■! ' > , /yrm-i ■ -.-m"!- 'f'^pym^ iiis** 'IU4^ ^P^, ^'■■■;^ ■'«•> >- ^W^ fM' '^m^^' ^^^rvfd^} ^^: Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/essaysonmoderndrOOplielricli 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: <