Plays: pleasant and unpleasant

Preface

MAINLY ABOUT MYSELF

A HERE is an old saying that if a man has not fallen in love before forty_, he had better not fall in love after. I long ago perceived that this rule applied to many other matters as well : for example_, to the writing of plays ; and I made a rough memorandum for my own guidance that unless I could produce at least half a dozen plays before I was forty^ I had better let playwriting alone. It was not so easy to comply with this provision as might be supposed. Not that I lacked the dramatist's gift. As far as that is concerned^ I have encountered no limit but my own laziness to my power of conjuring up imaginary people in imaginary places^ and making up stories about them in the natural scenic form which has given rise to that curious human institution^ the theatre. But in order to obtain a livelihood by my gift^ I must have conjured so as to interest not only my own imagination_, but that of at least some seventy or a hundred thousand contemporary London playgoers. To fulfil this condition was hopelessly out of my power. I had no taste for what is called popular art^ no respect for popular morality^ no belief in popular religion^ no admiration for popular heroics. As an Irishman I could pretend to patriotism neither for the country I had abandoned nor the country that had ruined it. As a humane person I detested violence and slaughter^ whether in war^ sporty or the butcher's yard. I was a Socialist^ detesting our anarchical scramble for money^ and believing in vi Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant

equality as the only possible permanent basis of social organization^ discipline^ subordination^ good manners^ and selection of fit persons for high functions. Fashionable life^ though open on very specially indulgent terms to unencumbered "brilliant" persons (*' brilliancy " was my speciality)^ I could not endure^ even if I had not feared the demoralizing effect of its wicked wastefulness^ its impenitent robbery of the poor^ and its vulgarity on a character which required looking after <as much as my own. I was neither a sceptic nor a cynic in these matters: I simply understood life differently from the average respectable man; and as I certainly enjoyed myself more — mostly in ways which would have made him unbearably miserable — I was not splenetic over our variance.

Judge then^ how impossible it was for me to write fiction that should delight the public. In my nonage I had tried to obtain a foothold in literature by writing novels_, and did actually produce ^ve long works in that form without getting further than an encouraging compliment or two from the most dignified of the London and American publishers^ who unanimously declined to venture their capital upon me. Now it is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing^ provided it is a novel at all^ and not merely an ineptitude. It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing; but I pledge my credit as a critic that this was not the case with mine. I might have explained the matter by saying with Whately^ " These silly people don't know their own silly business '' ; and indeed^ when these novels of mine did subsequently blunder int® type to fill up gaps in Socialist magazines financed by generous friends^ one or two specimens took shallow root lil^ weeds^ and trip me up from time to time to this da3^ But I was convinced that the publishers* view was commercially sound by getting just then a clue to my real condition from a friend of mine^ a physician who had

Preface vii

devoted himself specially to ophthalmic surgery. He tested my eyesight one evenings and informed me that it was quite uninteresting to him because it was " normal/' I naturally took this to mean that it was like everybody else's; but he rejected this construction as paradoxical^ and hastened to explain to me that I was an exceptional and highly fortunate person optically^ *' normal '' sight conferring the power of seeing things accurately^ and being enjoyed by only about ten per cent of the population^ the remaining ninety per cent being abnormal. I immediately perceived the explanation of my want of success in fiction. My mind's eye, like my body's^ was '* normal '' : it saw things differently from other people's eyes^ and saw them better.

This revelation produced ^a considerable effect on me. At first it struck me that I might live by selling my works to the ten per cent who were like myself ; but a moment's reflection showed me that these would all be as penniless as myself^ and that we could not live by^ so to speak^ taking in one another's washing. How to earn my bread by my pen was then the problem. Had I been a practical common-sense moneyloving Englishman^ the matter would have been easy enough: I should have put on a pair of abnormal spectacles and aberred my vision to the liking of the ninety per cent of potential bookbuyers. But I was so prodigiously self-satisfied with my superiority^ so flattered by my abnormal normality^ that the resource of hypocrisy never occurred to me. Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million. The question was_, how to get the pound a week. The matter^ once I gave up writing novels^ was not so very difficult. Every despot must have one disloyal subject to keep him sane. Even Louis the Eleventh had to tolerate his confessor^ standing for the eternal against the temporal throne. Democracy has now handed the sceptre of the despot to the sovereign people; but they^ too, must have their confessor, whom they call Critic. Critiviii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant

cism is not only medicinally salutary: it has positive popular attractions in its cruelty^ its gladiatorship^ and the gratification its attacks on the great give to envy, and its praises to enthusiasm. It may say things which many would like to say, but dare not, and indeed for want of skill could not even if they durst. Its iconoclasms, seditions, and blasphemies, if well turned, tickle those whom they shock; so that the critic adds the privileges of the court jester to those of the confessor. Garrick, had he called Dr. Johnson Punch, would have spoken profoundly and wittily, whereas Dr. Johnson, in hurling that epithet at him, was but picking up the cheapest sneer an actor is subject to.

It was as Punch, then, that I emerged from obscurity. All I had to do was to open my normal eyes, and with my utmost literary skill put the case exactly as it struck me, or describe the thing exactly as I saw it, to be applauded as the most humorously extravagant paradoxer in London. The only reproach with which I became familiar was the everlasting " Why can you not be serious " ? Soon my privileges were enormous and my wealth immense. I had a prominent place reserved for me on a prominent journal every week to say my say as if I were the most important person in the kingdom. My pleasing toil was to inspect all the works of fine art that the capital of the world can attract to its exhibitions, its opera house, its concerts and its theatres. The classes patiently read my essays : the masses patiently listened to my harangues. I enjoyed the immunities of impecuniosity with the opportunities of a millionaire. If ever there was a man without a grievance, I was that man.

But alas ! the world grew younger as I grew older: its vision cleared as mine dimmed: it began to read with the naked eye the writing on the wall which now began to remind me that age of spectacles was overtaking me. My opportunities were still there: nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them

Preface ix

began to f ail^ and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience. I had to shirk the platform; to economize my health; even to take holidays. In my weekly columns^ which I once filled from a Fortunatus well that never ran dry or lost its sparkle so long as I pumped hard enough^ I began to repeat myself ; to fall into a style which^ to my great perils was recognized as at least partly serious ; to find the pump tiring me and the water lower in the well; and^ worst symptom of all^ to reflect with little tremors on the fact that my magic wealth could not^ like the money for which other men threw it away^ be stored up against my old age. The younger generation^ reared in an enlightenment unknown to my childhood^ came knocking at the door too: I glanced back at my old columns and realized that I had timidly botched at thirty what newer men — Rudyard Kiplings^ Max Beerbohms^ Laurence Irvings and their contemporaries — do now with gay confidence in their cradles. I listened to their vigorous knocks with exultation for the race^ with penurious alarm for my own old age. When I talked to this generation_, it called me Mister^ and^ with its frank^ charming humanity^ respected me as one who had done good work in my time. Mr. Pinero wrote a long play to show that people of my age were on the shelf; and I laughed at him with the wrong side of my mouth.

It was at this bitter moment that my fellow citizens^ who had previously repudiated all my offers of political service_, contemptuously allowed me to become a vestryman — me^ the author of '* Widowers' Houses '' ! Then^ like any other harmless useful creature^ I took the first step rearward. Up to that fateful day I had never stopped pumping to spoon up the spilt drops of my well into bottles. Time enough for that when the well was empty. But now I listened to the voice of the publisher for the first time since he had refused to listen to me. I turned over my articles again; but to serve up the

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weekly paper of five years ago as a novelty — no: I had not yet fallen so low^ though I see that degradation looming before me as an agricultural laborer sees the workhouse. So I said " I will begin with small sins: I will publish my plays."

How! you will cry — plays! What plays? Let me explain.

One of the worst privations of life in London for persons of intellectual and artistic interests is the want of a suitable theatre. The existing popular drama of the day is quite out of the question for cultivated people who are accustomed to use their brains. I am fond of the theatre^ and am^ as intelligent readers of this preface will have observed^ myself a bit of an actor. Consequently^ when I found myself coming across projects of all sorts for the foundation of a theatre which should be to the newly gathered intellectual harvest of the nineteenth century what Shakespear's theatre was to the harvest of the Renascence^ I was warmly interested. But it soon appeared that the languid demand of a small and uppish class for a form of entertainment which it had become thoroughly accustomed to do without could never provide the intense energy necessary for the establishment of the New Theatre (we of course called everything advanced "the New": vide ''The Philanderer/' page 118 of this volume). That energy could only be supplied by the genius of the actor and manager finding in the masterpieces of the New Drama its characteristic and necessary mode of expression^ and revealing their fascination to the public. Clearly the way to begin was to pick up a masterpiece or two. Masterpieces^ however^ do not grow on the bushes. The New Theatre would never have come into existence but for the plays of Ibsen^ just as the Bayreuth Festival Playhouse would never have come into existence but for Wagner's Nibelungen tetralogy. Every attempt to extend the repertory proved that it is the drama that makes the theatre

Preface

XI and not the theatre the drama. Not that this needed fresh proofs since the whole difficulty had arisen throiigli the drama of the day being written for the theatres instead of from its own inner necessity. Stilly a thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.

Ibsen^ then^ was the hero of the new departure. It was in 1889 that the first really effective blow was struck by the production of " A Doll's House '' by Mr. Charles Charrington and Miss Janet Achurch. Whilst they were taking that epoch making play round the worlds Mr. Grein followed up the campaign in London with hh '' Independent Theatre." It got on its feet by producinp; Ibsen's "Ghosts"; but its search for native dramatic masterpieces^ pursued by Mr. Grein with the ardor and innocence of a foreigner^ was so complete a failure that at the end of 1892 he had not produced a single original piece of any magnitude by an English author. In this humiliating national emergency^ I proposed to Mr. Grein that he should boldly announce a play by me. Being an extraordinarily sanguine and enterprising man^ he took this step without hesitation. I then raked out^ from my dustiest pile of discarded and rejected manuscripts^ two acts of a play I had begun in 1885^ shortly after the close of my novel writing period^ in collaboration with my friend Mr. William Archer.

Mr. Archer has himself described how I proved the most impossible of collaborators. Laying violent hands on his thoroughly planned scheme for a sympathetically romantic '* well made play " of the type then in vogue, I perversely distorted it into a grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism^ municipal jobbery^ and the pecuniary and matrimonial ties between it and the pleasant people of " independent " incomes who imagine that such sordid matters do not touch their own lives. The result was most horribly incongruous; for though I took my theme seriously enough^ I did not then take the theatre more seriously, though I took it more seriously xii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant

than it took itself. The farcical trivialities in which I followed the fashion of the times^ some flagrant but artistic and amusing examples of which may be studied in Mr. Pinero's ** Hobby Horse^'* written a year later and now familiar in the repertory of Mr. John Hare^ became silly and irritating beyond all endurance when intruded upon a subj ect of such depth^ reality^ and force as that into which I had plunged my drama. Mr. Archer^ perceiving that I had played the fool both with his plan and my own theme^ promptly disowned me; and the project^ which neither of us had much at hearty was dropped^ leaving me with two abortive acts of an unfinished and condemned play. Exhuming this as aforesaid seven years later^ I saw that the very qualities which had made it impossible for ordinary commercial purposes in 1885^ might be exactly those needed by the Independent Theatre in 1892. So I completed it by a third act; gave it the far-fetched mock-Scriptural title of " Widowers' Houses " ; and handed it over to Mr. Grein^ who launched it at the public in the Royalty Theatre with all its original tomfooleries on its head. It made a sensation out of all proportion to its merits or even its demerits; and I at once became infamous as a dramatist. The first performance was sufficiently exciting: the Socialists and Independents applauded me furiously on principle; the ordinary play-going firstnighters hooted me frantically on the same ground; I, being at that time in some practice as what is impolitely called a mob-orator^ made a speech before the curtain; the newspapers discussed the play for a whole fortnight not only in the ordinary theatrical notices and criticisms^ but in leading articles and letters; and finally the text of the play was published with an introduction by Mr. Grein^ an amusing account by Mr. Archer of the original collaboration^ and a long preface and several elaborate controversial appendices in the author's most energetically egotistical fighting style. The volume^ forming

Preface

Xlll number one of the Independent Theatre series of plays^ is still extant^ a curious relic of that nine days wonder; and as it contains the original text of the play with all its silly pleasantries^ I can recommend it to collectors of quarto Hamlets^ and of all those scarce and superseded early editions which the unfortunate author would so gladly annihilate if he could.

I had not achieved a success; but I had provoked an uproar; and the sensation was so agreeable that I resolved to try again. In the following year^ 1893^ when the discussion about Ibsenism^ " the New Woman," and the like, was at its height, I wrote for the Independent Theatre the topical comedy called " The Philanderer.*' But even before I finished it, it was apparent that its demands on the most expert and delicate sort of acting — high comedy acting — went quite beyond the resources then at the disposal of Mr. Grein. I had written a part which nobody but Mr. Charles Wyndham could act in a play which was impossible at the Criterion Theatre — a feat comparable to the building of Robinson Crusoe's first boat. I immediately threw it aside, and, returning to the vein I had worked in " Widowers' Houses," wrote a third play, " Mrs. Warren's Profession," on a social subject of tremendous force. That force justified itself in spite of the inexperience of the playwright. The play was everything that the Independent Theatre could desire — rather more, if anything, than it bargained for. But at this point I came upon the obstacle that makes dramatic authorship intolerable in England to writers accustomed to the freedom of the Press. I mean, of course, the Censorship.

In 1737^ the greatest dramatist, with the single exception of Shakespear, produced by England between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century — Henry Fielding — devoted his genius to the task of exposing and destroying parliamentary corruption, then at its height. Walpole, unable to govern without corruption, promptly xiv Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant

gagged the stage by a censorship which is in full force at the present moment. Fielding^ driven out of the trade of Moliere and Aristophanes^ took to that of Cervantes; and since then the English novel has been one of the glories of literature^ whilst the English drama has been its disgrace. The extinguisher which Walpole dropped on Fielding descends on me in the form of the Queen's Reader of Plays^ a gentleman who robs^ insults^ and suppresses me as irresistibly as if he were the Tsar of Russia and I the meanest of his subjects. The robbery takes the form of making me pay him two guineas for reading every play of mine that exceeds one act in length. I do not want him to read it (at least officially: personally he is welcome) : on the contrary^ I strenuously resent that impertinence on his part. But I must submit in order to obtain from him an insolent and insufferable document^ which I cannot read without boiling of the bloody certifying that in his opinion — his opinion ! — my play '* does not in its general tendency contain anything immoral or otherwise improper for the stage," and that the Lord Chamberlain therefore " allows " its performance (confound his impudence!). In spite of this document he still retains his right, as an ordinary citizen, to prosecute me, or instigate some other citizen to prosecute me, for an outrage on public morals if he should change his mind later on. Besides, if he really protects the public against my immorality, why does not the public pay him for the service } The policeman does not look to the thief for his wages, but to the honest man whom he protects against the thief. And yet, if I refuse to pay, this tyrant can practically ruin any manager who produces my play in defiance of him. If, having been paid, he is afraid to license the play: that is, if he is more afraid of the clamor of the opponents of my opinions than of their supporters, then he can suppress it, and impose a mulct of .£50 on everybody who takes part in a representation of it, from

Preface xv

the gasman to the principal tragedian. And there is no getting rid of him. Since he lives^ not at the expense of the taxpayer^ but by blackmailing the author^ no political party would gain ten votes by abolishing him. Private political influence cannot touch him; for such private influence^ moving only at the promptings of individual benevolence to individuals^ makes nice little places to job nice little people into instead of doing away with them. Nay^ I myself^ though I know that the Queen's Reader of Plays is necessarily an odious and mischievous official^ and that I myself^ if I were appointed to his post (which I shall probably apply for some day)^ could no more help being odious and mischievous than a ramrod could if it were stuck into the wheels of a steam engine, am loth to stir up the question lest the Press, having now lost all tradition of liberty, and being able to conceive no alternative to a Queen's Reader of Plays but a County Council's Reader or some other sevenheaded devil to replace the oneheaded one, should make the remedy worse than the disease. Thus I cling to the Censorship as many Radicals cling to the House of Lords or the Throne, or as domineering women marry weak and amiable men who only desire a quiet life and whose judgment nobody respects, rather than masterful men. Until the nation is prepared to establish Freedom of The Stage on the same terms as we now enjoy Freedom of The Press, by allowing the dramatist and manager to perform anything they please and take the consequence as authors and editors do, I shall cherish the court reader as the apple of my eye. I once thought of organizing a Petition of Right from all the managers and authors to the Prime Minister; but as it was obvious that nine out of ten of these victims of oppression, far from daring to offend their despot, would promptly extol him as the most salutary of English institutions, and spread themselves with unctions flattery on the perfectly irrelevant question of his estimable personal character, I xvi Pluys, Pleasant and Unpleasant

abandoned the notion. What is more_, many of them_, in taking this eourse_, would be pursuing a sound business policy^ since the managers and authors to whom the existing system has brought success have not only no incentive to change it for another which would expose them to wider competition^ but have for the most part the greatest dread of the " New " ideas which the abolition of the Censorship would let loose on the stage. And so long live the Queen's Reader of Plays !

In 1893 the obnoxious post was occupied by a gentleman^ now deceased_, whose ideas had in the course of nature become quite obsolete. He was openly hostile to the New movement^ and declared before a Royal Commission his honest belief that the reputation of Ibsen in England was a spurious product of a system of puffery initiated by Mr. William Archer with the corrupt object of profiting by translations of his works. In dealing with him Mr. Grein was at a heavy disadvantage. Without a license ** Mrs. Warren's Profession " could only be performed in some building not a theatre^ and therefore not subject to reprisals from the Lord Chamberlain. The audience would have to be invited as guests only; so that the support of the public paying money at the doors^ a support with which the Independent Theatre could not afford to dispense^ was out of the question. To apply for a license was to court a practically certain refusal^ entailing the <£50 penalty on all concerned in any subsequent performance whatever. The deadlock was complete. The play was ready; the Independent Theatre was ready; two actresses^ Mrs. Theodore Wright and Miss Janet Achurch^ whose creations of Mrs. Alving in ** Ghosts " and Nora in " A Doll's House " had stamped them as the best in the new style in England^ were ready; but the mere existence of the Censorship^ without any action or knowledge of the play on its part^ was sufficient to paralyse all these forces. So I threw " Mrs. Warren's Profession^"

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too, aside, and, like another Fielding, closed my career as playwright in ordinary to the Independent Theatre. Fortunately, though the Stage is bound, the Press is free. And even if the Stage were freed, none the less would it be necessary to publish plays as well as perform them. Had the two performances of ** Widowers' Houses " achieved by Mr. Grein been multiplied by fifty — nay, had " The Philanderer '' and '' Mrs. Warren's Profession " been so adapted to the taste of the general public as to have run as long as " Charlie's Aunt," they would still have remained mere titles to those who either dwell out of reach of a theatre, or, as a matter of habit, prejudice, comfort, health or age, abstain altogether from playgoing. And then there are the people who have a really high standard of dramatic work; who read with delight all the classic dramatists, from Eschylus to Ibsen, but who only go to the theatre on the rare occasions when they are offered a play by an author whose work they have already learnt to value as literature, or a performance by an actor of the first rank. Even our habitual playgoers would be found, on investigation, to have no true habit of playgoing. If on any night at the busiest part of the theatrical season in London, the audiences were cordoned by the police and examined individually as to their views on the subject, there would probably not be a single house owning native among them who would not conceive a visit to the theatre, or indeed to any public assembly, artistic or political, as an exceptional way of spending an evening, the normal English way being to sit in separate families in separate rooms in separate houses, each person silently occupied with a book, a paper, or a game of halma, cut off equally from the blessings of society and solitude. The result is that you may make the acquaintance of a thousand streets of middle-class English families without coming on a trace of any consciousness of citizenship, or any artistic cultivation of the senses. The condition of the xviii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant

men is bad enough^ in spite of their daily escape into the city^ because they carry the exclusive and unsocial habits of '' the home " with them into the wider world of their business. Although they are natural_, amiable^ and companionable enough^ they are^ by home trainings so incredibly ill-mannered^ that not even their business interests in welcoming a possible customer in every inquirer^ can correct their habit of treating everybody who has not been '* introduced " as a stranger and intruder. The women^ who have not even the city to educate them^ are much worse: they are positively unfit for civilized intercourse — graceless_, ignorant^ narrowminded to a quite appalling degree. Even in public places homebred people cannot be taught to understand that the right they are themselves exercising is a common right. Whether they are in a second-class railway carriage or in a churchy they receive every additional fellow-passenger or worshipper as a Chinaman receives the *' foreign devil " who has forced him to open his ports.

In proportion as this horrible domestic institution is broken up by the active social circulation of the upper classes in their own orbit^ or its stagnant isolation made impossible by the overcrowding of the working classes^ manners improve enormously. In the middle classes themselves the revolt of a single clever daughter (nobody has yet done justice to the modern clever Englishwoman's loathing of the very word " home ")^ and her insistence on qualifying herself for an independent working life^ humanizes her whole family in an astonishingly short time; and the formation of a habit of going to the suburban theatre once a week^ or to the Monday Popular Concerts^ or both, very perceptibly ameliorates its manners. But none of these breaches in the Englishman's castle-house can be made without a cannonade of books and pianoforte music. The books and music cannot be kept out, because they alone can

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make the hideous boredom of the hearth bearable. If its victims may not live real lives^ they may at least read about imaginary ones^ and perhaps learn from them to doubt whether a class that not only submit to home lif e^ but actually values itself on it^ is really a class worth belonging to. For the sake of the unhappy prisoners of the home^ then^ let my plays be printed as well as acted.

But the dramatic author has reasons for publishing his plays which would hold good even if English families went to the theatre as regularly as they take in the newspaper. A perfectly adequate and successful stage representation of a play requires a combination of circumstances so extraordinarily fortunate that I doubt whether it has ever occurred in the history of the world. Take the case of the most successful English dramatist of the first rank^ Shakespear. Although he wrote three centuries ago^ he still holds his own so well that it is not impossible to meet old playgoers who have witnessed public performances of more than thirty out of his thirty-seven reputed plays^ a dozen of them fairly often^ and half a dozen over and over again. I myself^ though I have by no means availed myself of all my opportunities^ have seen twenty-three of his plays publicly acted. But if I had not read them as well as seen them acted^ I should have not merely an incomplete^ but a violently distorted and falsified impression of them. It is only within the last few years that some of our younger actor-managers have been struck with the idea^ quite novel in their profession^ of giving Shakespear's plays as he wrote them^ instead of using them as a cuckoo uses a sparrow's nest. In spite of the success of these experiments^ the stage is still dominated by Gar rick's conviction that the manager and actor must adapt Shakespear's plays to the modern stage by a process which no doubt presents itself to the adapter's mind as one of masterly amelioration^ but which must