"Yes, individualism by all means," he added; "be yourself, but don't be a savage."
XVII The Exile of the Earnest
I met Keidansky at the performance of a Yiddish play, and our talk turned to matters dramatic.
"I notice by the papers," I remarked, "that Sarah Bernhardt has just produced a play written for her by F. Marion Crawford, the American novelist. So we are going to supply the theatres of other countries with plays. Are you interested?"
"Very much," said Keidansky; "this is not the only case of an American writing for the foreign stage, and it suggests to me a fine possibility. About Crawford I know but little; but he is one of our popular men. He has, according to his own confession, written to please; he has never offended any living beings by putting them into his works; he has never attempted to picture life, uninteresting as it is, and he is, on the whole, not one of those that we should want to send away to write plays for the people of other lands. And I am rather glad his 'Francesca da Rimini' has failed in London.
"But if there are any among us who are terribly in earnest, with tremendous intentions to elevate the stage, to write plays that will instruct, stimulate, uplift, to take all the struggles of humanity and put them into dramas—why let them learn some one of the foreign languages and go abroad and write plays for the serious people of Europe. Yes, if they persist in these things, and want to make us think, and all that sort of thing, which is short of pleasure, if they cannot amuse us with something funny or entertain us with something nice and romantic, why let them go abroad. It's the only way we can get rid of them, and we shall not mourn the loss of those who would have us do nothing else but mourn.
"We Americans do not want any plays that require intellect, for we need all that we have in our business enterprises; we do not want to think in the theatre, because it takes all our thoughts to advertise and sell our goods, nor do we want our emotions stirred, for that is a nervous strain, clouds the mind, and makes people unfit for speculation, scheming or anything on the next day. Then, these plays that arrest the brain and touch our very soul, they make us sentimental, soft-hearted, kind-natured, and draw us out on long conversations with our wives, children and friends. Meanwhile the wheels of trade are turning, and in the race for success we are left behind.
"We are a healthy people, and we don't want any morbid, lurid, ghastly productions over here, and in a large sense all very serious works are morbid, lugubrious and gloomy. At bottom of them there is always a problem, an evil, a crying wrong, a morbid state of something. A happy home is not dramatic; people at peace with themselves and the world are not good subjects for tragedy. According to the conception of these earnest writers there is no plot for a play without a peck of trouble. We don't want any such dramatic dishes served. We don't want people to play upon our feelings, and yet pay them for it. Occasionally, we are willing to have something a little bit sad, but we want it to end happily. But the earnest ones tell us that in real life few sad stories end happily, that their pictures are true to life. Hang it, we ourselves know they are true to life. There's plenty of trouble at home,—that's why we go to the theatre—to forget it. Gorky pictures a man—fat and forty, successful and comfortable as a government official—a man, who after reading 'a book of one of these modern much-praised writers,' comes to the conclusion that he is 'an insignificant nonentity, a superfluous being, of no use to any one.'