CHAPTER X
Henry Arthur Jones; his First Works—His Melodramas—Saints and Sinners—The Puritans and the Theatre—The Two Deacons; The Character of Fletcher—Judah—The Crusaders; Character of Palsam; the Conclusion of the Piece—The Case of Rebellious Susan—The Masqueraders—Return to Melodrama. Theories expounded by Mr. Jones in his book: The Renascence of the Drama.
The start of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones was not less difficult than that of Mr. Sydney Grundy. He could get only short and light pieces accepted at first. The earliest play of his within the memory of London play-goers was performed at the Court Theatre, and was entitled, A Clerical Error. The second was an idyll in two short acts, called An Old Master.
The young author found it necessary to seek refuge in provincial theatres. The world remained unwilling to learn his name—a somewhat undistinguished name, and easily forgotten. When, in 1882, Mr. Archer included him in his Dramatists of To-day, there were many who asked, “Who is this Mr. Jones?”
It was then he worked at melodrama. He served seven years with Laban, and married Leah, upheld by the hope of one day obtaining Rachel. This was his apprenticeship. As Mr. Grundy had learnt his craft by adapting our French authors, Mr. Jones learnt his by writing great popular dramas. It was in this genre, one which gives full scope to the imagination, that he came to know his own individual temperament, and developed those poetical faculties which were to be put to better uses; it was by this unlikely pathway that he found the road to Shakespearian emotions. His qualities and his defects date from this time.
The great success of The Silver King set Mr. Jones at liberty. I have neither seen nor read the piece, which has not been printed. It is a good melodrama, I understand. People found in it, together with some new types and coups de théâtre, observation, gaiety, a rare freedom of handling, some really moving touches, and, here and there, flashes of imagination and poetry.
Mr. Jones thought he could now take a step further, and please himself, having succeeded in pleasing the public. He wrote Saints and Sinners. The little Margate Theatre was the scene of the first performance of the new play in September 1884, this first performance having for object only the perfecting of the actors in their parts, and the testing of the public. The piece passed thence to the Vaudeville, where it held the bills until the middle of the following year, much talked about and applauded.
It marks an important date, not merely in the career of Mr. Jones, but in the history of the English drama. It denotes the revival of active hostility, in that ancient conflict between the Puritans and the stage, which began in 1580, and will last as long as English literature and English civilisation. This conflict had assumed a sluggish and inactive character in the nineteenth century. Shattered by the scorn of the Puritans, the stage had not dared to raise its arm for a blow. Suddenly it took the offensive, and carried the war into the enemy’s camp. Saints and Sinners is only the first of a series of dramas and comedies, in which Mr. Jones has fearlessly attacked the hypocrisies of religion, in their most characteristic form. He has let fly some darts, indeed, which have sped even further, and which he has not shot at random. Has he not declared, in his high-spirited and witty preface to The Case of Rebellious Susan, that the theatre was perhaps destined to succeed to the tottering pulpit, and to teach morality to the professional moralists?
Already, in 1885, he had claimed energetically for the drama the right to deal with any subject, even with religious subjects. Elsewhere, he declared that the theatre was one of the organs of the national life, and one of its essential organs; that one could no more imagine England without the theatre, than England without the press and the platform.