Choose for your scene an Irish bog. Among brutal Saxons the theory still lingers that Ireland is all bog, and this will give vraisemblance to your picture. If you require an Interior, an Irish cabin will be most appropriate, for there is another curious superstition on this side of the St. George's Channel that all Irishmen live in cabins.
For the subject of your drama select something gloomy and Scandinavian. It is true that The Times says that "Lunacy and surface drainage are not cheerful subjects for drama," but your Celt knows better. Everything depends on the treatment. Did not Ibsen contrive a drama of enthralling interest on the subject of the drainage of a watering-place? And they say Ibsen is a Scotsman by descent, which is next door to being a Celt.
Let your characters be crazy or neurotic. You will find Ibsen's works a perfect storehouse of these, and if you "lift" one or two of them nobody is likely to detect the theft. Rita Allmers, or Mrs. Borkman, or that sweet thing Hedda Gabler, would all come in useful, and, as your scene is an Irish bog, there is an obvious opening for a Wild Duck.
If the plot of your play is gloomy, the dialogue should be even gloomier. Irish humour would be quite out of place on this occasion. No one must flourish a shillelah or sing "Killaloe" to lighten up the proceedings, and the stirring strains of "The Wearing of the Green" must be rigidly banished. This paramount necessity for gloom will probably place you in a somewhat difficult position, and may make it necessary for you to banish the Irish brogue altogether from your cast. Long experience has shown that a Saxon audience invariably associates a brogue with latent humour, and if anybody laughed it would be all up with the Celtic Renascence.
Punch's charity—or tolerance—did not, however, begin at home. London dramatic critics fared no better at his hands than Irish playwrights; witness the essay which begins "Dramatic critics are of three kinds. They may either write about themselves, or about the play, or about Macready." The first were egotistic, the second wholly unjudicial, the third laboriously and tediously reminiscent. But the sting of the satire is in the last paragraph:—
In criticizing the acting of a play, you should be guided wholly by the status of the actors. Thus the performance of the highly salaried players should receive unstinted praise, and that of the actor-manager (it is not the least blessing of his happy position) adulation. Less known performers may be mentioned with less enthusiasm, and minor personages may even be alluded to with marked disfavour. This will lend to your judgments that air of fine discrimination which will add to their weight.
Punch and "the Duse"
Loyalty to old favourites was another matter, as when Punch, under the heading "Little Nell," pleaded in support of the "Nellie Farren" Benefit on behalf of that famous Gaiety heroine in 1898; or when in 1899 he offered his parting salute to Mrs. Keeley, who throughout her long career in burlesque, melodrama, and legitimate drama had never been vulgar or tawdry, but always brave and gay, and who lived to the patriarchal age of ninety-four. Sardou's Robespierre, written for Sir Henry Irving and his company, gave Punch the opening for a graceful compliment to father and son, for Mr. Lawrence Irving translated the play and appeared in the part of Tallien. Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet is regarded rather as a tour de force than a legitimate interpretation, and Punch, who could not accept her reading of the Prince as a mischievous, spoilt and conceited boy of eighteen, suggested, in a whimsical picture, that she ought to get Irving to play the part of Ophelia. The same year, 1899, was notable for the coming of the Revue. The pioneer effort, which was launched at the Avenue Theatre, was more or less on French lines, but even at the outset the Variety element was prominent in a series of imitations of popular actors and actresses. Tree's production of King John, with Lewis Waller as Falconbridge and Miss Julia Neilson as Constance, is pronounced "a superb revival," but the English version of Cyrano de Bergerac failed to convert Punch to the majority view, though he now admitted that the piece contained brilliant poetry. He preferred Wyndham to Coquelin, but liked neither of them in the title rôle, and he sums up by declaring the piece to be a fine dramatic poem not to be acted, but read. Still, Punch was never wholly insular or inaccessible to new and foreign influences. He describes in 1900 how an enthusiastic friend accosted him in broken Anglo-Italian and swept him off to see Mme. Duse in the Italian version of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Punch began by scoffing at the grotesque costumes of the cast, but succumbed to the magic of this wonderful actress, who owed nothing to physique, discarded all make-up, even in a part where artificiality was in keeping with the character, and triumphed by sheer force of genius.
Conversationalist: "Do you play Ping-Pong?"
Actor: "No, I play Hamlet!"
The vogue of musical comedy was now at its height. Punch has some amusing suggestions in 1900 for adapting The School for Scandal and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's Mrs. Dane's Defence to suit the fashion of the hour, with appropriate casts, including Dan Leno and Miss Marie Lloyd. His rhymed extravaganza on "The Evolution of Musical Comedy" accurately describes the prevalent method in this quatrain:—
In musical comedy books