The changing drama : contributions and tendencies

Introduction

The Trimplet

Nevertheless

Six Who Pass While the Lintels

Boil Medicine Show

Vol. 2— More Portmanteau Plays

Introduction

The Lady of the Weeping Willow Tree The Very Naked Boy Jonathan Makes a Wish

Vol. 3— Portmanteau Adaptations

Introduction

Gammer Gurton's Needle

The Birthday of the Infanta

"Seventeen"

Each of the above three volumes handsomely bound and illustrated. Per volume net $1.75

STEWART & KIDD CO., PUBLISHERS

CONTRIBUTIONS AND TENDENCIES

BY

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON

1 1 AUTHOR OF

"GEORGB BERNARD SHAW : HIS LIFE AND WORKS' "EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS," ETC.

CINCINNATI

Copyright, 1914, by Henry Holt and Company

Copyright, 19X9, by STEWART & KIDD COMPANY

All rights reserved

Copyright in England

*wC i" lay tlds look upon her shrine Whose lifted torch has lighted mine.

Sweet Heart— great Heart of tenderness: Strong Hands to help— dear Hands to blessi Clear Brain whose vision dwells in light: Fire Spirit, winged flame of white: Oh! Soul — true Sword Excalibur: Body— fit sheath for soul of her I

Hay this book upon her shrine — Hers— since herself has made it mine.

Introduction To New Edition

This book appeared in the year which saw the outbreak of the Great War. A new edition now appears in the year which bids fair at this moment to mark the conclusion of peace. At the time when this book was completed, the new movement in the drama was marked by rich promise and great strength. Yet within a few short months thereafter, there could be observed something like a complete arrest of productive movement in the drama, in the greatest drama producing countries of the world. The arts of peace succumbed to the science of war. Theatres closed their doors ; dramatists and poets exchanged the pen for the sword. After two years of war, a distinguished English critic wrote me " A new vision has come into life altogether. At this moment drama is dead in this country. Intellectualism itself is dead. We have become a nation of warriors, strategists and patriots."

What the new era following the war may bring forth in literature, we cannot say. Before the war was over, the query was being raised in regard to

INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION

the permanent changes likely to be wrought in the fabric of world literature through the influence of war and its atmosphere, the challenge to faith and the triumph of democracy. However such a query be answered, there is little reason to doubt that a new beginning in dramatic history will date from the year 1919. This book appears opportunely, then, in a new edition — affording as it does a survey of the modern dramatic movement to a point at which the Great War put a period and exhibiting the foundations upon which the new dramatist must build.

Archibald Henderson.

Prefatory Note

The contemporary drama awaits its historian and interpreter. There is no dearth of critical studies of the drama of the period. But the published works deal for the most part with individual figures, or else with movements limited either to a brief period of time or to a single country. Every one who is truly interested in the drama as a life form, in reference to the theater and to literature, must realize the need for the work which, from the critical and historical standpoints, takes account of the drama during the past halfcentury and more, as the symbol of a general movement in human consciousness.

For this great spiritual drama of to-day is warp and woof of the fabric of modern life. At the door of all our hearts knocks this new drama of pity and revolt. Pity for the lot of those less favored than ourselves, revolt against the injustices of the social order — these sentiments of social altruism and social justice animate most modern literature and most modern thinking. The drama of our era has played a pre-eminent role in stirring us to the assertion of individual vii viii PREFATORY NOTE

freedom, awaking our sense of social obligation, and holding the balance true between our individual rights and our social duties.

In the present volume, the attempt is made, on a very modest scale, to discover and to disclose the real contributions of the modern school of dramatists. These are studied primarily in relation to the life and the thinking of to-day. The evolution of form and technic, the re-alignment of criticism in regard to dramatic, esthetic, and ethical values, the general widening of outlook, the enlarged social content, the appraisal of genuine contributions, and the analysis of prevailing tendencies in the drama — such, within definitely chosen limits, is the intended scope of the present volume. From this scheme the poetic drama is excluded. Because, in my judgment, the poetic drama of the contemporary period, for all its beauties and ingenuities, to which I have been always ready to pay tribute, embodies no distinctive or considerable contribution to the art or the practice of play-writing.

Within the limits set, this book is believed to be the first work yet to appear in any language dealing with the contemporary drama, not as a kingdom subdivided between a dozen leading playwrights, but as a great movement, exhibiting the evolutional growth of the human spirit and the enlargement of the domain of esthetics. Perhaps

PREFATORY NOTE ix

it may serve, in a sense, as a reflection of the

spirit and tendency of the life of our era, which

the contemporary drama has sought and still

seeks so faithfully to interpret.

Archibald Henderson.

Chapel Hill, N. C, June, 19, 1914.

Chapter I Page

Modern art — Cosmic solidarity — Symbol of the growth of the human spirit — The coming of cosmopolitanism — Era of world literature — The study of nature — Science and philosophy the handmaidens of art — The world as audience — Nationalism and internationalism — The transit of social idealism — The Zeitgeist progenitor of modern play — The new conscience — The sophisticated public — Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen, Brieux— The social awakening — Society made for man — Society as tyrant — Society as culprit — Social humanitarianism — Dramatic art and personal conduct — The drama as social force — Gloom of new drama — A light in the darkness — Art and morality — The spirit of intention — " Social predication" — The new futurism.

CHAPTER II The New Criticism and the New Ethics . . 25

The demand for a new dramatic criticism — The disappearance of " the public " — The differentiation of " the public " into many publics — America's untutored throng — Criticism distanced by creativeness — The prolific nature of art — The bankruptcy of formalism — The " laws " of the drama — The newer interpretation of so-called laws — The vital quality of art — Criticism and science — The law of change — Change in outlook — " The trans valuation of all values " — Utilitarian and ethical conceptions — The conflict between ethics and esthetics — The modern view.

xii CONTENTS

Chapter III Page

The decay of "authority" — The drama a life form — The law of evolution — The biological analogy — The personal factor — Scientific criticism — Darwin and De Vries — The drama as a literary species — The origin and evolution of dramatic species — The phenomenon of survival — The competition of literary species — Content versus form — Evolution, variation, and mutation — " Laws " as scientific generalizations from esthetic facts — The method of science — The three tests — The three unities, with a difference — A backward glance — Aristotle — The Italian critics — Castelvetro — The modern attitude — Ibsen — Real time and "ideal" time — " Esthetic advantage " — The fourth unity — The creation of atmosphere — Maeterlinck, Strindberg, D'Annunzio — The practice of contemporary dramatists — Ibsen, Shaw, Giacosa, Hauptmann, Galsworthy, St. John Hankin — Mood conquers material — The scene undividable — Analytic treatment and synthetic treatment — The drama of recessive action — Identification of action with exposition — The drama of explication — The device of " devoilement " — The methods of fiction — The tyranny" of the past — Narration supplants action — Prophecy versus retrospection.

Chapter IV

The New Forms — Realism and the Pulpit Stage 83 The new forms — The drama of immediate actuality — Classic and modern art — The advent of Ibsen — Real people in natural situations — " The secret of the literature of modern times " — The bridging of " the chasm between the producing and the receiving mind " — Fashionable dramatic material worn out — Drama of ideas — The psychology of the crowd — Following after strange gods — Thfi-JQ £W futurism; — Art for life's sake — The methods of Ibsen — The thesis-drama — Art an esthetic process, not a scientific procedure — The general idea and the particular instance — "Slices of life" — Drama a stimulant

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

to action — Induced social consciousness — Drama as social dynamic — The social drama — Modern art redemptive as well as revelative — Galsworthy — The drama of social implication — The next step — The drama of sociologic injunction — Types of serious drama — Tragi-comedy — Pure social comedy — The sense of social obligation — The theater and the church — The new challenge — Art and morality— The dramatist as interpreter of life— The dramatist as social preacher— The pulpit stage — The sense of incrimination — The new social conscience.

CHAPTER V The New Forms — Naturalism and the Free

Theaters 113

The Theatre Libre— Cuvier, Taine, Zola— The document and the man — The " odor of the people" — Science and naturalism — Dumas fils — Augier — The triumph of naturalism — Antoine — The new acting — Paris the theater of conflict — Zola, Strindberg — Brieux — Germany and naturalism — The Freie Biihne — The drama of pure naturalism — " Evolution by explosion " — De Vries — The newer scientific theories as exemplified in the work of Hauptmann — The treasure of the humble — The miracle of the commonplace — The supreme defect of naturalism — The dregs of society — The abnormal and the degenerate as subjects for art — The great naturalistic dramas — The passing of naturalism — The changed temper of the age — Static characters in scenes chronologically sequent — The contributions of naturalism to universal ar{ — Science and art — The intimate theater — " Chamber music " — Two new dramatic species — Hebbel and the drama of explication — The dramatization of the exposition — Ibsen and A Doll's House — The awakening — The drama of discussion — Shaw and Brieux — The new dialectic — The drama of suggestion — Maeterlinck — Poe — The dramatized short-story — The dialogue of secondary intention — The weakening of action — The cessation of struggle — Era of experimentalism — Symbolic romance. — ■ »

xiv CONTENTS

Chapter VI Pagb

The Battle with Illusions — The Ancient Bondage and the New Freedom 145

The " elastic categories " — The bursting of the definitions — Aristotle's views of plot, action, character — His confusion of thought — Hauptmann — Action a " worthless accident " — Brunetiere — " No conflict, no drama" — Conflict not the differentiating characteristic of the stage play — Crisis versus conflict — Invalid distinction — Neither crisis nor conflict indispensable — Struggle of human wills furnishes most dynamic species of play — Dramatic action and crowd psychology — Mass consciousness — The errors of the disciples of Tarde and Le Bon — The theater not the cradle of atavism — Appeal to universal, not primitive, type — Crowd sense — Heightens intensity, without altering nature, of emotion — Modern spectator sits tight — Repression the keynote of modern drama — Revelation of underlying motives — Artistic foreshortening — Pictorial and plastic attributes of the play — The appeal to the higher emotio s — Drama as argument — Increased impassibility — The conflict of ideas and sentiments — The battle with illusions — A new species of comedy — The drama of discussion — The decadence of the dramatic — The play — A new definition — Distinctive qualities.

Chapter VII

The tacit acceptance of convention — Voluntary credulity — Planes of convention — Art rests upon convention — Illustrations of artistic conventions — Art different from reality — Style in dialogue — Style a function of ideality — The broken scepter of verse — Artistic efficiency — The banishment of accident — The loss of finality — The soliloquy and its modern variants — Modern technical ingenuity — The form of the playhouse — Did it banish the soliloquy? — The true explanation — Strindberg's suggestion — The aside — The apart — The confidant — Indispensable — The new alternatives — The raisonneur or expositor — The note of impartiality — The modern tendency.

CONTENTS xv

Chapter VIII Page

The publication of plays — The changed attitude — Twenty years ago and now — Literature and the drama — The rirpa T^frue of America— The old scenic chirography — The jargon of the s^age — Ibsen and naturalness — Approximation to reality — Stage directions with the stage left out — Increased particularity — Character description — Thumb-nail sketches — Art versus specifications — Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Bahr, Pinero, D'Annunzio — Wilde and the artistic sense — The fault of the personal — Bernard Shaw — A master of the new technic — Complete visualization of the stage — The barrier of the actor — Stage directions as social essays — Imperfect objectivity — The ideal spectator — A new interpretation — Stereoscopic imagination — The mutual reaction between artist and public — The resulting elevation of standards — Refinement in taste.

Chapter IX

The drama an image of the epoch — Every-day life accepted as normal dramatic material— The ancient view — The aristocracy of classic tragedy — Great events associated with personages of lofty station — Aristotle — Puttenham — Shakespeare — The poet of courts and princes — Indifference to social status of working classes — George Lillo — The progenitor of the bourgeois drama — Lessing — Schiller — The development of class consciousness — France — Voltaire — Larmoyant comedy — Diderot — Mercier — Sedaine — Miss Sara Sampson — Hebbel, the forerunner — Partial envisagement of true domestic drama — Hauptmann — Ibsen — B j ornson — " Scenes from private life " — The secrets of the alcove — Influence of modern fiction — The suburban note — Fresh air — The true drama of middle-class life — The decadence of romance — A transvaluation of values — The degeneration of the hero — The triumph of democracy — The dominance .

of the heroine — The bankruptcy of stage hexvi CONTENTS

PAGE

roism — The age of prose — The microscope versus ^ the telescope — The development of mass consciousness — The new hero — The crowd — The ideal as hero — Atmosphere, environment, supplant the hero — "Scientific natural history" — Poetic justice — Plato — Aristotle — Elizabethan practice — The long conflict — The new sense of justice — The loss of faith in intentional justice — Nature has no systems of morality — Justice achieved through humanity.

CHAPTER X y The new age — Evolution in form — Revolution in spirit — Drama as synthesis of all th* a^ts — Castelvetro — Croce — A new revelation — Genius and taste — The drama as criticism — The economic ten - dency^— Science versus creativen£ S&— The drama conditioned, not determined, by accessories — The historical view — The dramatist and physical limitation — The materialistic influence — The new discovery — Constructive synthesis of the arts — The co-operation of theater and drama — Totality of effect — Art and nature — T hg^new experiment^ , - ism — Stimmung — The rise of the regisseur — The *arT"of stage management — The prophecy of symbolic poetry — The organization of the theatre — Repertory — Types of audience — The Dranja, kg g . giip of America again — Democracy and the drama — The drama as a social institution — The drama and the state — Summary.

"The critic will be a small genius, the artist a great genius; the one will have the strength of ten, the other of a hundred; the former, in order to raise himself to the altitude of the latter, will have need of his assistance; but the nature of both must be the same. In order to judge Dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we ; but in that moment of judgment and contemplation, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one single thing. In this identity alone resides the possibility that our little souls can unite with the great souls, and become great with them, in the universality of the spirit." — Benedetto Cboce.

"What is the problem of culture? To live and to work in the noblest strivings of one's nation and of humanity. Not only, therefore, to receive and to learn, but to live. To free one's age and people from wrong tendencies, to have one's ideal before one r s eyes." — Friedrich Nietzsche.

"Art knows the true ideal of our times, and tends towards it." — Lyof Tolstoy.

The contemplation of any period of human activity at first sight reveals a vast network of intersecting interests. We observe a web interwoven with apparently independent threads of ideas and passions, of ideals and sentiments. This is especially the case in the domain of esthetics, where evolutionary process is continually retarded, arrested, or accelerated by the pristine energy of the human factor. Every artist imparts the illusion of individuality. The ego, conditioned by race, place, and moment, seems to operate within the prescribed circle of his immediate limitation. Yet viewed in historical perspective, the work of art inevitably falls into definite position in the creation of the cosmic pattern of world literature. The tragi-comedy of Ibsen, the symbolist drama of Maeterlinck, the sociologic comedy of Shaw, the motionless pictures of Tchekhov, the lyric romances of D'Annunzio, the thesismelodramas of Echegaray, the temperamental comediettas of Schnitzler, significant as illustrations, co-operate in bodying forth the variegated design of the contemporary drama.

A work of literary criticism is a true work of art only on the condition that it disclose in full illumination the guiding and shaping principles which express the true spiritual meaning of the epoch. Beneath the welter and confusion of conflicting and apparently dissociate literary phenomena, criticism must reveal the life forces pulsing through the literature of to-day. Only thus may the critic render intelligible and coherent the contemporary epoch in human consciousness. Only thus may the critic truly appraise literature as an organic expression of the growth of the human spirit.

A critical survey of the literature of the past three-quarters of a century or less projects into the light the vast debt that literature viewed as a factor in national culture and world civilization owes to science and the doctrine of evolution. To give precision to our ideas, let us especially direct our attention to the contemporary drama, that branch of literature which is the subject of our inquiry. In the world of industry, the barriers have fallen one by one beneath the patient, persistent blows of science, of invention, of discovery. 'Twas but yesterday that the American awoke with a start to discover the disappearance of the frontier. Civilization had pushed on to the farthest verge. The marvel of the Atlantic cable pales before the miracle of wireless telegraphy. A vast shudder shook England when a Frenchman obliterated with his aeroplane the ancient barrier of the Channel. The imaginative fancy of Jules Verne is dwarfed by the actual achievements in world circumnavigation of this very hour. Through the transforming magic of science, the nations of the world stand in perpetual intercommunication. Customs, costumes, habits of thought, modes of expression, once peculiar to locality and to nationality, are rapidly becoming world property. Cosmic solidarity is one of the supreme facts, the fertile contributions of the epoch. Only industry and research have fully realized this accomplishment. Trade is bounded only by the limitation of the globe. Science progresses unhaltingly, enlarging the domain of knowledge through the simultaneous scientific contributions of research everywhere.

The scientist, be he mathematician, chemist, physicist, biologist, geologist, fixes his attention endlessly upon a single subject. That one sublime subject, upon which the eyes of science are fixed, is Nature. This cosmic example, as well as the means for applying its lessons to other fields, is the example which science now sets literature. The artist in all ages has striven to express and reveal the soul of the individual. Within our epoch, the new spirit of science has breathed into the body of the artist the breath of the world's • life. Art and literature are beginning to speak with the international mind, the cosmopolitan soul. We feel in the air that "• epoch of world literature " which Goethe heralded and summoned. Nationality has not lost its meaning. The artist still recognizes that the more completely he realizes the national soul in literature the more surely will his work cross national frontiers. At the same time,, science has taught the artist that a consciousness of the feelings common to the citizens of civilized nations is more potent in winning the widest hearing and in attaining the most lasting repute than a consciousness simply of the feelings peculiar to his fellow-countrymen. Slowly precipitating everywhere, in the retort of contemporary life, is a basic substance of cosmopolitan culture, ideas, and inclinations.

Contemporary literature is unique in one differentiating feature. The world author during his own lifetime has actually attained the hearing of a world audience. Nay more, he has but to speak in the accents of genius and the words echo from the remotest fastnesses of the world. The genial humanity of a Mark Twain's good humor is reflected in countless tongues, even in the dialect of the savage. The trumpet challenge of a Rudyard Kipling resounds through the bounds of civilization. The bon mots of a Bernard Shaw are immediately caught up and repeated in New York and Berlin, Paris and St. Petersburg. The philosopher who is perchance 1 an artist as well, a Friedrich Nietzsche, a William James, or a Henri Bergson, gives cosmopolitan vogue to his theories and discoveries, and enriches the thinking of today with the terminology and concept of the Superman, of Pragmatism, and of Creative Evolution. A Henrik Ibsen, isolate, cloistral, moves forward for all people the boundary posts of the world's drama. A Lyof Tolstoy austerely condemns the classics of the world, even his own ; and points to the future in his formulation of a new meaning for art. A Richard Wagner prophesies the new art of a new social order, in which the " art work of the future " shall be the expression of the collective energy of a whole age, enlightened, individually, socially, morally.

It is no longer possible to speak with the same significance, as formerly, of English literature or French literature or Scandinavian literature. Their one-time individuality is modified through elements, common to all. Criticism itself, since

Taine, has become scientific — and so, cosmopolitan — in its aspect. The work of Strindberg stirs Paris; Sudermann wrings tears from Chicago ; Shaw ravishes Berlin with his mocking laughter; Brieux confounds New York with his unashamed social antiseptics. Criticism frankly accepts these phenomena as typical of the new spirit. It is not that the artist loses his individuality, his sense of race, his consciousness of environment. These things have always been felt by the artist, more or less keenly, in all ages. There is, however, in this modern air that the artist breathes, something which imparts a more poignant sensitiveness to the pressure of the force of solidarity. Even in such a matter as technic, the artist realizes to-day as never before the imperative obligation to measure up to the most advanced demands of architectonics, of dramaturgies. Culture is coming to mean, not merely the enlargement of the actual domain of knowledge, but, what is perhaps no less important in the advancement of civilization, universal diffusion of knowledge of all great intellectual and spiritual phenomena.

The dramatist must run the gauntlet of merciless inspection and criticism at the hands of his fellow-craftsmen. Furthermore, with a public ever attaining to higher levels of sophistication and developing more rigorous canons of taste through contact with the best representative examples afforded by other nationalities, the dramatist of to-day must possess not only wide knowledge of his art, but astute mastery of its technic. Above all, with a knowledge of human nature more circumstantial, more minute, than ever before — a knowledge contributed perhaps not less by science than by psychology, philosophy, or literature — the contemporary auditor is quick to seize, quick to condemn, a lapse on the part of the dramatic artist from the fundamental verities — the insuperable maxima, the irreducible minima — of human experience and potentiality. The dramatic artists of to-day, of all races and all climes, have a sense of common purpose, a certain unity of aim. This may best be described as the intention of advancing the cause of civilization.

It is just at this moment that our eyes are opened to the inner significance of this discovery. The ancient Greeks realized that man was a political animal. The France of Moliere realized that man was a social animal. The limitation of Moliere — a limitation which sometimes his genius enabled him to transcend — was inherent in his reverence for society. It was not the structure of society itself which was at fault, in Moliere's view. It was man who, in violating the laws of society, originated his own tragedy, his own ruin. Moliere teaches man the ancient lesson that he must not violate the fundamental principles of life and that his most urgent need is to conform to nature. The guiding principle back of this human, this humane sentiment, is the social principle that society's claims must never be ignored. Man was not made for laws, conventions, morals, inhibitions of a thousand varieties. These laws, conventions, morals, inhibitions were made for man. Indeed, they were made in the interest of an artificial complex, perpetually in a state of flux and evolution, which we call society.

In a certain sense, there is just ground for the modern man's dissatisfaction with Shakespeare and his conception of the world. For Olympian that he was, Shakespeare was assuredly not what we are accustomed to call a social philosopher. Before sociology, Shakespeare was. His is a drama of supermen and superwomen ; they move in grand silhouette against the sky-line of the universe. His heroes and heroines come nobly to the grapple with that force or power which is labeled Fate, Destiny, Providence, or the Divine Order. His dramas present the clash of the supreme struggle — Man at odds with the Universe. It may be admitted by the modern critic that Shakespeare created, in his dramatic hero, a more valid, a more credible superman than was ever previsaged in the convolute brain of a Nietzsche. The Shakespearean tragedy is a personal tragedy. We feel

DRAMA IN THE NEW AGE II

both pity and terror in these spectacles of the disintegration of moral, the bankruptcy of character, the degeneration of will, the atrophy of conscience, the obsession of sexuality. In Shakespeare's conception of the tragic we discern a revolutionary sense of protest against the moral order of the universe. We are darkly aware of the delicate balancing of the divine scales in the passing of judgment upon a universe densepacked with cruelty, hatred, injustice, failure.

In both Shakespeare and Moliere there is lacking that differentiating quality which characterizes the dramatist of the contemporary era. With all his passionate sense of revolt against the tragic cast of the universal life, Shakespeare lacked any ingrained conviction of social organization as a giant participant in the tragedy of human destiny. With all his shrewd and sagacious exposure of folly, fraud, imposture, quackery, and personal hypocrisies, Moliere never once bethought him of the crimes committed by society in the name of humanity. Whilst it may be urged with considerable justice that Shakespeare was no mere court sycophant, certainly it cannot be doubted that he was totally lacking in sympathy for the lot of. the common man. With all his wit and raillery at the fantastic creatures of French social life, Moliere exhibited deep-dyed racial respect for society, its interests, its laws, its obligations. The era of social democracy was not yet. But it was inevitable in the course of civilization that a day must dawn upon a world grown sick of the individual, the confessor, the autobiographer. With that day came the philosophy of sociology. To-day the world is envisaged in social guise as a vast structure of social laws, formulas, traditions, erected by man in his own interest for the sake of the State, the Family, the Race.

The great discovery of modern life, the most potent influence which thus far has projected itself into contemporary consciousness, is the dawning suspicion, gradually solidified into belief and fortified into conviction, that society has become the tyrant of the universe. Error is imperfect knowledge. In the equation of truth certain indispensable factors are missing. Crime is not solely a religious or moral question. It is a social question. Indeed, crime may be defined as the product of imperfect social knowledge. In the equation of conduct certain indispensable social factors are missing. Not crime only, but the petty annoyances, the grave injustices, the hideous inconsistencies of life, must be laid at the door, not of the individual man, but of our social institutions.