to balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King played it) were evidently as much played off at you as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage,—he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury,—a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged,—the genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life,—must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or old friend.
I cannot count the number of occasions on which I have enjoyed the performance of the ‘School for Scandal,’—but they must amount to a score at the least. I recall most clearly John Gilbert’s Sir Peter; and I can testify that he had preserved the tradition of King. He was the fretful old bachelor bridegroom, who, when the screen fell and discovered Lady Teazle in the library of Joseph Surface, was wounded not in his heart but in his vanity. He preserved the comic idea, as Sheridan had designed. But John Gilbert was the only Sir Peter I can recall who was able to achieve this histrionic feat.
Of all the many Lady Teazles it has been my good fortune to see, Fanny Davenport stands out most sharply in my memory,—perhaps because she was the first I had ever beheld and perhaps because she was then in the springtime of her buoyant beauty. Certainly when the screen fell she was a lovely picture, like Niobe all tears. Her repentance was sincere beyond all question. She renounced the comic idea, which is that Lady Teazle has been caught in a compromising situation by the elderly husband with whom she is in the habit of quarrelling. Fanny Davenport saw only the pathos of the situation; and she made us see it and feel it and feel for her and hope that her impossible husband would accept her honest explanation,—the explanation which indeed he would have to accept since we as eye-witnesses are ready to testify that it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
But this rendering of the part is discomposing to the comic idea; and it forces a modification of method upon the actor of Charles Surface. It is in deference to the comic idea that when the screen falls Sheridan made Charles see the humor of the situation and only the humor of it. He is called upon to chaff Sir Peter and Lady Teazle and Joseph, one after the other. If the actor speaks these lines with due regard to the comic idea which created Sir Peter as a peevish old bachelor bridegroom and Lady Teazle as a frivolous woman of fashion, and if the actor of Sir Peter and the actress of Lady Teazle take the situation not only seriously but pathetically as they would in a twentieth century problem-play, then Charles’s speech is heartless and almost brutal. Now Charles is a character as sympathetic to the audience in his way as Lady Teazle is in hers. Charles is to be loved as Joseph is to be hated. And so the impersonator of Charles is compelled to modify his method, to transpose his lines and to recognize that the robust raillery natural to him and appropriate to the predicament must be toned down in deference to our more delicate susceptibilities.
He laughs at Sir Peter first; and then he turns to Joseph, who is fair game and whom the spectators are glad to see held up to scorn. He says “you seem all to have been diverting yourselves here at hide and seek and I don’t see who is out of the secret.” With this he turns to Lady Teazle and asks, “Shall I beg your ladyship to inform me?” So saying he looks at her and perceiving that she is standing silent and ashamed, with downcast eyes, he makes her a bow of apology for his levity. Finally with another thrust at his brother, the unmasked hypocrite, he takes his departure airily, leaving them face to face. If the comic idea suffers from this contradiction of the intent of the comic dramatist, it must find what consolation it can in its sense of humor.
IV
A large share of the success of even the masterpieces of the drama, comic and tragic, is due to the coincidence of its theme and its treatment with the desires, the opinions and the prejudices of the contemporary audiences for whose pleasure it was originally planned. But the play, comic or tragic, as the case may be, can survive through the ages (as the ‘Merchant of Venice’ and the ‘School for Scandal’ have survived) only if this compliance has not been subservient, if the play has the solidity of structure and the universality of topic which will win it a welcome after its author is dead and gone. What is contemporary is three parts temporary, and what is up-to-date is certain soon to be out-of-date. Nevertheless it is always the audience of his own time and of his own place that the playwright has to please, first of all; and if their verdict is against him he has lost his case. Plays have their fates no less than books; and the dispensers of these fates are the spectators assembled in the playhouse. The dramatist who ignores this fact, or who is ignorant of it, does so at his peril. As Lowell once put it with his wonted pungency, “the pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; you cannot see it, but it is sixteen pounds to the square inch all the same.”
(1921)