Scene 4:—Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted torch for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash 3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H. Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf. [Wolf is evidently another name for Grindorf.]
Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts stretched from the Surrey side of the Thames to the Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the Skeltic temperament was purely melodramatic, its bass notes being transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of boyhood. It is greatly to be regretted that no inquiring scholar has yet devoted himself to the task of tracing the history of English melodrama, as Professor Thorndike has traced the history of English tragedy. Of course, there have always been melodramatic plays ever since the drama began to assert itself as an independent form of art. There is a melodramatic element in the 'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the 'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in the Elizabethan theater the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melodrama that flourished in the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth deserves a more careful study than it has yet received. Apparently it was due partly to a decadence of the native type of drama represented by Lillo's 'George Barnwell,' and partly to the stimulation received first from the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French Pixérécourt. And not to be neglected is the influence immediately exerted on the popular plays of the latter part of the period by the romances of Scott and of Cooper.
Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of style, of veracity of character delineation, of sincerity of motive, they were not without theatrical effectiveness—or they could never have maintained themselves in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen clearly, "a drama which was sufficiently popular to be transferred to the toy theaters was almost certain to have a sort of rude merit in its construction. The characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the dialog bald and despicable—but the situations would be artfully arranged, the story told adroitly and with spirit." In other words, the compounders of these melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots likely to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical audiences. Probably they were unfamiliar with Voltaire's assertion that the success of a play depends mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is unlikely that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration that plot is primarily more important than character; but they accomplished their humble task as well as if they had been heartened by these authorities. These ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them contributions to English dramatic literature, and they are not enshrined in its annals; but they were effective stage-plays, nevertheless, and they had, therefore, an essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas which Shelley and Byron were composing in those same years.
III
In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer of plays delivered by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain and Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain Stevenson's flat failure as a playwright. Many of his ardent admirers must have wondered why it was that he adventured four times into dramatic authorship, only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James Barrie and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists at first, as Stevenson was, strayed successfully from prose fiction into the acted drama. Was not Stevenson as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one of these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic power, as inventive, as responsive to opportunity, as ready to master a new craft? Why, then, did he fail where they have succeeded?
For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has an acceptable answer. Stevenson was unable to establish himself as a play-maker, first, because he did not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not put his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, contenting himself when he was a man with playing at play-making as he had played with his toy theater when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment as a dramatist was due to the abiding influence of this toy theater, and to the fact that the pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the 'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were hopelessly out of date before they were conceived. (There is a third reason, not mentioned by Sir Arthur, and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who knew the editor of the Magazine of Art personally; all four of Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made in collaboration with Henley, who was the least equipped by temper and by temperament for the practise of dramaturgy.)
Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene II
Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even if he had taken the new art seriously, he could never have won a place among the playwrights until he had fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery. In his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the accessories of Skelt's Juvenile Drama with boyish delight in the acquisition of things longed for to be possessed at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, he thought they were his possessions. But, of a truth, he was their possession, even if he did not know his slavery. As a man he was subdued to what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted to write plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow the better models of his own day; he was a bondman to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb, a chattel to Redington and to Pollock. "What am I?" he asked in his self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating, no doubt, yet subconsciously stating the exact truth; "What am I? What are life, art, letters, the world, but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped himself upon my immaturity." And the impression was then so deep that it could not be effaced in maturity. The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of dying when the man was born.