Our Stage and Its Critics / By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

by Edward Fordham Spence

Perhaps the secret is to be discovered in some passages that occurred during the trial of an action a little while ago, between two publishers, in which there was evidence to the effect that a book could not be a novel unless it had a love-story.

Of course, if upon our playwrights is imposed the limitation that all their plays must contain a love-story, the difficulty of the position is very great, and the greater still because they are not allowed to tell naughty love-stories unless they force upon them a moral ending, and they are very rarely permitted to indulge in a love-story which does not end in a wedding or the reconciliation of respectably wedded citizens. No wonder that as a body they seem to be getting bankrupt in imagination; they appear to be in the position of a cook who is never allowed to handle anything but sweets.

The state of things is rather curious. It may be often asserted truthfully of the West End theatres that there are as many love-stories as playhouses. Of late years, notwithstanding the evidence referred to, some of our novelists have shown a tendency to break away from the tradition; also some of the unfashionable playwrights exhibit signs of revolt; but the managers are timid, very timid, in the matter, and this is curious, because one has only to turn to Shakespeare to see that we have had modern successes with plays in which the love-story is trifling when it exists at all—Hamlet, for instance, and Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Henry VIII., and other historical pieces. Indeed, as soon as one begins to enumerate it appears that in most of the Shakespearean plays presented of late years the love interest, if any, has been a minor matter. Our managers might learn something from this.

There is mighty little sentimental love in the plays of "G.B.S." that have, or have had, a perilously disturbing vogue. And, indeed, when that ferocious dramatist does handle love it is in an intensely unsentimental fashion.

Moreover, love in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas is treated with cruel levity. Turn, by the way, to another great social satirist, Molière; one finds again that love sometimes is ignored, and when handled at all often treated dryly, or as a matter of little moment. Our most popular comedy, The School for Scandal, though it has a reconciliation business, is quite independent of any sentimental matter of importance. In several of the works of Mr Barrie, our most original popular dramatist, the sentimental interest is slight where it exists at all.

It seems needless to multiply instances; enough has been said to show that it is quite possible to make money with plays that are not at all sentimental. What a pity, then, that the dramatists who aim at general popularity should feel themselves constrained to be more or less sentimental, and also that managers should fight shy of the works of those dramatists, other than Mr Barrie, who have the courage to write unsentimental plays! For it is to be noticed that in the last ten years a great many unsentimental English plays have been written and produced by non-commercial managements. It does not from this follow that all of them ignore love and the relation of the sexes, or even avoid actual love-stories; but as a class they eschew the sentimental treatment which is and for a long time has been the distinguishing feature of British Drama.

A particular instance of the effect of the modern tradition may be mentioned. The Beloved Vagabond had a great success as a novel; it enjoyed a London run as a play of about two months only. In the book the love-story is a minor matter, treated mainly with a sub-acid humour, and the author wisely avoids an absurd happy-ever-after conclusion. The play was supersaturated with sentiment, with a sentiment which drove out nearly all the humour and, roughly speaking, all the plausibility. Is it easy to doubt that it is the sentimental treatment which has caused the history of the play to be so different from that of the novel?

There are signs that the public is growing rather tired of molasses, which in fact is ceasing to be "golden" syrup. The main effect, apart from purely technical matters, of the new drama, that practically speaking began with the production of The Doll's House at the Great Queen Street Theatre, has been destructive; the outcome has included some brilliant plays, the drawing power of which has never been fairly and fully tested; but the most important result has been the discontentment of the ordinary playgoer with the fare which once would have delighted him. Many bubbles have been pricked; many conventions killed; many plays ridiculed by houses that once would have accepted them eagerly.

Numerous causes have contributed to the fact that during the last few years the total sum lost in the London playhouses has been enormous, despite some big successes, several of which have been of unsentimental plays—such as Little Mary—and it seems to be time for the managers and playwrights to begin to consider the question whether they cannot go farther afield and handle themes from which they have held aloof hitherto. Gorgeousness of mounting has ceased to help managers; even the maidens in their teens have grown sophisticated, and jeer at the bread-and-butter love-stories; and successful modern French drama offers a much smaller proportion of adaptable plays than used to be the case. There must be a bottom to the deepest purse, and things can hardly go on in the legitimate playhouses as they have during the last few years; so it seems to be almost time for the managers to try to get out of a groove and look about for the unsentimental drama.

Since this was written the Phillips-Comyns Carr version of Faust was produced and not accepted by the critical, whilst the Phillips version of The Bride of Lammermoor, called The Lost Heir, was a failure and deserved its fate. Also it may be added Mr Frohman has produced Strife, Justice, Misalliance and The Madras House.