A Book About the Theater

by Brander Matthews

Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late Jules Lemaître, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country: "Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism—it is conversation." Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear and as sparkling as was Lemaître's, it is an excellent thing; yet he was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be; and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper—because the direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the swiftest of commentaries thereon.

The final distinction between literature and journalism is to be sought in their diverging and irreconcilable objects. The desire of the former is for permanence, and the aim of the latter is the immediate impression. When literature triumphs it is for all time—more or less. When journalism most completely achieves its purpose its success is temporary, to be retained only by iteration and reiteration, since it has for its target the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this distinction between journalism and literature, we have no difficulty in discovering journalism in many places other than the daily and weekly papers; very properly it fills the most of the space in the monthly magazines, and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in our book-stores, since only a small proportion of the volumes which pour from the press every year possess the combined substance and style, the solidity of matter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere writing up to the loftier level of literature.

On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable quality, not only in the magazines, but also now and again in the newspapers. Drake's 'American Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily journals, and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve and the dramatic criticism of Lessing and of Lemaître. But these were but happy accidents, and the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make his journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of literature. He feels that this is foreign to his main purpose, and he is content when his editorial articles, and his news stories are vigorous and picturesque—clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, better than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the news, all the news, and nothing but the news—accompanied, of course, by the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.

Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united—insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from being easy, criticism is quite as difficult as creation—more difficult, indeed, if we may judge by its greater rarity. In a superbly creative period there are sometimes three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, almost contemporaneous; and even at such a time there is rarely more than one critic worthy to be companioned with them. Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the sole Aristotle came forward as their critic. Corneille and Molière and Racine labored side by side, and only Boileau was competent to interpret and to encourage them.

When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and Boileau, of Lessing and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is actually creation. "The critical faculty as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail has told us. "It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and nobody knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be acclaimed as masterpieces until they have stood the test of time. And this is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place on the staff of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether he was assigned to deal with the drama or with literature at large.

III

The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the play-reviewer, is not criticism of the creative kind, since for that he is always likely to lack material. His task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to report upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the readers of the newspaper as to the nature and the merits of these novelties. His work is essentially reporting, even if it is reporting of a special kind, calling for special qualifications. The connection of the drama with the show business is intimate, and it always has been. In the long history of the theater there is no period without its successful pieces, the appeal of which was mainly sensuous—to the eye and to the ear, rather than to the emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an art, and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show business is a trade. This is no new thing—altho ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and altho it may make itself a little more obvious at one time than at another. What confronts us is the condition of things as they are, not the theory of things as they might be.

There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, who was also a creator, only if our theaters were presenting in rapid succession a sequence of masterpieces, tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire, social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not the case now here in the United States in the twentieth century; and it never has been the case anywhere or anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated the ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered our choice of Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Hauptmann, Henry Arthur Jones and Augustus Thomas, Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and at the same time we are invited to choose between 'Trilby' and the 'Celebrated Case,' melodramas and farces, summer song-shows and ultra-contemporary reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean spectacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand or deserve criticism of any kind; but they need to be reported upon like any other item in the news of the day.

If this is the case, it might as well be recognized frankly. There is always advantage in seeing things as they are, in fronting the facts and in looking them squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of those who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers will perceive the possibility of a change of method. He will charge one of his staff with the supervision of the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays, and the personal gossip about the players; and he will authorize this editor to send competent reporters to all first performances, directed to report upon them as they would report upon any other event of immediate interest. He would warn these reporters that they were strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and that they were, therefore, to refrain from explicit criticism. He would so select his men that a melodrama should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a good melodrama, and that a summer song-show should be described by a reporter who could find pleasure in inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this policy should be adopted, and announced clearly and emphatically, probably most of the occasions for quarrel between managers and editors would disappear; and the immense majority of the readers of the daily paper would be supplied with exactly the information they would prefer.

Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are really interested in the drama as a serious art, the editor-in-chief might avail himself of the fact that the Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also a magazine, to be read in more leisurely fashion, and therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger freedom. Here space could be found for genuine dramatic criticism by the most competent expert available. This dramatic critic should have nothing whatever to do with the news of the theaters, or with the first-night play-reviewing. He should not be tired and bored by having to go to the theater half a dozen times a week, and by being forced to analyze plays which do not reward analysis. He would be expected to select out of the current performances that one which promised to be most worthy of careful consideration, and he would feel himself free to discuss this at such length as it might seem to him to deserve. To him also should be intrusted the more significant of the new books upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of the drama. In the summer (and also whenever at any other season there might be a dearth of inspiring topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected to contribute, since he should never be called upon to make bricks without straw.