Pastiche and prejudice

by Arthur Bingham Walkley

I confess, then, my doubts about the soundness of this theory. Throughout the past history of any nation wars have been of so constant occurrence that it would be difficult not to find one preceding, by a fairly short term, any particular outburst of dramatic activity you like to fix upon. One is always post the other; it is not necessarily propter. And instances to the contrary will readily occur: periods of dramatic activity that were not immediately preceded by, but rather synchronized with, great manifestations of national energy; for instance, the period of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. And sometimes, when you look for your dramatic sequel to your national energizing, you only draw a blank. Did any outburst of dramatic production follow the American Civil War? The theory, in short, is “an easy one,” relying on lucky coincidence and ignoring inconvenient exceptions.

In any case, we ought to be able now, if ever, to put it to the “acid test.” The leading nations of the world have just fought the biggest of all their wars. Has the promised sequel followed? Is there any sign at home or abroad of a fresh outburst of dramatic energy? In Germany they seem to be merely “carrying on,” or tending to be a little more pornographic than usual. In Vienna they are still translating Mr. Shaw. No new dramatic masterpiece is reported from Italy, D’Annunzio being “otherwise engaged,” Mr. Boffin. Paris is still producing its favourite little “spicinesses” or, for the high brows, translating Strindberg. (Outside the theatre the effect of the war on Paris seems not merely negative but stupefying. They have achieved Dadaism and, so I read in a recent Literary Supplement, a distaste for the works of M. Anatole France!) In America the drama is in no better case than before the war.

And what about London? An absolutely unprecedented dearth of not merely good but of actable plays. People will give you other causes, mainly economic, for the theatrical “slump.” They will tell you, truly enough, that playgoers have less money to spend, and that the cheaper “cinema” is diverting more and more money from the theatre. And yet, whenever the managers produce anything really worth seeing there is no lack of people to see it.

There is nothing, then, to discourage the aspiring dramatist. Only he won’t aspire! Or his aspiration is not backed by talent! It seems as though the war, instead of stimulating dramatic energy, had repressed and chilled it. What on earth (if I may use a colloquialism condemned by Dr. Johnson) would poor M. Brunetière have said if he had lived to see his pet theory thus falsified? Probably he would have invented a new one. He would have said that wars mustn’t be too big to fit into a law devised only for usual sizes. Also he might have said, wait and see. The war is only just over; give your young dramatists a little breathing time. Shakespeare’s plays didn’t immediately follow the Armada. The French Romantic Drama didn’t begin till a good dozen years after Waterloo.

Well, we can’t afford to wait. While we playgoers are waiting for good plays, our young men are all frittering away their talent in minor poetry, which war seems to bring as relentlessly in its train as shell-shock. But the victims of both maladies ought by now to be on the high-road to recovery, and it is time that the young minor poets turned their attention to something useful, e.g., the reintroduction of the British drama. They have a capital opportunity, since most of our old stalwarts seem to have left the field. Sir Arthur Pinero gives us nothing. Mr. Arthur Henry Jones gives us nothing. Mr. Maugham is, I am told, far away in Borneo, so now is the chance for the young aspirants; the world is all before them where to choose. Of course it is understood that they will drop their verse. That used to be the natural form for plays over two centuries ago. It may come into fashion again, you never can tell, but, quite clearly, the time is not yet. I have heard people ask, “What are the chances for a revival of poetic drama?” They really mean verse-drama, but the answer is, that the essence of poetry is not verse, which is merely ornament, but the expression of a certain spiritual state, a certain état d’âme, and that there is always room for poetic plays. Dear Brutus contained much of the poetic essence; so does Mary Rose. But their language is prose, and our young aspirants may be recommended to write in prose, for which their previous verse-exercises will have been a useful preparation. Only let them hurry up! Let their hearts swell with the proud hope of creating that magnificent affair, which demands capital letters, the Drama of the Future. Mr. Bergson told us at Oxford that when an interviewer invited him to forecast the drama of the future he answered, “If I could do that I’d write it.” So we can only wonder what it will be like. “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson to Boswell who was “wondering,” “you may wonder.”

DISRAELI AND THE PLAY

We have all been reading Mr. Buckle’s concluding volumes, and when we have recovered from the fascination of the great man and the splendid historical pageant they present to us, we dip into them again in search of trifles agreeable to our own individual taste. And I shall make no apology for turning for a moment from Disraeli in robes of ceremony, the friend of Sovereigns, the hero of Congresses, the great statesman and great Parliament man, to Disraeli the playgoer. That dazzling figure is not readily thought of as a unit in the common playhouse crowd. Yet it is with a feeling of relief from the imposing spectacle of great mundane affairs that you find Disraeli, after receiving in the afternoon the “awful news” of the Russian ultimatum to Turkey (October, 1876), going in the evening with his Stafford House hosts to see Peril at the Haymarket, and pleased with the acting of Mrs. Kendal. The play, he tells his correspondent, Lady Bradford, is—

“An adaptation from the French Nos Intimes—not over-moral, but fairly transmogrified from the original, and cleverly acted in the chief part—a woman whom, I doubt not, you, an habituée of the drama, know very well, but quite new to me. Now she is married, but she was a sister of Robertson, the playwright. She had evidently studied in the French school. The whole was good and the theatre was ventilated; so I did not feel exhausted, and was rather amused, and shd. rather have enjoyed myself had not the bad news thrown its dark shadow over one’s haunted consciousness....”

Mrs. Kendal’s training was, I fancy, entirely English, but her acting was on a level with the best of “the French school.” Disraeli was an old admirer of French acting, as we know from “Coningsby,” and I think it is pretty clear from the same source that he particularly liked Déjazet. For he had Déjazet in mind, I guess, in the member of Villebecque’s troop of French comedians engaged for the delectation of Lord Monmouth, “a lady of maturer years who performed the heroines, gay and graceful as May.” This was the lady, it will be remembered, who saved the situation when Mlle. Flora broke down. “The failure of Flora had given fresh animation to her perpetual liveliness. She seemed the very soul of elegant frolic. In the last scene she figured in male attire; and in air, fashion, and youth beat Villebecque out of the field. She looked younger than Coningsby when he went up to his grandpapa.” This is Déjazet to the life. The whole episode of the French players in “Coningsby” shows Disraeli as not only an experienced playgoer but a connoisseur of the theatre. His description of the company is deliciously knowing—from the young lady who played old woman’s parts, “nothing could be more garrulous and venerable,” and the old man who “was rather hard, but handy; could take anything either in the high serious or the low droll,” to the sentimental lover who “was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea that he was ultimately destined to run off with a princess.”