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

by Edward Fordham Spence

It is noteworthy that this idea of dispensing with dramatists is not new. Efforts were made in the days of Le Chat Noir to evolve a new kind of drama, in which the playwright had little concern. Moreover, Mr Gordon Craig, one of the forces of the future—and of the present—has revolutionary ideas on the subject.

Let us now see what the great diseuse thinks of dramas and dramatists. Here is a strong sentence by her: "The author ignores, or will not admit, that, despite all his efforts, he never produces anything but a half-dead child. The talented actor animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the dramatic art is concerned."

To anticipate an obvious objection she says, "Of course I know there were a Shakespeare, a Racine, a Molière, and some others.... What a pity they had no descendants!" It is permissible to wonder whether the lady has read much drama. Possibly she would ask why she should spend time in reading mere "souls," and admit that her acquaintance with plays is almost confined to works witnessed by her; and, indeed, seeing that, according to her, "the rôle of the comedian is superior to that of the author," she may believe that a play only exists when it is acted, and be quite unaware that an imaginative, intelligent person can get a high degree of pleasure from reading a play.

The dramatist may well rest content with the suggestion that his work is the soul, the immortal, noble part of drama, and that the players form only the gross, corporeal element.

There may be some truth in Guilbert's remarks: "The dramatic is the most inferior of all arts. The play passes through too many channels, and comes before the public as a cramped, crushed and faded form. The writer ... sees his play in one light, the theatrical manager receives it and sees it in another, the stage-manager adds his own way of understanding it, the actor takes it up according to his own temperament and talents, and the public sees it from a fifth point of view. Add to this ten or twelve subsidiary characters. How can an author claim, under such circumstances, to remain the absolute master of his work?"

The term "subsidiary characters" to some extent explains the attitude of the actress. It is a suggestion of the famous "moi-même et quelques poupées" which exhibits the clash of ideas that forms the basis of the ineradicable antagonism between the original author and the actor. Each naturally thinks himself the master.

To the true dramatist the players are as the colours on the palette, the instruments in the orchestra—or, perhaps, the players of them—the stone of the sculptor; their task is to give bodily form to his ideas, clothes and flesh to the "soul" of his drama, and, as far as possible, to efface themselves in doing their duty.

The player, on the other hand, regards the dramatist as someone intended to write splendid parts for him—parts in which, to use the stock phrase, he "sees himself"—sees himself. Unfortunately the dramatists have, on the whole, been the sufferers, the slaves.

Sardou enslaved himself to Bernhardt; there are grounds for thinking that but for this slavery he might have been a great dramatist and not merely a rich, supremely skilful play fabricator. For a long time the players have had the upper hand, mainly because of the servility of the dramatists, but there are signs of a change. Already the "ten or twelve subsidiary actors" phrase is becoming out of date. We have seen play after play at the Court with parts of different degrees of importance, but hardly any "subsidiary" characters in the sense in which Yvette Guilbert uses the term.

There are moments when the letter of Guilbert seems a joke or a hoax. One does not like to think that she said, "The true comedian finds his success in himself, and can do without the dramatic author. He easily utilizes his own comic or tragic gifts, as is witnessed in Shakespeare, Molière, and a hundred others." To think that we do not know whether Shakespeare was "a true comedian," and that it is not unlikely that he was a poor actor! The lady is wise not to attempt to name the "hundred others" presumably ejusdem generis with Shakespeare and Molière. "There have always been, since the beginning of the ages, mimics and improvisators who did without the text of others." Possibly this is true but it does not follow that there are many players who could hold an audience by their mimicry or improvisations; not a few of the greatest actors and actresses might starve if they had to rely upon their own ideas. It is even notorious that some of our most illustrious actors have had their brilliant after-dinner impromptu speeches written for them.