The English stage of to-day

Prefatory Note

IN the work of translating and presenting this study of its contemporary drama to the British public I have had a double gratification — first in my own study and enjoyment of a work whose importance, as a very brilliant and comprehensive study of its subject, was at once recognized both in England and Italy, when it was published last year in Milan ; and next, because it seems to me to lend a really effective helping hand to a movement in which many of us — more perhaps than is often imagined — are keenly interested.

For Dr. Borsa when he complains, in his first pages, of the lack among us of a ^' good prose drama," when he chronicles his own regrets and those of intelligent and interested foreign critics — such, for instance, asM. Auguste Filon — at this want in our national life, yet comes to admit later on in his own pages, and to admit with sympathetic interest and approval, the many efforts, sometimes tentative as yet, but enthusiastic, many-sided, and often crowned with (even commercial) success, which are being made at this moment in our midst to meet that want.

'' His book"— said Mr. William Archer, speaking of the first Italian edition — '* presents not only a wide but a minute survey of the Stageland of to-day and vi PREFATORY NOTE

yesterday. . . . He has studied not only the theatre itself, but whatsoever is written and said about the theatre— criticisms, gossip, interviews, speeches at O.P. dinners, and, in short, all the multitudinous babble that goes on around the drama. . . . Signor Borsa, in a word, is an impressionist painter, not a philosophic historian. But his impressionism is always individual and suggestive. He is a keen observer, and, wherever he deals with an individual play, he shows himself an acute and intelligent critic."

This was written in November of 1906. But the theatre world moves so quickly that since then we have found it advisable in this new edition to entirely revise the work, adding new facts, fresh points of interest, and bringing it thoroughly up to date ; in this work of revision I must here acknowledge my cordial thanks both to the collaboration of the author himself and of my friend Mr. Francis F. Cox, who has now been associated with me for some years as a sub-editor, and whose knowledge of Italian idiom has here proved most invaluable.

The problem of the modern drama lies very close to us here in London, at the heart of the Empire. But in this instance London surely means England, and England will bring with her the Empire, and will touch immediately that vast complex life of the North American continent ; for though it is obvious to the student of theatre production that a London success by no means connotes the same in New York or Boston (or vice versa), yet I found in a visit to those cities last summer how closely the claims and aspirations of the English-speaking theatre world were interrelated.

PREFATORY NOTE vii

And here we have the subject-matter of this drama in almost bewildering amplitude at our very doors, as my author says, in that passage of his whose literary beauty I have tried to keep: "in this very London, where Life pours forth its power in great floods, rises and falls, struggles and rests, triumphs and curses, sneers and smiles ... in this City of Paradoxes, where the real has always something of the fantastic and the hideous something of the beautiful — this Enchantress London, who ends by bewitching even those who have most detested her." We have all the complex modern life of a great Empire lying before us, with its infinitude of inspiration, beside the picturesque opportunities (which we shall see that Irving himself preferred, but always in sincere and strong dramatic handling) offered by the records of past story ; and we have already in our midst a movement which finds its record to some extent in these pages — to which the best work of the later Victorian dramatists has pointed the way, to which the revival of ancient local pageants will surely prove an effective auxiliary — and whose aim it is to create a national drama worthy of ourselves, worthy of our great literary tradition, and of our place in modern history.

What we need is the public ; and if even my author has here and there said some hard (and true) things of this " great British public," I refuse to believe that the nation which produced Marlowe, Webster, Shakespeare, Congreve, Sheridan, which already takes such a keen and growing interest in the theatre, will remain, in its great majority, permanently dead to the higher side of dramatic art. Rather would I suggest that, viii PREFATORY NOTE

as a pebble thrown into some quiet, broad, self-complacent pool (and we have some really efficient living slingers, one of whose initials inspires my fourth chapter) stirs it in ever-widening circles, so by presenting the best art we shall by degrees — little by little — widen fresh circles of sympathetic adherents in London, in her great circle of suburbs, and throughout the land, throughout the Empire — till it shall be the "great British public" itself, at the last, who will be content with nothing less than the best in modern

drama.

SELWYN BRINTON.

Chapter I

The theatre . . . that is lacking — The passion of the public for the stage — First-nighters and London shop-girls — The cult of the actor — The problem of the play — A diagnosis of its malady — The actor-manager and the commercial drama — "To boo or not to boo?" — The competition of the "Halls" — Church and State — The abolition of the Censor — His position contrasted with that of Dante's " Cerberus " — "High teas" minus evening dress at the theatre? — The mediaeval Municipal Theatre — " Standardism " in art — The great British public and its middle-class ideas — Its still infantile level of artistic intelligence — " It's all right, it is only the children !" . pages 1-49

Chapter II

"A new drama or we faint!" — Auguste Filon's self-deception — First impressions of London and the London stage — From the fog of the streets to the glamour of the footlights — " London the Enchantress" neglected by her own dramatic writers — The leaders in modern English drama — Henry Arthur Jones, with the defects of his qualities — Saints and Sinners and The Lia^s — A rising star in the shape of Alfred Sutro — J. M. Barrie and the British biographer — " Pawky Humour" and its Caledonian origin — The survival of the Clan in North British art — The Admirable Crichton—'W. S. Gilbert's last Fairy play — Arthur Wing Pinero — His dramatic work analysed — The Gay Lord Quex — Pinero's stage technique — The late Oscar Wilde — His Duchess of Padua — The tragedy of his last days — Can his place in art ever be recovered ? ... 50-95

X CONTENTS

Chapter III

The intellectual aristocracy of England — The dramatic needs of this smaller public — J. T. Grein and the Independent Theatre — The Stage Society founded in 1899 — Its programme, and a summary of its work achieved — It is already more than "a forlorn hope on the English dramatic horizon " — The danger of its own earnestness and its most illustrious member's influence — Mr. Granville Barker and the Court Theatre — Artistic and financial success of the Vedrenne-Barker management — New authors and new productions in Sloane Square — The Voysey Inheritance — The Return of the Prodigal — The Silver Box — The Court as the theatre of the intellectual minority pages 96-119

Chapter IV

G. B. S.

The Theatre of Ideas — G. B. Shaw and his cure for the eyes — Shaw and the English terror of intellect — Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant— The tragedy of slum-landlordism and its comedy — Mrs. Warren^s Profession — A satire on professional militarism — Shaw explains the English character by Napoleon's verdict — Candida — Three Plays for Puritans — A diabolic comedy — The rivalry between Shakespeare and Shaw — Alan and Superman — The quintessence of Shawism — A Platonic suggestion revived by G. B. S.—John BulVs Other Island — Shaw's heroes and heroines — His marvellous personality and the marvels that he fails in doing . . . . 120-166

Chapter V From Stratford-on-avon To Drury Lane

The pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon — William Shakespeare's birthplace in Henley Street — A walk to Shotterv — The surroundings of Stratford and a glimpse of English Midland scenery — Shakespeare's life at Stratford — His tomb there — The problem of Shakespeare's mise en scene — A Midsummer Night's Dream as produced by Mr. Beerbohm Tree — Mr. William Poel and the Elizabethan Stage Society — The Mermaid Society — From Eveiyman to Sheridan's Critic — Mr. Louis N. Parker and the Warwick pageant — Greek tragedies and comedies at Oxford and Cambridge — The Westminster School play — The Drury Lane productions — Plum-pudding and Pantomime . 167-201

CONTENTS xi

Chapter VI

A visit to Algernon Charles Swinburne — The great English poet and his love for Italy — Souvenirs of Mazzini and Walter Savage Landor — Swinburne's play of Casar Borgia — Classic liberty and pagan beauty the inspiration of Swinburne's art — The seduction of the drama for English poets — The dramatic work of Tennyson and Browning — Irving and Tennyson — Becket and A SouPs Tragedy — Thomas Hardy a great pessimist — The illusion of life portrayed in his romances — The Dynasts, his strange contribution to the English literary drama — Stephen Phillips — Faolo and Francesca, Herod and Nero — His work, though eminently literary, adapted for stage performance ..... pages 202-246

Chapter VII

The average high tone of English journalism — Dramatic criticism in England — The critics and the public — The critics and the "human interest " — William Archer and the regeneration of British dramatic art — Arthur Bingham Walkley— English and Italian actors contrasted — Sir Henry Irving — His last "Good night" to his public — His rendering of The Bells — The 7nise en schie of his plays — The comfort of the London playhouse — Actor-managers and "first nights" — A story of Mr. Bourchier and a Gaiety "gallery boy" — The London theatre public of the eighteenth century . . 247-285

Chapter VIII

From the Oxford Street shop to the village craftsman's booth — The genuine rusticity of the Irish national drama, based on the needs and aspirations of the Irish character — The Celtic atmosphere of story, tradition, and legend — W. B. Yeats and The Celtic Twilight — The attempted revival of Gaelic — The dramatic movement within the Celtic Renaissence — The Irish National Theatre in Dublin — Its freedom from commercial aim and its aesthetic principles — The "dim kingdom " of the unreal — The mystic drama of William Butler Yeats — The Countess Cathleen and The Land of Hearfs Desire — " Where there is nothing . . . there is God!" . . 286-314

THE

ENGLISH STAGE OF TO-DAY ^ ^

Chapter I The Playgoers

FOR those who take a serious and absorbing interest in all that pertains to Art, one of the greatest drawbacks to life in London is the lack of good prose drama. If one were planted in a semi-barbarous region of Asia or Africa, instead of in the modern metropolis of a mighty- Empire, one would be less conscious of this deficiency. And yet London is overrun with theatres !

Of these there are fifty-nine— without counting the sixty-one music-halls and the six hundred and thirty other halls, in which spectacles of one sort or another are presented by day or night. Never has the theatrical art, or, I should say, the theatrical industry, been so prosperous and flourishing. Let it suffice to say that in London every year millions are spent, and

B that not less than twenty-five thousand persons are employed in connection with the legitimate stage.

The responsibility for these figures must rest with the novelist Jerome K. Jerome, who made the calculation in a lecture to the O.P. Club; but it is certain that they give but a faint idea of the magnitude of the London theatrical trade.

Proprietors, shareholders, lessees, managers, authors and actors make enormous fortunes out of it. Often a single play turns out to be a gold-mine. The Second in Command^ one of the most successful dramatic works of late years, within a short period yielded its author, Captain Robert Marshall, the sum of ;!^30,ooo. George R. Sims was recently drawing ^20,000 a year in author's fees ; while Barrie, during a season in which two of his plays were simultaneously billed in London and New York, was receiving ^480 a week !

Nor are the actor's profits less considerable. The salary of a moderate actor sometimes amounts to as much as i^ioo a week. Should the actor be at the same time a manager, his weekly receipts may reach a total of from ;^300 to nearly ;^500 a week. In the money market theatrical shares are always on the upward grade, even during periods of general financial depression. In short, the whole business is one gigantic "boom," as they say in the City — a "Tom Tiddler's Ground," as we might less prosaically call it, from which every one in any way connected with the stage is reaping a golden harvest — thanks to the honest public !

The public is insatiable ! It never has enough ! In ten years playgoers have increased in numbers by forty-four per cent ; while during the same period the total number of theatres has risen eighteen, and of music-halls forty-five per cent. The theatrical craze has become a very madness. In London, where everything passes unobserved ; where the continuous rush is so level and monotonous ; where the life of the streets, with all its phases and episodes, melts, as it were, and merges into one single, immense, confused, tiresome roar ; in London, where, more than in any other city on earth, the crowd is so characterless and inscrutable, one of the few things which make a striking impression on the spectator is the daily spectacle afforded by the masses of playgoers on their way to and from the theatre.

Each morning trains hasten from every point of the compass to the great central stations with their loads of professional and business men, clerks, and employes in the common uniform of the City ; each evening these same trains disgorge hundreds and thousands of fair ladies elegantly attired, accompanied by their well-groomed male escorts. Beneath the lofty, massive, and gloomy station roof, between the slimy, blackened walls, among the tireless, panting engines — grimy with soot and ruddy with the glow of furnace doors — through the foul, smoky, suffocating atmosphere of the station, they thread their way — delicate visions of white, pale blue, or pink, in hoods or wraps of Japanese silk, embroidered slippers and fleecy boas, wrapped in their brocaded opera cloaks, beneath which stray glimpses are caught of the lace and chiffon of evening bodices — on they flit, with a fantastic shimmer of pearls and diamonds, with a soft rustle of silks, satins, and tulle.

These are the patrons of the stalls and boxes, on their way to the theatre to see and to be seen, who will finish up the evening gaily with champagne in the warm, brilliantly lighted, gilded saloons of the ''Cecil" and the "Savoy." But no less interesting and noteworthy are the patrons of the pit and galleries.

Any one passing through the Haymarket, the Strand, or Shaftesbury Avenue on matinee days, or on any evening except Sundays, may see at one theatre or another an interminable file of people waiting long and patiently for the doors to be opened. Summer and winter the scene is always the same; in grey, damp fog, filling and irritating nose and eyes, in rain that penetrates to the bones, in blustering gales, in sweltering, suffocating heat, the crowd never flinches. It remains planted there for hours, quiet, orderly, and silent, under the vigilant eye of the policeman tramping steadily up and down in his enormous boots — some seated on camp-stools brought with them ; some deep in the perusal of novels, magazines, or newspapers ; some studying the playbill ; others munching sweets. Meanwhile the newsboys arrive, running and out of breath, with the special editions and latest cricket, football, or racing results : "All the winners ! All the winners ! " Counterfeit nigger minstrels regale the waiting throng with "Home, sweet home!" to a banjo accompaniment ; while a dismal Italian organ stops at the kerb to grind out an air from Trovatore!

It is a mixed crowd, formed for the most part of small parties and courting couples. There are shopmen, clerks, and spinsters in pince-nez ; but more numerous still are the shopgirls, milliners, dressmakers, typists, stenographers, cashiers of large and small houses of business, telegraph and telephone girls, and the thousands of other girls whose place in the social scale is hard to guess or to define, who avail themselves of the liberty allowed them by custom, and the coldness of the English masculine temperament, to wander alone at night from one end of London to the other, spending all their money in gadding about, on sixpenny novels, on magazines, and, above all, on the theatre.

The British drama has such an attraction for them, and offers them so much instruction ! I once read in the Daily Telegraphy under the theatrical announcements, a notice conceived in these terms : " Who wants a husband? Statistics show that ninety per cent, of women, when they have reached a marriageable age, are only awaiting the first opportunity in order to get married ; yet hundreds remain old maids. Perhaps husbands are scarce ! Do you want to know why you do not get one ? Go and see Her Forbidden Marriage at the Standard Theatre. Every evening at 7.45 p.m. ; matinee every Saturday at 2 p.m."

The passion displayed by girls for the theatre, with its inevitable accompaniment of secret infatuations for actors, of languors and excitements, has developed of late years into a real hysterical malady, studied by physicians, psychologists, and sociologists, with great diversity of diagnosis and from different points of view, but with a certain amount of agreement as to the remedy suggested — work, fresh air, and matrimony ! (See Her Forbidden Marriage !)

For this histriomania is not confined to attendance at the theatre ; it is complicated and rendered more acute by a complex and morbid interest in everything connected with the stage.

There are some fifteen clubs whose members are united by the sole bond of a common love for the dramatic art — a real theatrical Arcadia, wholly sacred to the discussion of plays and artistic tendencies, the reading of theatrical compositions, as in Pailleron's Monde oit Von s'e^inuie — the organization of dinners in honour of some author or actress, and meetings for the consideration of dramatic subjects.

Amateur dramatic clubs are legion ! There is one for every district in London and for every city in the provinces. Every one is bitten by the mania for acting. Performances take place in the family circle, in social clubs, schools, colleges, and the Universities. The recitations of the local greengrocer, chemist, or cobbler are a feature of the ''penny readings" organized by the parson of the parish. Peers and peeresses take part in dramatic performances at their town houses and country seats. The late Lord Anglesey transformed the chapel of his ancestral castle in Wales into a theatre, modelled on that of Dresden, and installed in it a permanent dramatic company, which he subsequently took on tour, himself filling the roles of principal comedian and star, and finally died at the age of twenty-nine, at Monte Carlo, loaded with debt, after squandering a patrimony which yielded him an annual income of ^100,000 — a victim to his love of art !

Then there are some fifty illustrated theatrical periodicals, well got up, full of portraits, stage news, and anecdotes, without counting the magazines, weekly illustrated and daily papers, which regularly devote columns to the theatre, its heroes and heroines, and its endless gossip.

The cult of the actor and actress is a new development— of the nature of Carlyle's "hero worship." The actor looms large in the public eye ; London lies at his feet. His portrait is everywhere — at the photographer's, the bookseller's, on posters, picture post cards, and even on table services and other articles of china. In France, Germany, and Italy the theatres take their names from Moliere, Schiller, and Goldoni ; in London they are named after actors, and so we have the Garrick Theatre, Wyndham's, Terry's, Penley's, etc. Even the publishing trade exploits this fetish-worship to its utmost extent, and one of the finest and most elegant editions of Shakespeare derives its title from the celebrated actress, Ellen Terry.

Can the actor's ambition soar higher ! The British Empire, in contrast to that of Rome, invests him with a dignity which has received the seal of official sanction. Historians tell us that no Roman senator would ever condescend to enter an actor's house, nor would a Roman knight be seen with one in the public street. In London, on the other hand, the actor is an honoured guest at the annual banquets of the Lord Mayor and the Royal Academy, side by side with Princes of the Blood, ambassadors of all the Powers, bishops, judges, generals, members of the Government, and leaders of the Opposition ; while, after the speech of the Prime Minister, the Stage invariably forms the subject of one of the regulation toasts.

Still, in spite of all this booming and histriomania.

one of the greatest intellectual privations from which the foreigner suffers in London is, I repeat, the lack of good comedy and good prose drama.

This want is felt and lamented by the more intelligent section of the public. Remedies have been sought ; causes have been investigated ; cures have been proposed. The subject is studied and discussed, experiments are made, and up to the present time the result is — nil ! The crisis has lasted for a good while, but during the past three or four years it has become absolutely spasmodic in its intensity. The cry is universal. Open any daily or weekly paper, magazine, or serious monthly review, and in every number you will find the same jeremiad. Books are written, conferences are held, inquiries are conducted at home and abroad. Every one is asked for his opinion. Those of Sarah Bernhardt, Bjornson, Coquelin, Hervieu, Coppee are consulted. Attempts are made to arouse the Government from its apathy. Appeals are made to the generosity of American millionaires, who often squander millions on less worthy objects. Schools of dramatic art are opened. Schemes are proposed for imitating the happy experiment of Antoine, and founding independent theatres in London also.

The problem is exciting the attention of all who have at heart the future, I will not say of art alone, but of the Anglo-Saxon race itself. Stead, the well-known editor of the Review of Reviews, who out of respect for his own Puritan principles had reached the age of fifty-five without ever having set foot inside a theatre, one fine evening took his courage in both hands, and having once crossed the threshold became a regular playgoer, in order personally to investigate the causes of the decline of the drama. And if Stead, with all the enthusiasm and the resources of an apostle, fails to find a remedy, it must mean that the case is indeed a desperate one.

In the meantime, since the evil lasts and is the subject of so much controversy, let us also attempt on our own account a rapid diagnosis.

What is the precise character of this crisis? The public has lost its taste for the artistic and serious drama ; its desires are all for the frivolous and the commonplace ; authors have not the courage to resist the popular tendency, and the managers take very good care not to attempt it. The public prefers operetta to comedy, and pantomime to drama. Why is this so? What are the causes of this apostasy in the country of Marlowe and Shakespeare ? What are the forces which hinder the elevation and modernization of the British drama ? Whence this triumph of buffoonery and tomfoolery over art ?

Let us, first of all, hear what the English themselves have to say on this subject.

On one point critics and authors are agreed — that it is the system that ruins the English stage. For better comprehension let us compare it with our own. The Italian theatre is a repertory theatre : the English is a theatre of long runs. With us, companies are formed to play a whole repertory of comedies and dramas ; in London, companies are formed to play one comedy or drama only. With us, dramatic companies have no fixed theatre ; they tour from city to city ; they remain lo THE ENGLISH STAGE OF TO-DAY

for a month in one place, for two months in another, and wherever they go they perform a very varied assortment of works old and new. In London, the actor has his own permanent theatre, of which he is either proprietor or lessee, and there he performs one single work for perhaps a year at a time. Afterwards, with the same play, he will continue to tour the provinces, and even America and the Colonies.

It is easy to understand that under such a system, in choosing a play for representation on the London stage, it is necessary that the choice should be a safe one, and that it should be guided solely by the probabilities of financial success. The actor-manager has built up a magnificent industry out of the dramatic art ; but, keeping before his eyes solely the question of profit, he has never cared to educate the taste of his public. The public desires buffoonery? Very good, let us play the buffoon ! Tree, after a series of performances of Julius CcBsar, doffs the chlamys of Antony and dons the doublet of D'Artagnan in a grotesque choregraphic adaptation of the Three Musketeers. Actors of every country keep their eye on the main chance — it is only fair, and no more than human ; but the English actor-manager has developed this tendency to a greater degree than his colleagues of all the other nations put together. He seldom takes the trouble to read authors' manuscripts. Those of unknown writers he does not read, for the very reason that they are unknown, and therefore even though they had the talent of Moliere, it would certainly not be the actor-manager who would take upon himself the thankless task of introducing them to the public. Those of

THE PLAYGOERS ii

well-known writers it is unnecessary for him to read ; for even were the play the veriest rubbish imaginable, the name of the author would be sufficient to make it go down. Witness the case of Sir Henry Irving and Sardou's Dante !

Frequently the actor-manager himself commissions the work he may require from this or that fashionable author, just as he might order a coat from his tailor or a pair of shoes from his shoemaker. The work, it goes without saying, must always conform to certain exigencies of theatrical opportunism, by which the unhappy author finds himself more harassed and confined than, in times past, by the famous three unities of Aristotle. If he accept these limitations, well and good ! if not, the order is placed elsewhere.

Besides, the author — unless he be a celebrity — counts for little. On the bills his name appears either not at all or in the smallest of print ; while that of the actor-manager figures in letters a foot high, beneath a striking likeness of his noble and inspired lineaments. Even the theatrical announcements in the newspapers, instead of giving, as with us, the names of the theatre, the playwright, and the title of the play, simply proclaim those of the theatre and its actor-manager.

The theatre itself, I may mention again, is often the property of the actor-manager. But even if it does not happen to be so, and he is merely the lessee, he still exercises an absolute dictatorship over it. The public pays, but does any member of the public suppose that he has any right whatever to the place he occupies? Not a bit of it! Let him prove it, if he likes, by protesting that he is unable to see, on account of the hats of the ladies in front of him ; or to hear, on account of the noise made by late comers ! Let him try, even in the most unexceptionable manner, to obtain a hearing for his legitimate grievances ! The actor-manager will make no bones about it. He will let loose a dozen policemen upon the pit, and the protester will simply be taken by the collar and thrown out ! This actually happened at the Criterion in February, 1903.

Possibly our playgoer may think he has a right to hiss or, I should say, bellow (for in English theatres they do not hiss, but make a noise resembling the lowing of a cow, which is called "booing"), in order to express disapproval ? Intolerable presumption ! It is true that if he goes to a restaurant he may say to the proprietor, "This fish is not fresh. I don't pay for food that is not fit to eat. Take it away, and bring me another dish." But if an actor-manager serves him up a dramatic dish which stinks aloud to the four winds of heaven, let him not, for mercy's sake, venture to tell him that for the money paid at the door he expects better fare !