(Chiefly frivol and froth)
You do not spoil the broth
By employing a number of cooks.
With the opening of the new century, the "poetic drama" was revived with a certain measure of success by the production of Mr. Stephen Phillips's plays. Mr. Phillips had graduated as an actor, but Punch found him lacking in the theatrical sense, while acknowledging the pomp and pageantry of his verse. Herod, with Sir Herbert Tree in the title rôle, is condemned for its repulsive realism, and the lack of any character that engaged sympathy. The notice of Paolo and Francesca in 1902 is long, critical and by no means unfriendly, but the resultant impression is of "a negative achievement" in which the purple patches failed to redeem the lack of consistent characterization or of stage-craft. Mr. Henry Ainley is mentioned, but without any recognition of the qualities which have since earned for him distinction and popularity. Nero, by the same author, produced in 1906, is described as "out-heroding Herod." There were many fine lines but little dramatic action. Punch praises Miss Constance Collier as Poppaea, but cannot take the part seriously. "She looked the Roman lady, played the unfaithful wife, and died effectively as an invalid after a long and inexplicable illness. Perhaps she was poisoned. Nero knows; nobody else does except, perhaps, Mr. Stephen Phillips." Tree's make-up as Nero was most artistic, but he had not one really fine scene given him; Mrs. Tree was an admirable Agrippina; but Punch was not thrilled by the final conflagration, which he describes as a "weird, maniacal but dramatically unsatisfactory finish."
Barrie and Shaw
Meanwhile Sir James Barrie and Mr. Bernard Shaw were coming along with leaps and bounds, but neither of them owed much to Punch in the early years of the century. He had nothing but praise for H. B. Irving's acting in The Admirable Crichton, but it was a triumph for the actor rather than the playwright. The hero was "a perplexing creation," and the play "a queer mixture of comedy, extravaganza, farce and tragedy." Even less sympathetic was the first notice of Peter Pan, in 1905. As Punch had detected resemblances to The Overland Route and Foul Play in The Admirable Crichton, so he now found reminiscences of Peter Schlemihl and Snowdrop in the new play. For the rest, he could find little either to amuse or that could even be acknowledged as new or original in the extravaganza. He could not even tell whether the children present enjoyed it. Punch acknowledges that Barrie was the pet of the critics, and congratulates him on having his pieces perfectly acted by first-rate comedians. He frankly admits that he (Punch) was in the minority. A year later Peter Pan is recognized as a popular favourite in a much more sympathetic notice. Mr. Shaw was a much tougher morsel to digest, but here, too, one notes a progressive appreciation from the days when Punch pronounced Man and Superman to be "unpresentable," not on moral grounds, but because it was not a mirror of humanity in point either of character or action. Similar reserves are expressed in the notice of The Doctor's Dilemma in 1906. The general verdict is summed up in the epigram that "unfortunately, by steady abuse of it, Mr. Shaw has long ago forfeited his claim to be taken seriously." Yet the play contains "some very excellent phagocytes which enjoy a strong numerical advantage over its malevolent germs." So, again, Cæsar and Cleopatra, while affording in many ways a rare intellectual entertainment, was spoiled by the author's passion for being instructive; the piece fell between two stools, for it was neither frankly sacrilegious nor purely serious.
The ingenious burlesque account of an imaginary meeting of "The Decayed Drama and Submerged Stage Rescue Society" in 1903 is in the main hostile to the societies which confined their activities to the revival of old plays that failed to attract the general public. But Punch was by no means enamoured of all the manifestations of modernity, and the rumour in 1906 that Mr. Seymour Hicks was going to produce a musical comedy based on As You Like It prompted a diverting retort in Punch's: "As We Certainly Don't Like It, a Musical Comedy in Two Acts, by Hicks von Rubenstammer and William Shakespeare."
Punch adds the note:—
"Great care has been taken to follow the usual musical-comedy plan of making the Second Act even worse than the first."
His success may be judged by the extract that follows:—