Doubtless everybody connected with theatres believes that love in some form or another is the only possible basis for a successful drama, although we are well aware that romantic love such as the dramatists trade in is only an episode in the lives of a minority of the nation, and does not come at all to the rest. Apparently it is presumed that those who have never felt it wish to hear about it, and that those who have, desire to revive their memories. Indeed, many experts imagine there are very few topics which will lure the public to the box-office.
There is before us at the moment a letter from Henry Irving, in answer to a suggestion that Ibsen's great drama The Pretenders was worthy of production by him, and he says, "Of the power of Ibsen's Pretenders I am quite sensible, but unfortunately there are considerations which prevent me from accepting the suggestion. In the first place, I believe the theme of ambition has no great dramatic hold, or a very slender one, on the playgoing public of to-day.... I am compelled as a manager to take these things into account. Were I conducting an endowed theatre, the case would be different." Many things have happened in Stageland since April 1897, when this letter was written by Irving, and it is by no means improbable that the scope of the theatre has been somewhat extended. After all, it is fantastic that money, the element which plays the greatest part in the lives of most of us, should generally be treated superficially if at all, and, as a rule, when not neglected, should be handled without accuracy or even verisimilitude of detail.
One might refer to Macbeth as a successful play with ambition as its theme. Since Irving's letter was written a fair number of unsentimental plays have been produced and well received, such, for instance, as Strife and The Silver Box and The Voysey Inheritance, all works of great quality.
[Some Unsuccessful Dramatists ]
When considering some of the criticisms upon Becket, and accepting them as accurate, one is inclined to ask why Tennyson failed as a dramatist. That he did, judged by the ordinary standard, can hardly be denied, nor could any degree of success with Becket disprove the statement, since the acted work is a bold, free adaptation of the printed play. He was anxious for success as a playwright, and in fact no fewer than five of his plays have been presented on the stage—all of them published after he was sixty-six years old. Now, Tennyson, undoubtedly, from every point of view that one can classify exactly, was far better equipped for playwriting than hundreds of successful dramatists—yet he failed. Why?
The puzzle does not end nor begin with him. One can name a number of literary men of great rank who have written vainly for the stage, to say nothing of others who are authors of works in the form of drama, but nevertheless, like a Shelley, Swinburne or Longfellow, may not have been stagestruck.
As conspicuous modern instances Balzac, Byron and Browning may be selected, and a writer who, if hardly of the same class, has written at least one masterpiece. This is Charles Reade, whose delightful book "The Cloister and the Hearth" seems likely to attain immortality. Reade, we know, was absolutely stagestruck, and wrote dozens of plays and spent a great deal of money over them; indeed, it is not too much to say that his mania for the theatre seriously injured his work as a novelist. Yet who will pretend that any of the pieces that he concocted alone or in conjunction with others is worth the least valuable of his novels?
Balzac, though not stagestruck in the same degree as Charles Reade, had a great desire for success as a playwright; part of the desire may have been due to eagerness to make money with which to pay off those terrible debts. Yet in one biography of him no mention is made of his dramas. Nevertheless, he sweated hard over Vautrin, La Marâtre, Les Ressources de Quinola and Mercadet; none of them helped substantially to pay off the debts, nor can any be rated equally with the poorest of his novels. Mercadet, certainly, has one brilliant scene of comedy in it, and under the name of A Game of Speculation proved a trump-card with Charles Mathews. G.H. Lewes was author of the version which, according to a popular story, was written and rehearsed between Saturday and Monday. The original, with the full title of Mercadet ou Le Faiseur was not acted till after the death of Balzac, when it was reduced to three acts by D'Ennery and given with success at Le Gymnase.
Everybody knows that Browning wrote a number of plays. A Soul's Tragedy was lately presented by the Stage Society, an interesting hardly successful experiment. A Blot on the 'Scutcheon was produced at Drury Lane in 1842 and revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells, and also in 1893 by the Independent Theatre, when Miss May Harvey gave an admirable performance as Mildred; whilst Strafford, Colombe's Birthday and In a Balcony have all seen the footlights and achieved at the most a succès d'estime. Few, however, even putting aside the vulgar, fallacious test of the box-office, would say that these works are really valuable stage dramas, despite the superb qualities obvious in them.
Some of Lord Byron's plays have been given upon the boards; but the real Byron of the stage is the author of Our Boys and goodness knows how many more successful works, all as dead to-day as the dramas of Sheridan Knowles. It has been said that The Cenci, when produced privately by Sir Percy Bysshe Shelley, with Miss Alma Murray as heroine, acted very well. Has the Stage Society ever considered the question of a revival?