 131 
 
. ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Nessus, so he gives them away. A man's 
 conscience is certainly in active eruption 
 when he cannot enjoy his own clothes. 
 
 This drama deals with modern ^* charity.*' 
 Of course there are organised charities, there 
 are municipal arrangements for the un- 
 classed, there is always the poor-house. But 
 there is no blood in machinery, there is little 
 sweetness in officialdom, there is no bloom in 
 institutions. (Remember the old woman in 
 Our Mutual Friend^) Why can't these peo- 
 ple go to the regular places legally provided 
 for them? Don't we pay taxes to support 
 such things? Yes, but if you were on your 
 deathbed, and you thought one of your own 
 sons or daughters were to be one of ** these 
 people," would your dying moments be filled 
 with peace? 
 
 The key to this strangely beautiful play is 
 found on the title-page, where the author has 
 placed a quotation from Ferrand, one of his 
 vagabonds, who is ironically described in the 
 Dramatis Personae as ^*an alien" {who is my 
 neighbour?) ** Without that. Monsieur, all is 
 dry as a parched skin of orange." 
 
 The fairness of the author in stating the 
 case is fully as much in evidence here as in 
 132 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 the preceding plays. The mendicants are 
 not *' nature's noblemen'' — far from it; they 
 are not ** deserving poor," who are tempo- 
 rarily out of work through ill-health, acci- 
 dent, or hard times; they are incurable. I 
 remember hearing a famous economist say- 
 ing ''There are no deserving poor." 
 
 The garden of true Christianity is not only 
 full of useful vegetables ; it glows with bright 
 flowers. The sayings of its Founder are as 
 beautiful as his deeds; no wonder He often 
 cured people by speaking to them. 
 
 With the same emphasis that caused Mr. 
 Galsworthy to set the prison scene in Ju&r 
 tice on Christmas Day, he begins The Pigeon 
 on Christmas Eve, and in Ferrand's speech 
 he increases the emphasis. 
 
 ** Monsieur, if HE himself were on earth 
 now, there would be a little heap of gentle- 
 men writing to the journals every day to call 
 Him sloppee sentimentalist! And what is 
 veree funny, these gentlemen they would all 
 be most strong Christians. But that will not 
 trouble you. Monsieur; I saw well from the 
 first that you are no Christian. You have 
 so kind a face." 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy allows ''common sense" 
 133 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 to speak in the persons of the professor, the 
 Canon, and the Justice of the Peace — we 
 don't learn much. The fact is the drama- 
 tist's sympathy embraces all the wreckage of 
 society ; he does not think in terms of classes, 
 he thinks only in terms of individuals. 
 Every human soul is sacred. 
 
 There is more natural, spontaneous humour 
 in this piece than in anything else the author 
 has written ; it ends on a marvellous jest, well 
 befitting the date assigned to the last act. It 
 is a brilliant and charming play, so soft in its 
 outlines as to disguise the splendid bony 
 structure beneath. 
 
 In the Spring of 1912, Mr. Winthrop Ames 
 opened his Little Theatre in New York with 
 The Pigeon; it ran quite through the season, 
 and is in sharp contrast to the almost con- 
 tinual bad luck that followed subsequent se- 
 lections. A play like The Pigeon is nearly 
 as rare as its wild prototype. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Barrett H. Clark, (given 
 in Mr. Clark's British and American Drama 
 of To-day) the dramatist makes the follow- 
 ing interesting comments on The Pigeon, 
 ** About those dates in The Pigeon. Christ- 
 mas Eve because of Ferrand's remark: *HE 
 134 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 is come, Monsieur ! ' and the general tenour of 
 Wellwyn^s acceptance of every kind of out- 
 cast. New Yearns Day because of Ferrand's 
 remark : * 'appy New Year ! ' which marks the 
 disappearance of casual charity in favour of 
 Institutionalism, of the era of outcasts in 
 favour of the era of reformers. April 1st be- 
 cause of the joke at the end on the Humble- 
 men which symbolises the fact, or rather the 
 essence, of the play, that, while Wellwyn 
 (representing sympathy and understanding) 
 is being * plucked' all through the play, he 
 comes out and knows he does, on top at the 
 end, as the only possible helper of the un- 
 helpable. I hope this is sufficiently ob- 
 scure ! ' ' 
 
 In comparing the theories set forth about 
 the proper treatment of the poor with the 
 actual poor individuals represented in The 
 Pigeon, one is reminded of the remark in 
 Faust: 
 
 My worthy friend, all theories are grey, 
 And green alone Life's golden tree. 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy wrote The Eldest Son in 
 1909, but it was not produced until 1912. 
 Here again class is set over against class, 
 135 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DKAMATISTS 
 
 and the Head of the House finds his facile 
 philosophy turned against himself. Nothing 
 is more interesting in Galsworthy's plays 
 than to see towering smooth-sailing rhetoric 
 torpedoed by one fact. The famous *^ aloof- 
 ness" of the dramatist is in evidence all 
 through this drama, his reserve, restraint, 
 and. reticence; but it is inferior to The Silver 
 Box and to The Pigeon, in its lack of relief, 
 while it has not the sombre majesty of Strife. 
 It would, however, make a reputation for 
 almost any other writer. 
 
 In 1913 appeared The Fugitive, where the 
 author deals with a favourite theme in his 
 novels — love and marriage. This play is a 
 failure. He champions the woman against 
 English hypocrisy in such a manner that we 
 have a reductio ad absurdum. Her drinking 
 poison on the stage is a relief to the reader 
 and dangerously near the ridiculous to the 
 spectator. I have never seen on the stage 
 a tragedy by a truly great dramatist which so 
 totally failed to impress the audience. 
 
 In The Mob (1914) we have the individual 
 
 against the crowd. The tremendous event 
 
 that followed hard upon its presentation was 
 
 so unforeseen by the author as to make the 
 
 136 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 piece curiously opportune. I wonder what 
 would have happened if any one had at- 
 tempted to produce it after the first of Au- 
 gust of that memorable year ? It shows what 
 happened to a man who dared to oppose the 
 South African War. He was mobbed and 
 killed, and later generations erected a statue 
 to his memory. The hero made the melan- 
 choly error of attempting to fight public opin- 
 ion with reason. One might as well fight a 
 rhinoceros with a paper-cutter. 
 
 In the autumn of 1920, The Mob was pro- 
 duced successfully at the Neighborhood Play- 
 house, New York. 
 
 In 1920 Mr. Galsworthy published three 
 plays in a single volume, being the Fourth 
 Series of his Dramatic Works. These are 
 A Bit 0' Love, The Foundations, The Skin 
 Game. They do not singly or collectively 
 equal his earlier pieces in value or in impor- 
 tance, but they are emphatically worth read- 
 ing, and the last was successful on the Lon- 
 don and New York stage. In A Bit 0' Love, 
 we have the individual martyr again, his at- 
 titude being incomprehensible to the crowd. 
 The clergyman's wife has left him because 
 she loves some other man, and the villagers 
 137 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 cannot understand his ^^calm, dishonourable, 
 vile submission,'' because they do not know 
 the meaning of the word Love. In the end, 
 the clergyman is saved from suicide by a 
 chance, and in the moonlight he utters this 
 prayer: *^God of the moon and the sun; of 
 joy and beauty, of loneliness and sorrow — 
 give me strength to go on, till I love every 
 living thing ! ' ' Mr. Galsworthy wants us all 
 to understand; and no one can understand 
 without love. In this play, however, both the 
 motive and the philosophy are more admir- 
 able than the art. 
 
 The author calls The Foundations, pro- 
 duced at the Royalty Theatre, London, June 
 1917, **an extravagant play." I should like 
 to have seen it, for I am certain it acts better 
 than it reads. Although it deals with an in- 
 tensely serious theme — social revolution — it 
 has an abundance of humour. It has a curi- 
 ous similarity in places to The Admirable 
 Crichton, 
 
 To The Skin Game, Mr. Galsworthy has 
 added the parenthesis (A Tragi-Comedy) and 
 the quotation, ** Who touches pitch shall be 
 defiled. ' ' As Strife proved the sad futility of 
 fighting between Capital and Labour, so this 
 138 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 proves the tragic consequences of quarrelling 
 between two families, that of the country- 
 gentleman, and that of the newly-rich man. 
 Once more class is arrayed against class. 
 There is abundance of action here, including 
 an admirable auction scene. Both sides lose, 
 for the newly-rich man is beaten, and the 
 methods employed by the aristocrats to beat 
 him are fatal to their own honour and peace 
 of mind. 
 
 If the philosophy of the author has not 
 been made clear by his own plays and the 
 comments in this essay, I am sorry ; for there 
 is only one thing better than understanding 
 his philosophy, and that is the adoption of it. 
 It is simply the good old word Charity as 
 used in the year 1611. Practically all of his 
 dramas are expositions of the thirteenth chap- 
 ter of PauPs First Letter to the Corinthians. 
 His lectures and essays are more didactically 
 devoted to the same admirable purpose. If 
 every American and Briton would read and 
 translate into action the ideas in Mr. Gals- 
 worthy ^s article, American and Briton, the 
 peace of the world might be assured. 
 
 With reference to the art of the dramatist, 
 Mr. Galsworthy has written so clearly that 
 139 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 I am going to follow the example of Mr. Lewi- 
 sohn and of Mr. Clark, and quote. *^A 
 Drama must be shaped so as to have a spire 
 of meaning. Every grouping of life and 
 character has its inherent moral; and the 
 business of the dramatist is so to pose the 
 group as to bring that moral poignantly to 
 the light of day. . . . The art of writing true 
 dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying 
 itself all license, grudging every sentence de- 
 voted to the mere machinery of the play, sup- 
 pressing all jokes and epigrams severed from 
 character, relying for fun and pathos on the 
 fun and tears of life. From start to finish 
 good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; 
 clear, of fine texture, furthering with each 
 thread the harmony and strength of a design 
 to which all must be subordinated . . . the 
 question of naturalistic technique will bear, 
 indeed, much more study than has yet been 
 given it. The aim of the dramatist employ- 
 ing it is evidently to create such an illusion 
 of actual life passing on the stage as to com- 
 pel the spectator to pass through an experi- 
 ence of his own, to think and talk and move 
 with the people he sees thinking, talking and 
 moving in front of him. ... A good plot is 
 140 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 that sure edifice which rises out of the inter- 
 play of circumstances on temperament, or of 
 temperament on circumstance, within the en- 
 closing atmosphere of an idea.'' 
 
 Well, all this is true, admirably expressed, 
 and illustrated by the author's practice. It 
 is now easier to understand, why, having 
 written five or six great plays, and being one 
 of the most notable playwrights of the twen- 
 tieth century, he has nevertheless created 
 hardly any persons that will always be re- 
 membered as individuals. He has not added 
 Personalities to modern drama — personali- 
 ties like Candida, or Peter Pan, or Cyrano. 
 The reason is clear, I think; his persons are 
 the embodiment of ideas — they are flesh and 
 blood, they are real, but we are more inter-^ 
 ested in what they represent than in their 
 own idios^aicrasies. Or, as the late Mr. 
 Calderon said of Chekhov, our interest in his 
 plays is centrifugal rather than centripetal; 
 our attention is not primarily drawn to the 
 fortunes of a little group on the other side 
 of the footlights, but rather to Humanity. 
 
 141 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 When I was a boy in the Hartford Public 
 High School one of my classmates was 
 named William C. Fitch. Of all the students 
 he was the most peculiar, the most eccentric. 
 He was unlike the normal boy in clothes, ap- 
 pearance, gait, manners, tastes, language, and 
 voice. No other youth would ever have 
 dared to wear such clothes; they were in- 
 deed clean, without spot or blemish, looked 
 as if they were being worn for the first time, 
 which in itself fills the ordinary wearer with 
 terror as he enters the school grounds; but 
 the radiance of these glossy garments almost 
 hurt the unprotected eye, and they were cut 
 in a manner that we should now call futurist. 
 
 People dress in the fashion, as everybody 
 knows, not to attract attention, but to avoid 
 it ; this boy seemed at once to court publicity 
 and to be indifferent to it. His gait was 
 strange, the motive power seeming to dwell 
 exclusively in the hips; if you can imagine 
 a gay sidewheel excursion steamer, with the 
 142 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 port and starboard wheels moving in turn in- 
 stead of together, you will obtain a fair idea 
 of the approach of William C. Fitch. His 
 face was impressively pale, looking as if it 
 had never been exposed to the sun ; this pal- 
 lor was accentuated by hair both black and 
 copious. His manners seemed absurdly af- 
 fected until we found they were invariable; 
 he was never caught off his guard. His lan- 
 guage, judged by schoolboy standards, was 
 ridiculously mature; instead of speaking the 
 universal dialect of slang, he talked English. 
 His voice was very high, frequently breaking 
 into falsetto, and even in ordinary conversa- 
 tion it sounded like that of an hysterical 
 woman who had just missed the train. He 
 had not the faintest interest in any form of 
 outdoor sport, and never pretended to have 
 any. When the bell rang for *4ong recess" 
 every other one of us rushed into the school 
 yard and played furiously for twenty min- 
 utes ; he remained in the schoolroom, writing 
 notes on perfumed paper and tossing them to 
 the girls, some of whom were unreservedly 
 interested both in these missives and in their 
 author. Nor did he confine his epistolary en- 
 deavours to recess; he seemed to be deep in 
 143 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 correspondence during most of the school 
 hours. I remember sitting next to him in the 
 class in Csesar, and despite the ever imminent 
 danger of being suddenly called upon to re- 
 cite — which he did easily and well — I ob- 
 served he was engaged in the rapid compo- 
 sition of a letter on light blue paper; when 
 he had finished it to his satisfaction he tossed 
 it with surprising accuracy to a maiden who 
 was waiting to receive it. He was fourteen 
 years old. 
 
 To us he seemed quite impossible ; but none 
 of us then g-uessed how offensive we must 
 have seemed to him. When we came in from 
 football, streaming with sweat, stewing in our 
 own juice, and sat down beside this immacu- 
 late person, whose very hair looked clean, 
 what inner repugnance he felt we never 
 knew ; he never betrayed his soul to boys. 
 
 What did we do to him? It would be bet- 
 ter to ask. What didn't we do to him? So 
 far as we could we made his life a burden. 
 Imagine any boy such as I have described, 
 trying to order his life in his own way among 
 ruthless barbarians. In school life — as in- 
 deed in most communities — conformity is 
 king. Those who will not run with the herd 
 144 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 and think with the herd and bellow with the 
 herd commit the unpardonable sin. But 
 small boys, on regarding an original speci- 
 men, do not shrug their shoulders like 
 Frenchmen, and mutter Apres tout, c'est son 
 affaire; they insist on an attempt to remake 
 the oddity after their own image. I remem- 
 ber one morning a boy opened a window, 
 while several others picked up the future 
 dramatist and threw him through the aper- 
 ture without waiting to see whither he went 
 or where he landed. So far as I can re- 
 member, he never made much show of re- 
 sistance, nor did he protest too much ; but he 
 never changed in one iota ; so that we finally 
 gave him up as hopeless, and let him alone, 
 which he perhaps foresaw we should ulti- 
 mately have to do. 
 
 We thought he was effeminate, a mollycod- 
 dle, a sissy ; we did not know that he had the 
 courage of his convictions, and was thus the 
 bravest boy in school. When he went to Am- 
 herst he exhibited the same singular inde- 
 pendence. I can remember to this day the 
 flaring bright blue suit he wore in Hartford ; 
 he affected the same brilliant colour as a 
 freshman in college. I learn this from the 
 145 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Memorial Introduction to his Plays. One of 
 his professors said, **When Clyde first ap- 
 peared upon the campus he wore a suit of a 
 peculiar blue — sufficiently blue and pecuHar 
 to call down upon him the ruthless gibing of 
 the upper classmen. For days he persisted 
 in his attire, and faced the music. So I was 
 not surprised when, one evening, he put in his 
 appearance at my house. He explained the 
 situation and asked my advice. I felt that 
 whatever decision he might make must come 
 from him, and I told him so. Then in a per- 
 fectly quiet voice he said, as he turned to go, 
 *I guess I'll stick it out.' " 
 
 Many years later, when he came to New 
 Haven to superintend the first performance 
 of a new play, we walked together from my 
 house to the theatre. He had an extraor- 
 dinary suit, only partially concealed by a 
 gorgeous overcoat, and on his head was the 
 most amazing hat ever worn by a male crea- 
 ture. Every one we met stopped to stare ; so 
 far as I could make out, he was quite unaware 
 of the sensation he produced. 
 
 Once, while talking with him in his house 
 in New York, he went back of his own ac- 
 cord to our school days. **I knew, of course, 
 146 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 that everybody regarded me as a sissy ; but I 
 would rather be misunderstood than lose my 
 independence. The only concession I ever 
 made was this: on stormy days, my mother 
 forced me to wear overshoes to school, which 
 I hated, and I knew it would not do to appear 
 rubber-shod before the other boys. So I al- 
 ways hid these offensive things before reach- 
 ing school, and put them on again on my way 
 home. I hated football, baseball ; was bored 
 to death by all sports ; and I did not see why 
 I should do things I hated to do merely to 
 conform to public opinion.'' 
 
 Judged by the standards most people use 
 in estimating success, he was right and all 
 the rest of us were wrong ; for in later years 
 we are credibly informed that his annual in- 
 come was $250,000 a year; and none of us 
 hard-headed practical men ever earned as 
 much as that. So you see he finally won the 
 respect of the Philistines. The wife of An- 
 drea del Sarto thought her husband was an 
 ass, because he spent his time painting pic- 
 tures, instead of acting like a man ; but other 
 people, she must have reflected, were even 
 greater asses, because they paid real money 
 for these things. 
 
 147 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 If my memory serves me, that accomplished 
 actress Miss Elsie de Wolfe once expressed 
 her amazement that Clyde Fitch should know- 
 more about women than they knew about 
 themselves. She said that at a rehearsal her 
 cue was to walk upon the stage in high emo- 
 tion ; she did so ; but her inner complacency 
 was jarred by the voice of the playwright 
 coming out of the dark auditorium: **That 
 isn't the way to walk in order to express your 
 feelings in this scene; I'll show you.'' He 
 did ; he walked on, and she saw immediately 
 that he was right and she was wrong. She 
 could not understand his insight; but I 
 could, for I went to school with him. During 
 the long recesses when we were playing foot- 
 ball he was spending those minutes with the 
 girls, for he instinctively knew that they had 
 more to teach him than we. That is where 
 he laid the foundation of his success as a 
 dramatist, even as Richardson learned how 
 to write novels by composing letters for the 
 village maids. 
 
 In his college days at Amherst he made 
 
 such an impression in acting women's roles 
 
 in theatricals that his contemporaries there 
 
 have never forgotten it. As Lydia Languish 
 
 148 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 he created a veritable sensation ; I remember 
 reading about it in the public press. It is 
 pleasant to record his loyalty to his college 
 in later years ; his valuable library is now at 
 Amherst, and he left money for the endow- 
 ment of a professorship. If one wishes to 
 know exactly how he looked in maturity, one 
 has only to view the portrait painted by Wil- 
 liam M. Chase, presented by his mother to 
 the college. It is perfect. 
 
 Some dramatists do not betray their clever- 
 ness in conversation ; either they cannot talk, 
 or they save their best for the footlights. It 
 was not so with Clyde Fitch. He was one of 
 the most brilliant talkers I ever knew — his 
 wit was spontaneous and inexhaustible. 
 Once, after he gave an address to my class at 
 Yale, I invited a dozen undergraduates to 
 meet him at dinner. He had to take a train to 
 Boston at one o'clock in the morning. After 
 dinner we sat around an open fire, the stu- 
 dents sitting in a semicircle on the floor while 
 the dramatist talked. Such talk ! The only 
 interruptions were occasional questions; for 
 hours he inspired and delighted us all, and 
 we were sorry enough when the time came for 
 him to leave. 
 
 149 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 When his posthumous play, The City, was 
 produced in New Haven shortly before the 
 regular first night in New York, December 
 1909, many of us were peculiarly stirred, not . 
 merely by the sharp climaxes but because, on 
 the eve of sailing to Europe that fatal year, 
 he had come to New Haven and talked freely 
 to my students on this very drama. He gave 
 a detailed account of the plot, speaking with 
 extraordinary zest ; he was confident that the 
 idea on which the story was built would im- 
 press American audiences; he had already 
 selected the cast, and told us he would con- 
 duct rehearsals as soon as he returned in the 
 early autumn. Never shall I forget my emo- 
 tion toward the close of the first act, when 
 the hero spoke these broken sentences, among 
 the very last that came from the playwright 's 
 pen: 
 
 <<Why, it was only a minute ago he was 
 there, talking with me ! It doesn't seem pos- 
 sible — that now — he's dead — dead — gone for 
 good out of this life ! I don 't understand it ! 
 What does it all mean!" 
 
 The driving idea of The City is, of course, 
 that character can triumph over environ- 
 ment — ^it is not New York that ruins young 
 150 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 men, they are ruined by their own weakness. 
 The city does not destroy them ; it tests them. 
 *'No! You're all wrong! Don't blame 
 the City. It's not her fault! It's our own! 
 What the City does is to bring out what's 
 strongest in us. If at heart we're good, the 
 good in us will win ! If the bad is strongest, 
 God help us! Don't blame the City! She 
 gives the man his opportunity ; it is up to him 
 what he makes of it! A man can live in a 
 small town all his life, and deceive the whole 
 place and himself into thinking he's got all 
 the virtues, when at heart he's a hypocrite! 
 But the village gives him no chance to find it 
 out, to prove it to his fellows — the small town 
 is too easy ! But the City!!! A man goes to 
 the gates of the City and knocks ! — New York 
 or Chicago, Boston or San Francisco, no mat- 
 ter what city so long as it's big, and busy, and 
 selfish, and self-centred. And she comes to 
 her gates and takes him in, and she stands 
 him in the middle of her market place — 
 where Wall Street and Herald Square and 
 Fifth Avenue and the Bowery and Harlem 
 and Forty-second Street all meet, and there 
 she strips him naked of all his disguises — 
 and all his hypocrisies — and she paints his 
 151 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ambition on her fences, and lights up her 
 skyscrapers with it! — ^what he wants to be 
 and ivhat he thinks he is! — and then she says 
 to him, * Make good if you can, or to hell with 
 you!' And what is in him comes out to 
 clothe his nakedness, and to the City he can 't 
 lie! / know, because I tried!'* 
 
 A man goes to the gates of the City and 
 knocks. Clyde Fitch went to New York, a 
 young man, with no money, no influence, no 
 powerful friends ; by sheer brains and pluck 
 he raised himself to the heights of fame. It 
 is no easy thing for an individual to conquer 
 a city ; but Clyde Fitch conquered New York, 
 even as 0. Henry conquered it. 
 
 His public career covered exactly twenty 
 years, from 1889 to 1909. When he began 
 to write, American drama scarcely existed; 
 when he died, it was a reality. He did more 
 for the American stage than any other man 
 in our history; when the chronicles of our 
 original plays come to be written, he will fill 
 a large space. He made a permanent im- 
 pression on the modern theatre; for he was 
 essentially a man of the theatre. The same 
 independence that characterised him at 
 school and college was conspicuous after he 
 152 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 became a public figure. Outside of a few fa- 
 vourite actors and actresses, his most inti- 
 mate friends did not belong to the profes- 
 sion. He was not popular with fellow dram- 
 atists, with professional critics, or with the 
 camp followers; perhaps still less popular 
 with reformers, theorists, and *'uplifters.'^ 
 He held himself aloof both from the group of 
 successful playwrights and from the undisci- 
 plined army of bohemians. He would not at- 
 tend public dinners, public meetings of those 
 interested either financially or intellectually 
 in the drama, and the only formal public ad- 
 dress he ever wrote — fortunately preserved 
 in the Memorial Edition — is one that with 
 great difficulty I persuaded him to stand and 
 deliver for the first time at Yale. He told 
 me that he could not endure the ways of the 
 bohemians and was bored by the reformers. 
 He said, **I am not a bohemian, not a sport- 
 ing man, not a man-about-town, not a 
 preacher — I am simply an observer of life 
 who writes plays for the theatre.'' He owed 
 comparatively little to others; he could not 
 work in partnership or in collaboration. He 
 was too individual; and, although his plays 
 reflect the turbulent stream of social life, he 
 153 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 really loved solitude. In fact, it was neces- 
 sary to him. He built two houses in the 
 country, and fled thither whenever it was pos- 
 sible to do so. Every spring he departed 
 for the Continent, and there he wrote off the 
 plots that were constantly rising to the sur- 
 face of his mind. Much of his composition 
 was done in Venice. 
 
 He has often been blamed for the feverish 
 rapidity with which he produced plays. He 
 spoke frankly about this, saying it was the 
 only way he could work. At one time he had 
 four original plays running in New York. 
 One evening he gave birth to twins. He 
 made a parental speech at one theatre, and 
 ran across the street to receive public con- 
 gratulations at the other. He was always 
 modest about himself and his work, never as- 
 sumed the pose of either a literary man or a 
 prophet, saying that at any moment his abil- 
 ity might forsake him, or his vogue vanish. 
 He worked at high pressure, as though he 
 knew that the night was coming. Yet he 
 wrote each play in his own hand five times — 
 and to those who are curious about such mat- 
 ters it may be interesting to describe his 
 method. He took large sheets of paper, and 
 154 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 used five pencils of different colours, chang- 
 ing the hue for each version, writing over, 
 under, and around the lines of the original 
 draft. * * Then I can tell at a glance which is 
 my first, second, or fifth thought. ' ' 
 
 He was constantly surprised and amused 
 by the way in which his imaginary characters 
 behaved. He told me, as he told many 
 others, that although he would start a play 
 with a definitely conceived plot the persons 
 of the drama would persist in going their 
 own gait — often the opposite of what he had 
 planned. ^*I usually am compelled to let 
 them have their will.'' 
 
 Clyde Fitch wrote thirty-three original 
 plays, twenty-three dramatisations of other 
 pieces or stories, and left three original plays 
 in manuscript. This is prolific, but nothing 
 in comparison with Thomas Heywood or 
 Lope de Vega. All but one of his original 
 plays dealt with American subjects, and gen- 
 erally with contemporary life. Mr. Walter 
 Prichard Eaton says that if we took Fitch's 
 works and correctly illustrated them, they 
 would give to future generations a better idea 
 of American life from 1890 to 1910 than 
 newspapers or historical records. 
 155 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Clyde Fitch was fortunate in gaining suc- 
 cess and popularity early in life; when he 
 had been out of college four years, he found 
 himself famous. Shortly after graduation, 
 he went to New York, supported himself by 
 private tutoring, and attempted (in vain) to 
 win attention by the composition of short 
 stories; I have some of these and they are 
 rarities. Then he wrote some plays of no 
 merit ; but in the season of 1889-1890 he pro- 
 duced Beau Brummelly a play that won in- 
 stant recognition, that had a long run, that 
 was frequently revived, and that deserved all 
 its success. 
 
 It ought to be said that he owed his first 
 opportunity and hence his first success to the 
 late Edward A. Dithmar, accomplished dra- 
 matic critic of the New York Times. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Dithmar took the young adventurer 
 into their home ; Mr. Dithmar introduced him 
 to Richard Mansfield, and made it possible 
 for him to get a hearing for Bean Briimmell. 
 
 Modern drama began in Germany, in Eng- 
 land, and in America at about the same time. 
 In Germany the year 1889 saw the produc- 
 tion of Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang and 
 Sudermann^s Die Ehre; in England the year 
 156 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 1892 was made important by Oscar Wilde's 
 Lady Windermere's Fan, and Bernard 
 Shaw's Widowers' Houses j followed the next 
 year by Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray; and on the evening of 17 May 1890, 
 with the first performance of Beau Brumm,ell, 
 American drama came into its own. The two 
 hundred and fiftieth representation of the 
 piece took place on 30 January 1891, and it 
 is not too much to say that every one of these 
 performances delighted the audience. What 
 would have happened if Clyde Fitch and 
 Eichard Mansfield had not worked in part- 
 nership, who can say ? How long the drama- 
 tist would have waited for success, who can 
 tell? But although Eichard Mansfield gave 
 the author the idea of the play, was of con- 
 stant assistance to him in the course of its 
 composition and in rehearsals, and glorified it 
 by his magnificent interpretation, the play 
 stands on its own independent merits, and 
 is one of the best ever written by an Ameri- 
 can. If it had depended on the actor alone 
 for its success, it would not be worth preser- 
 vation in print; but the fact is, that without 
 any theatre or acting, read as a book in the 
 lamplit silence of the library, it makes a dis- 
 157 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 tinct impression. It brought the old Beau 
 back to life again; it created a Personality 
 in the literature of the theatre. To me at 
 any rate he is not merely the glass of fash- 
 ion and the mould of form, but a real man; 
 so I thought of him as I stood with uncovered 
 head by his grave one summer evening in 
 Caen. 
 
 In the autumn of 1889, Clyde Fitch pre- 
 sented the scenario to Richard Mansfield, and 
 naturally awaited the decision with uncon- 
 trollable excitement. In a letter written 6 
 November, quoted in the Memorial Edition, 
 he said, ** Negotiations are on the tapis for 
 a play to be written for RICHARD MANS- 
 FIELD by WM. CLYDE FITCH, and I am 
 awaiting a dispatch now to go to Philadel- 
 phia to clinch things with Mansfield, who is 
 playing there this week. It all may elude my 
 grasp, as so many things have done, but if it 
 doesn't, isn't it, oh, isn't it an opportunity! 
 The subject of the play is to be Beau Brum- 
 mell." 
 
 No young or old author could have been 
 more fortunate than to have his hero inter- 
 preted by Richard Mansfield, the most intel- 
 ligent, the most brilliant, the most impressive 
 158 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 actor of his generation; he was the incarna- 
 tion of great characters in history and in fic- 
 tion, and when he died, he left a space that no 
 one could even begin to fill. I regard his 
 death, in the plenitude of his powers, as the 
 greatest loss suffered by the modern stage. 
 
 Despite the more than gratifying success 
 of this piece, Clyde Fitch had years of strug- 
 gle and disappointment ahead. Although he 
 wrote constantly, it was not until the year 
 1898 that he hit the target again, and not 
 until 1901 that he gained critical recogni- 
 tion as a true American dramatist. In 1898 
 he made a reverberating stroke with Nathan 
 Hale and with The Moth and the Flame; but 
 the former has no real value, and owed its 
 popularity mainly to the skilful acting of 
 Nat Goodwin and Maxine Elliott; the latter 
 is only superficially clever, its climax at the 
 end of the first act having been incomparably 
 better done by Henry Becque in Les Cor- 
 heaux. He returned to American history the 
 next year with Barbara Frietchie, in which he 
 was fortunate to have as interpreter Julia 
 Marlowe; and in 1903 he produced Major 
 Andre, which if I remember rightly, he with- 
 drew after the first night, as, like Charles 
 159 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Lamb, he had no idea it was so bad until he 
 saw it. 
 
 The first play of any real importance after 
 Beau Brummell came eleven years later, The 
 Climbers, and stands to-day as one of its 
 author's five masterpieces — the others being 
 Beau Brummell, The Truth, The Girl with 
 the Green Eyes, and The City. Although in 
 1901 he was a successful playwright, and 
 leading actors and actresses were proud to 
 appear in his productions, he had difficulty in 
 getting The Climbers accepted. In August 
 1900, he wrote from France, *^I have had a 
 disappointment. Frohman decides not to do 
 The Climbers. It is a real bitter disappoint- 
 ment, for I believe so much in the play. ' ' 
 
 This is one of the comparatively rare oc- 
 casions when that astute manager was at 
 fault, but he is not the only one who rejected 
 it. Others said, **The American public will 
 never stand for that funeral stuff in the first 
 acf But as Mr. Eaton remarks, they did, 
 about five rows deep after the last row of 
 chairs. It was finally produced at the Bijou 
 Theater, New York, 21 January 1901, with a 
 cast that contained such admirable actors as 
 Mr. Ferdinand Gottschalk, Miss Amelia 
 160 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 Bingham, and Miss Clara Bloodgood. The 
 last-named became the author's favourite ac- 
 tress ; and I shall never forget the letter he 
 wrote to me when he received the news of 
 her tragic death. But the success of this 
 play was the author 's ; no acting can spoil it. 
 I saw it once, presented by the worst stock 
 company ever permitted to live ; even through 
 their grotesque presentation and extraor- 
 dinary pronunciation of English, the drama 
 glowed with vitality. 
 
 It is possible that Clyde Fitch studied 
 Henry Becque with some profit. The scene 
 in the first act of The Climbers, where the 
 Man of Business tells the silly widow and 
 her three daughters that her late husband's 
 supposed wealth consists of liabilities, is like 
 the situation in Les Corheaux, where the help- 
 less widow and her three daughters learn the 
 same terrifying information. The difference 
 between the two plays is even more illuminat- 
 ing than the similarity. It is the difference 
 between an American writer, who simply did 
 not dare to drown his characters in the deep 
 waters of tragedy, and a French writer whose 
 love of truth was so uncompromising that he 
 had no pity either on his characters or on his 
 161 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 audience. In justice to American audiences, 
 however, it should be remembered that 
 Becque's play is so terrible that Parisian 
 audiences could not endure it; it has never 
 had anything resembling popularity; its au- 
 thor lived in the direst poverty; even his 
 grave was neglected until Antoine called 
 public attention to the scandal; and to-day, 
 although Becque has had a powerful influence 
 on modern drama, and his name is honoured 
 by all lovers of what is truly great in the the- 
 atre, his masterpiece is almost never revived. 
 Like all the plays of Clyde Fitch, The 
 Climbers is full of limitations and full of 
 faults. It nowhere rises to the heights of 
 thought and passion, where Ibsen, Haupt- 
 mann, Rostand dwell in the serene air, con- 
 templating the clouds below and the sky 
 above ; for as the saint in unshakable security 
 must be able to masterfully survey his own 
 passions, so the true artist must live aloft 
 where he can look down on his blind and suf- 
 fering creatures, even as God regards the 
 world he has created. So far as I can re- 
 member, no American has ever written a 
 drama that even suggests the sublimity of 
 the noblest art. 
 
 162 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 And there are faults as well as limitations 
 in this New York play. There is the setting 
 of melodrama in the snow-fall; there are 
 speeches dripping with sentimentality ; there 
 is stock burlesque. But when the worst has 
 been said, The Climbers, as a representation 
 of metropolitan life, is superior to any play 
 that preceded it in American history. There 
 is an audacity in the opening scene that 
 frightened the manager, but which the audi- 
 ence welcomed with hearty recognition, be- 
 cause they knew it was true. The wolfish 
 way in which sandwiches are devoured is 
 characteristic of all people at funerals, ex- 
 cept those very few who are broken-hearted. 
 Meals are never eaten with more gusto than 
 at funerals — is it an instinctive will-to-live? 
 I remember many years ago, when I read 
 somewhere in the works of Jonathan Swift 
 that people never looked so happy as at fu- 
 nerals, I was shocked; but if, omitting the 
 first two carriages, one will look at the faces 
 in the long succession of vehicles, one will 
 have to admit that Swift was not far from 
 the truth. 
 
 If there is no creative power of the first 
 magnitude displayed in this comedy, there is 
 163 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 extraordinary ingenuity, extraordinary dex- 
 terity, and a faithful report of contemporary 
 manners. If we do not go deep enough, it 
 is true to the life it undertakes to represent. 
 
 Clyde Fitch was not only a faithful re- 
 porter of the aspects of life around and about 
 him ; he was equally successful in reconstruct- 
 ing the image of past scenes. In Beau Brum- 
 mell, he had to rely on his reading; but in 
 Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, he pro- 
 duced a comedy that is as charming as an old- 
 fashioned garden, and which is full of mem- 
 ories and observations of his own boyhood. 
 It was presented for the first time, 4 Febru- 
 ary 1901, two weeks after The Climbers^ ran 
 through the entire season, was revived the 
 following year, and in 1907 again brought 
 back to the stage ; it gave Miss Ethel Barry- 
 more one of her first great opportunities, 
 which she fully improved. Every person in 
 the audience who could remember the sev- 
 enties was delighted with the old language, 
 the old songs — Champagne Charley, Shoo 
 Fly — the obsolete slang, the landing wharf, 
 the Brevoort House, and the costumes ! Well 
 do I remember as a boy the vogue of The 
 Grecian Bend. 
 
 164 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 Spectators at the first night of a Fitch 
 play were not only reasonably sure of hear- 
 ing clever dialogue and an entertaining story ; 
 they were eager for the rise of the curtain, 
 knowing in advance that some familiar as- 
 pect of life would be faithfully represented. 
 Thus, in The Stubbornness of Geraldine, the 
 deck of an ocean liner is revealed, with every 
 typical passenger doing and saying typical 
 things; in another play, a church wedding; 
 in Girls, we have life in a New York flat, 
 with the accursed rattling of the steam-radi- 
 ator; the girls washing their handkerchiefs, 
 and spreading them to dry on the window- 
 pane; in another comedy, we have the busy 
 floor of a department-store. 
 
 On 25 December 1902, was presented for 
 the first time The Girl with the Green Eyes, 
 Had its author been able to write a convinc- 
 ing last act, this would undoubtedly have been 
 his best play. But he, never could write a 
 good last act; few have been able to do so. 
 It seems to be the final test of the play- 
 wright's art. Clyde Fitch became a master 
 of attach; his first acts were brilliant in ex- 
 position, taking the audience by storm; but 
 he almost invariably weakened toward the 
 165 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 close. This is probably the reason why so 
 many professional critics, who felt in the 
 early scenes, that after all the author had 
 achieved a masterpiece, left the theatre cold, 
 and transferred the chill to their reviews. 
 But although as a rule Clyde Fitch received 
 less than his deserts from the critics, they 
 literally saved for him and for the American 
 stage The Girl with the Green Eyes. For 
 once, and the only time in his career, the 
 critics were more enthusiastic than the audi- 
 ence. The first night this play fell flat; 
 there was almost no audience at all for the 
 next few nights, and it seemed as though the 
 play must be withdrawn; it had every indi- 
 cation of complete popular disapproval. But 
 the critics refused to see it die. They kept 
 up their praises in the papers ; they exhorted 
 the people of New York to go to see a really 
 fine drama ; finally their prayers were heard, 
 the play rose from the shadow of death, took 
 on vitality, and had a vigourous life for the 
 next six months. 
 
 As The Climbers opened with a funeral, 
 this opens with a marriage, where every de- 
 tail of a fashionable wedding-party is pre- 
 sented. Yet even in the first hour after the 
 166 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 ceremony, we see the suggestion of jealousy 
 that darkens the drama, and should have 
 turned it into an irredeemable tragedy. In- 
 deed the play should have closed at the end 
 of the third act. Although there are many 
 clever and amusing scenes — like the satire on 
 tourists before the Apollo Belvedere — the 
 motive force consists of one idea, resembling 
 in this respect The Truth and The City, 
 which is the reason why these three are the 
 most important works in their author's 
 career. The text is found in the third act, in 
 a line spoken to Jinny by her mother: 
 ** Jealousy has no saving grace, and it only 
 destroys what is always most precious to 
 you.'' 
 
 Now it is a curious thing that jealousy, 
 which has no touch of mirth or humour, is 
 almost always represented on the modern 
 stage as funny. It has been the foundation 
 of many farces; but although Shakespeare 
 revealed its tragic possibilities, I know of 
 only one modern play where it is honestly 
 and truthfully presented — The Girl with the 
 Green Eyes. Clyde Fitch never did any- 
 thing more fine, more delicate, than in dis- 
 playing the gradual growth of jealousy in 
 167 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Jinny's mind. The conversations between 
 her and her husband are so admirable — not 
 a shade too light or too dark — that if he could 
 have continued in other plays with such 
 strong and such subtle analysis of character, 
 he really would have become a great drama- 
 tist. In all his work he is true to the sur- 
 face of life — but here he deals with the under- 
 lying causes of speech and conduct. He 
 analyses as well as portrays. 
 
 I do not recall anywhere in American lit- 
 erature a study of jealousy as accurate and 
 as complete as this, except in Howells's novel, 
 A Modern Instance, Yet jealousy accom- 
 panies love as frequently as one finds weeds 
 in a garden of flowers. The late Emile 
 Faguet said that jealousy, with all its ugli- 
 ness, was yet the sole proof of the existence 
 of real love ; wherever you find jealousy, there 
 you have the indubitable proof that love ex- 
 ists ; and if there is no jealousy, there is no 
 love. The middle clause of the preceding 
 sentence is probably true; I do not believe 
 the first and third. Clyde Fitch's play itself 
 is against the Frenchman ; for surely the man 
 loved his wife. 
 
 In this drama the conversation itself is 
 168 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 dramatic; the most stirring scenes have al- 
 most no ** action/* 
 
 The author's favourite among his produc- 
 tions was The Truth, produced for the first 
 time in October 1906; it failed. In the fol- 
 lowing year it achieved a distinct success in 
 London, was played in many Continental 
 cities, and was revived at the Little Theatre 
 in New York in 1914. It did not seem old- 
 fashioned, because its interest lies not in its 
 study of fashionable society, but in its study 
 of human nature. Its failure in New York, 
 while a disappointment, heightened its mak- 
 er's love for it, as mothers sometimes love 
 crippled children with more eager intensity. 
 Then the recognition it received in London 
 and in Europe was doubly sweet. The Me- 
 morial Introduction cites a letter written 
 from Berlin in April 1908: **I wish you . . . 
 who have always taken me and my work seri- 
 ously, and know what I put into it, and from 
 what a standard I wrote, could have shared 
 my joy and satisfaction at Hamburg.'' 
 Again: **The papers are very good in Italy 
 for The Truth, La Veritd, but they complain 
 of my Puritanism. They say I have * ex- 
 quisite wit,' * originality,' and *deep psychol- 
 169 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ogy,' but I think they were a little disap- 
 pointed there were no Indians in it." 
 
 This drama, while not so powerful as The 
 City, nor so subtle as the best scenes in The 
 Girl with the Green Eyes, is Clyde Fitch's 
 most complete work; it contains incompara- 
 bly the best last act he ever produced, for the 
 last act of Beau Brummell really wrote it- 
 self. Every character in it is a distinct per- 
 sonality; the conversations between father 
 and daughter are very fine. She is literally 
 a natural-born liar; and she suffers under 
 inquisition like a criminal under the third 
 degree. It is like a fox-hunt. 
 
 The enormous success of the first night of 
 The City, New York, 22 December 1909, one 
 of the most thrilling first nights in the history 
 of the American stage, accentuates one's re- 
 gret that the author could not have lived to 
 see it. It would have been to him a rich re- 
 ward for many disappointments, and it would 
 have stimulated him to the composition of 
 plays — of which this is a forecast — that 
 would have given him a higher place in dra- 
 matic literature. The popular demonstration 
 swept even the critics off their feet. This is 
 what The Tribune said the next morning: 
 170 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 **An audience half wild with excitement 
 roared its approval last night. The applause 
 of hands was drowned in the tremendous 
 cheering that swept from orchestra to bal- 
 cony. It is long since such a demonstration 
 has taken place in a New York theatre. The 
 audience exhausted itself with cheering. 
 And the cheers were deserved. They were 
 earned by the power of the playwright and 
 by the power of the acting. It seems tame to 
 say merely that the play is strong, for in its 
 strongest scene it is tremendous. The play 
 is strong as a raging bull, an elephant in 
 passion, a hungry tiger; strong as man the 
 animal is strong, not with the strength of man 
 in the balanced exercise of his faculties, 
 capacities and powers. . . . Life! Beyond 
 question. A powerful presentation of life 
 by dramatist and actors ; a presentation that 
 appals, horrifies; to the last degree * realis- 
 tic,' * modern' to the brim; a play of greed, 
 hypocrisy, blackmail, theft, and murder. . . . 
 The art employed is remarkable, the effect is 
 at moments mighty." 
 
 Such language will seem absurd only to 
 those who were not present. It is a faithful 
 report of the effect produced on the audience. 
 171 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 And it seems cruel that Clyde Fitch could 
 not have lived to read such a criticism, for it 
 is exactly what he had hoped to receive when 
 writing the play. The man who had been 
 called again and again the milliner of the 
 American theatre finally reached a peak 
 which his critics had declared inaccessible. 
 
 My own belief is that Clyde Fitch wrote 
 this ** unpleasant'' play to prove the length 
 of his tether. Perhaps he was tired of read- 
 ing that he was a mere confectioner who de- 
 lighted in the architecture of candy ; he seems 
 throughout this play to say ^^I can be as 
 morbid and as tragic as you please.'' The 
 second act revealed even to his oldest friends 
 a new Clyde Fitch. The intensity of the 
 dialogue may be judged by the fact that dur- 
 ing this scene the heroine — so far as there is 
 one — is shot dead without dropping the cur- 
 tain. Her body is carried from the room, 
 and in two minutes we have quite forgotten 
 her, so terrific is the verbal duel between hero 
 and villain. The contest now is for the 
 hero's soul, which frankly interests the audi- 
 ence more than the life or death of any one in 
 the story. To my mind this is the greatest 
 single triumph ever attained by our drama- 
 172 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 tist — for it is simply the exaltation of the 
 spiritual over the physical in the very whirl- 
 wind of action. 
 
 It is amusing to remember that Pittsburgh, 
 hearing in advance that at one point in the 
 play the degenerate villain shouts **You're a 
 God damn liar!'' informed the management 
 that unless this phrase were changed or 
 omitted, the production would be forbidden 
 in that town. The mother of the dead play- 
 wright remonstrated to no avail; she would 
 have withdra^vTi the piece altogether if she 
 had had her way; finally it was given with 
 the word **God" omitted. I have not heard 
 that Pittsburgh then or since objected to 
 musical comedies. 
 
 Every one of the three plays — The Girl 
 with the Green Eyes, The Truth, The City — 
 is founded on a single idea ; there is not only 
 observation of life, there is a spiritual motive 
 force. 
 
 There is nothing more superficial than to 
 say that Fitch was superficial. As a rule, 
 he chose to deal with those aspects of life that 
 are superficial; but they are a part of real 
 life, and he dealt with them — not always, but 
 often — like a true artist. He was constantly 
 173 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 accused of striving for theatrical effect, 
 which is to a large extent exactly the thing to 
 strive for in the theatre. No one ever hated 
 him so much as those who had tried to do 
 what he did, and failed. His position, in the 
 critical consensus, was almost exactly the po- 
 sition of Sudermann in Germany. When a 
 new play by that writer appears, one knows 
 in advance exactly what the critics will say, 
 for many of them have had him '* placed" for 
 years, and their minds are made up before 
 the curtain rises. It is indeed interesting to 
 observe that the contemporary criticism of 
 Sudermann might be taken as the stock criti- 
 cism of Fitch. In the London Times Liter- 
 ary Supplement in July 1920, I find the fol- 
 lowing words written about Sudermann 's 
 latest play. Die Easchoffs, in which I will 
 simply substitute the word Fitch for Suder- 
 mann, and New York for Berlin. **This 
 latest drama of Fitch has recently enjoyed a 
 remarkably successful run in New York. Its 
 reception has at least shown that Fitch has 
 lost little, if anything, of his extraordinary 
 grasp of stage methods and his power of 
 gripping attention by means of a strong plot, 
 bright if superficial dialogue, and cleverly 
 174 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 contrived dramatic situations. Further than 
 that, however, the critic will not be able to 
 go; the play, in fact, may be fairly summed 
 up by saying that it is exactly typical of 
 Fitch. . . . These disadvantages, however, 
 Fitch is able to overcome by the presentation 
 of a series of situations of the greatest the- 
 atrical effectiveness, calculated to hold the at- 
 tention of any audience." 
 
 Now this in itself is not a crime. Let it be 
 freely granted that Hauptmann is a greater 
 man that Sudermann and that Clyde Fitch is 
 not for a moment to be compared with Barrie, 
 or Galsworthy or Shaw. Neither Sudermann 
 nor Fitch are profound thinkers, but they 
 are master playwrights for all that, and have 
 had a powerful effect in raising the level of 
 dramatic productions in their own countries. 
 Sudermann 's Die Ehre started an epoch in 
 modern German drama; and in our modem 
 American drama Clyde Fitch still holds the 
 largest place, and is our greatest single bene- 
 factor. He was always serious, if his plays 
 were not; he never left anything to chance, 
 and followed his calling with a devotion that 
 cost him his health and life. After the suc- 
 cess of The Climbers, managers wisely left 
 175 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 details of production to him. When a new 
 play was accepted, he chose the cast and con- 
 ducted all rehearsals as an ai3solute dictator. 
 He told the actresses what clothes they 
 should wear — one of them, he said to me, 
 burst into tears when he would not permit her 
 to wear the gown she had selected. These 
 are small details, perhaps, but I mention them 
 as showing how completely he was a man of 
 the theatre, and how he regarded nothing as 
 unimportant. When a new author writes a 
 play, the audience are unaware of what has 
 been **done to if; I remember on the first 
 night of a production from an obscure writer, 
 the author was called before the curtain, and 
 made this speech: ** Ladies and gentlemen, I 
 want you all to know that there is one line 
 in this play I wrote myself.'* All the works 
 of Clyde Fitch after the beginning of the 
 twentieth century were his own — in composi- 
 tion and in presentation. 
 
 What we in America must hope for now is 
 a dramatist, who, with all of Fitch's tech- 
 nique, knowledge of the stage, cleverness in 
 dialogue, and devotion to the theatre, can 
 give us truly great plays ; no such person has 
 yet appeared. 
 
 176 
 
CLYDE FITCH 
 
 No play of universal importance has ever 
 been written in the Western Hemisphere. 
 Yet we have some original twentieth century 
 dramas that stand out above the average pro- 
 duction. Our foremost living dramatist is 
 Augustus Thomas; and his best piece, The 
 Witching Hour, is excellent both in action 
 and dialogue. I know, because I have heard 
 it on the stage, and seen it in the motion pic- 
 tures. The late William Vaughn Moody con- 
 tributed to literature and the theatre in The 
 Great Divide, Eugene Walter has never 
 realised his possibilities; but The Easiest 
 Way was certainly not lacking either in 
 force or in truth. Louis K. Anspacher^s 
 The Unchastened Woman is a brilliant and 
 original comedy, and will repay study in the 
 printed text. Eugene O^NeilPs Beyond the 
 Horizon deservedly won a prize, but it has 
 more promise than excellence. Jesse Lynch 
 Williams understands the art of dialogue, 
 but has not yet produced a wholly convincing 
 play. The best one-act piece that I know of 
 by an American writer is the tragedy, 
 Trifles, by Susan Glaspell. This indicates a 
 high-power pen. It has a Eussian intensity. 
 Our most successful living novelist, Booth 
 177 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Tarkington, has lately devoted himself in all 
 seriousness to the drama, and I have high 
 hopes. His earlier pieces, written in collab- 
 oration, were only sugar-plums; but Clarence 
 is an exceedingly clever comedy, and Polde- 
 kin, although it received a chorus of damna- 
 tion from the New York papers, is a living 
 proof that the limitations imposed on Mr. 
 Tarkington 's art by the critics, must be re- 
 moved. His next play may surprise his 
 friends and disturb his foes. 
 
 178 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 In the late afternoon of a typical winter 
 day in Paris, 14 December 1903, and in re- 
 sponse to a cordial invitation giving the time 
 and the place, I walked through the cold 
 drizzle up on the heights not so far from the 
 Trocadero, entered the long crooked rue 
 Raynouard, came to an opaque portal in an 
 opaque wall, made out in the dimness the 
 number 67, rang a bell, and awaited the re- 
 sult of the tintinnabulation — which went 
 echoing off in the remote interior — with an 
 accelerated heart. Soon I followed a maid- 
 servant through long passages and rever- 
 berating corridors — just as if we were char- 
 acters in one of the plays — until after an 
 incredibly long and winding pilgrimage, the 
 maid stopped in front of a door and knocked. 
 A clear voice called ^'Entrezf* and I did. 
 
 A cheerful contrast it was to all I had seen 
 
 outside of it. It was a rather small square 
 
 room ; a sea-coal fire was blazing merrily in 
 
 the open grate; the walls were lined with 
 
 179 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 books ; a table was in the middle of the room, 
 a comfortable chair placed at it, while di- 
 rectly behind the chair, so that the writer 
 could reach these particular books without 
 getting up, was a set of the Mermaid Series 
 of the Elizabethan Dramatists, besides many 
 other volumes in the English language. The 
 chair at the desk faced the door, and as I 
 entered, I saw the man in the chair busily 
 writing in the old-fashioned way, with pen 
 and ink. He looked up mth a hospitable ex- 
 pression, immediately rose, shook hands 
 warmly, and offered me a cigarette. I lit it, 
 and was so confused that I put the wrong end 
 in my mouth. This seemed to amuse M. 
 Maeterlinck extremely; in fact, he roared 
 with laughter. I laughed to keep him com- 
 pany, and at once we seemed to be intimate. 
 The famous mystic was in appearance the 
 opposite of what many must have imagined. 
 Although his works are full of spiritual sig- 
 nificance, full of symbolism and the stuff that 
 dreams are made of, the best adjective to 
 describe the man is hearty. It was a hand- 
 some, healthy face, manly and cheerful in ex- 
 pression ; he looked as rugged as an English 
 squire, and as though he had been brought up 
 180 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 on beef steak and Bass's ale. He had posi- 
 tively no mannerisms, no affectations; he 
 seemed composed of cordiality and good 
 sense. 
 
 I knew that for years he had read English 
 with the same ease that he read French; I 
 therefore expected the conversation would be 
 in my own tongue. But I had no chance to 
 discover how good his spoken English might 
 be, for he insisted — perhaps out of politeness 
 — that we should both speak French. I was 
 consoled by the fact that the distance between 
 his oral French and mine could not possibly 
 be greater than that between his written 
 French and my written English; and for an 
 hour we talked freely, **une heure amicale,'' 
 he was kind enough to call it afterwards. He 
 spoke of his immense admiration for English 
 literature, for English poets, English drama- 
 tists, and, among American authors, for Em- 
 erson. He confirmed all that he had written 
 me about his love for Browning. I reminded 
 him of his early translation of the Eliza- 
 bethan Ford's tragedy, 'Tis Pity, and he 
 smiled, saying it was a work of his youth. I 
 told him of my difficulties in finding a copy in 
 Paris, and of my pleasure in finally adding it 
 181 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 to my collection. We spoke a good deal 
 about his play Monna Vanna, and when I said 
 I should hear it next month in Munich, he 
 looked distressed, saying that the Munich 
 performance was bad — later I thought it was 
 good. It certainly gives one a notion of the 
 standards that prevail at Paris when I say 
 that of all the months I have spent in Paris in 
 the twentieth century, never at any time dur- 
 ing my visits to that city has there been a 
 single one of Maeterlinck's plays on the stage. 
 I can judge of the acting qualities of his 
 drama only through English and German. 
 
 As I rose to go, he gave me an autograph 
 copy of his translation of the work of a Flem- 
 ish mystic. I went straight from his house 
 to the Comedie PrauQaise, where I heard a 
 performance of Victor Hugo's Hernani. It 
 was of course admirably produced and inter- 
 preted, but its declamation sounded so un- 
 real and its sentiments so melodramatic that 
 many in the audience laughed outright. 
 
 When Maeterlinck visited America for the 
 first time in 1919, I found him the same man 
 — frank, hearty, modest and sincere. The 
 brilliant successes of plays written since 
 1903 had not changed his personal manner. 
 182 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 It is a pity that his unfortunate lecture tour 
 produced such a false impression of him in 
 our country. He used a language on that 
 opening night that had never been heard 
 from gods or men. I told him it was really 
 a great compliment to us. All his works 
 written in French had been original ; no one 
 could foretell the characteristics of his next 
 book. And so, when he came to America, he 
 not only wrote an original lecture but in- 
 vented an original language, that was used 
 just once — like a goblet for the king's health 
 — and will never be used again. 
 
 My acquaintance with the famous Belgian 
 in 1903 began in a way that is of some lit- 
 erary interest. As every one knows, Monna 
 Vanna, published in 1902, was a turning 
 point in Maeterlinck's career. Up to that 
 date, and for a little over ten years, he had 
 written * literary" dramas, that appealed 
 only to readers; he was scarcely thought of 
 as a practical playwright. But Monna 
 Vanna was a success — as it deserved to be — 
 on every stage in Europe except in England, 
 where it was forbidden by the censor; the 
 world was talking about it. One day, in the 
 quiet of my library, I began to read it, and 
 183 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 when I was part way through the second act, 
 I leaped from my chair — the thing seemed in- 
 credible, but here was a scene that must have 
 been taken straight from Browning's drama 
 Luria. I say it seemed incredible that Mae- 
 terlinck could have conveyed anything from 
 this almost-forgotten work of Browning, and 
 yet it was even more incredible that such a 
 psychological situation should have happened 
 twice by accident. The fact that both Monna 
 Vanna and Luria represented hostilities be- 
 tween Florence and Pisa in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, the fact that the general of the Floren- 
 tine forces was an alien — that was not so re- 
 markable and might have been fortuitous. 
 But that in both plays the Commissary of the 
 Republic of Florence, in the camp with the 
 Commander-in-chief, should be steadily be- 
 traying him in letters home; and that when 
 the general, in a man-to-man interview, spoke 
 of the discovery of this abominable treach- 
 ery, the culprit, instead of being ashamed, 
 embarrassed or apologetic, boldly defended 
 his course, saying that Florence was greater 
 than any man who worked for her, and that 
 if the general punished the Commissary for 
 this so-called treachery, he would simply be 
 184 
 
MAURICE MAETEELINCK • 
 
 proving the correctness of the Commissary's 
 attitude — how could this be an accident! 
 Such original pyschology is purely in the 
 manner of Browning, and to see it repeated 
 literally in Monna Vanna was amazing. Of 
 course it was a side-issue in the French play ; 
 it had nothing to do with the main plot or the 
 main interest, and the drama could have 
 stood perfectly well without it. However, 
 there it was ! 
 
 I waited for some one to speak. I read 
 many criticisms of Monna Vanna; no one 
 mentioned this similarity, either in England 
 or in America. I therefore published an 
 article in the New York Independent, calling 
 attention to the parallel, but of course not 
 suggesting plagiarism. Immediately I re- 
 ceived condemnation and ridicule. If only 
 these hostile critics had taken the trouble 
 to read Luria; but Luria was a play that had 
 been published in 1846, had never attracted 
 attention — had never been played in any 
 country or at any time except just once at 
 the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in 
 Hartford, Connecticut — ^had in short been 
 forgotten even by students of English liter- 
 ature, even by students of Browning. This 
 185 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 latter fact is clear from the position taken by 
 James Huneker, who, in Steeplejack^ informs 
 us that he reads Bro^Aoiing chronically. In 
 1903 Mr. Huneker was dramatic critic for the 
 New York Sun; he ridiculed my pretended 
 discovery. Later in the year, however, he 
 went to Paris, called on Maeterlinck, and the 
 Belgian told him I was right and he was 
 wrong. He then wrote me a handsome letter, 
 stating exactly what Maeterlinck had said. 
 
 Wishing only to arrive at the truth, for 
 Browning and Maeterlinck are both of such 
 importance in literature that an established 
 connexion would be interesting, I sent the 
 Independent article to the author of Monna 
 Vanna, and received an immediate reply. 
 
 ^*22 March, 1903. 
 '*! have just read with interest, in The In- 
 dependent, the article that you have devoted 
 to Monna Vanna, You are absolutely right 
 {vous avez parfaitement raison) : there is, 
 between an episodiacal scene in my second act 
 (where Prinzivalle unmasks Trivulzio) and 
 one of the great scenes in Luria a similarity 
 that I am surprised has not been noticed be- 
 fore. I am all the more surprised, because, 
 186 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 far from concealing this similarity, I tried 
 myself to emphasise it, in taking exactly the 
 same hostile cities, the same epoch, and al- 
 most the same characters: when it would 
 have been easy to transpose the whole thing 
 and make the borrowing unrecognisable, had 
 I wished to deceive. 
 
 **I am an eager reader and an ardent ad- 
 mirer of Browning, who is in my opinion one 
 of the greatest poets that England has ever 
 had. This is why I regard him as belonging 
 to classic and universal literature, which 
 everybody is supposed to know. It is then 
 natural and legitimate to borrow a situation 
 or rather a fragment of a situation, just as 
 one borrows daily from ^schylus, Sophocles, 
 and Shakespeare. Such borrowings, when 
 they are concerned with poets of this rank, 
 and are so to speak, coram publico, are really 
 a kind of public homage. 
 
 **Then, apart from this episode, which 
 fills a corner so accidental and so subordi- 
 nate that one might entirely suppress it with- 
 out in the least injuring my play, my piece 
 separates itself entirely from the tragedy of 
 Bro^vning and has nothing more in common 
 with it. This scene rises in my drama like 
 187 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 an isolated column that my pious homage has 
 erected to the memory of the poet who cre- 
 ated in my imagination the atmosphere where 
 Monna Vanna lives, to the memory of a Mas- 
 ter admired by all/' 
 
 This letter was not only cheering to me, 
 but I think it is important to students of lit- 
 erature; and let me repeat that Maeterlinck 
 is accurate in saying that the main plot of 
 Monna Vanna owes nothing to Luria. I 
 wrote, asking permission to print the letter, 
 and received the following reply. 
 
 ^^2 May, 1903. 
 *^I am very grateful for your cordial and 
 very correct attitude in this little literary 
 controversy and I thank you heartily. I do 
 not recall the precise words of my former let- 
 ter, but as I wrote simply a fact that I 
 wanted to express, I see no reason why it 
 should not be published exactly as I wrote it. 
 Only I think I remember saying that the 
 scene between Prinzivalle and Trivulzio had 
 been borrowed from Browning. It would be 
 more exact to say that it had been inspired 
 by the reading of Luria. So, as another ex- 
 188 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 ample, has my new piece, Joyselle, been in- 
 spired by The Tempest of Shakespeare. If 
 it seems natural to seek a point of departure 
 and a motive of inspiration in Shakespeare, 
 why should one be astonished if it is sought 
 in Browning r' 
 
 In my judgment, Maeterlinck does not ex- 
 aggerate the greatness of Browning; but it is 
 certainly true that Browning is not univers- 
 ally read in France, although Professor Ber- 
 ger has written a volume devoted to him, and 
 M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador to the 
 United States, who knew Browning person- 
 ally, long ago called attention to the English- 
 man 's genius. I once spoke to Emile Faguet 
 about Maeterlinck's enthusiasm for Brown- 
 ing, and asked him if Browning were a house- 
 hold word in France. He smiled and said, 
 ^^Pas encore,^' 
 
 It is interesting to record the relationship 
 between Luria and Monna Vanna, but much 
 more interesting to know of M. Maeterlinck's 
 admiration for Browning. For the concep- 
 tion of Love which is primary in Browning's 
 work, is prominent not only in Monna Vanna 
 and Joyzelle, but certainly in such a play as 
 189 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Soeur Beatrice, and in fact is essential to an 
 understanding of Maeterlinck's ideas. 
 
 Maeterlinck is one of the great dramatists 
 of modern times, and is perhaps, if we con- 
 sider both the excellence of his work and its 
 universal influence, the foremost living writer 
 in the world. Although practically all of his 
 work is in prose, he is commonly spoken of 
 as a poet — an unconscious recognition of the 
 spirit and quality of his writings — and he 
 used to be called the Belgian Shakespeare. 
 He has modestly insisted that the late Emile 
 Verhaeren, the Belgian poet and dramatist, is 
 a more important figure in literature than 
 himself ; but he can get no one to agree with 
 him. During the war there was talk of elect- 
 ing Maeterlinck to the French Academy, de- 
 spite his foreign birth and citizenship; in a 
 letter to Le Journal, he suggested that they 
 choose instead **my old friend Emile Ver- 
 haeren, first, because he is my elder ; second, 
 because he is a very great poet, while I am 
 only an industrious and conscientious prose 
 writer. Any one with patience could write 
 what I have written; nobody could do what 
 he has done. Only a poet is qualified to 
 190 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 represent worthily a nation's greatness and 
 heroism/' 
 
 Patience is an admirable quality; but un- 
 common as it is, it is more common than 
 genius. Nor is it a particular qualificaftion 
 for producing literature. Bro^vning and 
 Byron were not conspicuous for possessing 
 patience. 
 
 Good news was brought to Ghent on 29 
 August 1862, for on that day and in that 
 place Maurice Maeterlinck was born. He 
 came of a very old Flemish family — he had 
 the mediaeval mystics in his blood. . . . He 
 took the regular course at the Jesuit College 
 of Sainte-Barbe, in Ghent. These early re- 
 ligious impressions were lasting, for though 
 it cannot be said that Maeterlinck is either an 
 orthodox Catholic or Protestant, he is a life- 
 long student of religion, and not from an 
 aloof standpoint. He is a religious man, and 
 ethical ideas have formed the foundation of 
 much of his work. After graduating from 
 this college in 1885, he took up the study of 
 law at the University of Ghent. But he 
 cared much for literature and little for law. 
 
 M. Tourquet-Milnes informs us that the 
 191 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 first thing written by Maeterlinck that got 
 into print was The Massacre of the Innocents. 
 The scene is in Nazareth and we are told 
 that it is painfully detailed and realistic. It 
 is interesting to see that in common with 
 all great writers, his main inspiration is the 
 Bible ; its pages were to have a powerful in- 
 fluence on his mature prose style, and he was 
 later to write a play on Mary Magdalene. 
 
 After this prose sketch, came what is gen- 
 erally called Maeterlinck's first publication 
 (really his second), a volume of poems named 
 Hot-Houses (Serres Chaudes). This thin 
 book is full of vaguely melancholy verse; 
 quite different in appearance are these 
 forced flowers from those of The Double 
 Garden. 
 
 Serres Chaudes appeared in 1889; and 
 three years before, in 1886, Maeterlinck real- 
 ised a dream of his boyhood — he saw Paris 
 for the first time. I am quite sure that no 
 American and no Frenchman can share or 
 even adequately imagine the sensations of an 
 ambitious Belgian when he first comes to 
 Paris. Maeterlinck was twenty-four; so far 
 as polite intercourse and writing had been 
 concerned, French was his mother-tongue; 
 192 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 yet he had never seen Paris nor heard Pari- 
 sians talking together. His attitude toward 
 the centre of French art and literature must 
 have been entirely different from that of a 
 southern Frenchman like Alphonse Daudet or 
 from an Englishman who had learned the lan- 
 guage in his youth. 
 
 English literature is diffused all over the 
 world ; it can never be centralised again as it 
 was at London in the days of Samuel John- 
 son. But French literature is still central- 
 ised at Paris ; and as young Maeterlinck saw 
 the world-famous poets and novelists walking 
 the streets, and lingered in the Bohemian 
 cafes listening to manuscript verse from 
 youthful enthusiasts, we can hardly guess his 
 excitement and the spur to his literary ambi- 
 tion. **Very often,'* he once said to the 
 journalist, Jules Huret, ^*I saw Villiers de 
 Plsle Adam. It was at the Brasserie Pous- 
 set in Montmartre. There were others too: 
 Mendes came in occasionally.'' 
 
 After some months in the French capital, 
 he returned to Belgium and lived in solitude 
 and calm — that expectant calm that hovers 
 over the landscape of the Low Countries — 
 that Silence which was to be characteristic 
 193 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of his early dramas. This period of pro- 
 longed and uninterrupted meditation, study, 
 reflection, and composition was important to 
 his future development. 
 
 His reputation bloomed in the same year 
 that saw the publication of Serres Chaudes, 
 though not by that work; for in 1889 — the 
 year of the first play by Hauptmann and the 
 first by Sudermann — Maeterlinck produced 
 La Princesse Maleine, a tragedy in five acts. 
 Octave Mirbeau, who was later to become a 
 famous dramatist, and who was then a journ- 
 alist, greeted the unknown Belgian with this 
 rhapsody, printed in Figaro, 24 August 1890. 
 **I know nothing whatever of M. Maurice 
 Maeterlinck. I don't know where he comes 
 from or anything about his present condition. 
 I don 't know whether he is old or young, rich 
 or poor. I only know that no man is more 
 unknown than he ; and I know also that he has 
 produced a masterpiece, not indeed a master- 
 piece so labeled in advance, such as our young 
 poets publish every day, sung on every note 
 in their yelping lyre, or rather on the con- 
 temporary yelping flute; but an admirable 
 and pure eternal masterpiece, a masterpiece 
 which is enough to immortalise a name and 
 194 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 to make this name blessed by all who hunger 
 for the lofty and the beautiful ; a masterpiece, 
 such as all honest and struggling artists, 
 sometimes, in their moments of enthusiasm, 
 have dreamed of writing and such as no one 
 of them has written until now. In short, M. 
 Maeterlinck has given us a work the most 
 full of genius of any of our time, and also the 
 most extrarodinary and the most simple, 
 comparable — shall I dare to say? — superior 
 in beauty to what is most beautiful ini 
 Shakespeare. This work is called La Prin- 
 cess e Maleine, Are there twenty persons 
 living who have heard of it I I think not. ' ' 
 
 This is the beginning of the echoing cry. 
 The Belgian Shakespeare. Now it is easy 
 enough to laugh at this rhapsody, as many 
 have done ; but Mirbeau was not so far from 
 the truth. Certainly the world has not 
 placed Maeterlinck above Shakespeare; cer- 
 tainly La Princesse Maleine in itself does not 
 and did not deserve such extravagant praise. 
 But the most important thing to remember is 
 that Octave Mirbeau recognised the genius in 
 this play at a time when the author was un- 
 known; and Mirbeau was right in his wild 
 enthusiasm, for Maeterlinck, although no one 
 195 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 but Mirbeau suspected it, was to be accepted 
 as one of the great writers of the world. 
 
 It is not only remarkable that Maeter- 
 linck's genius should have been recognised 
 just as it rose on the horizon of letters ; it is 
 even more remarkable that the lookout who 
 saw it was Octave Mirbeau. This hard- 
 headed, windbitten Norman radical, who 
 hated mystery and sentiment and romance 
 and illusion, who was later to write one of the 
 best realistic plays of his time, was the one 
 man in France who saluted the poet of 
 dreams. 
 
 Mirbeau 's voice did not carry far in those 
 days, and his enthusiasm caused only a local 
 flurry ; though what the feelings of the young 
 Belgian were can only be dimly imagined. 
 Maeterlinck was not really universally known 
 until his play The Blind — Les Aveugles — 
 was produced by Lugne Poe on 7 Decem- 
 ber 1891. Of course the play had no **run,'' 
 but it made a sensation, and I remember 
 reading in the American papers an account 
 of the strange piece with an analysis of the 
 plot. 
 
 The next time Maeterlinck appeared in the 
 American press was through a succes de 
 196 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 scandale. He had translated the decadent 
 but powerful Elizabethan tragedj^ by John 
 Ford, 'Tis Pity, for the Theatre de TOeuvre, 
 in 1895. It will be remembered that in this 
 drama a brother is in love with his sister ; he 
 stabs her, cuts out her heart with his dag- 
 ger, and with the bleeding heart poised on 
 the point of the blade, rushes into a dining- 
 room where a fashionable dinner is in prog- 
 ress. The New York World, which can 
 hardly be blamed for not knowing much at 
 that time about the Belgian, called him Mae- 
 ckirling; the news item said, *^ Paris has been 
 shocked. This difficult feat has been accom- 
 plished by a writer named Maeckirling. ' ^ 
 The report went on to say that on the first 
 night a fresh sheep's heart had been used, 
 but so many ladies in the audience and on 
 the stage fainted, that in subsequent perform- 
 ances a flannel heart had been substituted. 
 
 Years later a professor in an Eastern col- 
 lege in America asked his class if they knew 
 who Maeterlinck was, and one youth volun- 
 teered confidently this information. **He is 
 the king of Abyssinia.'' 
 
 As soon as Maeterlinck became known in 
 America, parodies and burlesques began to 
 197 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 appear. This was inevitable — it had hap- 
 pened to Ibsen, Browning, Henry James, and 
 to all authors whose plain, definite meanings 
 do not float on the surface of the printed 
 page. The peculiar style of the Belgian, — 
 simple naive language that nevertheless was 
 incomprehensible, all the more maddening 
 because apparently so elementary, the con- 
 stant repetitions, the apparent non-sequiturs, 
 made him a mark for journalistic humour. 
 And indeed it would be difficult to write a 
 burlesque of The Seven Princesses, his most 
 opaque and least important work. I at- 
 tended an amateur performance of that play, 
 where at first the audience endeavoured to 
 listen respectfully; but soon the dialogue 
 made that impossible; restrained gayety 
 finally gave way to roaring mirth ; the audi- 
 ence lost all shame, and the questions and 
 replies were greeted by whoops and howls 
 and shrieks of laughter; nor were we trying 
 to make any hostile or burlesque demonstra- 
 tion; we were in such hysterical, uncontrol- 
 lable pleasure-pain that it was dangerous to 
 health; as I look back on that memorable 
 evening, I think it was the funniest **show'' 
 I ever saw. 
 
 198 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Yet it is the ** difficult'' authors that hold 
 the highest place in critical esteem. Ibsen's 
 Master Builder is called a work of genius, 
 although no one has ever been able to demon- 
 strate what it means; the fame of Henry- 
 James grows brighter every year. The com- 
 mon people may be grateful to an author's 
 amenity, but the more discriminating readers 
 will never place Longfellow above Browning. 
 Indeed there is danger that Longfellow will 
 not receive half his due. It takes courage to 
 confess that one enjoys reading him. The 
 mystery of Maeterlinck's final intention adds 
 something to his stature, as a figure looks 
 larger in a fog. 
 
 There are two good reasons, among others, 
 for this. One is, that a writer who is not 
 transparently clear, offers a challenge in 
 every work, sometimes on every page. And 
 while we love to have our curiosity satisfied 
 by a poem or a play or a novel there is some- 
 thing we love even more ; to have it aroused. 
 The unfathomable works of art are also su- 
 perior to the lucid ones in this — they are 
 more like life. For Life is a greater mystery 
 than anything written about it. I suppose 
 this is one reason why novelists who use 
 199 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 '4ocal colour'' are admired least of all in the 
 locality they describe. The people who live 
 there know they are not like that; the story 
 has a plot and their lives have none. You 
 might as well attempt to stop the course of 
 a river while you describe it ; or to represent 
 the sky on a f air-and-f oul day in April by a 
 geometrical diagram. 
 
 It is inevitable that Maeterlinck should 
 have been labeled; a label is like a proverb 
 or a catch-phrase, it saves expense of thought. 
 Thus, Maeterlinck's plays were called sym- 
 bolistic, static, and so on. Like all artists he 
 felt the same objection to classification that 
 the subjects of art themselves feel. In a 
 letter to Mr. Barrett Clark, cited in the lat- 
 ter 's valuable book. The Continental Drama 
 of To-day (1914), Maeterlinck wrote, **You 
 must not attach too great importance to the 
 expression * Static'; it was an invention, a 
 theory of my youth, worth what most literary 
 theories are worth, — that is, almost nothing. 
 Whether a play be static , or dynamic, sym- 
 bolistic or realistic, is of little consequence. 
 What matters is that it be well written, well 
 thought out, human and, if possible, super- 
 200 
 
 i 
 
MAUEICE MAETEKLINCK 
 
 human, in the deepest significance of the 
 term.'* 
 
 That it be superhuman is not only a fa- 
 vourite idea of the Belgian author, it was 
 realised in all his best plays except Monna 
 Vanna. Every work of talent has three di- 
 mensions, length, breadth, depth — and if it 
 be a work of genius, (which includes talent) 
 then it invariably has the fourth dimension, 
 as shown by the plays of Ibsen. For exam- 
 ple, Pelleas and Melisande, reduced to its 
 lowest terms, is the familiar tragedy (Paolo 
 and Francesca) of a young and beautiful 
 woman married to an old, ugly, uninteresting 
 husband, and allowed frequent conversation 
 with the husband's young, and brilliant 
 brother. The same result invariably hap- 
 pens, although not always the same conse- 
 quences. You have love, conscience, loyalty, 
 treachery, jealousy, murder, remorse — surely 
 the ingredients of tragedy. But over all this 
 Maeterlinck throws a veil through which we 
 see these lovers struggling helplessly like 
 children in the night; and for the time all 
 human life seems surrounded by impene- 
 trable forests in which the children are lost, 
 201 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 because we have no map and no guide. The 
 little group of sufferers, who suffer horribly, 
 represent humanity. We feel the ** encircl- 
 ing gloom. ' ' 
 
 In the preface to the three volume edition 
 of his plays, published in 1902, and which is 
 essential to a comprehension of the earlier 
 dramas, Maeterlinck wrote, ** Great poetry, 
 looked at closely, is composed of three prin- 
 cipal elements; first the beauty of language, 
 then passionate contemplation and painting 
 of that which really exists around us and in 
 us, that is to say, nature and our sentiments, 
 and finally, enveloping the entire work and 
 creating its special atmosphere, the idea 
 which the poet makes for himself of the un- 
 known in which float the beings and the things 
 which he creates, of the mystery which con- 
 trols them and judges them and which pre- 
 sides over their destinies. I am certain that 
 this last element is the most important. Ob- 
 serve a beautiful poem, no matter how brief 
 or fugitive. Rarely do its beauty and gran- 
 deur confine themselves to the things we ac- 
 tually know. Nine out of ten times its great- 
 ness depends on an allusion to the mysteries, 
 to human destiny, to some new bond between 
 202 
 
MAURICE MAETEELINCK 
 
 the visible and the invisible, the temporal and 
 the eternal. '* Later, he uses as illustrations 
 of realistic plays that are surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of vast forces, Tolstoi's Power 
 of Darkness and Ibsen's Ghosts. **In these 
 two dramas superior powers intervene that 
 we all feel pressing on our lives." 
 
 Thus it is clear that Maeterlinck is not con- 
 tent with representing various individuals in 
 action, the common spectacle on the stage ; he 
 will have these figures, but above all he 
 wishes to suggest to the audience and to the 
 reader in even greater emphasis the sur- 
 rounding mystery that controls both them 
 and us. So it is absurd to demand an ex- 
 planation of every *^ symbol" in Pelleas and 
 Melisande; the episode of the ring was an 
 inspiration of genius, and tells more than 
 pages of talk. 
 
 The love of ** silence" in Maeterlinck's 
 plays, the suggestion of meaning by pauses 
 and immobility, so characteristic of Les 
 Aveugles, L'Intruse, and Interieur, arises, I 
 think, from that overwhelming desire in 
 every artist for some better means of com- 
 munication than spoken words. It is only 
 the unthinking and the inartistic and the un- 
 203 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 imaginative that find human speech a satis- 
 factory method of communicating ideas and 
 intentions; perhaps it is adequate to the 
 ideas and intentions that such people employ ; 
 as some poems are clear because they are 
 shallow. Browning, who had a wide vocabu- 
 lary and unusual power of expression, fre- 
 quently cried out against the inadequacy of 
 words as a vehicle of thought. He believed 
 that in the next world we should have some 
 better method. 
 
 Not so! Expect nor question nor reply 
 At what we figure as God's judgment-bar! 
 None of this vile way by the barren words 
 Which, more than any deed, characterise 
 Man as made subject to a curse; no speech — 
 
 And the intention of Maeterlinck's dramas 
 Browning expressed in the closing lines of 
 The Ring and the Book, 
 
 Art may tell a truth 
 Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, 
 Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. 
 So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, 
 Beyond mere imagery on the wall, — 
 So, note by note, bring music from your mind, 
 Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived. 
 
 204 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Some tragedies are tragedies of surprise, 
 like The Return of the Druses, which has the 
 most unexpected and overwhelming climax 
 that I remember anywhere in drama; others 
 are tragedies of suspense. The method in 
 each naturally corresponds somewhat to the 
 terms dynamic and static. Maeterlinck is a 
 master of suspense ; the situation is hopeless 
 from the start; the atmosphere is charged 
 with disaster, as swollen clouds are charged 
 with rain; the blow will fall, its horror aug- 
 mented by suspense. Like Ibsen's tragedies, 
 they are all composed of falling action; and 
 the dialogues of both Maeterlinck and Ibsen 
 have this in common; the language is so ex- 
 tremely simple, the sentences are so short, 
 the brief questions are so frequent, that so 
 far as language goes, their works may be 
 confidently recommended to beginners in 
 French and Norwegian. Yet although the 
 words are **easy,'' their significance is ob- 
 scure. The dictionary does not help. 
 
 The tragic element in suspense is height- 
 ened by the simplicity of the language and 
 by the constant antiphony of question and 
 answer. How frequently something like this 
 happens in Ibsen: (I am not quoting) : 
 205 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 A. I have been very sad this year. 
 
 B. You have been sad ? 
 
 A. Yes, I have been sad. It was the blow. 
 
 B. The blow? 
 
 A. Yes, my father died. 
 
 B. Ah, I remember hearing of it. It must have 
 been a blow to you. 
 
 A. But that was not the real blow. 
 
 B. That was not the real blow? 
 
 A. No, there was something worse than that. 
 
 Maeterlinck often places his characters on 
 one side of a closed door — always a good 
 ** symbol.'' Thus, from his first play, La 
 Princesse Maleine: A dog is scratching at a 
 door. 
 
 La Nourrice. II gratte, il gratte, il renifle. 
 Hjalmar. II flaire quelque chose sous la porte. 
 La Nourrice. II doit y avoir quelque chose. . . . 
 Hjalmar. Allez voir . . . 
 La Nourrice. La chambre est fermee; je n^ai 
 pas la clef. 
 
 Hjalmar. Qui est-ce qui a la clef? 
 La Nourrice. La reine Anne. 
 Hjalmar. Pourquoi a-t-elle la clef ? 
 La Nourrice. Je n'en sais rien. 
 
 I agree with Ludwig Lewisohn that the best 
 among the early works is not Pelleas and 
 Melisande, but the three short plays, L7w- 
 206 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 truse, Les Aveugles, Interieur. These are 
 original, are the most economical in the use 
 of symbolism and suspense, and because of 
 that very fact make by these elements a tre- 
 mendous impression. These dramas may be 
 dreams, but one cannot shake them off. 
 
 The static quality in the plays written be- 
 fore Monna Vanna (1902) is best interpreted 
 in Maeterlinck's own words, which are fre- 
 quently quoted. I take the citation in Eng- 
 lish from Barrett Clark: **I have grown to 
 believe that an old man, seated in his arm- 
 chair, waiting patiently, with his lamp be- 
 side him; giving unconscious ear to all the 
 eternal laws that reign about his house, in- 
 terpreting, without comprehending, the sil- 
 ence of doors and windows and the quivering 
 voice of the light, submitting with bent head 
 to the presence of his soul and his destiny — 
 an old man who conceives not that all the 
 powers of this world, like so many heedful 
 servants, are mingling and keeping vigil in 
 his room, who suspects not that the very sun 
 itself is supporting in space the little table 
 against which he leans, or that every star in 
 heaven and every fibre of the soul are di- 
 rectly concerned in the movement of an eye- 
 207 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 lid that closes, or a thought that springs to 
 birth — I have grown to believe that he, mo- 
 tionless as he is, does yet live in reality a 
 deeper, more human, and more universal, 
 life than the lover who strangles his mis- 
 tress, the captain who conquers in battle, or 
 *the husband who avenges his honour.' " 
 
 The intimacy of silence is naturally the 
 most difficult of all things to represent on the 
 stage. Yet in real life silence is often the 
 best means of communication between those 
 whose affection is sincere and deep. Love, 
 and even friendship, will annihilate formal- 
 ity; it is only between new or rarely-meeting 
 acquaintances that a constant flow of conver- 
 sation must be maintained. Carlyle and 
 -Tennyson both agreed that the best evening 
 they ever spent together was when they sat 
 voiceless for hours, opening their mouths 
 only to exhale tobacco-smoke ; they knew each 
 other so perfectly that they were in absolute 
 harmony; somehow their thoughts traveled 
 from one to the other through the smoky 
 fragrance more swiftly and more clearly than 
 through the medium of words. Mr. Howells 
 said that he and Mark Twain once entered 
 the smoking compartment of a train at Hart- 
 208 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 ford, sat directly facing each other for three 
 hours, and neither spoke a word until they 
 entered the station at New York. Mr. 
 Howells did not have the power of expres- 
 sion through nicotine; but both friends felt 
 no embarrassment, and enjoyed the journey 
 together. 
 
 This would be static drama if represented 
 on the stage — and something akin to this is 
 actually accomplished in the plays of Maeter- 
 linck. It is communication through silence 
 — ^not necessarily between human beings — 
 but between a human being and surrounding 
 imponderable forces. 
 
 The *^ obscurity^' of Maeterlinck is unlike 
 the obscurity of those authors whose lan- 
 guage is clumsy or involved; his obscurity 
 arises from the fact that he is an individual 
 constantly oppressed by the environment of 
 vast mysteries; and in the simple language 
 of his plays he is forever trying to give to 
 the reader or the spectator that double sense 
 of infinite distance and close imprisonment. 
 
 A drama that is usually passed over in 
 
 discussion of his work, I believe to be one of 
 
 his most beautiful, most important, and 
 
 therefore most lasting — Sister Beatrice. 
 
 209 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 This was written in 1901, and came just be- 
 fore that definite change in his manner which 
 was marked the next year by Monna Vanna. 
 In Soeur Beatrice we have a masterpiece both 
 in literature and on the stage. Yet he him- 
 self dismisses it as a trifle. Of all the mys- 
 terious and unfathomable passages in his 
 writings, I find the plain prose of this pref- 
 ace, so far as it deals with this particular 
 play, the most impenetrable. 
 
 ^*As to the two little pieces . . . Ariane et 
 Barhe-Bleue, ou la delivrance inutile, and 
 Soeur Beatrice, I should like to have no mis- 
 understanding. It is not because they come 
 later in my career that one should search for 
 an evolution or a new desire. They are, to 
 speak accurately, little stage-plays, short 
 poems of a kind called wrongly enough 
 * opera-comique, ' destined to furnish to mu- 
 sicians who asked for them a theme conveni- 
 ent for musical development. They mean 
 nothing more than that, and people will en- 
 tirely mistake my intentions if they try to 
 find great moral or philosophical hidden 
 meanings. ' ' 
 
 It is inconceivable that Maeterlinck could 
 write so powerful and affecting a play as 
 210 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Soeur Beatrice merely as a libretto. It is 
 true that most of his plays naturally lend 
 themselves to music; I think the opera Pel- 
 leas and Melisande is more beautiful and 
 somehow more *^ natural' ' than the play; and 
 Monna Vanna is a steady success on the op- 
 eratic stage, (though The Blue Bird was a 
 failure) ; but Soeur Beatrice is one of the best 
 acting plays of the twentieth century, and is 
 almost equally effective in the library. I 
 shall never forget the performance I saw in 
 Germany in 1904, when the drama was given 
 by the combined forces of the Neues and 
 Kleines Theater from Berlin; and almost 
 as great an effect was produced in America 
 by the New Theatre company, with that re- 
 markable interpreter of poetry and passion, 
 Edith Wynne Mathison. When a fine artist, 
 the late Madame Komisarshevskaia, came to 
 America from Russia, I asked her what was 
 her favourite role in all modem drama, and 
 she replied without a moment's hesitation, 
 Soeur Beatrice. She had fully intended to 
 produce it in New York, and was forbidden 
 to do so by our monopoly system, something, 
 that with all her keenness and quickness of 
 intelligence, was beyond her comprehension. 
 211 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 The story of Sister Beatrice is taken from 
 an old miracle, where the Holy Virgin takes 
 the place of an absent nun; and there are 
 versions of it in many languages. I remem- 
 ber years ago reading the Bohemian romance, 
 Amis and Amil, by Julius Zeyer, and finding 
 the story there. *^ The holy statue had disap- 
 peared. ... In this moment, however, the 
 door of the sleeping-chamber opened wide of 
 itself, a blinding light filled the passage, a 
 sweet perfume in white clouds came from the 
 room . . . and on the threshold appeared the 
 holy statue. The mysterious veil, which 
 quite concealed the forehead, moved as under 
 the breath of a soft breeze, and out of the 
 shimmering folds fell white sweet-smelling 
 flowers like snowflakes. Quietly the statue 
 took its place on the golden throne. ' ' ^ 
 
 It is worth recording that a number of 
 years ago Sister Beatrice was given for the 
 first time in America under the auspices of 
 the Chicago Woman's Club, and made an in- 
 
 1 Maeterlinck's play reawakened interest in the beau- 
 tiful old fable, and those who are interested may read a 
 treatise on the subject published in 1904: Die Geschichte 
 der Marienlegende von Beatrix der Kuesterin. By H, 
 Watenphul. 
 
 212 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 efifaceable impression on those who saw it. 
 The critics were rather surprised at its stage 
 value. 
 
 Not only is this one of the best of Maeter- 
 linck 's plays for representation, provided al- 
 ways the setting and actors are adequate, 
 but, despite his disclaimer, it comes as near 
 as any other of his dramas to expressing his 
 philosophy — which may be summed up in the 
 one word Love. In Sister Beatrice, Monna 
 Vanna, Joyzelle, Mary Magdalene, The Blue 
 Bird, The Betrothal, Love is the fulfillment 
 of the law — the final philosophy and religion. 
 It is in this aspect of his work that Maeter- 
 linck comes closest to Browning ; for the Eng- 
 lish poet would have delighted in the story of 
 the Virgin and in the sacrifice made by 
 Monna Vanna. Technically the holy nun was 
 both unchaste and disloyal ; but according to 
 Maeterlinck she followed single-hearted the 
 call of love; in her absence therefore her 
 place was taken by the infinitely comprehend- 
 ing Blessed Virgin, and on her return, though 
 she comes in rags, broken in health, and tor- 
 tured by conscience, she is received into 
 glory. Her sins are forgiven: for she loved 
 213 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 much. I wish Browning had made one of 
 his dramatic monologues or romances out of 
 this legend. 
 
 There is, as every one has noticed, a def- 
 inite turning point in Maeterlinck's career, 
 signified by the production of Monna Vanna 
 in 1902. Up to this time he had been a ** lit- 
 erary '^ dramatist, enjoying a reputation as a 
 man of letters and a philosopher, but not 
 regarded as a practical playwright. But 
 Monna Vanna was and is a brilliant stage 
 play, full of contrasts, full of conflict, full of 
 passion, and ending with a marvellous oppor- 
 tunity for the actress. No wonder that its 
 success has always been associated with some 
 woman; for the man who takes the part of 
 Prinzivalle has the thankless and difficult task 
 of remaining on the stage during the third 
 act without saying a word. Like a cinema 
 actor, whose happiness and life are at stake, 
 he must continually ** register '^ emotion. 
 
 Two problems interested Maeterlinck in 
 this play. Can a woman be physically dis- 
 honoured and yet spiritually pure! Should 
 a woman sacrifice her ** honour'' for her coun- 
 try or for the welfare of others, as boldly as 
 she would sacrifice her life ? To both of these 
 214 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 questions the dramatist gives an unqualified 
 affirmative ; in fact, he reemphasises the first 
 in Joyzelle, 
 
 Thomas Hardy wrote a long and powerful 
 novel to prove the first paradox, for Tess, 
 according to her creator, is **a pure woman 
 faithfully presented.'^ It was the treatment 
 of the second question which aroused sharp 
 discussion, not only between Monna's hus- 
 band and his father, but in the audiences ; and 
 which led to the English censor's prohibi- 
 tion. Such a case as Maeterlinck brings up 
 is artificial or at all events unlikely; but he 
 was interested I think in the pliilosophy of 
 love. If it is right to give our lives for our 
 country, why should it not be right to sacri- 
 fice one's honour for one's country! Well, 
 so far as men are concerned, the answer has 
 always been and is now affirmative. As a 
 woman's honour is her virtue, so a man's 
 honour is his honesty. In times of war not 
 only do millions give their lives for their 
 country, but the highest, noblest, most patri- 
 otic service of all is performed by the spy, 
 who sacrifices his oath, his word of honour, 
 his truthfulness, everything he holds most 
 dear — this is really the ** supreme sacrifice." 
 215 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 How he must envy the men in the casualty 
 list! 
 
 Maeterlinck applies this same supreme sac- 
 rifice to woman. It is possible that he was 
 thinking of that great scene in A DolVs 
 House, where the husband says to the wife, 
 **I would gladly work for you day and night, 
 Nora — bear sorrow and want for your sake — 
 but no man sacrifices his honour, even for one 
 he loves. ' ' To which Nora replies, ^ ^ MilHons 
 of women have done so.*' The husband of 
 Nora and the husband of Monna Vanna are 
 alike in being colossally selfish; for in each 
 instance the man was thinking of his honour, 
 of his loss — not at all of his wife 's suffering. 
 And in each instance the case is made as dif- 
 ficult as possible By the dramatist, in order 
 to underline his point. The natural result is 
 that thousands of men sympathise with the 
 two husbands, and think their anger quite 
 justified. But whatever the individual dif- 
 ficulty, and Monna Vanna 's husband can 
 hardly be expected to view the situation with 
 enthusiasm, the Norwegian and the Belgian 
 were both trying to teach the supremacy of 
 Love. Love sticks at nothing and knows no 
 barriers. 
 
 216 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Observe how in both these plays it is the 
 last act that reveals male selfishness. What- 
 ever sympathy we may have had with the 
 man in the earlier scenes, he himself, by his 
 selfish egotism, alienates us in the end, even 
 as he slays love in his wife's heart. Had 
 Guido or Helmer known what love was, they 
 would have seen and have understood. For 
 Love is only sand-blind; selfishness, egotism, 
 conceit are in the dark. 
 
 Whether Monna Vanna was right or, 
 wrong, her decision was a test of her hus- 
 band's character; and Browning tells us that 
 even a crime may be a test of virtue. 
 
 The meaning of Monna Vanna ought to be 
 transparently clear, for in this play the au- 
 thor emerged from the veil of symbolism. 
 Yet many have misunderstood it. In two 
 letters to two enquirers, Maeterlinck said 
 that Monna Vanna is a true heroine, and 
 old Marco the inspiring genius — he repre- 
 sents the final wisdom of life, having lived 
 long and learned much. Monna Vanna sym- 
 pathised keenly with her husband's agony in 
 the first act, and still loved him; she would 
 have continued to love him, even after the 
 affecting interview with Prinzivalle; but his 
 217 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 stupidity and total lack of confidence in her 
 and in her word finally open her eyes to his 
 meanness. She strives no longer against her 
 growing love for Prinzivalle, and will fly with 
 him to some remote place, where if destiny 
 permits, she will begin a new and happier life. 
 In this explanation, Maeterlinck used almost 
 the exact words of Ibsen: *^she recognises 
 that her marriage has been a lie.'' 
 
 The first performance of Maeterlinck's 
 Mary Magdalene took place in the English 
 language and on the New York stage; it 
 happened at the New Theatre, 5 December 
 1910. There were three difficulties; the 
 translation was not very good, the leading 
 actress was miscast, and every one was re- 
 minded of Paul Heyse's play on the same 
 theme, which had been powerfully inter- 
 preted in English by Mrs. Fiske. Two 
 points were borrowed from Heyse ; and when 
 Maeterlinck wrote to the old German drama- 
 tist asking permission to use them, he was re- 
 fused not only unequivocally but harshly. 
 Then he determined to use them anyway, say- 
 ing in his preface that one was taken from the 
 New Testament and the other was common 
 stage property — it was in fact the ethical 
 218 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 problem that we have already seen in 
 Monna Vanna and in Joyzelle, It seemed at 
 one time to obsess Maeterlinck. 
 
 Maeterlinck bought an old Norman Abbey- 
 near Rouen, where a performance of Mac- 
 heth attracted wide attention. It was in this 
 romantic and inspiring Abbey of Saint 
 Wandrille — which gave him even more in- 
 spiration than he could have hoped for — 
 that he wrote The Blue Bird (which, by the 
 way, never should be called in English The 
 Bluebird), This carried his fame to the re- 
 motest parts of the earth, and unsupported, 
 it is sufficient to carry his fame to remote 
 generations. It is the crown of his life's 
 work, summing up all his best qualities as 
 poet, dramatist, play\vright. His early 
 dramas are a greater success in the library 
 than on the stage ; Monna Vanna is a greater 
 success on the stage than in the library ; The 
 Blue Bird is equally great in both places — 
 it is a masterpiece in literature and all-con- 
 quering in the theatre. It is an original and 
 beautiful play; it is a distinct contribution 
 to our present glorious age of drama. 
 
 When the author had it ready for the stage, 
 he sent it to Mr. Stanislavski, the Director of 
 219 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the Artistic Theatre at Moscow. It was 
 played in the Russian language in the year 
 1908, and from that first night — the world's 
 most exciting premiere since Cyrano de 
 Bergerac — it traveled far and fast. It has 
 been given at the Moscow theatre alone over 
 three hundred times; when put on at Lon- 
 don, 8 December 1909, it ran for over three 
 hundred performances, the excitement being 
 so intense that they were often forced to give 
 twelve presentations every week; when it 
 started the second season of the New Theatre 
 in New York, 1 October 1910, it was the talk 
 of the town. 
 
 Like Peter Pan it charmed both young and 
 old. The delight of the children was audi- 
 ble at every performance; but the ** deeper 
 joys'' of men and women were, if less vocal, 
 even more in evidence. For just as in all 
 his work, Maeterlinck's language is simple 
 and his ideas complex, so The Blue Bird ap- 
 peals to human beings at every stage in their 
 journey. 
 
 The best account of the original Russian 
 presentation may be found in Oliver M. Say- 
 ler's book. The Russian Theatre and the Rev- 
 olution (1920). While people were being 
 220 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 shot down in the streets, and the spectators 
 in the theatre had to dodge bullets on their 
 homeward way, this lovely fairy tale capti- 
 vated packed houses, just as it did during its 
 first season, just as it will a hundred years 
 from now. The company at the Artistic The- 
 atre is the finest and best-drilled company of 
 actors in the world ; it was a notable compli- 
 ment to give them The Blue Bird, but they 
 were worthy of it. Mr. Sayler gives the 
 speech of Director Stanislavski to his troupe, 
 spoken before they began rehearsals. 
 
 *^The production of The Blue Bird must 
 be made with the purity and fantasy of a 
 ten-year-old child. It must be naive, simple, 
 light, full of the joy of life, cheerful and im- 
 aginative like the sleep of a child ; as beauti- 
 ful as a child ^s dream and at the same time 
 as majestic as the ideal of a poetic genius 
 and thinker. Let The Blue Bird in our the- 
 atre thrill the grandchildren and arouse seri- 
 ous thoughts and deep feelings in their 
 grandparents. Let the grandchildren on 
 coming home from the theatre feel the joy 
 of existence with which Tyltyl and Mytyl are 
 possessed in the last act of the play. At the 
 same time let their grandfathers and grand- 
 221 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 mothers once more before their impending 
 death become inspired with the natural de- 
 sire of man: to enjoy God's world and be 
 glad that it is beautiful. ... If man were al- 
 ways able to love, to understand, to delight 
 in nature! If he contemplated more often, 
 if he reflected on the mysteries of the world 
 and took thought of the eternal! Then per- 
 haps the Blue Bird would be flying freely 
 among us. . . . [Can you imagine New York 
 managers talking to New York actors like 
 that?] In order to make the public listen 
 to the fine shades of your feelings, you have 
 to live them through yourself intensely. To 
 live through definite intelligible feelings is 
 easier than to live through the subtle soul 
 vibrations of a poetic nature. To reach 
 those experiences it is necessary to dig deep 
 into the material which is handed to you for 
 creation. To the study of the play we shall 
 devote jointly a great deal of work and at- 
 tention and love. But that is little. In ad- 
 dition, you have to prepare yourselves inde- 
 pendently. I speak of your personal life 
 observation which will broaden your imagi- 
 nation and sensitiveness. Make friends of 
 children. Enter into their world. Watch 
 222 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 nature more and her manifestations sur- 
 rounding us. Make friends of dogs and cats 
 and look oftener into their eyes to see their 
 souls. Thereby, you will be doing the same 
 as Maeterlinck did before he wrote the play, 
 and you will come closer to the author. . . . 
 More than anything else, we must avoid the- 
 atricalness in the external presentation of 
 The Blue Bird, as well as in the spiritual in- 
 terpretation, for it might change the fairy 
 dream of the poet into an ordinary extrava- 
 ganza. ' ' 
 
 Although I would give much to see The 
 Blue Bird in the Moscow Theatre, I do not 
 believe the Russian Cat and Dog were any 
 better than the American pair in 1910. The 
 late Jacob Wendell, an actor who was stead- 
 ily growing in authority, made the dog so 
 real that many wept at his fidelity. Cecil 
 Yapp was marvellous — his face, his agility, 
 the way he paused in the midst of washing 
 his cheek, his feline sneeze — he simply was 
 the Cat. It is possible that his cat-life 
 robbed him of something human ; for though 
 I have frequently seen him in other plays, 
 he has n*er\^er been so convincing as he was 
 in The Blue Bird. 
 
 223 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DRAMATISTS 
 
 So far as The Blue Bird has any philoso- 
 phy, it is pessimism ; even in that amazingly 
 beautiful scene — the best in the New York 
 version — the Land of Memory, the pathos 
 arises from the fact that the dead never live 
 at all except when the living think of them; 
 which makes the graveyard, with the ex- 
 clamation There are no Dead seem as incon- 
 sistent as the scene showing that all individ- 
 uals have a definite existence long before 
 they are born. Furthermore, at the end of 
 the play the Blue Bird disappears; nor did 
 the children need to learn about it, because 
 at the opening, their delight in the view of 
 their rich neighbours' happiness is quite un- 
 shadowed by envy, a charming episode. But 
 why look for logic in a work of art? or why 
 cloud a thing of beauty by pointing out in- 
 consistencies ? 
 
 In the autumn of 1918, under the direction 
 of Winthrop Ames, the first performance on 
 any stage of The Betrothal took place in the 
 English language and in New York. Ob- 
 serve again how slight is the connexion be- 
 tween the French theatre and the French 
 plays of Maeterlinck. His motto for a pre- 
 miere appears to be *^ Nowhere in France.'' 
 224 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 One cannot blame him, when one thinks of 
 the conventional contemporary Parisian 
 plays and audiences. 
 
 As it is more difficult to keep a reputation 
 than to make one, so it has ever been more 
 difficult to write a sequel than an initial mas- 
 terpiece. Vingt Ans Apres is a notable ex- 
 ception, the most notable of all being, as one 
 of my undergraduate students suggested, the 
 New Testament. But nearly all attempts to 
 repeat share the fate of Tennyson's Lochsley 
 Hall Sixty Years After, The Charge of the 
 Heavy Brigade, The Death of (Enone; Black- 
 more 's Slain by the Doones, Barrie 's Tommy 
 and Grizel, and so on. 
 
 Therefore The Betrothal was an agreeable 
 surprise. It naturally and inevitably lacked 
 the novelty of The Blue Bird, but the inspira- 
 tion was equally fresh and strong. The in- 
 terest was steadily maintained, the successive 
 scenes were both beautiful and captivating, 
 and there was the same combination of fresh 
 simplicity and far-reaching imagination. It 
 was even more provocative to thought than 
 The Blue Bird, presenting its ideas in a more 
 aggressive and challenging way. The only 
 thing that militates against the success of 
 225 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 The Betrothal is the enormous cost of the 
 production; even with the theatre packed 
 night after night, it did not meet expenses. 
 
 Although, here, as in The Blue Bird, hap- 
 piness, if it exists anywhere, is to be found 
 right at home — for the young man, after ex- 
 perimenting with many distant strangers, 
 finally marries his little neighbour — the old 
 bugbear Destiny has nothing to do with it. 
 In the early scenes, Destiny is a colossal fig- 
 ure; he constantly becomes smaller, and fi- 
 nally he is no bigger than a doll, and is han- 
 dled contemptuously by human beings. The 
 Ancestors hold the trumps, and determine the 
 young man's choice of his mate. They 
 are a heterogeneous collection. After seeing 
 this play, one might logically believe that The 
 Blue Blood is as difficult to find as The Blue 
 Bird. 
 
 Maeterlinck's war play, A Burgomaster of 
 Belgium, was produced in New York in the 
 spring of 1919, and while it was much better 
 than most war plays, it will add little to 
 Maeterlinck's reputation. The truly remark- 
 able thing is Maeterlinck's aloofness. It was 
 written during the darkest hours, by a man 
 passionately devoted to his country and that 
 226 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 country Belgium; yet the presentation of 
 characters and scenes was so objective that 
 some idiots thought the piece was pr<J-Ger- 
 man. 
 
 Maeterlinck has always been a greater 
 writer than philosopher ; a greater master of 
 style than of thought. It is pathetic to think 
 how eagerly his visit to America was awaited 
 by those who thought he really had some- 
 thing new to tell them of the spirit world; 
 some proof that this time should be positive. 
 Alas, the only thing in his lecture that could 
 be called new was his language, and that was 
 even more unintelligible than the messages 
 of ghosts. He himself was honest and can- 
 did ; he gave us his own personal opinion, his 
 impressions after considering various facts. 
 Nor have I ever regarded him as a great 
 Teacher, as so many seem to do. It is just 
 as impossible to formulate a universal phi- 
 losophy as it is to demonstrate the abso- 
 lute truth of religion. Maeterlinck loves 
 metaphysical speculation ; he has studied and 
 reflected much; he knows ancient writers, 
 Flemish mystics, Carlyle and Emerson by 
 heart. He observes life with the minuteness 
 of the scientist and with the imagination of 
 227 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the poet — men and women, animals and flow- 
 ers. He has not only written about mediaeval 
 and modern heroes and heroines, he has writ- 
 ten about dogs and bees. Even so, he is more 
 Dreamer than Interpreter. 
 
 But although Maeterlinck is not a great 
 teacher nor a great philosopher, he is a great 
 writer, a great dramatist, a great Artist. 
 The so-called ** truths'^ of philosophy pass 
 away, for they are often mere fashions of 
 thought; every professional philosopher has 
 them in his shop-window ; sometimes they are 
 garments covering lifeless blocks ; you ask for 
 an idea and you get a phrase ; to-morrow the 
 world will all be running after new phrases, 
 'which will then be as fashionable as the catch- 
 words of to-day. But Beauty endures for- 
 ever. 
 
 228 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 The twentieth century French Drama has 
 been overrated. Critics speak of Hervieu, 
 Capus, Donnay, Bataille, Lavedan and Bern- 
 stein as though they were not only clever 
 play-makers, which they are, but as though 
 they were thinkers and dramatists, which 
 they are not. (Yet four in the list mentioned 
 were elected to the French Academy.) They 
 are all men of the theatre, but not men of 
 ideas. If they had really followed the 
 Leader, Henry Becque, they might have pro- 
 duced plays of permanent value; Les Cor- 
 heaux is worth their combined production. 
 With a complete knowledge of the technique 
 of construction, they chose to study ** real- 
 ism" rather than reality. With an empty, 
 hollow formula, and only one theme — 
 adultery — they gave to the French theatre a 
 depressing monotony — for there is no mo- 
 notony so depressing as the monotony of 
 restlessness. They suggest constant activity 
 with no vitality; they seem to be suffering 
 229 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 from nervous exhaustion. A character in a 
 modem French play, significantly named Les 
 Marionettes, makes a speech that must be 
 echoed by many spectators; *^The air we 
 breathe here is bad. I need some rest, some 
 solitude. And above all I should be glad if I 
 could hear people talk about something be- 
 sides love.'' 
 
 In spite of the towering reputation of these 
 writers, they have not altogether escaped 
 condemnation. Mr. Ashley Dukes, in his 
 book, Modern Dramatists, speaking of Ibsen, 
 says, *Hhe playwrights of his day were liv- 
 ing in an atmosphere of half-truths and 
 shams, grubbing in the divorce court and liv- 
 ing upon the maintenance of social intrigue 
 just as comfortably as any bully upon the 
 earnings of a prostitute.'' Later on, he re- 
 marks, **In order that the bankruptcy of 
 modern French drama may be fully under- 
 stood, it is only necessary to glance at the 
 authors who hold the stage of present-day 
 Paris (1911)." 
 
 At about the same time M. Paul Flat, in 
 
 Figures du Theatre Contemporain, speaking 
 
 of Henry Bernstein, said, **Who will deliver 
 
 us from the immortal, everlasting theme of 
 
 230 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 adultery, with its manifold variations, in- 
 numerable as human heart-beats, I admit, but 
 equally monotonous, and of which we finally 
 become weary? Who will find for us an- 
 other motive of dramatic interest, besides 
 these husbands invariably deceived by their 
 weary-hearted wives, misunderstood, uncom- 
 prehended, to whom life has not given the 
 things they lusted for, Parisian and provin- 
 cial Bo vary s who renew their youth and be- 
 come modern. ... Yes, what a novelty it 
 would be and what an audacity! What a 
 sigh of relief we should breathe in escaping 
 from this horrible banality, which theatrical 
 convention fastens upon us, according to 
 which apparently no genuine dramatic mo- 
 tive can exist except unhappy and guilty pas- 
 sion, the deceived husband and the thousand 
 consequences!'' 
 
 That admirable French critic, M. Henry 
 Bordeaux, in the same year in which ap- 
 peared Mr. Dukes's book (1911) relieved his 
 mind in similar fashion in the dedicatory let- 
 ter to his second volume of La Vie au Theatre. 
 **Yet I also love the theatre after my own 
 fashion, which is not yours. You love it like 
 a collector of specimens, whereas I seek a 
 231 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 mirror of contemporary life, and indeed of 
 all life. That means that I am often de- 
 ceived. For a long time our stage was the 
 most accurate expression of our literature. 
 Our race, particularly sociable, was eagerly 
 fond of movement, charm, and powerful an- 
 alysis. We found there fine social and in- 
 dividual analysis, a study of characters fash- 
 ioned by the work of centuries, our own clear 
 and ardent feelings. But too many conven- 
 tions, exigencies and intrigues came in. To- 
 day the theatre has ceased to represent us 
 as we are. With some exceptions, a new ro- 
 manticism disfigures us. It is a romanticism 
 sensual, worldly, even savage. Our stage 
 heroes seem born quite alone, with no one to 
 help, and if they marry they never have 
 children. Thus their life is represented as 
 totally lacking in duties. The only thing 
 they do is to make the most of it selfishly. 
 We know well enough that life is a little more 
 complex than that, and the only truly in- 
 teresting conflicts are those where struggle 
 men and women who have a moral conscience. 
 Apart from that, these are nothing but the 
 gambols of brutes. Therefore it is not un- 
 profitable to indicate, when new plays ap- 
 232 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 pear, what lowers dramatic art and what 
 elevates it.'* 
 
 The late Paul Hervieu (1857-1915) was 
 often called an * ^ntellectuaP ' dramatist; in 
 reality his plays are empty, and not a sin- 
 gle one is important. He showed ingenuity 
 in UEnigme, where the audience as well as 
 the husbands endeavour to discover which 
 wife is the adulteress; in Le Dedale, a new 
 note is sounded on the triangle — the chief 
 musical instrument known in the French the- 
 atre — where the former husband seduces his 
 divorced wife. The entire works of Capus 
 may be summed up in one weary, ironical 
 smile. Donnay's best play is Paraitre, but 
 it is slight; his much-belauded L' Autre Dan- 
 ger is written around the * Manger'* of an 
 intrigue with a man when he may finally fall 
 in love with your daughter. Then you must 
 stand aside, and let your lover marry your 
 daughter, so as not to interfere with the 
 girPs ** happiness.'* This piece won the 
 French Academy prize in 1903. But the sub- 
 ject was much better handled in Maupas- 
 sant's novel, Fort comme la Mort, and for 
 that matter in Bel-Ami, Of Bataille's plays. 
 La Vierge Folle is as good or bad as the 
 233 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 average. Lavedan, in addition to the study 
 of a cynical Don Juan in Le Marquis de 
 Priolay wrote a clever piece called Le Duel, 
 where two brothers, a priest and an atheist- 
 ical physician, fight for a married woman. 
 There is room for admirable acting here, and 
 it is a good stage-play. But it is full of 
 tricks. Of all the Parisian playwrights, the 
 most dexterous is Henry Bernstein. In the 
 theatre one comes under his spell, for he 
 makes a series of situations so exciting that 
 one forgets the unreality of the characters 
 and of their adventures. Perhaps La Griff e 
 is his ** strongest'* piece, though La Rafale is 
 thrilling; in Le Secret we have a truer and 
 deeper psychology. 
 
 That excellent critic, M. Adolphe Brisson, 
 condemned the contemporary French drama 
 in much the same fashion as M. Bordeaux, 
 and the published correspondence between 
 him and the playwrights who resented his 
 strictures, makes interesting reading. He 
 gave a preliminary sign of his final outbreak 
 in his remarks on Bernstein's La Rafale, 
 **He is a very intelligent man. And perhaps 
 too intelligent. The sureness of his art, the 
 perfection of his skill, the infallible accuracy 
 234 
 
EDMOND KOSTAND 
 
 of his aim have something which is a bit dis- 
 quieting, something that chills. One would 
 like to feel that a heart was beating behind 
 this tragedy; one could wish that it was less 
 implacably clever, softened with a tear. One 
 would even like to see a little awkwardness 
 and true feeling. The play is inhuman; I 
 will say * superhuman, ' if M. Bernstein pre- 
 fers that word. But I should like it better if 
 it were simply human. Mais quoi! Am I 
 going to grumble against my pleasure ? Was 
 I b6red? No, indeed. Was I amused? In- 
 finitely. . . . Alors . . . Alors, mettons que 
 je n'ai rien dit et que cette nuance n^existe 
 que dans ma seule imagination.^' 
 
 That is about the way an honest spectator 
 feels ; we are grateful to the author for such 
 diabolical cleverness, but w^e miss the touch 
 of nature. It is just possible — I saw signs of 
 it in Le Secret — that in the future he may 
 add to his gifts as a playwright the power 
 of the dramatist. There is no hope for his 
 rivals. 
 
 The only difference between the typical 
 modern French drama, apart from the excel- 
 lence of the acting, and the modem American 
 drama, is that most of the French plays end 
 235 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tragically and ours end sweetly. But mur- 
 der, suicide and separation do not necessar- 
 ily indicate works of art. 
 
 After going to Parisian theatres scores of 
 times, I am convinced that their modern play- 
 wrights, together with the high prices, have 
 had a generally debasing effect. We are ac- 
 customed to think of a Parisian audience as 
 highly intelligent, sophisticated, discriminat- 
 ing; really it is not so. In their attitude 
 towards both mirth and sentiment, they are 
 not a whit better than the audience at New 
 York matinees. The intelligent people stay 
 at home, I suppose — and when they think of 
 the price of a theatre ticket, they buy a good 
 book. 
 
 The one indisputable superiority of Paris 
 over New York is the team-acting; it is al- 
 ways a pleasure to go to the Comedie Fran- 
 Qaise, and see the results of tradition and 
 sound training. What a pity that such in- 
 telligence, such skill, such art is employed on 
 work so trivial ! 
 
 After I had written the above paragraphs 
 
 my belief that the French theatre has been 
 
 debased by adultery-mongers and shallow 
 
 trickery is strengthened by reading in the 
 
 236 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 London Mercury for September, 1920, a Let- 
 ter from France on the Theatre du Vieux- 
 Colonihier, written by M. Albert Thibaudet, 
 in which he says: *^The theatre in Paris is 
 at this moment passing through a very grave 
 crisis. It is not a commercial crisis. The 
 theatres continue to have full houses and to 
 realise satisfactory receipts. But their pros- 
 perity is built on the ruins of delicacy and 
 taste. The clientele of profiteers which 
 makes the fortune of the theatres demands 
 and encourages productions in its own im- 
 age. '^ 
 
 Apart from the dramatists that I shall 
 mention in a moment, one of the best twen- 
 tieth century plays produced by professional 
 manufacturers of drama is Les Affaires sont 
 Les Affaires, (1903) written by the late Oc- 
 tave Mirbeau, (1850-1917), his only good 
 piece. With the marvellous acting of M. 
 Feraudy, this tragedy made a tremendous 
 impression, and I shall remember it so long 
 as I live. That it did not depend mainly on 
 the actor, however, is shown by its success 
 all over Germany, in the Scandinavian coun- 
 tries, at Petrograd, London, and New York. 
 Albert Guinon, who wrote a number of iron- 
 237 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 ical tragedies, and who was one of those 
 who resented the criticisms of M. Brisson, 
 achieved a masterpiece in Decadence, where 
 the dialogue is amazingly brilliant. This 
 was produced in 1901, and for some reason, 
 attracted little attention, and was quickly for- 
 gotten. When I was in Paris in 1903, I had 
 the greatest difficulty in finding a copy ; most 
 bookshops had never heard of it, and finally I 
 persuaded one bookseller to let me go down 
 in the basement of his emporium, where we 
 found it, covered mth dust. In 1904, some 
 manager resurrected it on the stage; it had 
 a prodigious success, and sent the sale of the 
 book into thousands. Paul Flat, in the Re- 
 vue Bleue, wrote about it in a state of exalta- 
 tion; the play immediately appeared on the 
 German stage, where it was the subject of 
 endless discussion in the press. The ** con- 
 flict'' here is between decayed French aris- 
 tocracy and newly rich Jews, and any reader 
 who wants a sensation may be confidently re- 
 ferred to this book. 
 
 I think it would be a good thing for French 
 drama if the French stage were more hos- 
 pitable to foreign dramatists. The famous 
 critic Sarcey named his dog Ibsen as a sign 
 238 
 
EDMOND KOSTAND 
 
 of contempt, and so far as I know the only 
 play of Shaw that has appeared on the 
 stage is Candida, 
 
 Several reactions have taken place against 
 the lack of cerebration in modern French 
 drama. Every one knows of Brieux — 
 rJionnete Brieux — as French critics called 
 him before he was elevated to the Academy. 
 He has been overpraised by Shaw, and many 
 of his plays are simply theses, but he has 
 brains and character. He has felt keenly the 
 disgrace that modern French writers have 
 brought on the fair name of France, and he 
 has attempted to combat this both in the 
 press and on the stage. He is tremendously 
 in earnest and has a big heart — in his most 
 recent play he has endeavoured to make 
 Frenchmen and Americans understand each 
 other. In La Frangaise, a charming comedy, 
 written before the war, he wished to explain 
 to America that French women were not nec- 
 essarily lacking in virtue. He therefore in- 
 troduced an American cowboy, who has been 
 * * seeing the sights ' ^ in Paris, and a Harvard 
 student, who, by the way, speaks French 
 more correctly than English. The cowboy 
 tries to make love to a sensible, humorous 
 239 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 French matron, and the Harvard student is 
 absurdly formal and stilted. Both are cured. 
 Brieux is a force in modern Literature, but 
 I think his best play is one of his earliest, 
 Blancltette, which deals with a problem as 
 applicable to America as to France — what is 
 going to become of our high school girls? 
 Brieux represents France rather than Paris ; 
 he has never felt at home on the Boulevards. 
 One critic said of him, **He writes only to 
 fight.'' Well, he has found plenty of things 
 to attack. 
 
 M. Brieux lives in a different world from 
 that of his contemporaries. When he visited 
 America in 1914 (the French could not have 
 sent a better unofficial representative) he was 
 generous in giving interviews, although he 
 confessed that they were torture. He had 
 somehow the blunt sincerity of the country- 
 man combined with urbanity. In the New 
 York Times for 15 November 1914, he said 
 frankly, **I consider that the drama, like 
 other forms of literature, may legitimately 
 be used as an instrument for the amelioration 
 of social conditions. Of course, this truth 
 has not always been recognised. But Di- 
 derot, the father of bourgeois drama, knew 
 240 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 that it could be so used. And there is Mo- 
 liere — practically all his plays voice a thesis 
 of social import. My life-work is to use the 
 theatre in an endeavour to better conditions, 
 and my sincere wish, my greatest wish, is 
 that at the end of my life there may be a 
 little less suffering on this earth.*' 
 
 Although he was keenly interested in the 
 composition of the American cocktail, as 
 readers of La Frangaise would know, he made 
 the following prophecies during the war in 
 Le Journal, in answer to the question, What 
 will be the lot of French women after the 
 war? 
 
 1. Man will give up alcoholism. But he must 
 be helped and his excuse that the saloon is the poor 
 man's club taken away. 
 
 2. Man will respect woman and no longer treat 
 her as a being, puny, weak and compulsorily sub- 
 missive. 
 
 3. The abominable marriage dowry institution 
 will disappear. People will marry not to settle 
 down when youth is over, but in full youth, to 
 live together all their lives, with the risks at the 
 beginning, the struggles during the years and the 
 joys of success. 
 
 4. Mothers will teach their sons to respect 
 women. 
 
 241 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 5. No honest woman will be at peace while she 
 knows that somewhere another woman is forced 
 into the street through physical or moral misery. 
 
 Paul Bourget is of course reactionary in 
 art, morals and religion. In his youthful 
 education he received a thorqugh grounding 
 in both science and classical literature. He 
 and Brunetiere were schoolmates, colleagues 
 as teachers, and fellow Academicians — they 
 were in absolute harmony mentally, and in 
 the novels of one and the critical essays of 
 the other, we see the same aim. Bourget 's 
 earlier novels are, however, quite different in 
 tone from the later ones. The complete 
 Bourget as we know him to-day, ardent Cath- 
 olic, aristocrat, conservative, moralist, may 
 be found in his novel UEtape, published in 
 1902. His plays, like all the rest of his work, 
 are in desperate earnest. But while one may 
 applaud both his idealism and his literary 
 skill, his dramas would have a wider influ- 
 ence if they had some humour, some esprit, 
 some charm, some sparkle. He is probably 
 the most conservative man of letters in 
 France. His views might be summed up as 
 follows: first, monarchy is better than de- 
 mocracy; second, independence in religious 
 242 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 thought is neither necessary nor desirable; 
 join the Catholic Church, which can settle 
 for you every dogma and every moral emer- 
 gency; third, absolute union of church and 
 state; fourth (and here, mirahile dictu, he is 
 in harmony with H. L. Mencken, what a 
 team!) don't try to mix social classes; stay 
 at home and remain in your own social cir- 
 cle. 
 
 With all his literary gifts and intellectual 
 endowment, the influence of such a man is 
 not only limited, but it is greatest where it 
 is least needed. He comes to call the right- 
 eous, not the sinners, to repentance. 
 
 One of the severest possible criticisms of 
 the modern French theatre may be found in 
 the fact that Maeterlinck did not dare to 
 trust his delicate Blue Bird to a Parisian au- 
 dience; he sent it off to Moscow, where the 
 first performance took place in the Russian 
 language. From there it flew all over the 
 world, and finally reached Paris. 
 
 Besides the social revolt of Brieux, and 
 the religious revolt of Bourget, there was of 
 course a rebellion in art. Just as Germany 
 had the Freie Buhne, where Hauptmann's 
 world-shaking Vor Sonnenaufgang was per- 
 243 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 formed in 1889, so in Paris in the year 1887 
 was founded the Theatre Lihre, by a young 
 man who was to become the most distin- 
 guished French Theatre Director of modern 
 times, M. Andre Antoine. Miss Constance 
 Mackay, in her book, The Little Theatre in 
 the United States, quotes the late Jules 
 Lemaitre, himself a clever playwright and 
 great critic: '*We had the air of good Magi 
 in mackintoshes seeking out some lowly, but 
 glorious manger. Can it be that in this 
 manger the decrepit and doting drama is 
 destined to be born again f The drama was 
 not reborn in that humble place, but from 
 this experiment the idea of the ** Little The- 
 atre '^ spread all over the world, and is to- 
 day exerting a vast influence for good. 
 
 The drama was not reborn there be- 
 cause it needed a man of genius, and he was 
 not forthcoming. They already had Henry 
 Becque as a model, but none of the young 
 writers were capable of following him — he 
 himself was neglected in Paris, and so late 
 as 1903, Antoine, in a newspaper interview, 
 called attention to the fact that it was im- 
 possible to discover in Pere-Lachaise the ex- 
 act place where Becque was buried. Finally 
 244 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 in 1908, at the corner of two avenues in the 
 city, a bust was placed in his honour. 
 
 The best play written for the Theatre Libre 
 was Blanchette, by Brieux, which is still his 
 masterpiece. Two other dramatists of im- 
 portance were given an opportunity — Fran- 
 gois de Curel and Emile Fabre. During the 
 war CurePs Ame en Folie, played at a little, 
 unfasliionable theatre, made a sensational 
 success. Soon another theatre was founded 
 — this time for the writers of symbolistic and 
 romantic dramas — the Theatre de L'CEuvre, 
 by an admirable scholar and actor, Lugne 
 Poe. They had their man of genius in Mae- 
 terlinck, to write both romantic and sym- 
 bolistic dramas, and they drew freely on 
 Ibsen for symbolism, presenting The Mas- 
 ter Builder. In March 1895, the company, 
 headed by Mr. Poe, came to London, and pre- 
 sented Maeterlinck's L'Intruse and P^lleas 
 and Melisande, and also Ibsen's Master 
 Builder and Rosmersholm. At that time 
 Bernard Shaw was slashing everything in the 
 Saturday Review, but his ironical spirit was 
 first subdued and then made worshipful by 
 this new example of French art. He wrote, 
 **M. Lugne-Poe and his dramatic company 
 245 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEKN DKAMATISTS 
 
 called ^L'CEuvre' came to us with the repu- 
 tation of having made Ibsen cry by their per- 
 formance of one of his works. There was 
 not much in that; I have seen performances 
 by English players which would have driven 
 him tjo suicide. But when the first act of 
 Rosmersholm had hardly begun on Monday 
 night, when I recognised, with something like 
 excitement, the true atmosphere of this most 
 enthralling of all Ibsen 's works rising like an 
 enchanted mist for the first time on an Eng- 
 lish stage. . . . The performance of Maeter- 
 linck 's Pelleas and Melisande . . . settled the 
 artistic superiority of M. Lugne-Poe^s com- 
 pany to the Comedie Frangaise. When I re- 
 call the last evening I spent at that institu- 
 tion . . . when I compare this depressing 
 experience with last Tuesday evening at the 
 Theatre de L'CEuvre, I can hardly believe 
 that the same city produced the two. In the 
 Comedie Frangaise there is nothing but costly 
 and highly organised routine, deliberately 
 used, like the ceremonial of a court, to make 
 second-rate human material presentable. In 
 the Theatre de L'CEuvre there is not merely 
 the ordinary theatrical intention, but a vigi- 
 lant artistic conscience in the diction, the 
 246 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 stage action, and the stage picture, produc- 
 ing a true poetic atmosphere, and triumph- 
 ing easily over shabby appointments and ri- 
 diculous incidents. '^ 
 
 Meanwhile the conventional French drama 
 goes on — Capus, Donnay, Bataille, Lavedan, 
 Bernstein and MM. De Flers and Caillavet 
 reap their harvest. They are facile, accom- 
 plished, witty, entertaining; when they are 
 placed beside their English contemporaries, 
 Barrie, Galsworthy, Shaw, Ervine, Masefield, 
 Barker, they become diminished. In com- 
 parison with the best British dramatists of 
 to-day, they are like children playing with 
 blocks in the same room with authors writing 
 books. 
 
 One man of genius, however, is better than 
 many manikins ; and modern France has con- 
 tributed to the literature of the world the 
 greatest play since the days of Shakespeare, 
 and the greatest drama since Goethe's Faust. 
 From any and every point of view, Edmond 
 Rostand is a giant. He is great in so many 
 different ways — great as poet, dramatist, 
 playwright, wit, humorist, romantic ideal- 
 ist, satirist ; and as a language-virtuoso he is 
 equally supreme. His dramatic works con- 
 247 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 sist of six plays — three minor, three major; 
 they are a permanent addition to literature ; 
 they contain characters that will last as long 
 as the best of Victor Hugo and the best of 
 old Alexandre Dumas, which means they will 
 last as long as good books are read. 
 
 It is astonishing how much one man can 
 give to his country; it is true that three 
 plays by Rostand are not only worth all the 
 plays written by other Frenchmen during the 
 last thirty years, but that they represent a 
 creative splendour in the theatre that has not 
 been witnessed since Shakespeare. The first 
 night of Cyrano was the greatest first night 
 on any stage within the memory of living 
 man; the first night of Chantecler was the 
 prime news of the world. 
 
 Just as Normandy produced those bitter 
 realists, Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, 
 whose novels and tales so perfectly illustrate 
 the heart-killing climate of their native land, 
 so our glorious romantic poet came from the 
 South, and the sunshine that flooded his 
 childhood glows on every page of his dramas. 
 It is strange that his works should be so in- 
 spiring, for his heroes are always beaten, his 
 best plays are all tragedies ; yet, as one critic 
 248 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 said, ** Death in Rostand is morp cheerful 
 than Life in Maeterlinck/^ 
 
 Edmond Rostand was born at Marseilles 
 on 1 April 1868, and was the finest piece of 
 humour produced on that memorable day, as 
 Cyrano was the best Christmas present that 
 the world had received for a hundred years. 
 His father had wealth, education and brains 
 — a brilliant journalist, who edited and trans- 
 lated the poems of Catullus. The boy went 
 to southern schools, w^here his personality 
 was developed rather than repressed; then 
 he became a student at Stanislas College in 
 Paris, and took a degree in law in 1890. 
 Like so many others, he * ' abandoned law for 
 literature,'^ published a volume of poems and 
 married a French poet, Rosemonde Gerard. 
 Her poems are remarkable, and if she had 
 not married Rostand, she would be independ- 
 ently famous; but you cannot see the stars 
 after sunrise. 
 
 When he was twenty years old, his first 
 play, a one-act comedy, Le Gant Rouge, was 
 played at the Cluny Theatre, 24 August 1888, 
 and it passed practically unnoticed. Rostand 
 in later times remarked, ** There is nothing 
 to be said about it, except that it was the 
 249 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 first realisation of a dream that has always 
 haunted me as a child, and that was that I 
 must write for the stage.'' 
 
 He wrote another one-act comedy in verse, 
 took it to the Comedie Frangaise, and 
 Feraudy requested another act; he then 
 finished Les Romanesques, which received 
 the Toirac prize of four thousand francs for 
 the best piece submitted to the Comedie dur- 
 ing the season 1890-1891, but he had to wait 
 three years to see it performed. It was 
 played for the first time 21 May 1894. Its 
 sparkling freshness and vernal charm at- 
 tracted the critics, and gave the author what 
 might be called a mild reputation. He was 
 hailed as a humorist, and he said that people 
 already had him classified, and looked only 
 for fun in his next work. 
 
 In the autumn of this same year, at the 
 house of Sarah Bernhardt, Ooquelin being 
 also present, the young poet read aloud La 
 Princess e Lointaine, which captivated the two 
 actors. Coquelin predicted a great future, 
 little knowing that Rostand would surpass 
 all prophecies, and hand his own name 
 down to posterity. On 5 April 1895, the new 
 play was produced with Sarah BernhaTdt 
 250 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 as Melissinde, Guitry and Jean Coquelin be- 
 ing also in the cast; it was not particularly 
 successful; the only play by its author that 
 it is really better to read than to see. Sarcey, 
 who, with all his cleverness, was so often 
 blind, failed to see anything in it; and it is 
 amusing to read Bernard Shaw's criticism 
 when the great actress put on the play in 
 London, 17 June 1895. The arch-enemy of 
 romance ridiculed it. Shaw reviewing Ros- 
 tand is like a harp solo criticised by Mephis- 
 topheles. 
 
 On 14 April 1897, came the first perform- 
 ance, on Wednesday of Holy Week, of La 
 Samaritaine; Evangile en trois tableaux, en 
 vers. This cannot be said to have been com- 
 pletely successful, yet the dramatist was 
 more than satisfied. *^I only allowed it to 
 be played during Holy Week. . . . But what 
 gave me the most delight in its success was 
 that I had not only demonstrated to the 
 critics and to the public that I was something 
 more than a writer of comedies, but that I 
 had proved it to myself. ' ' 
 
 In the same year his name was blown by 
 the trumpets of fame to the four winds of 
 hokven, for on 28 December 1897, came the 
 251 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 first performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, 
 which ran for over three hundred consecu- 
 tive nights. No one believed that he could 
 duplicate this success, but he did. On 15 
 March 1900, with Sarah Bernhardt in the 
 title role, appeared UAiglon; this tragedy 
 convinced the world that a living man was 
 one of the greatest dramatists of all time. 
 The next year, 1901, Rostand was elected to 
 the French Academy, being the youngest ever 
 chosen, barely thirty-three. His discourse in 
 1903, when he was publicly received, is an 
 important document in modern literature. 
 
 We should pay high tribute to the artistic 
 conscience of Rostand. I suppose no modern 
 writer was naturally more gifted with im- 
 promptu poetry and wit ; his inspiration was 
 chronic. Surely it is to his credit that from 
 1901 to 1918 he produced only one work. 
 
 Yet how ardently I hope that his drama on 
 Faust, which he had been writing for years, 
 may have been sufficiently advanced for the 
 fragment some day to appear ! 
 
 Ten years passed between UAiglon and 
 
 Chantecler, It was impossible for Rostand 
 
 to live in Paris, not only because of delicate 
 
 health, but because he could not take a walk 
 
 252 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 on the street without being followed by ador- 
 ing crowds. This public homage, which was 
 the breath of life to Victor Hugo, was unen- 
 durable to the young poet. He went down to 
 Cambo in the Pyrenees, built a huge chateau, 
 and spent his days there in happy retire- 
 ment. He changed his mind a thousand times 
 about Chant ecler, which of course he intended 
 to be played by Coquelin. Eehearsals would 
 begin only to be stopped by a telegram from 
 the author ; manuscript would be sent to the 
 press, only to be similarly recalled. When 
 one reads the piece, one understands; it 
 bristles mth turns of wit and plays on words. 
 No doubt as soon as he had put the precious 
 writing in the post he thought of an addi- 
 tional jewel. He waited too long, however, 
 for Coquelin died in 1909. 
 
 Finally on 7 February 1910, came the 
 long-awaited first night of Chantecler, It 
 seemed as though the whole world awaited 
 the verdict with breathless suspense. And 
 the world was right. Creative genius is the 
 most valuable gift that man can receive, 
 truly exceeding in importance all other 
 things. A new work by the foremost drama- 
 tist in the world was the greatest news then 
 253 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 possible. The new play came just at the time 
 when Paris was suffering from an unprec- 
 edented disaster — devastating floods; but 
 France forgot mortal woe in immortal art. 
 I say the world was right in awaiting this 
 birth with hushed expectation ; it speaks well 
 for the public in all countries that their eyes 
 were turned toward Paris. 
 
 It is easy to laugh: it is easy to sneer at 
 all this as wonderful advertising. People 
 laugh now at Barnum's wonderful prelimi- 
 nary advertising of Jenny Lind. It certainly 
 was wonderful, but there was one thing more 
 wonderful, and that was Jenny Lind. 
 
 The important fact remains that the an- 
 nouncement of the first night of this play was 
 the leading feature in the news of the world. 
 As people in Paris forgot the floods, people 
 in New York forgot the market. Here is a 
 drama that has no concern with the ordinary 
 obsessions of mankind — war, politics, lust, 
 money. Here is a drama making no tempo- 
 rary or opportune appeal. Here is a drama 
 known in advance to be nothing except a 
 work of art. And yet, in every city in the 
 world, and in thousands of villages, it loomed 
 up as the foremost fact. It was the greatest 
 254 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 triumph known in modem times for Art and 
 Letters — and the greatest rout of the Philis- 
 tines. On the morning following the first 
 night of the play in Paris, a daily newspaper 
 in Butte, Montana, devoted not the first col- 
 umn, but the entire first page to Chantecler! 
 
 During the darkest hours of the war, the 
 French people kept hearing the clarion voice 
 of their poet, announcing the sunrise of vic- 
 tory, and immediately after the day of vic- 
 tory dawned, the voice became still. Ros- 
 tand died on 2 December 1918. 
 
 In the Vorspiel auf dem Theater to Faust, 
 Goethe, in language that is as applicable in 
 1920 as it was when written, allows three per- 
 sons to present their views. The eternal di- 
 vergence of the three, and the necessity of 
 some combination of all, have been presented 
 with such profound msdom and understand- 
 ing of both the theatre and human nature, 
 that no one has added anything valuable to it 
 for a hundred years. The three debaters 
 are the Manager, the Poet, and the Clown. 
 The Manager insists on a play of action, that 
 will really interest all the varieties of men 
 and women that make up the audience; the 
 Poet insists on Idealism, Romance, and 
 255 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Beauty, for the people must not only be up- 
 lifted, they must be transported; the Clown 
 wants to make them laugh, even if it ruins 
 the piece. The plays of Shakespeare — that 
 is, the best of them — supremely illustrate 
 the triple combination. They are full of 
 poetry and beauty, alive with humour, and 
 swift in action. The audience is amused, is 
 excited, and is inspired. 
 
 No modem dramatist has reached this 
 Shakespearean level except Rostand. He is 
 equally great as poet, as humorist, as prac- 
 tical playwright. No man of our time has 
 been such a creative force in literature, and 
 possessed such a knowledge of the require- 
 ments of the stage. It is inspiring to read 
 his dramas, as many millions of readers 
 know; but it is even more inspiring to see 
 his plays performed, for they were all writ- 
 ten for the stage. The sheer dexterity of 
 the first act of Cyrano y the way the throngs 
 of people are brought in and brought off the 
 stage, the way the general confused excite- 
 ment rises to one tremendous climax, would 
 be a model for playwrights, even if the piece 
 were not literature. As every one knows, 
 256 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 Cyrano fights a duel while composing a bal- 
 lade, exhibiting equal skill with his hand and 
 with his mind. It is symbolical of the au- 
 thor ; in the very whirlwind of action, he gives 
 us exquisite poetry. 
 
 There was a foretaste of this power in Les 
 Romanesques, which is a little masterpiece, 
 and which, despite its eclipse by the later 
 works, continues to hold the French stage, 
 and perhaps will never become obsolete. It 
 is beautiful, it is charming, it is humorous, 
 but above all it is interesting. Most pieces 
 submitted to managers are either specimens 
 of good literary composition with no action, 
 or else melodramas or farces of no literary 
 value. In writing Les Romanesques, Ros- 
 tand wisely forsook subjects of temporary 
 interest in sociology or politics, and based his 
 work on the fundamental and therefore per- 
 manent things in human nature. In the 
 poem Transcendentalism, Browning com- 
 pares the writer of a treatise on plants with 
 the magician who fills a room with roses. He 
 leaves us in no doubt as to which of these 
 methods should characterise the poet. Many 
 authors of modern analytical plays are like 
 257 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 students of botany; Rostand creates flowers. 
 He is a poet and a playwright ; but above all 
 he is a magician. 
 
 It is true that in La Princesse Lointaine 
 and in La Samaritaine the poet transcends 
 the playwright; but one of these was an ex- 
 periment in tragedy, and the other a contri- 
 bution to religious thought. They both 
 helped him to write Cyrano de Bergerac. 
 
 In the year 1842, Browming published a 
 lyric called Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli. 
 The fact that Rostand chose the same subject 
 for La Princesse Lointaine is not important ; 
 but it is important to observe, how, not only 
 in this play, but in Cyrano and in Chantecler, 
 Browning's philosophy of ** Success through 
 Failure '^ is illustrated. The English poet 
 and the French dramatist have much in com- 
 mon; they were preoccupied with love, real 
 love; they believed that the highest success 
 comes only through failure ; they represented 
 their teachings of optimism mainly through 
 Tragedy. Browning might have written 
 English words corresponding to the dying 
 speech of Joffroy : 
 
 Ah! je m'en vais, — n'ayant a souhaiter plus rien! 
 Merci, Seigneur! Merci, Melissinde! — Combien, 
 258 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 Moins heureux, epuises d'une poursuite vaine^ 
 Meurent sans avoir vu leur Princesse lointaine ! 
 
 During the last decade of the nineteenth 
 century, plays founded on the Bible became 
 increasingly frequent. Oscar Wilde's Sa- 
 lome (1893), Rostand's La Samaritaine 
 (1897), Sudermann's Johannes (1898), 
 Stephen Phillips's Herod (1900) are typical 
 illustrations of a growing fashion. The most 
 poetic and the most reverent is certainly La 
 Samaritaine, though it lacks the dramatic in- 
 tensity of Wilde 's short piece. The only rea- 
 son why it disappoints is because no one has 
 ever yet been able to retell a Bible story and 
 improve it. The simplicity of the Bible nar- 
 ratives cannot be matched. For Rostand's 
 verse, in all its glory, is not arrayed like one 
 of these. 
 
 Yet La Samaritaine is a tenderly beautiful 
 tribute paid by a man of genius ; and I shall 
 always regret that I never heard the melodi- 
 ous poetry spoken by the voice of gold. 
 
 Rostand himself was more than satisfied 
 by the success of the play. In the printed 
 version, he has the following foreword: **I 
 thank Madame Sarah Bernhardt, who was a 
 Flame and a Prayer ... the Parisian pub- 
 259 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 lie, whose earnestness, emotion, and intelli- 
 gent excitement in responding to my most 
 subtle meanings, have once more reassured 
 the Poets; the Critics, who gave me noble 
 support. ' ' 
 
 Have once more reassured the poets — ^it is 
 as a rule only the minor and the unsuccessful 
 poets who complain of the public attitude to- 
 ward their work. The public is disposed to 
 greet with enthusiasm poems of genius — 
 nearly all great poets are properly ** placed'' 
 by the public during their lifetime. The 
 tiny poets who attack the public for not prais- 
 ing and appreciating their efforts would have 
 no complaint to make if they could write 
 better. 
 
 It is a curious thing, in the present high 
 tide of the drama, and remembering that the 
 glory of English literature is its poetry, that 
 we have no great modern English dramas in 
 verse. It is all the more remarkable because 
 the foremost modern French dramatist and 
 the foremost modern German dramatist wrote 
 their masterpieces in verse form — Cyrano de 
 Bergerac by Rostand and Die versunkene 
 Glocke, by Hauptmann. John Masefield, 
 when he writes plays, writes them in prose, 
 260 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 with only slight exceptions. And so, for the 
 most part have Synge, Yeats, Lord Dunsany 
 and others. George Meredith might have 
 written poetic dramas in the EHzabethan 
 manner. Thomas Hardy's Dynasts is an in- 
 tellectual, rather than a poetic masterpiece — 
 it has nothing of the sublime, emotional, 
 thrilling, transporting power of Kostand. 
 We admire the author's mind more than the 
 work. 
 
 Eostand was not an unconscious or an ac- 
 cidental Eomantic. He had his own pro- 
 gramme, and his six plays represent it. He 
 lifted the French drama and the French 
 spirit out of the Slough of Despond, and led 
 them, like Greatheart, toward the Celestial 
 City. He was disgusted with the cynicism, 
 the sensuality, the mockery that many had 
 come to believe were the true representation 
 of modern French literature. In the year 
 1912, 1 read an article by a French critic who 
 said that nowadays the only possible intelli- 
 gent attitude toward the so-called ** great 
 problems'' of life was a smile. In the same 
 year I read a good-tempered criticism of a 
 new play in Paris, where the critic said with 
 a yawn, ** After all. Flesh is the Queen of 
 261 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Paris. And if there were any God, he would 
 certainly treat our Paris as he treated Sodom 
 and Gomorrah.'* 
 
 The prevailing tone of blague was insup- 
 portable to Rostand. He knew that France 
 needed an awakening. His plays, poems, and 
 addresses were one protest against Mockery 
 — when he was received into the French 
 Academy on 4 June 1903, his speech was a 
 call to arms, **The poison of to-day, with 
 which we have no longer the right to drug 
 the people, is that delicious essence that 
 stupefies conviction and slays energy. We 
 must restore passion. Yes, and emotion, 
 too, which really is not absurd. We must re- 
 mind these timid Frenchmen, who are always 
 afraid of not being sufficiently ironical, that 
 there can be plenty of modern wit in a reso- 
 lute eye. ' ' 
 
 Little did he know how soon the spirit that 
 he incarnated in himself, and in his poetry 
 would be needed to save his country from 
 slavery. Apart from the literary elevation 
 of his dramas, Cyrano de Bergerac during 
 the years of horror was worth to France a 
 dozen generals and a million men. All the 
 world wondered at the spirit of desperate 
 262 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 valour and astounding tenacity exhibited by 
 * ^decadent'' France. But she had been re- 
 generated by the spirit of her great poet, 
 and the opportunity revealed the truth. 
 
 In spite of, and partly because of, his popu- 
 larity, many French critics have refused him 
 a place in the front rank. The very spirit 
 that he fought was bound to sneer at him, 
 knowing that the two could not live together. 
 But that is not the chief reason for so much 
 French depreciation. It is because, he, like 
 Victor Hugo, fought not merely against the 
 schoolmen, but against the national literary 
 instinct. Many Frenchmen have never ad- 
 mitted the greatness of Victor Hugo, though 
 he is one of the idols of the world ; they still 
 believe that his work is fustian. I remember 
 in 1903 a French literary man telling me in 
 all seriousness that Victor Hugo was mere 
 sound and fury, signifying nothing; nor did 
 he refer to Ruy Bias and Hernani: he said, 
 ** Fifty years hence every line of Victor Hugo 
 will be forgotten, while Flaubert will be 
 greater than ever.'' For my part, I cannot 
 see why Frenchmen should not be proud of 
 both; why should admiration for one lessen 
 the other's glory? But your true French- 
 263 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 man loves the lapidary style; and for this 
 reason, many French critics cannot see Ros- 
 tand, while others perhaps are afraid to sur- 
 render. I am going to quote a letter that 
 I received from a distinguished French novel- 
 ist and essayist, who is just now known all 
 over the world. I had sent him a criticism of 
 the theatres of Paris I wrote in 1912, which 
 I had written after seeing five or six typical 
 triangle plays, followed by a performance of 
 L'Aiglon. 
 
 '*21 April 1912. 
 *^I thank you for the article which you 
 were kind enough to send me. I read it with 
 great interest and I sympathise with your 
 point of view. I believe your strictures are 
 both fair and sound. But the only author 
 whom you praise — Rostand — is one of those 
 whom I most strongly condemn. If it is true 
 (and I firmly believe it to be) that the theatre 
 ought to be the mirror of its time, I cannot 
 reproach the Parisian theatres of the boule- 
 vards for representing the brutal lack of mo- 
 rality characteristic of the society there rep- 
 resented. And from this point of view, I re- 
 gard a Bataille as the most significant of the 
 Parisian playwrights ; for he best represents 
 264 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 the moral anarchy and the extreme refine- 
 ment of intelligence, where we now find the 
 elite (a worldly elite) of an old people, very 
 artistic, very human and very corrupt. I 
 can consider him (and I do consider him) as 
 an enemy; I hope for the destruction of the 
 society that he represents : but I recognise his 
 art and his sincerity: he does Iiis duty like an 
 artist: he is true to life. The Eostand of 
 UAiglon and of La Princesse Lointaine is 
 not. The soul of his dramas consists of fan- 
 faronnade, declamation, false heroism, false 
 love, every sentiment false. He is a brilliant 
 virtuoso. His work, often defective, has al- 
 ways eclat; but he is at his best only with 
 the fantasies of a pianist : whenever he wants 
 to give a fine phrase of Beethoven, a simple 
 and profound sentiment, his inadequacy and 
 his superficiality appear. Nor am I less se- 
 vere toward the interpreter of L^Aiglon, this 
 Sarah Bernhardt, for I regard her as an evil 
 influence on the French poetic drama. The 
 radiance of her fame throws an illusion over 
 her lack of naturalness, her faulty diction, 
 her foreign accent, her real coldness, and her 
 monotonous, hammered-out art. I am will- 
 ing to believe that her defects are exagger- 
 265 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DEAMATISTS 
 
 ated by age; but it is precisely her defects 
 that people admire and imitate. She has 
 done a great deal of harm, and she makes 
 matters worse by her deplorable taste in pre- 
 ferring false, offensive poetry. The hero of 
 my novel and his author will never forgive 
 her/' 
 
 Although I have read many adverse French 
 criticisms of Eostand, I think this letter is 
 not only the ablest, but that the opposition 
 to his work, — generally felt among French 
 critics — is here expressed in an extraordi- 
 narily concise way. Although I totally dis- 
 agree, it is perfectly clear why the writer of 
 it, and so many of his fellow-countrymen, 
 take that position. Eostand offends against 
 their classic theories of art, their love of the 
 sober and the self-restrained, their decided 
 preference of irony over enthusiasm — sure 
 mark of sophistication; they like smiles, but 
 they hate laughter. It is for the same rea- 
 son that Mr. Santayana, wholly Latin in 
 blood and ideals, cannot endure the poetry 
 of Browning. His poems **not only portray 
 passion, which is interesting, but they betray 
 it, which is odious." 
 
 266 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 But there is a great, outstanding fact to 
 be accounted for — the conquest of the world 
 by Cyrano de Bergerac. To realise now the 
 unparalleled enthusiasm of the first night, 
 I refer readers to Catulle Mendes; that 
 grown-up gamin of the Boulevards, who 
 could give any man in the world lessons in 
 blague, skepticism, indecency and insolence, 
 was swept into the seventh heaven of rap- 
 ture — he preserved not only his own impres- 
 sions in print, but collected others. The de- 
 light of the audience was so uncontrolled that 
 the play could hardly get ' on — the nearest 
 approach to it in America is the behaviour of 
 the spectators when a touchdown is made in 
 a football game. The applause in the the- 
 atre on that memorable night was heard next 
 day in the remotest parts of the earth. The 
 play appeared on every foreign stage — over 
 half a million copies of the French text have 
 been sold, and it has been translated into all 
 languages. While I am writing these words, 
 converts are being made in many countries. 
 For the book goes everywhere. 
 
 Rostand, taking an almost forgotten his- 
 torical figure, (I remember in my youth read- 
 ing Henry Morley^s edition of Gulliver^ s 
 267 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Travels, with its interesting appendix on 
 Cyrano de Bergerac), created a new, imper- 
 ishable character in drama and in literature. 
 Critics may sneer at Rostand ^s art, they may 
 attempt to *^ account for him in every way 
 hut the one true way, hut they can no more 
 drive Cyrano off the earth than they can get 
 rid of d'Artagnan, Jean Valjean, or Falstaff. 
 He has come to stay. 
 
 Even those who attack Rostand are puz- 
 zled by the variety and multiplicity of his ac- 
 complishments ; he has all the grandeur and 
 impromptu power of Victor Hugo, but then 
 he abounds in what Hugo had not a trace of 
 — humour. He has grace, dexterity, flexibil- 
 ity, word-magic ; he uses the rigid form of the 
 Alexandrine and makes it supple ; he reaches 
 the vertiginous heights of sublimity, heroism, 
 self-sacrifice, and adds to the Genius of Ro- 
 mance the Genius of Humour. All kinds of 
 humour — for he can defeat his rivals and 
 leave them the choice of weapons. 
 
 It is amusing to see the critics trying to 
 explain this. M. Blum, a French dramatic 
 critic, says that Rostand is not a man of 
 genius, but an extraordinary collection of di- 
 verse talents, seldom united in one person. 
 268 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 M. Adolphe Brisson once made a pilgrim- 
 age to Cambo, to see if he could find out from 
 the author the reason for Cyrano's world 
 conquest. On his way he meditated as fol- 
 lows, as he reports in the last chapter of 
 Le Theatre et Les Moeurs-. **That we loved, 
 applauded, acclaimed Cyrano, nothing is 
 easier to understand; the beauties of the 
 work justify all that. But that from day to 
 day it spread immediately all over the world, 
 that it was translated into all languages, 
 played not only in large cities, but in the 
 smallest towns and in America, and that 
 everywhere it excited the same enthusiasm; 
 that three hundred thousand copies of the 
 book (1906), something unprecedented, 
 should have been sold all over the earth, that 
 the name of the author traversed the globe 
 with the rapidity of a flash of lightning — 
 all this is unique and calls for an explanation. 
 For, after all, we have other masterpieces as 
 brilliant, as clever as Cyrano. Why have 
 they not had the same good fortune! Fame 
 is an honest fellow, who usually walks with 
 slow steps, and ordinarily does not place a 
 crown except on brows mature, with whiten- 
 ing hair. Why, when Cyrano appeared, did 
 269 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Fame suddenly grow dizzy T' Then, being 
 shown in the presence of M. et Mme. Rostand, 
 he plumped the question direct, **What is 
 there in Cyrano to account for its sudden 
 universal conquest? What is it exactly that 
 foreigners find in itl'' Rostand himself had 
 no explanation to offer ; he could not explain, 
 said M. Brisson, why it was that his piece 
 produced exactly the same effect on people 
 quite different, the English, the Danish, the 
 Slavs, the Turks, the Heidelberg philosopher, 
 and the pork-packer from Cincinnati. **Was 
 it the classic simplicity of the intrigue, the 
 mingling of wit and courage, what we call 
 le panache, the generosity of the hero, the 
 contrast between his physical ugliness and 
 his moral nobility, this antithesis which 
 pleases men because they think that they all 
 have something of it themselves? But these 
 features exist in other works : Triboulet came 
 before Cyrano, and in the plays of de Musset, 
 there is not less feeling, French sprightliness, 
 fantasy — Alors. . . /' 
 
 **Mme. Edmond Rostand, who listened to 
 
 my dissertation with a little, half-mocking 
 
 smile: * There are people who exhale all 
 
 around them sympathy, simply because they 
 
 270 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 have charm. Don't you think it may be the 
 same with things of the mind!' Parhleu, 
 that is the best explanation, the true one ! It 
 explains nothing and it is the best one. For 
 I believe that a work of art has a soul be- 
 longing to it, which attracts or repels, and 
 arouses passionate feeling. One may sur- 
 render, be vanquished by a painting, a statue, 
 a poem. Between fifteen and twenty years 
 of age I was hopelessly in love with the 
 Mona Lisa.'' 
 
 Eichard Mansfield gave an admirable and 
 highly intelligent performance of Cyrano de 
 Bergerac in America; M. Le Bargy reached 
 unexpected heights ; no one will perhaps ever 
 reach the perfection attained by Coquelin, 
 who was a great artist, ideally fitted to the 
 part, and who had the advantage of long and 
 intimate discussions with the author ; but the 
 piece will never be lost to the stage, and will 
 always awaken enthusiasm. 
 
 It is particularly unfortunate that an 
 American court, a Chicago judge presiding, 
 decided that Eostand had not written Cyrano^ 
 but had stolen it from an obscure American 
 writer. We may laugh at this, but it was the 
 cause of Mansfield abandoning the play, as 
 271 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 he refused to pay royalties to the American 
 ** author,'^ and it may prevent any American 
 performances in the future. Only last year 
 Edward Vroom, a romantic actor of talent, 
 was informed that he would be sued by the 
 widow of the legal author, if he persisted in 
 his preparations to produce it. 
 
 The best translation ever made of Cyrano 
 de Bergerac is undoubtedly the German ver- 
 sion by Ludwig Fulda; it has been Eng- 
 lished many times, but no successful trans- 
 lation has ever been published. Yet it is not 
 impossible. It would be a boon to have a 
 version as good as Bayard Taylor's transla- 
 tion of Faust, or one equal to Constance Gar- 
 nett's renderings of the Russian novelists. 
 But first-rate translators have always 
 been more rare than first-rate creative 
 authors. 
 
 As we owe to Eichard Mansfield the op- 
 portunity to see Cyrano on the American 
 stage, so we owe to Maude Adams the Ameri- 
 can presentations of UAiglon and Chante- 
 cler. She was loudly denounced for attempt- 
 ing the latter, but I admired her Chantecler 
 even more than her UAiglon, Physique is 
 important perhaps, but not necessary to per- 
 272 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 sons in the audience who have imagination; 
 and it is never so important as brains. Mrs. 
 Fiske was more convincing as Tess of the 
 D'Urhervilles than a handsome chorns girl 
 would have been; in fact, everything about 
 her was Tess except her photograph, 
 
 No man has a soul so dead that it cannot 
 be stirred by Cyrano, Its combination of 
 lyrical beauty, passion, wit, sentiment, hu- 
 mour, enthusiasm, tragic force, pathos, united 
 in one divine transport of moral beauty — the 
 Soul! Even under those ribs of death, the 
 boards of the French stage, Rostand awak- 
 ened a soul. And in the autumnal garden, 
 amid the falling leaves, and the chill of death, 
 we hear the voice of that which alone is as 
 sublime as the stars, — the human spirit. 
 
 For in all three plays we have Triumphant 
 Failure. 
 
 Professor Nitze quotes a poem written by 
 Rostand which was published only a few 
 hours after his death, and harmonises with 
 the spirit in all his work. 
 
 Qu'un peuple d'hier 
 Meure pour demain, 
 C'est a rendre fier 
 Tout le genre humain ! 
 273 
 
ESSAYS ON MODEEN DKAMATISTS 
 
 I know I ought not to translate this, but I 
 cannot help trying. 
 
 That yesterday's Race 
 Should die for to-morrow — 
 That gives a proud face 
 To all human sorrow! 
 
 Eostand did not select the figure of L'Ai- 
 glon for any political or historical reason, 
 but as an emblem of the frustration of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Grand Dieu ! ce n 'est pas une cause 
 Que j'attaque ou que je defend . . . 
 Et ceci n'est pas autre chose 
 Que I'histoire d'un pauvre enfant. 
 
 The enormous difficulties of presenting 
 Chantecler will probably militate against its 
 life on the stage; but in many ways, both 
 from the literary and spiritual point of view, 
 it is Eostand 's greatest work. We see as we 
 saw in Wagner's Meistersinger, the undying 
 hatred of every heaven-born genius for 
 Pedantry and Affectation. Let the second- 
 rate artists stick to the rules — they need 
 them. Let the second-rate critics measure 
 genius with the rules, they have no other 
 274 
 
EDMOND EOSTAND 
 
 standard. But the man of original creative 
 power is always greater than the rules; as 
 in the moral world, Love is greater than Law. 
 In the play Chantecler, the Peacock is like 
 Beckmesser ; the scene infallibly reminds one 
 of the part played by the picayune pedant in 
 the music-drama. In that famous afternoon 
 tea — the greatest * * party * ' ever known in lit- 
 erature, Victor Hugo might have poured out 
 his scorn on the pedants and the prudes and 
 the parlour poets ; he might too have thought 
 of the sublime scene where the Cock protects 
 the venomous cowards from the hawk; but 
 he could not even have imagined the mar- 
 vellous humour that follows the terrific fight, 
 like sunshine after storm. The guests are 
 all going; Chantecler, with a fine mot, de- 
 parts with the hen pheasant ; the Guinea-hen 
 hostess, just as the curtain is about to fall, 
 says, *^This is the most successful fete ever 
 known ! ' ' Then, amid the brouhaha of leave- 
 taking, the solemn Magpie-Usher announces 
 an arrival : 
 
 The Tortoise! 
 
 and the curtain falls. 
 
 As every one knows, Eo stand conceived the 
 275 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 idea of this drama merely by gazing, in the 
 course of a country walk, at a barn-yard. 
 These humble creatures displayed human na- 
 ture to the imaginative eyes of the poet. * *In 
 1901, while taking a walk in the outskirts of 
 Cambo, I was passing a humble farm when I 
 suddenly stopped before the barnyard. It 
 was just an ordinary barnyard, containing 
 the usual pigeon loft, wire nettings, manure 
 pile, and within, the animals, hens, ducks, 
 guinea-fowl, geese, turkeys, a cat asleep, a 
 dog wandering about; in brief, a common 
 spectacle. I watched with interest, when 
 suddenly in stalked the cock. He entered 
 proudly, boldly, like a ruler, with disdain in 
 his eye, and a certain rhythmic movement of 
 the head which produced the irresistible im- 
 pression of a hero. He advanced like a buc- 
 caneer, like a man in quest of adventure, a 
 king among his subjects. In a flash I saw 
 in this spectacle a play. I returned to the 
 barnyard many times, and rapidly the frame- 
 work of the play was constructed in my 
 mind. ' * 
 
 That afternoon walk was a great day in 
 the history of literature. 
 
 We must go back to La Fontaine for any- 
 276 
 
EDMOND ROSTAND 
 
 thing approaching this human manipulation 
 of the animal kingdom; and Eostand rises 
 higher than either La Fontaine or Rudyard 
 Kipling. For the old fabulist indicated our 
 undeniable likeness to the instinctive selfish- 
 ness of the beasts; Kipling drew his usual 
 lesson of industry and practical wisdom ; Ros- 
 tand gave us a spiritual interpretation of 
 life. 
 
 Chant ecler is man doing his work in the 
 world, doing it anyhow, doing it for the sake 
 of the work finally, rather than for the re- 
 ward; doing it first conceitedly, then despair- 
 ingly, finally triumphantly. For work is 
 more necessary to the worker than to any 
 possible recipient of its product. The Hen- 
 Pheasant is jealous of his absorption in his 
 career, she wants him to put love-o' women 
 first, but in the end she is glad to die for 
 him. The dog is a philosopher, and a good 
 fellow. The guinea-hen is a stupid social 
 climber, cursed with affectations. The night- 
 birds prefer darkness to light, because their 
 works are evil. The blackbird is the Pari- 
 sian mocker — he may be either critic or 
 dramatist. 
 
 The oftener one reads the three master- 
 277 
 
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 pieces of Rostand, the greater they seem. 
 And curiously enough, although they abound 
 in individual and scattered jewels of wit, wis- 
 dom and poetry, the whole is greater than the 
 parts. In considering this unique personal- 
 ity, many are amazed and many doubt. But 
 the optimism of the man should find a vibrat- 
 ting response in the mind of the reader. It 
 is beyond all expression fortunate that such 
 genius should have been given to the world, 
 that France should have had the honour of 
 producing a writer worthy to rank with the 
 giant Elizabethans in England ; but it is still 
 more fortunate that, despite the nibbling 
 tooth of criticism, the whole world should 
 have given him homage. For he spoke di- 
 rectly to the conscience, the spirit, the re- 
 ligious life of man ; the universal acclaim that 
 greeted his voice, is proof that under all the 
 materialism and selfishness and vulgarity 
 and baseness of the human race there is a 
 Soul. 
 
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