Great monarchs still live after their fall. The Napoleon of the stage would have died at Waterloo instead of crawling out of life at St Helena. One need not multiply instances after such a prodigious example. Managers naturally respect—some will say "pander to"—the public taste; wherefore our real life plays rarely see the footlights, and when they do sometimes are cruelly forced into an artificial ending.
From time to time one even sees quaint announcements that, owing to the wishes of the public, the conclusion of a particular play has been twisted from the author's original idea into some termination that gratifies the audience's desire to leave the theatre in a mood to enjoy a supper afterwards. The question of art involved in the matter hardly needs discussion. No one will deny that, in comedy at least, the greatest suggestion of truth is the greatest art, even whilst admitting that the inevitable circumstances of the production of a play demand certain modifications and adjustment of truth. The dramatist can never hold the mirror up to Nature; he can only reflect her in a distorting glass.
A few years ago in a play that made a sensation came the worst example of the forced conventional "happy-ever-after" ending on record. The case was that of An Englishman's Home, where there was foisted upon the author, who was abroad, a quite imbecile happy ending which caused much discussion: it is not unlikely that this crime against drama and the dramatist prevented the piece from enjoying the immense success confidently prophesied for it.
Nowadays authors are in a greater difficulty, because people—particularly the so-called "smart" folk—are eager to get away early for supper, whilst many are compelled to steal off to catch trains to Brighton and other suburbs, and leave the theatre before the ending of a play. The result threatens to be curious. The dramatists will be induced to make their big effort in the penultimate act, leaving nothing for the last but some tranquil rounding off which you may miss without serious loss. Instead of the notice, often, alas! untrue: "The audience is requested to be seated punctually at eight o'clock, since the interest in the play begins at the rise of the curtain," we shall have: "Members of the audience anxious for supper or to catch suburban trains are requested to leave before the curtain rises on the last act, which is only a kind of needless epilogue."
We had some trace of this new epilogue method in Leah Kleschna, as well as in Letty. How the critics of the morning papers would bless such a system! At the same time, it is imaginable that the authors will raise a difficulty—they are such an exacting race!
However, a brilliant suggestion has been made of a way of dealing with the difficulty. "Why not," asks a fair correspondent, whose letter has incited this article—"why not begin with the last act?" The scornful may answer with the question, "Why begin at all if you've nothing better than our ordinary drama?" but they must be kept out of court. There really is something in the idea. Public interest flags somewhat in the case of ordinary plays because the house knows too well the things that are going to happen; it might be stimulated by seeing them happen and then watching the development of the facts leading up to them. This suggestion is not protected in any way, either in England or the United States.
[Preposterous Stage Types ]
The title may sound a little misleading, Ruskinian, Horne-Tookian: probably the word "preposterous" would not have been used but for an accidental remembrance of De Quincey, who was so fond of using and explaining it, of pointing out that it signified the behind-before, the cart before the horse, the hysteron-proteron. By-the-by, why has De Quincey gone out of fashion? There are charming reprints of almost everybody who is somebody, and of somebodies who really are nobodies; even Alexander Smith is being talked of; yet, if you want a full feast of De Quincey you must go to ill-printed pages bound horribly. However, except so far as Shakespeare is concerned, the author of a famous essay on Wilhelm Meister has left us little on the topic of the stage. A casual question brought forward the subject: it was whether Sothern's Dundreary really represented an English type. To answer this is a matter of some difficulty.
The fact remains that if Dundreary did not represent a type, at least it created one. Dundrearys became quite numerous after Sothern's success; and the observant have remarked that not infrequently a stage character has verified itself by a species of ratification—a remark that has a flavour of Ireland, or, if a famous essay by Miss Edgeworth is to be accepted, a flavour of France—this is a reference to her essay on Irish bulls, a title itself which happens to be unconsciously a bull.
The "mashers" and "crutch and toothpick brigade" of the stage were rather the progenitors than imitators of the type, and the Gibson girls were more numerous after the appearance of Miss Camille Clifford than before she came to London. It might be indiscreet to go further into details and cite more modern instances on the topic.