Miss Lulu Bett; an American comedy of manners

Front matter

Book_

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Foreword

For centuries people in plays have been abnormally distinguished. Theirs has been a peculiar facility for cleverness, virility, or personal charm, which has raised them above the individuals in the audience and made of the theater a place where one goes to experience vicariously the warm glow of uttering an epigram through the mouth of "Lord Goring," the deep satisfaction of romantic relations with a beautiful lady ("Prince Rudolpho" acting as our agent), or the inexpressible relief of having a mortgage lifted through the efforts of young "Tom Cartwright."

If Art is to be held down to one of the many indefinite definitions given to it throughout the ages — that of reflecting life — then the theater has contained but little of Art, for it has been peopled by unnaturally brilliant characters living preposterous lives in a manner so totally removed from life as it is known by the honored members of the public that they have been willing to pay money to witness it as a curiosity.

Especially in its dialogue has the stage clung to an artificiality which even the best of playwrights seem unable to shake off once the blood mounts to their temples and they feel the resiliency of the second act beneath their feet. Statistics could be brought out to [xiii]

FOREWORD

prove that, in an average gathering, the proportion of clever conversationalists to dull though voluble talkers is one to three hundred and twenty-four thousand. And yet almost every play contains at least three in a cast of ten whose repartee is unquestionably intended to be classed as "entertaining."

Even the "old-home" talk of our rural dramas, the line, "Land sakes, ain't them pies done yet?" with which the first act opens, has become, in spite of its affectation of naturalness, so theatrical that whenever we hear a genuine housewife say it in a real kitchen we suspect her of trying to talk like an actress.

Into this babel of artificial dialogue came Miss Lulu Bett bearing the revolutionary banner of banality. And under this banner march ninety-nine one-hundredths of American conversationalists. First in her book, and then in her play, Zona Gale discarded the ideal held by writers since Plutarch that their characters must say something unusual, and gave us "Dwight Herbert Deacon" to say the gorgeously conventional thing with epoch-making dullness.

"The baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared any other way. Roasting retains it," he asserts in the first act.

To which his wife replies: "That's what I always think."

And the white light of truth which bursts forth from this conversational sally discovers Oscar Wilde to be a shining collection of tinsel.

Zona Gale is the first author, to my knowledge, who [xiv]

FOREWORD

has dared to write genuinely dull dialogue. Many writers have achieved dull dialogue under a misapprehension on their parts, and still others have started out with the honest intention of making their characters dull in the interests of veracity. But these latter have sooner or later succumbed to the temptation either of enlarging upon the dullness until it became burlesque or of capitulating entirely and throwing in a clever line simply to keep up the tone of the play.

But Miss Gale saw the truth and has kept it whole. She was depicting uninspired American family life (almost for the first time in our literature) and she held fast to the ideals of American family conversation. In the opening scene of the first act of Miss Lulu Bett there is not a single redeeming feature in the remarks, made by the Deacon family across the creamed salmon. It is nothing short of magnificent.

"Dwight Herbert ,, is, of course, the high priest of this elaborate banality, and in his creation Miss Gale has given to America a man made in its own image, something rarely done on our native stage. And, as if this were not enough, she has also brought, whining and scuffling before the footlights, our first normal stage-child, in the unpleasing person of the recalcitrant "Monona." For years we have seen no small children on the stage who did not spend their time coming downstairs in their nighties to reunite uncongenial parenfs or bringing tears to the hard eyes of adventuresses by telling them that they looked "des like n^vver." It was with the full force of an original dramatic creation [xv]

FOREWORD

therefore that "Monona Deacon," the world's most disagreeable stage-child, came swimming petulantly into our ken. She and her disillusioned "Grandma Bett" (a character somewhat more generic as acted but no less vivid), with their joint and articulate hatred of the rest of the family, constitute a refreshing rearrangement of the hitherto idyllic characters of Childhood and Old Age.

In the interests of truth, then, Miss Gale has violated many sacred dramatic rules. She has given us characters who talk as people really talk and who therefore are dull. She has given us an old lady who is not sweet, and a child who is not cute. And, on the technical side, she has begun two successive scenes with practically the same dialogue, so that for several minutes one is scarcely distinct from the other. And in this last deviation from established custom she has at one stroke succeeded in creating an atmosphere of monotony and domestic routine in home life which stands unique among theatrical effects.

The result of such adherence to uninspiring reality might well have been expected to be a failure in its appeal to an uninspiring nation of theater-goers. But Miss Gale took the chance. She wrote the play, as she had written the book, without compromise, and was rewarded by an enthusiastic public,

Robert C. Benchley

THE CAST

"As produced and staged by Mr. Brock Pemberton beginning December 2j, 1920, at the Belmont Theatre, New York.

Monona Deacon Lois Shore

Dwight Herbert Deacon William H olden

Lulu Bett Carroll McComas

Bobby Larkin . . . . Jack Bohn

Diana Deacon Beth Varden

Ninian Deacon Brigham Royce

Time : The Present Place : The Middle Class

Act I. — Scene 1. — The Deacon's dining-room

Scene 2. — The same ; ten days later. Act II. — Scene 1. — The Deacon's front porch; a month later.