The Stage as Seen by a Novelist, Part 2

Evening News (London), 5 December 1887, page 1, 2,330 words

(By the Author of “The Mummer’s Wife.”)

I said, on Saturday, that the audiences that assembled in the Globe Theatre three hundred years ago, and those which assemble nightly in our music-halls, are similarly composed, are identical in temperament and in feeling; the middle classes were absent from the theatre of old time as they are now from the music hall; in the former courtesans, courtiers, and coasters assembled as they now assemble in the latter to drink, shout and swear; an ideal audience, courtesans, courtiers, coasters, for I have always held the middle classes as worthless in all emprise of the heart of the brain. Napoleon did not seek generals in counting-houses; the clerks would put their pens behind their ears; and it will be always found that Empires and litterateurs are created either by the people or the aristocracy. The actors of old time were devil-may-care fellows, who did not think of talk of their social status, and the audience, consisting as it did of the extremes of society, and having very little respectability hanging about it, was wont to encourage actors and authors in every excess, and so it was that we obtained that double-distilled essence of the middle-ages, known as the Elizabethan drama. And speaking of the pitiful decadence of the English stage, rotten at root with family prejudice and French adaptation, I said that we must look down, not up, for regeneration; and if we ever again possessed a dramatic literature, it would be born of the music-hall, as was the Greek drama of the Rhapsodists, as was the Shakesperian drama from the miracle play.

In the way of this result I see but one obstacle. It is well-known that a vexatious restriction forbids the performance of a story by means of dialogue in a music-hall. Now, I think that if the law on this point were rescinded we should find some halls catering for a more intellectual audience, and the first outcome of the new license would be little sequences of scenes characteristic of every-day life. Plays of this kind would be presented in rapid succession, and the demand for new plays would lead to many tentative efforts. Laborious efforts to capture half a million people would no longer exist. The actor would again become the mummer; and so a new art might evolve out of a crude beginning. A theory and nothing but a theory; even so. As matters stand, I, for one, prefer the Royal Music Hall to the Adelphi. The music-hall is primitive, the theatre is decadent. See my ideal audience listening, amid beer and tobacco, to such songs as “”What sheer ‘Ria,” or “Will you stand me a cabfare, ducky?” See the fat City men and their daughters listening to such plays as “Peril,” “enemies,” “Sophia.” These plays are related to “The Country Girl,” “The Double Dealer,” “The Way of the World,” “She Stoops to Conquer,” “The School for Scandal,” only as the Latin of St. Fortunatus, say his “Voyage on the Moselle,” is to Virgil or Livy. No monk of the Middle Ages wrote Latin worse than Mr. Harris’s authors, Messrs. Pettitt, Merritt, Buchanan, and Roe, wrote English — the same feebleness of expression, of cold pallor, and wrinkles. The Latin language ended in the endless repetition of a few expressions in a wasting away of a few ideas. It must be clear to any one possessing any literary insight that no modern feeling, I had better say no unconventional feeling, pulses in any modern play; no modern play owes its existence to the author’s contact with life; surely no dramatic author pretends to write from impulse, and to please himself, as do novelists and poets. This being so, I ask why I should not prefer a hall to a theatre? It is humanly conceivable that the author of “Charles Dilke” wrote from impulse and to please himself, but even Mr. Buchanan would not dare to say that he mangled Fielding for any purpose but gain. The hall is nearer nature, and it is certainly not further removed from art than the theatre. Will any admirer of the drama have the courage to maintain that “Harbour Lights” is better written, or in form or feeling more artistic than “What cheer, ‘Ria”? I think not. It will be said that such songs are vulgar — that the hall is vulgar. True, the hall is vulgar, and the song is vulgar; but surely vulgarity is preferable to popularity, and the theatre is merely popular. In the theatre we are respectable, in the hall we are alive. We laugh, we joke, we drink, as did our ancestors the Elizabethans. And it is folly to think that we are not as intelligent and as capable of appreciating wit and poetry as the fat fathers and daughters who sit striving to digest their heavy dinners in the Adelphi or the St. James's; and were the revival of any of the Elizabethans (Shakespere excepted, for he is listened to as is the Archbishop of Canterbury) a question of the hour, I venture to say that they would be more appreciatively listened to  and more naturally enjoyed by the audiences of the Royal than by that of any theatre in London, not excepting the Lyceum. Indeed I can readily imagine “Dr. Faustus” being played to chers at the Royal. True it is that we are not in the habit of hearing there poetry in any way comparable with —

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,

    And fired the topless towers of Ilium?

But the comic interludes — say Scene X. — differ little from many music=hall dialogues, and it would, I feel sure, meet with appreciation and applause.

In a rudimentary state there is much not only in the music-hall audience, but also in the music-hall literature, that reminds me of the Elizabethans. This likeness is only apparent in the comic scenes, and the most loosely constructed plays of that great time. In drawing comparisons between the man and the ape, the lowest savage and the highest simian are selected. I say, therefore, let us take Middleton. Will any one deny that there is something curiously and singularly suggestive of a music-hall in “A Trick to Catch the Old One”? Will any one deny that the first outcome of the rescission of the law regarding plays in music halls would probably be a comedy after the manner of “A Trick to Catch the Old One.” Indeed, I can almost imagine a successful revival of this comedy at the Royal. That it would be better received there than in a theatre does not, I think, admit of discussion. Its charming opening, a few lines of dialogue between a man and his mistress arranging that he shall pass her off as a wealthy widow to whom he is engaged and so by working on the cupidity of his grasping uncle, wheedle him out of some money; its portrayal of a devil-may-care-hand-to-mouth life fits it particularly for a place where the audience is coming and going, laughing and talking, drinking and listening at whiles. A revival of this play is of course purely fanciful, the tendency of music-hall audiences, under the new conditions, would lie rather in the creation than in the resurrection of talent. Of two impossibilities choose the least, and it seems to me less difficult to believe in the development of the hall than in the regeneration of the theatre. Smoking and drinking will always keep the family away from the hall; and where the family is not, art may be. So think I. Such is my incurable belief. So long as the English drama is composed for the amusement of the family, so long shall we remain without a dramatic literature. Nor will any good come of the struggles of any one man; he will be worsted in the encounter; when the change comes, it will come silently of itself; it will be a work of nature, and not of one man, or half a dozen men, but of a great part of the nation. Nor are signs of change, of a revolt from family prejudice, wanting. Never were the halls more popular; I see signs of change in the mashers’ eulogy and recognition from women in the boxes. I see signs of change in a certain spirit of freemasonry, easy to feel, but impossible to define — the fusion of thought between them and the writers of certain sporting papers; in a word I see an audience in the hall whom I would like to address.

But to better elucidate my views I will make certain reservations in my sweeping condemnation of the dramatic output of this last quarter of the nineteenth century. I have seen three plays in which I can recognise life and beauty, namely, “The Cup,” “Our Boys,” and”Sweethearts.” The evening I listened to “The Cup” was one of real delight, and my heart was tense even to pain with that passionate thrill that real art never fails to produce in me. Ellen Terry and Irving were artists that night. How different from what they were in that dreadful fricassée of Faust, prepared by a tenth-rate poet, and sauced with hags and demons. Pure genius, such as Tennyson’s, can burn brightly even in the marsh fog of our age, but only for a moment. Witness “The Promise of May.” “Our Boys,” so loose in construction, so unstudied, but so full of the humour of English life, commands respect and admiration; it is spontaneous. You can prove it wrong on every point — everybody is witty, there are some foolish situations, it represents no possible society, but it lives and breathes; it is spontaneous. The author was a naturally witty man, he had worked in years when burlesques, an entirely English form, were fashionable; these had saved him from Scribe and Sardou, and one day a happy dramatic contrast presented itself to his mind, and he wrote straightaway. “Sweethearts” is a little landscape by Corot, or, shall I say, to be English, by Constable; but there is a grey charm about it that reminds me of Corot. Unlike “Our Boys,” “Sweethearts” is a delicate and finished composition; and I think of it with, perhaps, a more intimate sympathy than for any modern play, for it is the only stage story that is tied and united by the action of the sentiments. There are no villains, no letters, no lost wills, and the hero is not a hero, he is merely a man; and with all its modernness there is an old eternal truth to ponder on — he that goes forth to fight the battle of life shall forget, she that remains at home and thinks shall remember. How a man of Mr. Gilbert’s temper of mind could have written it, I could not explain, even if limitless space were at my disposal. But speaking of “Sweethearts” reminds me that I have something to tell Mr. Gilbert — a private matter some might think; but nothing is private nowadays.We write only for the printer, and as no better occasion is likely to present itself, I will here offer my apologies.

Some three or four years ago I read “Sweethearts.” I had never seen the play acted, and I was so delighted with it that I at once translated it into French — a pleasure of four mornings. I did not ask Mr. Gilbert’s permission, first, because I was anxious to gratify my caprice without a moment’s delay; secondly, because it seemed a little ridiculous to ask leave to translate into French — the Oxford don does not write to Mr. Tennyson for leave to translate “The Gardener’s Daughter” into Greek hexameters. So I went ahead with my translation, amused by the unexpected changes the alteration of language awoke in the simple story, and it was not till I had written the last line that I thought of how I had wasted my time. Angry with myself I put the manuscript away, and presently, in the excitement of something new, forgot all about it. But one day at Medan, where I was staying with M. Zola, I spoke of “Sweethearts.” The light was dim in the great studio, and the pale French meadows were passing away into darkness; the master was lying on his sofa in the window, and we were talking of naturalism au theâtre. But why don’t you get the MS., and read us this play? A telegram was dispatched, and two days after, after a dinner — the excellence of which I shall never forget — we tramped up the intricate staircase that led to the studio. Cigars were lit. I read the play. M. Zola expressed himself warmly, the natural charm and simplicity of the play went to his heart. He took the correction of my list, we made an appointment with Paril, he accepted “Le Sycamore” at once, and he promised to produce it this winter at the Odéon.

A piece of literary good fortune if ever there was one. I hope that Mr. Gilbert will not think me guilty of literary discourtesy, and should he ever see a version of our play, I hope it will satisfy him. If it is nothing else, it is literal. We have ventured on only one alteration; we have altered the end. The alteration is not mine. I was opposed to it, but somehow I have grown accustomed to it, and now both ends seem to me equally good. I wonder what Mr. Gilbert will think? Om the Emg;osj [;au the pavers wa;l i[ the stage towards the house, the man saying that all is not over, not nearly over; in the French he admits that all is over, he hurries away, the woman bursts into tears, and speaking of the sycamore, cries, “Abattes le, abattes le.”